Shadowlight & Personae RPG Core Guide Preface

In the thirty-plus years I’ve been playing tabletop RPGs, I’ve been a part of face-to-face groups in northern New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, and southern Connecticut. I’ve played at tables at RPG conventions in northern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. I’ve played at “virtual tables” that have brought people together not only from throughout the US but from other countries as well, especially in the last three years when we as a species have collectively persevered through a global pandemic.  I’ve played games that take up as much space as “the world’s most popular RPG” and games that take up only a few pages. I firmly believe it’s important to play a lot, not only the same game but different games, with different rules and procedures of play, and with different players.

It’s a fact of life that RPG groups don’t stay together, or the same, forever. Whether formed at a college, where members of the group leave after graduation, or any number of life's other interferences, gaming groups expand, shrink, disassemble and reassemble. When the moderator of one group wants to start anew, there's room for great potential—but oftentimes, the moderator must accept new players as they come and adjust to different styles of play. The moderator hopes that maybe, over time, he might convince some of the players who are more dedicated to the game in RPG, and not the roleplaying might start to see the value in telling stories that don't always involve some tropes that eclipse other more nuanced storytelling possibilities. If the new game group can share what it is they are looking for in the types of roleplaying games they enjoy playing, and come to a consensus, then Personae can provide a common denominator for play to start—the modularity to adjust the play experience as time goes on, building robustness where it will enrich gameplay and right-size to a balance of simplicity and complexity.

RPG groups should have the tools to craft a collaborative storytelling experience that caters to their particular needs. No two groups of roleplayers are alike, and as a result, no one game will provide what everyone wishes to get out of a roleplaying experience. However, if provided with the fundamentals, a baseline set of mechanics to define characters and interact in the fiction—the shared narrative environment that everyone at the table participates in—then the group can expound upon the baseline and determine exactly what they need to conduct the type of game that they seek to their satisfaction.

Rules and procedures of play should only be as complex or as intricate as an individual group needs or wants them to be. This especially applies to combat—conflict that involves violence or violation. An RPG could be adapted to provide an intricate, tactical play experience. The resolution methods, however, can still be applied to a wide variety of situations, both combat and non-combat-related. Roleplaying, character interaction and development, and overall collaborative storytelling can best be fostered when the players are given both the tools they need and the tools to make those tools themselves.

Another guiding principle is that no rule, or set of rules, should prohibit anyone in a group from accomplishing the sorts of deeds that they want to accomplish, so long as the group is in agreement. A character's array of game statistics should help to fully express the character, not dictate what the character can do, defined in the player's words, with dialogue and consensus determining the mechanical applications of those abilities. A character is capable of attempting any action that the player can imagine—abilities may increase the likelihood of success, making an action easier to succeed, or enhance the action somehow, increasing the effect or allowing it to last for a longer period of time, but a character will never be in a position where a trait is required in order to accomplish a specific type of declared action.

The story of Shadowlight & Personae is over fifteen years in the making. I find that its story and the story of my involvement in the TTRPG community are intertwined…entangled, you might say. They’re tales that can’t be told separately. In many ways, Shadowlight & Personae is the reflection of the sum total of my tabletop RPG experiences, my philosophy formulated based on those experiences, and ultimately an image of how I’d like to participate in and to see games played, either as a player or the chorus at the table. Every game I’ve played where I’ve seen a particular philosophy espoused has influenced some part of S&P, and every theory discussion I’ve read or participated in—either on a message board, forum or on social media—has in some way been woven into S&P’s fabric. S&P is the ultimate expression of what roleplaying games mean to me, not only as a hobby but as an expression of my passions, values and character. It is my small hope that even if we never have the opportunity to sit at the same TTRPG table together, you’ll understand what TTRPGs mean to me from reading this book and using it to inform play at your table.