Emulation Versus Expansion: Daydreaming about Destiny

After five years, I started playing Destiny 2 again. It’s a video game that’s famous for its killer Dungeon & Dragons But In Space vibes and aesthetic, fantastic gunplay, and addicting shoot and loot grind. I started playing again because the Witch Queen trailers were so evocative (how can I resist a god of cunning that looks like the most bad ass moth), and I kept playing because it’s a lot of fun.

At first I thought, Well I don’t have to think about making this into a TTRPG because Spencer has that covered with LIGHT. Which is true, LIGHT is a rules lite game that embodies the loot and shoot vibes and power fantasy of video games really well. Fantastic stuff! (sidenote: Spencer is working on a new version of LIGHT and I’m so excited about it, you should just check out his games in general).

But as I played through a quest and watched notable characters interact with each other, the more I started to think I want to play a game about THIS instead, and I can’t get that from Destiny 2 or LIGHT.

So what is THIS? Basically many of the characters are Guardians who have been at this for a long time, centuries even. They fight, they protect humanity, they die, they’re revived in battle, and it happens over and over again. I can’t stop thinking about how that would affect a person’s character, their very soul even. How does that change how they interact with each other?

“Every instinct is telling me to strike, centuries of conditioning. But…instincts can lie,” one character says. It made me think of how hard it is for long lived warriors to change and grow. How could a TTRPG guide that sort of play? In the same conversation, the characters call upon events that happened long ago to prove a point, “Give him the same chance you gave me…once upon a time.”

I started to imagine what kind of play that would look like. What kind of game has you explore what it means to be a long lived warrior, who interacts with others who have seen and experienced as much as you have? What parts of you would you force to change, what dead parts of your soul would you revive? What difficult and painful lessons took decades, if not centuries to learn? What does it mean to be resurrected, again and again, to be deathless and yet awaiting the final death?

We often see indie designers draw upon inspiring media to create their games. I do the same! But I think a lot of people get caught up on how to embody all of the inspiring material in a single TTRPG. A tall order that I feel dilutes the true potential of a game.

Just because LIGHT does not embody this super specific desire I have, does not make it any less of a great game. LIGHT does one thing, the video game power fantasy, and does it really well. Fantastic! And the game is better for it. But this is a whole other conversation for another time.

(Ahem, in fact, Josh Hittie and I will be talking about drawing from inspirations for your TTRPG design during our Big Bad Online panel, you should check that out!)

But I also think there’s a lot of potential in TTRPGs exploring beyond the inspiring material. Offering a creative space that can’t be present in the original media at all, and can only be effectively played out in a TTRPG.

There’s a lot of focus on emulating things, like the outdated (and limiting) idea that Powered by the Apocalypse is mainly a genre emulator. But what about expansion? What about taking a new path beyond what inspires you, with a path that only a TTRPG can create?

With that in mind, I’d like you to think about the media that inspires you, and what about it that you want to see in a TTRPG. What new paths can you forge? How can you expand instead of emulate? What would that distinction look like? How would it affect gameplay?

In the meantime, I’ll just keep daydreaming about my TTRPG of immortal guardians and the centuries of emotions and relationships they carry with them. I don’t dare to create a new game, not when I have so many I need to polish and refine! But it’s a lovely idea I go back to in between shooting things in Destiny 2.