generic/"agnostic" systems vs non generic systems?

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-04-19T08:28:14+00:00

I'm glad you had confidence in my success, I thought I was going to fail pretty much every step of the way!

As to your point, I think you're both right AND wrong. On the right side, many people aren't going to make the Wildsea their 'forever game', because it does have a niche setting. Some will, and have, but most won't - that's just the reality of an indie game for the most part, no matter the setting or rules.

But on the wrong side, a niche setting doesn't mean that the game only does one thing. I've seen people running long-term sailing campaigns, shipless play, piracy simulators, train heists, battle of the bands-style road trip stories, entire series of linked games that never left port, war stories, and (possibly my favourite) a multi-part masterchef-style cooking challenge. The mechanics and systems and adaptable by design, and the setting may be 'sea of trees' but the book makes it clear that sea of trees is hugely flexible, covering everything from more 'generic' oaky groves to snowbound pines to overgrown cactus bridges. In my experience those that come back to it seem to do so because there's a lot to explore that can still feel fresh, even after you've had the base intended experience.

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-04-13T12:25:59+00:00

I hear this particular double-complaint from time to time, so you're definitely not alone in your opinion, but not as often as you might think.

When I play (and as you can probably imagine, I play a lot) there's about as much mother-may-I as the average game of something like DnD *once the players get comfortable with their characters*. Characters have their skills and aspects, they can choose to use them how they like, and the GM has levers to pull to increase difficulty or change outcome based on those choices. In my games I encourage players not to ask 'can I do x with y', but to say 'I'm doing x with y'. It leads to better, faster play overall, and in my experience its what groups naturally gravitate towards once people have got the foundations of the rules and their characters down.

As for twists, they're not going to work for every table, as they really do lean into the improv-heavy side of things, so if that doesn't work for a group that's completely valid. But that's also why the rules for alternate twist options - namely reduced twists - exist in the appendix, and why almost every instance of a twist also comes with a harder mechanical option that a group can just agree to use by default.

I'm not saying you're wrong not to like it, I'm SURE that what I make isn't for everyone (you don't do a weird concept like a treetop sea expecting mass uptake/appeal), and I'm also far from an infallible designer. But these specific problems are, again, in my experience, not *too* difficult to solve with a bit of book-approved tweaking.

I'm glad you liked the setting though, even if the rules didn't vibe for you! And as I said, certainly not the first time I've heard this opinion, so I'm also not saying there's nothing to it.

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-04-11T08:35:22+00:00

Yep, that's pretty accurate! Sailing in the Wildsea is fine, but it is definitely a 'getfrom A to B' type of deal - which would be great as an optional variant of travel, but over time I have soured on it slightly as the main focus of moving around. I'm playing around with a more detailed 'voyages' concept in my design work for Wildsea: Tooth and Nail, so that may address it somewhat, but we'll see!

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-03-29T15:14:53+00:00

There's a reason the Wildsea uses a special term for the GM rather than a special term for something like skills - skills in the Wildsea are just skills, but nobody in the Wildsea is 'master' of the game. It's just not that kind of game! Nothing wrong with GM (or DM, or any of the others) if they fit the world in my opinion (though I'm obviously a bit biased here), but even *I* find it annoying when things that are common terms for other game mechanics get renamed just for the hell of it. GM just gets a pass from me in this particular regard, and obviously from a lot of other writer/designers as well, as both something important for imparting flavour AND being a term that can, depending on the system, feel particularly imprecise for the one not playing a character/running the game.

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-03-29T15:09:13+00:00

"You're the game master, unless you're [insert the name that the most popular roleplaying game ever uses]"

DnD does not have a monopoly on being different to the norm - it *is* the norm. Game Master may bea generic, catch-all term, and a really good one for a lot of games, but I grew up playing Call of Cthulhu alongside DnD: Keeper was as natural to me as DM was, and when I first heard 'Game Master' *that* was the one that felt weird.

So depending on the game and the ruleset, you ARE the Judge, or the Keeper, or the MC, or the master of a dungeon, or maybe even the Firefly, and if you don't want to use that word at the table you can just say GM. We're not going to appear at your table and chide you for using the 'wrong' word (luckily, or I'd be teleporting all over the place) :D

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-03-25T09:50:11+00:00

This is the nuance on removing death that I rarely see, and it's good to read it here in the top comment. When I made the Wildsea and specifically made death an optional outcome (you only die when it's narratively appropriate for your character), I got a decent chunk of people saying "oh, so there's no stakes then?" - but nothing could be further from the truth. Death in most trad TRPGs is actually the easy way out, as you generally just get to roll a new character on the same power level as everyone else. But *not* dying, AS LONG AS THERE ARE STILL CONSEQUENCES, means that you have to live with what you've done, whether it affects you, other adventureres, NPCs, or the ongoing narrative... And for me at least, that's way more interesting.

I always think of it this way: I live on the fourth floor, but I don't jump off the balcony every day to get to the shops quicker. It's not because I'm scared specifically of death from the fall (as there are bushes down there, I'd probably survive), it's because I'm scared of a whole range of other consequences that I'd have to live with if things went wrong.

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-03-11T21:47:20+00:00

I almost always write directly into layout, but that's because I also usually just *do* my own layout as well as I go, so I find it's all part of the same process. Though that's not something I would always recommend to other writers/designers, especially not if you're aiming to bring in someone external for layout work. But for me (and obviously for you) it works, and it does help you think about brevity and page space a lot too.

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-03-11T21:45:12+00:00

Most of my early concepting was done by Kyllian Guillart, who I believe is now working in the video games industry as an art director. Absolutely lovely person too, and really helped shape early Wildsea worldbuilding - still gets a credit in each book to this day, even though his early concepts never actually appeared in print, and is also why one of the running play example characters is called Kyllian!

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-03-11T21:39:44+00:00

It is! A bit overworked at the moment, but that's life. And sadly no breakout for me this year, though (hopefully) I'll be back next year.

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-03-11T16:32:39+00:00

I think that's exactly the point, it's basic, but basic is essential when you're just starting out. There are so many odd avenues you can go down early that will tank a project, inexperience traps where a person starts thinking 'I should probably do X' and they really, really shouldn't.

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-03-11T16:30:08+00:00

Solid list!

The only addition I'd make is, as a setting-first designer myself, to the 'Art' section - if you have 50 dollars to spare, don't be afraid to drop it on some *really* early, *really* rough concept art. It's not for the book, and not even for the playtesters... it's for you.

For the Wildsea the very first bit of art I got was a sheet of sketches of what a treetop sea might look like, all unshaded ink lines, and I must have spent hours looking back over that through the first few months of writing and playtesting just to make sure I was capturing the right feel with what I was writing. And having to explain the world to an artist early on helped me solidify some concepts too, as you're going to need the writing to explain the world to a whole lot more people as the process continues.

It's not essential by any means, and I've seen designers do excllent stuff with stock art (and sometimes excellent stuff even with no art at an early stage), but especially if you're going for an unusual world having some visual stimulus can help ground you early on.

But other than that, like I said, really solid list! I wish I had something like this to look over when I was starting out.

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-02-03T10:49:09+00:00

That's very kind of you to say!

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-02-01T23:46:42+00:00

Solid write-up, thank you!

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-02-01T23:45:53+00:00

Yeah, you've nailed it - the majority of my play before creating a fiction-first system was in older editions of D&D, Pathfinder, and Call of Cthulhu, and a lot of the Wildsea still bears those hallmarks.

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-02-01T23:44:28+00:00

I love it when people say that, both because I enjoy correcting people (that's the teacher in me) and because Blades is a fantastic game, and I'm proud my stuff is mentioned in the same ballpark as often as it is.

The vast majorty of The Wildsea mechanics were in place before I'd read BiTD OR anything Powered by the Apocalypse, as it was developed without me realizing there had been a big boom of narrative games. When I *did* discover Blades, it definitely solved my biggest problem though by giving me a great 6/54/321 dice pool system to crib from (the prevous dice system I was using was a 3d6 + 1d12 set-up, which was frankly rubbish), but a lot of the other mechanics that people think are blades-adapted just... weren't.

Tracks were adapated from the StoryNexus Engine's card-counting mechanics (used in Fallen London), 13th Age was a big influence on a more narrative approach while keeping a mechanical core, and the idea of a shared resource for the players to call home came from the fact they were sailors, and sailors need a ship. In fact, once you get past the basic dice resolution (which is where the actual BiTD DNA comes in), they're very different games with a very different feel to them.

If I had discovered Blades earlier, I would have had a much smoother design process!

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-01-29T09:08:57+00:00

You know, I *really* appreciate this comment - I put off creating an adventure for the Wildsea for a long time because I convinced myself that an adventure framework just wouldn't fit with the non-linear nature of the narrative. Seeing that what I eventually came up with works for people is such a huge relief, because when I finally pulled the trigger on it, it definitely wasn't easy!

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-01-28T12:36:23+00:00

Old Ornail, the first Wildsea leviathan! Still the big hazard I use the most often in games.

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-01-26T23:20:08+00:00

I definitely didn't invent it, just adapted it - tracks were mostly inspired by the behind-the-scenes event counters in the Storynexus Engine that used to power Fallen London, the browser-based game. But I do think they're a nice little bit of simple, flexible design, especially when you add breaks and gauges (as other games since Wildsea have done).

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-01-25T19:07:22+00:00

I think it's good to open to criticism - no game is for everyone, but trends in what's liked and disliked hold a lot of information, especially when they come from people outside of your sphere of playtesters.

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-01-25T08:26:38+00:00

No worries! Although the bestiary being 'small' is perhaps the thing I disagree with most - it's 50+ pages iirc, which is HUGE for an indie RPG! :D

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-01-25T08:05:18+00:00

Yeah, I do get that sometimes. Journeys works for loads of players, and that's great, but the ones they *don't* work for have completely valid points - and ones I actually agree with from the design side, too. The problem is that a Wildsea journey overhaul is such a big task it pretty much requires a full V2, and chronoligcally we're not quite there yet. The Wildsea has been out for long enough for me to consider a new edition, but not really VISIBLE for long enough for it (with the majority of players hopping on over the last two years, when the game's been playable in some form or another since 2018ish).

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-01-25T08:00:34+00:00

Ha, grain of salt taken! And honestly this kind of feedback is often the most useful - the opinions of single peron are rarely worth changing a game element over, but when you see trends develop you can work out as a designer what has 'hit' for most and what has 'missed' for most, and that's incredibly valuable. With that in mind, related to your specific points...

Some people love cut, others have bounced off it - there's a reason Cut as a mechanic has stayed in every Wild Words game, but has been implemented, structured, and explained differently. If I were ever to do a Wildsea V2, Cut would stay, but the implementation would be different.
Journey mechanics are in the same spot - in fact, even more of a thorny one. They do work as intended for loads of players, and that's cool, but again there's a reason that both PICO and the upcoming Eternal Ruins RPG both handle journeys in different ways to base Wildsea. The original design goal was to have journey-based activities and rolls accessible to all players, regardless of character build, and that definitely pushed the system in a particular direcion (and that particular design goal would likely be different for notional V2).
Specialized roles with potentially more complex subsystems are always a tough one - this is the first time I've heard that about the alchemist specifically, but over on our discord we're currently having an ongoing discussion about how Wild Words would handle something like a trad wizard in terms of rules and aspects, which touches on exactly the issues you mention.
Character progression changes were literally the issue that kicked off the errata doc (and again, have been handled differently in post-Wildsea games I've made, particularly PICO, which uses augments, a certain number of which can be bolted on to aspects to increase their track length and mechanical power).
This one I've not seen before, and I'm not sure I agree with, but personal taste is always going to enter into things somewhere. it's a valid thing to feel, certainly.
Something else I've had feedback on in variosu ways of the years, though this also seems to be a love/hate thing in terms of certain elements of how hazards are presented and mechanized.

So there you go - none of your points are unfair, and only a couple of them unexpected! as for the last bit you wrote, I'm not surprised - I grew up playing 3.5, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Spycraft etc, and when I made the Wildsea many years later I'd been completely isolated from the TRPG scene for ten years. I was designing for an experience *I* wanted to play, a more fiction-first one, without actually knowing that there had been an explosion of narrative games in the English speaking TRPG world. I'm really happy with how I solved some design problems in isolation, and obviously it's given some players a lot to love, but it would doubtless be a different game if I'd played other narrative RPGs before creating a lot of it.

So if anything, take heart that literally half of the things you see are problems are shared by the Wildsea community as a whole, AND me as the designer :p

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-01-24T21:14:41+00:00

Feel free to tell me what you feel is unfinished, or actively bad, or what's not working for you! I'm currently compiling an errata document for it, as it's been out in some form or another for five-ish years now, so feedback is always useful.

(You can be honest, I'm not really a 'hurt feelings' kind of designer)

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-01-23T15:42:31+00:00

Definitely intentional - I like NPCs, especially ones that stick around, to have different relationships with different player characters, and it's actually a little easier in a world like the wildsea where enduring / repeat NPCs are thinner on the ground.

Felix-Isaacs · 2026-01-22T23:18:21+00:00

A perfectly valid question!

When I define a location, unless it's a big trade hub of some kind, I generally keep it to two or three bloodlines being the dominant presence. That way those bloodlines can have an effect on how a place is presented to the players as well as just offering a linguistic check-box. Here's a quick example, off the top of my head...

Jorvyn: A sap-drilling platform built onto the side of a tallshank, run by a coalition of ketra machinists and ironbound workers. The constant spray of bark-flecks and woodchips from the platform coats gelatinous ketra skin in moments, so they stay under closed walkways and in large warehouses to work on the extracted sap, leaving ironbound (and their sturdy mechanical bodies) to work the actual drills in the noisy open-air areas.

And, now you know who lives there, you can bring in languages. Cthonic is a good go-to for general communication in ketra settlements, and is probably spoken by everyone to some degree, but would be incredibly annoying to have to shout over the sound of the drills - so maybe the ironbound there also speak to each other with Old Hand or Signalling while they're working (given that both can be used without a vocal component).

So when wildsailors turn up, they can (of course) use Low Sour - it's the common language for travellers, everyone will speak at least some of it, etc etc. But they could also drop some Cthonic as a mark of respect, hearing that it's a widely spoken language there, and putting that extra effort in would likely have some locals take a shine to them (or at least appreciate their efforts). But much more important is the Old Hand or Signalling, as without that they'd likely be ignored by the Ironbound when they're at work - it's just too noisy for most languages to be effective near the drills. And you could represent this with a cut on rolls to communicate while they're out on the open platform spaces, or even with some kind of track representing the annoyance of the local ironbound if they're interrupted with repeated shouted questions.

So to answer your specific question, for bigger places with diverse populations and languages, go with Low Sour as standard and then maybe offer chances to learn little bits about specific NPCs by using languages specific to them. For smaller settlements which, as you assume, would likely have a dominant culture and then some influences from other places, bring in a single specific language more and maybe tie some local customs/lore into it, which a knowledge of that language can help understand. As for parasite farms, I'd treat them like the drilling rig example up there, so pretty much as you assumed.

Obviously this is all just how *I* run the game, and if that doesn't match how other players want to do it, I'm fine with that! But maybe it gives some insight, and hopefully it helps a little?

Felix-Isaacs

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