The Platinum Rule, Revisited

“Everyone is responsible for helping to create a good gaming experience for everyone, including themself. We call this the Platinum Rule.”
— Magonomia Core Rules (p. 3)

The alchemical symbol for platinum. Credit: Kwamikagami, CC BY-SA 4.0 ,via Wikimedia Commons

In RPG Imaginings’ very kind overview video of Magonomia®, the host especially praised the Platinum Rule (quoted above). The host presumed the Platinum Rule came from Fate™ rules, but actually it was created by Shewstone Publishing. It first appeared (with slightly different wording) in the Magonomia Starter Rules in 2019. We’re not especially concerned about claiming credit, though. We’re concerned about spreading the idea.

Why the Platinum Rule?

For the first edition of a tabletop RPG — or any edition, really — it’s important to tell the audience how to play. We want to get everyone on the same page, so to speak, so they can start off their new game with a shared understanding of it.

We thought long and hard about the single most important piece of advice we could give to prospective players and GMs, that would put them in the best position to have a good time with the game. The Platinum Rule is what we came up with.

Pathfinder Second Edition Has It

We wrote the Platinum Rule into Magonomia because we think it’s important. Between the five designers on the cover of Magonomia Core Rules, we’ve played a lot of editions of a lot of tabletop RPGs. Yet none of us (in 2019) could think of ever seeing this basic social rule written down in a game. Games have historically been light on writing down the social rules, though this is starting to change.

I was delighted to see Pathfinder Second Edition has the same principle (on page 8, under the heading “Gaming is for All”): “It is the responsibility of all the players, not just the GM, to make sure the table is fun and welcoming to all.”

It’s Obvious … or Is It?

It took a while for us to realize the importance and the power of the Platinum Rule. In my first ever interview about Magonomia with blogger John Sharpe, he was excited about the Platinum Rule and asked me about it. I was caught a bit off guard, not realizing what I had created. I gave an answer that was a bit wide of the mark. In hindsight, I wish I had thought to say why we put it in the Starter Rules: it’s the single best piece of advice we could give a gaming group.

I thought we were merely stating the obvious. Quite a few people have shrugged off the Platinum Rule, saying “that’s obvious.”

If it’s so obvious, why have I only seen it written down in two core books in my 40+ years of gaming?

I no longer think the Platinum Rule is obvious. It’s a cornerstone of the gaming group’s social contract. I suppose we can discuss whether it belongs in the group’s social contract or not, but I no longer accept “it goes without saying” as a valid dismissal of it.

The Platinum Rule is Open Game Content

Use the Platinum Rule in your game products or homebrew content. Both Magonomia and Pathfinder Second Edition are licensed under the Open Game License, so you’re invited and encouraged to use, remix, and modify it under the terms of that license (see the respective rule books for the exact license terms).

Beyond Battles 2021 Video, Slides, and Notes

Shewstone Publishing presented SEM21197813 Beyond Battles: Overloooked History for World Builders at Gen Con Online on September 17, 2021. This year’s topics were:

  • The legend of King Arthur and how it conflicts with archaeological evidence of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain.

  • Real-world clerical necromancy, an underground of monks and priests who practiced black magic and mostly got away with it.

  • The “taming” of English nobility by the Tudor dynasty at the end of the fifteenth century.

Our Historical Fantasy RPG

We publish Magonomia, the RPG of Renaissance wizardry. Everyone plays a wizard wielding magic based on authentic Renaissance lore.

Video

Slides

Here are the slides of the presentation.

Notes

Here are the notes and follow-up from each section.

Legend of King Arthur

Although the legend is no longer considered factual, it makes a great adventure setting. Andrew recommends the Age of Arthur RPG.

A good science fiction novel set against an empire’s decline is A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine.

Here’s a direct link to the Secrets of the Dead episode “King Arthur’s Lost Kingdom.”

Wikipedia’s article on the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain summarizes recent discoveries about the period.

Clerical Necromancy

We didn’t mention it in the presentation, but an excellent overview of (European) historical magic is Magic and superstition in Europe : a concise history from antiquity to the present by Michael F. Bailey.

A more focused book about medieval magic (containing no actual spells) is Magic in the Middle Ages by Richard Keickhefer. Kieckhefer also has several other books about the history of magic that are worth a look.

An audience member asked about books with actual spells that pre-modern people believed would work. We didn’t research actual spells from the medieval period so we’ll have to direct you to your search engine or your friendly local reference librarian. We do know quite a bit about fifteenth and sixteenth century spells. Two books we used heavily while researching our game Magonomia are:

Also, we touched on the investiture conflict, the 500-year struggle between the Western church and monarchs over how much influence the Crown will have over selection of priests and bishops. It’s a big topic; for a good overview of this and other important historical trends, we recommend Civilization in the Middle Ages by Norman F. Cantor.

The Taming of the Nobility

There wasn’t any discussion of sources during the seminar. Many history books give surprisingly light treatment to Henry VII, which is perhaps the way he would have wanted it. I’ll refer the interested reader to The Tudors: The Complete Story of England's Most Notorious Dynasty by G.J. Meyer.

Also I found a good documentary about Henry VII on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1ZKruLTJQ2Y

Have More Fun by Embracing Failure in Fate Games

by Andrew Gronosky

This is a section of text from chapter 6 of the Magonomia® manuscript.

When I first read the Fate Core System book, I had a negative impression. It looked to me like Fate was designed so characters rarely fail. I'd spent most of my gaming years playing RPGs like Call of Cthulhu®, where having your character devoured by a monster is considered one of the better possible outcomes. "Young gamers these days are a bunch of crybabies!" I harrumphed. "Back when I started playing First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons® (or AD&D® for short), one failed dice roll could get your character disintegrated beyond hope of resurrection!"

It did cross my mind that having a character you've been playing for two years blasted into ash on Round 1 of a battle might be considered a bit anticlimactic. In fact, I remembered, when I was a GM for AD&D®, I fudged dice rolls quite a lot just to prop up some semblance of a plot. The current (Fifth) edition of D&D® is a lot more forgiving, or perhaps I should say, less gratuitously harsh. And more fun.

If you’re coming from an old-school mentality of "make this dice roll or your character dies!" then you’ll probably have an impulse to apply all the narrative tools Fate gives you to avoid failure. You can sustain that for several game sessions, if you’re parsimonious with your Fate Points. I did. You'll be missing out on more than half the fun of Magonomia, because failure, setbacks, and complications add a lot to the experience.

The key insight that made me embrace the Fate system was when I decided, for the first time, not to Invoke an Aspect to prevent failure. I took the "success at a major cost" option instead. That's the anecdote [about the wizard hiding in a tree and dropping the potion they were planning to use, then having to think fast to get out of that tight spot ] . Tell me that's not better than succeeding on the Stealth roll, if you can!

Failure has a different meaning in Magonomia than it does in a game like D&D®. Magonomia becomes fun when you let go of your fear of individual failure. Step outside your character and realize the story won't get derailed if something bad happens to them. In fact, unless they face dangers and trials, there is no story. Internalize that mistakes and bad luck don't punish you, the player. Trust the GM to make failure a springboard to move the plot forward.

Frankly, I think Magonomia is more like real life, where mistakes are recoverable and your friends have your back.

In the end, I concede that the Fate system gives you many tools to avoid failure. I would add that it also gives you every reason not to be afraid of failure. In Magonomia, we mean it when we say "create a positive experience for everyone." One of the ways you can do that is to let your character fail.