I thought this was going to be a quick blog post where I digest and recycle a few other fans’ recommendations, “What to watch before Ahsoka” and I’d have a nice little post out late Friday afternoon and a queue that I could catch up on over the weekend. Once I got started, though, it ended up being a much deeper dive into 2010’s era Star Wars on TV, and into the character. And I watched quite a few more episodes of both Clone Wars and Rebels than I expected I would, or would have to.

Before I dive too deep — if you just want a quick TL;DR on what you have to watch before Star Wars: Ahsoka the answer is:

Nah, you’re good. Just watch it.

Rosario Dawson has already shown she understands and can inhabit the character (in The Mandalorian Chapter 13: The Jedi and The Book of Boba Fett Chapter 6: From the Desert Comes a Stranger) and I think we can trust the writers on this one.

Questions like, “Well, who is she?” “Who trained her to be such a bad-ass?” “How did she escape Order 66?” “Wait, she says she’s not a Jedi?” are the sorts of things that are either not too terribly important to telling a new story, or points that will be addressed as she interacts with returning and new characters.

That’s where we’re at. Go. Watch. Don’t sweat the details like some obsessed grognard lore nerd.

[*cough*]

##

The sources I used for this guide include
Clone Wars Episodes in Chronological Order (from StarWars.com)
Tumblr user fullyfancyfan’s Clone Wars Skippable Guide
Murphy’s Multiverse with ‘The Ultimate List of What to Watch Before Ahsoka’
and Reddit’s r/StarWars thread on ‘What should I watch to prepare for Ahsoka?’

…which I found using the google searches “Which clone wars episodes can I skip?” and “What to watch before Ahsoka”

If you’ve seen Clone Wars and Rebels and just need some light reminders [spoilers] about the plots you might also find the Wikipedia pages for Star Wars: Clone Wars Episodes and Star Wars: Rebels Episodes to be handy, if only to read quick summaries of what I’m skipping.

Ahsoka is a creation of Clone Wars¹ so technically you don’t need to watch any of the movies, but I’ll assume you are broadly familiar with the films (any trilogy) and enough of a fan of the broader Star-Wars thing that you’re generally receptive to recommendations. The only two episodes you might want/need to watch of the Disney+ live action Star Wars are linked above.

I’m also going to assume that you want to get up to speed specifically with the story and character of Ahsoka and you don’t have a whole lot of time and also aren’t super into watching 10+ seasons of cgi animated Star Wars just to get there. So one goal is to cut more from the list, not necessarily to include every last appearance of Ahsoka in the shows.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars was a 2008 ‘film’, given an August theatrical release², but also debuting on Cartoon Network that October. It is probably best to think of it as the first three(-ish) episodes on the series (which began airing weekly on Cartoon Network immediate after, 3 Oct 2008). Ahsoka is voiced in the film & series by Ashley Eckstein.

One thing to note about the Clone Wars cartoon is that episodes weren’t originally presented in what might be called ‘story order’. The vibe is kind of like 1940s news reels from the war front (you’ll get that from the narration at the start of episodes) and for the first three seasons of Clone Wars we were getting bits of this war out of chronological order. It’s why one of the links above is to the watch order guide on StarWars.com; if you wanted to watch all of Clone Wars as a single story, ‘in order’, that resource is available to you. For an Ahsoka-focused list, we’ll be taking some pretty big steps³ but skipping whole story arcs and watching episodes ‘out of order’ is a whole “Clone Wars” thing, as valid as any other recommendation.

So let’s get started. For the Disney+ links below, you’ll need to be a subscriber.

2008 Film: [Stream on Disney+]

Eh, it’s OK. Fine enough if you want to watch it all but we really only need to see the Battle of Christophsis bits, which is a good (re-)introduction to the CW versions of Anakin, Kenobi, the Clones — and Ahsoka.

If you’re ready to keep going and don’t care about the kidnapped hutt kid, stop watching at 26:30

Clone Wars

Season 1, Episode 9 Cloak of Darkness [Stream on Disney+]
…confirming the early characterization of Ahsoka as young, impulsive, and a little snippy.

Season 1, Episode 13 Jedi Crash [Stream on Disney+]
“When Anakin is gravely injured, Ahsoka must take charge”

Season 1, Episode 19 Storm Over Ryloth [Stream on Disney+]
Character development! Storm Over Ryloth is the first of a three episode story arc, but the next two follow other Jedi, not Anakin and Ahsoka.

Season 2, Episode 1 Holocron Heist [Stream on Disney+]
More lessons for an impulsive padawan. Those who like the bounty-hunter and western vibes of the Mandalorian or just a good old-fashioned heist will enjoy this one. The next two episodes, Cargo of Doom [Stream on Disney+] and Children of the Force [Stream on Disney+] finish out the arc if the story hooks you, but those in a hurry can move on.

Season 2, Episode 6 Weapons Factory [Stream on Disney+]
Ahsoka gets paired with Luminara’s padawan Barriss on a mission to sneak into a droid factory and destroy it (while their masters take care of things above ground). A neat contrast here because obviously, Skywalker is not a conventional teacher, so we see how at least one other Jedi-padawan pair operate. Also Barriss is a peer, closer to Ahsoka in age and training, and we get to see that dynamic

Season 2, Episode 11 Lightsaber Lost [Stream on Disney+]
“When Ahsoka’s lightsaber is stolen by a pickpocket, she gets help from the seemingly feeble elder Jedi Tera Sinube as she tracks down the thief.” The Clone Wars writers enjoy pairing Ahsoka with many Jedi Masters, as we’ve seen at least three times already even in this short list. Often these are like Master Sinube, bordering on comedic relief but full of wisdom for our Ahsoka. It’s a recurring ‘bit’ but also good storytelling (and is building Ahsoka as a more complex character, not just Anakin’s 2nd).⁴

This is also a good point to insert some commentary.
How Filoni FIXED Ahsoka in 4 Episodes | Star Wars Explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msgQ6WbIHyc
“how Dave Filloni intentionally crafted Ahsoka’s flaws to transform her from a hated newbie into a staple of the franchise.”

Season 2, Episode 22 Lethal Trackdown [Stream on Disney+]
Another pairing, this time with Master Plo Kloon. By this point, the ‘lesson I have to learn’ trope may feel a little overused, especially since we’re skipping around so much to find that particular beat, but I think the more important part is that Ahsoka is learning from so many Jedi, not just Anakin.

Here I will note Episodes 15, 16, & 17 of Season 3. Watch them if you want. I’ll link those at the end — or maybe just in the footnotes⁵ – At least until this arc is ret-conned, it’s Star Wars. For folks who just want to watch the new live action Ahsoka this is a HUGE distraction & not part of my watch list. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you”

Yes you can skip these. Please skip these.

You can also skip these, but they’re solid episodes, and is the two-parter that closed out season three.

Season 3, Episode 21 Padawan Lost [Stream on Disney+]
Season 3, Episode 22 Wookiee Hunt [Stream on Disney+]

Heck at this point we’re done.

You’re good. Watch the new show. There will be more background and backstory but I feel like these ten episodes from the first three seasons are enough to get to know Ahsoka as a character.

…There’s more. Quite a bit more.⁶ I’m trying to respect your time; we’re only four hours in. What’s left is going to take another eight or so hours, and there isn’t another good jumping off point.

Skipping ahead to season five, we have a four episode story arc that is all about Ahsoka and also a pivotal part about her character

Season 5, episode 17 Sabotage [Stream on Disney+]
“Sometimes even the smallest doubt can shake the greatest belief.”

After the events of S5E17, Ahsoka Tano is blamed for a murder, and forced to escape into the Coruscant underworld to prove her innocence. Definitely watch these next three as a block.

Season 5, Episode 18 The Jedi Who Knew Too Much [Stream on Disney+]
Season 5, Episode 19 To Catch a Jedi [Stream on Disney+]
Season 5, Episode 20 The Wrong Jedi [Stream on Disney+]

This arc ends season five. It also ends Clone Wars run on the Cartoon Network. Season six was released on Netflix (13 episodes as a batch, in 2014) and for a while that was thought to be all we’d get (of Clone Wars; Rebels was already in production). But we got a surprise in 2020, a seventh season was ordered to help launch the Disney Plus streaming service. For Ahsoka’s story [for reasons I won’t go into because Spoilers] we actually skip season six and the first four episodes of season seven. From there, though, you’ll want to watch the rest, episodes 5 through 12.

Season 7, Episode 5 Gone with a Trace [Stream on Disney+]
“If there is no path before you, create your own.”

Season 7, Episode 6 Deal No Deal [Stream on Disney+]
“Mistakes are valuable lessons often learned too late.”

Season 7, Episode 7 Dangerous Debt [Stream on Disney+]
“Who you were does not have to define who you are.”

Season 7, Episode 8 Together Again [Stream on Disney+]
“You can change who you are, but you cannot run from yourself.”

Season 7, Episode 9 Old Friends Not Forgotten [Stream on Disney+]
Season 7, Episode 10 The Phantom Apprentice [Stream on Disney+]
Season 7, Episode 11 Shattered [Stream on Disney+]
Season 7, Episode 12 Victory and Death [Stream on Disney+]

That last story arc is basically a movie. It’s impressive television. It is highly recommended and no, I won’t spoil anything in it for you.

Rebels

Clone Wars wasn’t the only show going, though. As season six of Clone Wars was wrapping up with a Netflix release, Rebels was gearing up to premiere on Disney XD. For those wondering about the chronology, the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney was finalized in October of 2012, right as season five of Clone Wars was airing. Corporate behind-the-scenes stuff and the nature of the Cartoon Network deal probably meant Clone Wars was (a least a little) doomed as soon as Disney took ownership, and probably also explains the fractured nature of Season Six [“The Lost Missions”]. But to be fair, Clone Wars was getting dark — it wasn’t a kids show anymore, and Disney no doubt thought a reboot to a new show, crew, and era would be more kid-friendly. Rebels isn’t entirely a kids show though, and wasn’t meant to be; I think their target audience was teens and tweens.⁷

Optional but recommended is Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2, Spark of Rebellion [Stream on Disney+, Part 1 and Part 2]. This two-parter will introduce you to the main cast of Rebels, and ground you well enough.

The new Ahsoka show includes several Rebels characters who are making the jump from CGI to live action. I’ve even heard it called ‘the next season of Rebels’. So there may be an argument for watching all four seasons of Rebels; if you should feel that urge later, with a whole week between episodes of Ahsoka, we should have plenty of time.

Ahsoka’s part in Rebels is mostly in Season Two — after a very brief appearance at the end of Season 1, Episode 15 Fire Across the Galaxy. Ahsoka is used very sparingly in Rebels, mostly as a background character.⁸

Ahsoka-related but not necessarily Ahsoka-focused, the first four episodes of season two can be skipped.

Season 2, Episodes 1 and 2 Siege of Lothal [Stream on Disney+, Part 1 and Part 2]
Season 2, Episode 3 The Lost Commanders [Stream on Disney+]
Season 2, Episode 4 Relics of the Old Republic [Stream on Disney+]

Even Season 2, Episode 18 Shroud of Darkness, a very Jedi-focused episode, doesn’t have a whole lot of Ahsoka’s story in it⁹, just a lot of foreshadowing. Worth a watch though and an excellent way to set up the season two finale.

Season 2, Episodes 21 and 22 Twilight of the Apprentice [Stream on Disney+, Part 1 and Part 2]

Because I’m sure you will have questions, I’d follow this immediately by Season 4, Episode 13 A World Between Worlds. We just skipped two whole seasons of story, and that kind of jump might bring up a different set of questions, but this is where we conclude the Malachor story.

The last time we see Ahsoka before her appearance in The Mandolorean is in Rebels Season 4, Episode 15 Family Reunion – and Farewell, in a end-of-series coda section [start watching at 42:00, mostly to skip SPOILERS that you might want to wait to see when you’re watching all of Rebels]. I’ll also note in 2022, Diz gave us two more bits (fine, three, whatever) featuring a Clone-Wars-era Ahsoka in Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi Episode 5, Practice Makes Perfect and Episode 6, Resolve.

I hope all those links work. I’ll be cleaning up this blog post for the rest of the day.

We’ve got word from Disney’s Twitter Account for Ahsoka that the show will premiere a day early, tomorrow at 6pm US Pacific Time.

New #Ahsoka inspired art by NickyBarkla</a> has arrived. <br><br>Don’t miss the two-episode premiere, streaming Tuesday, August 22 at 6PM PT on <a href="https://twitter.com/DisneyPlus?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/hynybbxg5B

— Ahsoka (@ahsokaofficial) August 19, 2023

It doesn’t give you a whole lot of time to catch up, but in a pinch just refer to my original tl;dr way up there at the top of the post before the break. And despite me spending three days and overworking my Disney+ account to write all this: try to just enjoy the new shows on their own merits; not everything has to carry the weight of five decades and the bloated expectations of an entitled fan base. Sometimes these are just fun sci-fi and/or space fantasy adventures, often for the kids.

¹ specifically of Dave Feloni, supervising director — and earlier in his film career both a conceptual artist and storyboard artist.

² The theatrical release was probably both to raise the profile of the show, give it a splashy premiere, but also to make some money back as the development costs for a full CGI show (esp. in 2008) was a chunk of change.

³ though from all the resources I have at hand, what is presented is in chronological order. yay consistency.

⁴ Also I’m pretty sure this episode is one of the references Respawn Games used for Coruscant when making Jedi: Survivor. There’s a big cross-Coruscant parkour chase scene in this ep.

⁵ For a long time, the whole damn burden of Star Wars was being carried by this one Cartoon Network series, back when they didn’t know Diz would buy them out. No movies were on the horizon, even the release of tie-in novels had slowed down, and tv cartoons were the whole damn franchise. In this context you can watch [Overlords], [Altar of Mortis], and [Ghosts of Mortis] . A story had to be built. But it’s not her story, necessarily, just more myth (and probably straight from George Lucas, so it’s “canon”, as much as anything is).

⁶ We’re skipping a block of episodes that starts with Season 3, Episode 10 Heroes on Both Sides [Stream on Disney+],
Season 4, Episode 14 A Friend in Need [Stream on Disney+], and finishes with a four-episode arc early in season 5: A War on Two Fronts [Stream on Disney+], Front Runners [Stream on Disney+] , The Soft War [Stream on Disney+], and Tipping Points [Stream on Disney+]. The first two introduce Ahsoka to Separatist politics and to a young Separatist Senator, Lux Bonteri. Lux and his planet of Onderon, are featured in the later arc as Ahsoka and other Jedi support a rebel faction on Onderon in their effort to free their world from the Separatist-friendly government that controls it. Despite also featuring (a young) Saw Guerra and having the twist that the Jedi are supposed to be merely advisors, not combatants, when re-watching these I realized it’s a good Star Wars story but these arcs don’t feel like her story.

⁷ Diz was looking to mint a few more Star Wars fans among Millennials and Gen Z while putting some gloss on the XD channel, which is like the ESPN-8 of Disney’s cable offerings.

⁸ I’m guessing here, but there is the fact that she’s a little overpowered compared to the rest, comes with her own story/baggage that the show’s writers didn’t feel like addressing on a week-in week-out basis and she actual works really well as a behind-the-scenes quest-giver type.

⁹ not a lot of Ahsoka’s story. Plenty for the new guys. It is their show after all.

The billionaire owner of Twitter has decided that some useful tools, like Tweetdeck, are only for the paying customers and other useful tools, like blocking accounts, aren’t actually useful at all. He doesn’t see the need.

I have tried other options. I have a half-dozen or so accounts, set up on different platforms. But like many other people, I’m on social media to share stuff, hopefully one day also to promote items I have written and crafted that I’d like to sell. So I will end up where everyone else lands, once we collectively figure that out.

In the mean time, I think I’ll spend a lot more of my time writing here. Sharing what I can, talking to myself, developing a format I can live with for a weekly round-up post and another for quick updates on the days in between. I was going to post a thread on Twitter about which episodes I was planning to watch before Ahsoka next week; I suppose instead of putting that out on Elmo’s platform, I’ll just share it all with you instead. See you this evening. -M.

So I was working on something¹ and in doing some edits/revisions, I decided I needed eight elements for a RPG and DnD-adjacent …um, thing and settled on stone, metal, water, wood, flame, wind, and guile.²

I guess I still need an eighth but its fantasy so stars and/or dragons or quintessence or… no.

No, seven is fine. That’s a decent set of six + the seventh is already a stretch; no need to go for the hail mary pass on top of what’s already a stretch.

Guile is a great word. Quite flavorful. Not used much. Has maybe a negative connotation but that’s fine too, I can work within that as a constraint.

The term I was leaning toward before finding guile was just… Magic. Generic “magic”. Super basic and boring.

What I wanted was ~Magic~ but also in the sense of Art. Tékhnē. Works. Craft. Mage-Craft. Also with a sense of invention, discovery, innovation, and science. Something to embrace spells and potions and clockwork and crafts like blacksmithing, as opposed to just the usual amorphous cosmic preexisting always-there force kinda sense to magic. Elemental Guile, which works for the project just fine.³

But man, guile is such a good word. Let’s see where else that might take us:

What if we add Guile to the ‘standard’ set of six attributes. I’d position it as the spellcasting attribute – cunning, craft, wile, artifice, insight; to be inventive, imaginative, creative, innovative, ingenious, artful; to be deft, clever, shrewd, sly, subtle; to have perception, comprehension, acuity; to devise, contrive, improvise, and invent.

Intelligence is a mix of potential, aptitude, and learned knowledge. Wisdom a mix of insight, empathy, and self-mastery. Charisma a mix of assurance, persuasion, and appeal.

I’d set Guile as being equal to any of those and equivalently relevant.

##

If I were to go back to a different set of old notes⁴, at one point I was thinking on the standard set of six stats and also, being kind of disappointed in them? At the same time, I was entertaining the random idea of writing a RPG source book using Wikipedia⁵. Possibly because I was relying on Wikipedia for a lot of preliminary research⁶. Anyway, if I go back to those notes, I found that Guile slotted right into place. Almost like I was always meant to add it.

I present these notes with some light formatting but also with the disclaimer – I’m going for a low-effort post today so these are just notes: equivalent to pre-first-draft and more about getting the ideas down on paper⁷ than getting everything formatted⁸ and in perfect prose. With that caveat I Present:

10 alternate RPG attributes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_(role-playing_games)

Strength
Endurance
Hardiness
Agility
Deftness

Resolve
Wisdom
Intelligence
Charisma
Guile

Strength
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_strength
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(running)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_training
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_exercise

Endurance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiorespiratory_fitness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-distance_running
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobic_exercise

Hardiness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_fitness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_density
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver#Functions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wound_healing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_repair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_healing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_tissue_injury
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injury
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease

Agility
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agility
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_(ability)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_coordination
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexibility_(anatomy)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_intelligence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory#Physiology

Deftness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_motor_skill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye-hand_coordination
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambidexterity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_memory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory#Fine_motor_memory

Resolve
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardiness_(psychology)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coping
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_resilience

Wisdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_sense
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patience
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

Intelligence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptitude
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_memory

Charisma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charisma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superficial_charm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_skills
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence

Guile
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discernment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-obviousness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_solving

“Your character may have 18 INT but you, my friend, are as dumb as a bag of hammers”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning

The 5 Physical and 5 Mental Attributes can be thought of as parallel and corresponding. mostly. kinda-sort-of

Strength/Resolve
Wisdom/Endurance
Intelligence/Hardiness
Agility/Charisma
& Deftness/Guile

On Agility and Deftness: “A person with high Agility (i.e. good reflexes) will be able to put a hand up when thrown a ball; a person with low Deftness (i.e. bad hand-eye coordination) will have their hand up but not catch it”

On Endurance and Hardiness: “Endurance is running a marathon. Hardiness is surviving the flu.”

“Pick two” – Most DND abilities combine two of these traits (or aspects of two)

• ‘Constitution’ as Endurance and Hardiness
• Or ‘Strength’ as Strength and Endurance
• Dexterity as Agility & Deftness
• ‘Wisdom’ as Wisdom & Resolve
• ‘Charisma’ as Charisma & Guile
• Or ‘Intelligence’ as Intelligence & Guile

Claiming copyright over this set-of-10 would be difficult (and probably not enforceable) & so: I don’t. CC BY-SA 4.0 like the rest of the blog but I’m only asking politely; effectively as common terms in English the list is CC0. Well, “guile” isn’t that common in English anymore but that was kind of my point, way up there at the start. It’s a great word. Feel free to steal it off me.

¹ I half-remembered some notes from, I kid you not, twenty freakin’ years ago and yes, I have been transferring them from archive to archive and PC to laptop to laptop to PC and to my current rig. I was using OpenOffice (or maybe even excel?) back in 2002, instead of LibreOffice and Google Docs, but I still have them.

² Sky/Stars was the original 7th, I added Guile (over Magic) as the 8th, & then made the executive decision to pare back down to seven.

³ It is a tarot-style deck of cards and the seven elements are suits in a minor arcana. Yes, with seven suits it’ll end up as a double deck [78×2 = 156]

⁴ these are just from 2020, not 2002.

⁵ I don’t know what I was drinking at the time, but it was merely alcoholic. Not anything stronger.

⁶ …as one does. Not the best way to do research — and of course, you should find a 2nd/backup/reinforcing and perhaps better source before you rely on wiki for anything vital, but wiki is (true to name) fast and with all the cross-links and linked sources (where available), it’s a decent enough place to start.

⁷ Like most of us, I do almost everything from a keyboard into digital files but ya get me

⁸ This includes turning those links from text back into links. Ain’t nobody here got time for that, you are perfectly capable of ctrl-c ctrl-v if you really needed to get there.

Let’s just ignore that I haven’t written anything for the blog in two weeks & we can skip the apology/excuses/justifications and get back to a topic.

“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down,” per Robert Frost, and he also described it as playing handball without a wall. Most of us don’t play either sport but handball, I’m guessing, is even rarer which is why the front half of the quote is the bit we remember.

I like the handball analogy better because sometimes I don’t get really creative until I literally¹ bounce off a wall. Or until I find the right kind of person to bounce ideas off of. The tennis net always seemed more arbitrary, and when a ball hits the net, it stops. And then you have to reset and go through all the motions to get the ball back in play, which is why players avoid it.

Anyway, the point of Frost was that without some structure and a few rules², you’re not really writing Poetry™, at least as he preferred it. But just like a couple of kids can have fun with two rackets and a tennis ball without having to keep score, free verse is still poetry³.

In designing games, particularly board games where many of the rules will be given both representation and often physical form in the printed board and components, we have all kinds of structure to work within. Our game is the board is the structure is the rules. Folks can ignore the rules⁴ but since we’re using the same pieces, even variations tend to be pretty close to form. Italian sonnets and English sonnets are not the same but 14 lines is 14 lines. Board games are fun, but playthroughs of Monopoly and Risk all tend to look the same – and while both are now traditions in some families, the tradition is also usually to play them just once a year.

Card games, particularly those that use the now-standard deck of 52, in four suits, are probably the closest we get to a “Frostian Poetic” genre of games: there is structure, there are rules. But there is also a lot of creativity in the variations. A single deck but ‘according to Hoyle’ we have a couple hundred variations of play. Within the limits of 10 + 3 times 4 we get Poker, Bridge, Rummy, Cribbage, Blackjack, Solitaire, and War, with all kinds of ways to match, count, or rank cards and just as many ways to ‘take tricks’ and keep score. Eventually we hit limits, and we add a joker — or we get variations like Pinochle, or the UNO deck. We keep the vocabulary (draws, hands, playing out of the hand face up on the table) but use new alphabets.

And eventually we get things like Mille Bornes [1906 or 1955] and Magic: The Gathering [1993]. Is MtG still playing by the same design rules as Poker?⁵ There is a very distant family resemblance. MF Doom and Robert Frost stand a century apart but Doom and other rappers are most assuredly still using rhyme and meter.

And with that, I think I have stretched the analogy just about as far as it’ll stand.

##

RPGs have rules, obviously. And many, many available accessories, minis, and tokens that can make some sessions play more like board games or war games, at least in part.

But RPGs, at least those played on table tops⁶, are more like a free-form collaborative story-telling game. The rules we start with give that story some structure, and also help shape the course of play, but over time we’ll change the rules, too, to get closer to the kinds of stories we want to tell.

Maybe more importantly than the rules of an RPG is the vibe of the RPG. And I specifically chose vibe to describe this because I am Gen X and cringe and trying too hard to sound cool, but also because the Vibe of a Game is a mix of things: quite a bit comes in the published settings or ‘worlds’ of the game, some in the rules-as-written, some from other media including the sources used for inspiration by the game designers, and some from roughly 50 years of playing these games and the 20 years of mid-century sci-fi and fantasy that came before them.

Mork Borg is a Vibe. Apocalypse World is a Vibe. Blades in the Dark is a Vibe.

Pathfinder has a lot of overlap with D&D but the settings of Golarion and Forgotten Realms have very different vibes. [Even within D&D: Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, and OG Greyhawk are all very different games to play though technically they share a common rule set — if we fudge a bit. Different D&D settings came out for different editions, and 2nd isn’t 4th isn’t 5th.]

A really neat thing about RPGs is that the rules almost don’t matter. Characters can be defined in different ways, the labels can change. A paladin could be called a Holy Warder, Realm Guardian, Templar, or Lightbound but if a player wants to play a character with that paladin vibe, we find a way for it to fit the overall vibe of the game world and we give that character Smite, because paladins, even if the rest of the class kit and power set are wildly different. I can build a paladin by rolling 4d6 multiple times to generate stats or I can start with 100 points and break out some of the GURPS manuals. I can search online and find the appropriate PbtA Playbook [edit to add: Dungeon World’s Paladin. there ya go.]. I can grab my copy of Band of Blades (it’s in my to-be-read pile) and see what the deal is with Chosen [edit to add: It’s a whole different Vibe].

When even whole rule sets are optional and swappable (to an extent) what is the limitation we put on our RPGs? What’s the rhyme scheme and meter?

When your game can technically be played across an entire whole world, it’s often necessary to drop two sets of parallel lines down and make ourselves a board. Starter village, dungeon, quest hub, capital. Quite a few early sessions fall back on the familiar so we can ground ourselves and figure out the Vibe, both of the game and setting, and also what this particular table, this set of players with with this GM, how that’s going to feel as we play 3-5 hours at a time.

That’s our ‘board’, I think. And across many different genres, I find the parallels. It could be horror-survival on a sci-fi space station but we’ll have a Safe Starting Area, a Dungeon equivalent, eventually a quest hub, and probably a goal, destination or end game — in a fantasy context, the ‘Capital’ — whether that means impressing the monarch or taking their throne. A wild west setting will have some sleepy frontier town, Canyons and Badlands and the things in ‘em, and maybe eventually some sort of slowly simmering plot that leads the story to the Big City, or even Back East. The road there and back again starts in the Shire but eventually takes us to Minas Tirith, and as a “road movie” it’s more about hitting the landmarks than bouncing around a quest hub but there’s comparable story structure there.

Twisting expectations, and (as a GM) finding whole new ways to make a “starter village” and “dungeon”, that’s what keeps the game fresh⁷. And of course: with the biggest dungeons, the whole campaign can just be town and vaults, back and forth but always exploring deeper or farther, until we find the story in it and the eventual endgame.

A lot of us have stuck with D&D (various editions with various additions and often a lot of homebrew) but only because that’s where we started. The basics of D&D have proven to be pretty adaptable, and folks have done some wild things with just 12 classes and a handful of character backgrounds. But the tropes of D&D and our expectations going in are also ‘grounding’ in a way – and grounding in a couple of senses: a foundation underneath us, and a sort of electrical ground for the rules to keep things from short-circuiting.

So to answer my own question, yeah, the tennis net is kind of necessary. Arguably, the rules we agree to, at the table, keep the game ‘on the rails’ just as surely as the clockwise track around Monopoly, and the limits of the setting (fantasy or otherwise) are also the edges of this (huge, imaginary, but still contained) game board. RPGs don’t have to be limited, but we accept the limits. That’s the vibe we like and the type of stories we’re looking to tell.

Just like no one is actually playing Monopoly by the official rules, no two GMs run their table the same way, and no two groups are playing the exact same game either. Everyone adapts something. Every GM has had a player who wanted to do something that required either a creative interpretation of the rules or some sort of exception (hopefully minor) from them. This flexibility is core to RPGs; not unique to RPGs but much more common among them.

So you might disagree with me. The poetry of what you’re making is maybe more spoken word than dactylic hexameter or alliterative Old English or strict quatrains and couplets.⁸ But I feel like some limits are probably necessary, especially when the boundaries of what we can imagine are basically limitless.

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The image at the top of the post is only tenuously, tangentially related. Though I needed some starting point for thinking about the post today, & I took the literal boundary drawn on an otherwise completely open-ended map. It’s the latest version of the template I’ve been working on for making hex World Maps (for fantasy settings or other things that work well on hexagonal grids) – you can see the last couple of posts for more on the scale for the map, and what the rectangular overlay is for.

Eventually I’ll find a final template I like and work up a couple of samples that use it and put together a packet, a pdf, & make that available on Itch.io

¹ “literally” in its modern meaning, not literally literally.

² Like the Pirate’s Code, rules for poetry is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules

³ Frost was using a version of the tennis-and-net analogy as far back as 1933, Ginsberg wrote Howl in ’55. So whatever trend Frost was responding to, it wasn’t specifically the Beats or Ginsberg. And arguably the use of repetition in Howl gives it a structure and, especially when performed, the spoken word cadence is just as effective as a strict poetic meter would have been. But enough commentary on poetry I am way out of my depth here.

⁴ Everyone is playing Monopoly wrong, for example.

⁵ Magic should probably be compared to games like Rummy instead of Poker, in that a bunch of cards are played in front of each player and you can react to what your opponent played on your own board, albeit in a limited fashion

⁶ Table tops, real or virtual. A lot of people play the game on screens these days, so we can’t differentiate just based on ‘is it software?’ anymore. But for MMOs, JRPGs, and other computer RPGs the game world is kind of a fixed thing, and you interact through your PC (both your Player Character and your personal computer) and your options are strictly limited to those of the interface. For “table top” RPGs, we’re playing as the PCs and we interact with each other. The options are close to being unlimited, so long as we agree to keep telling this particular story to each other, even if we do occasionally let the dice decide some outcomes. There may eventually be some sort of hybrid, certainly some companies keep working toward that as a goal. But the original sort of game, played in person in living rooms, dens, and at kitchen tables, with or without a lot of battlemaps and minis, will always be an option available to us.

⁷ …plus new options for character fantasies: classes, subclasses, ancestries, backgrounds — we’ve been building this kit for decades.

⁸ makin’ that analogy work.

So first, let me recommend www.worldmapgenerator.com, which is where I found the source maps. In this case it’s a Robinson Projection though I was also able to use the tools at worldmapgenerator.com to shift my center point from 0° 0° to 120° E and 120° W longitude to ‘re-center’ each of the three maps. And while I could have exported the source maps as SVG files (and then proceeded with some kind of digital work flow), the files weren’t really what I was looking for. I used my templates, and while relying heavily on the map reference, I tried free-hand drawing the coastlines.¹

Here’s the triptych:

I’m making the most of the real estate available given the 8.5×11 restriction – The presentation could have been six equally sized² hexagons, but here we have three maps, each page showing two hexagons overlapping.

And the scale is 1 Hex = 600 nautical miles = 10° of latitude.

If comments were enabled on this blog³, the first comment would no doubt be some variation on, “why?”

Using the Most Obvious Model Available seemed like a good way to test the template and to also get a real feel for the scales involved. Africa is a handy ruler to have: 40° to 40° and right on top of the equator where distortion is minimal. It’s something I’ll definitely keep in mind as sketch out fantasy continents. It was also an exercise in how much detail is lost at this scale. A lot of my map making will no doubt be one scale down (zoomed in one scale) as opposed to these ‘world maps’ – either the triptych or the set of six hexagons. But the work so far has been great — both the output and practice — and I’m pleased to have the tools and these templates in my map-making toolbox.

Edit to add: these were sketched on my multi-use, kitchen sink template but at some point I’ll bust open inkscape again and make one for you that is specifically equator +/- 70° and includes the latitude and longitude grid lines over the hex map. Probably two, both the 8.5×11 that I’ve used above, and a ‘single hex’ variant. AT SOME POINT but not soon, unless I get a kick-in-the-ass that persuades me otherwise.⁵

¹ Coastlines are hard, yo. Europe, Indonesia, and the Philippines were designed by a vicious, angry god who wanted to punish cartographers particularly. Actively punish them.

² the planet we live on has this weird northern hemisphere bias, so on at least two of the maps you can see where I had to go way past 65° N latitude to capture the familiar coastlines. This is fine; the templates were designed to allow ‘coloring outside the lines’ as a feature, but it still could be a neater presentation.

³ heh. [4]

⁴ still my best decision from 2017

⁵ Under the current regime: I have to work 40 hours a week and I’ll be honest, sometimes that work leaves me completely drained. This blog reflects what I like to do to unwind, it is a hobby — not my primary job — and you are gonna get what you get. I don’t anticipate these circumstances changing. So, “at some point” means: at some point. IF *I* need the tool sooner, it will be sooner, but I appreciate your patience and your willingness to use the tools and templates shared to date to get there even if I can’t, at this moment, hold your hand and make every step super easy with extra super-specialized tools and templates.