The Misadventures of Hareng Rouge

In part I-IV I have explored the role of mechanical selection, equipment selection, social and ecological selection and narrative selection in the survivability and adaptation to the table environment of Dungeon Crawl Classics characters. I have tried to develop a multi-factor evolutionary model of tabletop survival dynamics.

There are things in play at a table that help your character survive and mere survival is, itself, one of those things. Mechanical fitness will keep you alive long enough to acquire gear that fixes some of your maladaptation. Fixing that maladaptation will make you a useful member of the party and strengthen the party’s collective adaptation to table ecology giving all of you better persistence and table adaptation. The party will protect you if you are useful.

As a character and a party, you will move along the power curve.

The framework of my theory is

Part I: mechanical selection – the question of better adaptation to table ecology

Part II: equipment selection – resourcing and equipment feedback loops

Part III: social/ecological selection – how persistent and adapted to the table are we all

Part IV: narrative selection – does narrative salience, the Sheherazade pressure, trump all?

Which of these pressures actually dominates in lived play? I can’t answer that conclusively yet. I need to play to find out.