Toolkit Gaming

05 Apr, 2025

Preamble

Anyone familiar with old-school tabletop role-playing games will be familiar with the idea of the rules as a "toolkit" instead of something that could be called "complete." 0e Dungeons & Dragons was certainly not considered a complete game in its own right, but rather, assumed that the players would make the game their own (see the famous "Afterword" in the third booklet). Indeed, OD&D was a game written for wargamers and assumed such a background for potential players. It's only after the game took off beyond that community and after Gary saw the potential for tournament play, among other reasons that I won't get into here, that more rules began to be added to make the game tighter, eventually morphing into what we know today as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. While one can detect the OD&D DNA in AD&D—at the very least, the Monster Manual used OD&D stats for the creatures therein—there was no denying that AD&D presented a richer, more robust game that is still widely enjoyed today in various forms (1e, 2e, Hyperborea, and Adventures Dark & Deep). So why play its predecessor or other games in that same ilk?

In this post, I hope to enumerate what "toolkit gaming" is and why it's worth exploring today.

What is a Toolkit Game?

I understand a "toolkit game" to be a game where the rules are explicitly presented as a set of tools for players¹ to build off of as a game unfolds, whether it's a one-shot, multi-session adventure, or full-blown campaign. Within this family we can trace multiple species: first, universal games like GURPS, HERO System, Savage Worlds, and Amazing Adventures that provide players with seemingly endless bits and bobs to piece together into whatever genre they're after; and second, "incomplete" games like OD&D or Gamma World 1e. Or take the brief introduction to 2X71, for example, a retroclone of Gamma World 1e from 1978 and the game that inspired this post:

2X71 is a minimalist retelling of future mutant campaign role-playing game, first published in 1978. This text aims to capture the essential and weird details of the aforementioned edition, but is by design and definition incomplete. This rulebook will give you a flexible framework to create and play in a strange post-anthropocene setting, where your characters will uncover powerful artifacts, or die trying.

It's important to note that this latter category is not the same as a "rules-lite" game, although the two can certainly overlap if we consider typical lengths or quantities of rules. Toolkit games therefore lie on both ends of the rules spectrum: where GURPS presents a plethora of rules to pull together into the exact kind of game that one wants to play, OD&D presents a set of ideas born from wargaming norms for players to flesh out on their own.

In short, you either have the full model kit or the start of one with some suggestions of how you might use what you have lying around the house of your mind to "finish" it.

Why is "finish" in scare quotes? One key assumption built into toolkit gaming is that the game is not necessarily "complete," not even when you first sit down to play after doing all of the preparation. Sure, even the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons makes it clear that they expect players to come up with houserules for circumstances not covered by the rulebooks, but that attitude contrasts how thick those rulebooks are. Evidence of this is clear in the fact that 5e can't decide whether it wants to leave more rules up to the DM to adjudicate or provide clearcut, unambiguous guidance, based on my own experiences with the game as well as reading forums for years with others making similar, frustrated claims. The game ends up somewhere in the middle, struggling to establish a clear identity that isn't reliant on being marketed as the "world's greatest."

This all begs the question: is a toolkit game an actual game or more of an approach? Any TTRPG is technically a toolkit, as the whole point of this tabletop hobby is to make these games our own to some extent. While one could certainly take that approach to any TTRPG, the ones we're after here are games that have the idea of a toolkit baked into their very core by presenting a structure which contains gaps from the get-go for us to fill in. In short, we're after the latter category described above: more on the OD&D side of the spectrum than GURPS.

Why Toolkit Games?

In toolkit games, it is not only the world that unfolds as you play, but also, the rules themselves. Therein lies much of their magic, as long as all players are on board for that kind of a gaming experience. It's one that carries the potential to be particularly personal, intimate, and fulfilling.

One could argue that toolkit games are more daunting than games which provide you with as many rules as possible because the former require some familiarity with genre conventions, statistical probabilities of dice rolls, or having established trust with the players at the table, whereas the latter will simply require you to become familiar enough with the rule book to find a rule on the fly relatively quickly to keep the game moving.

To alleviate that concern, I'd suggest considering the "rule of cool," which I would say applies here: when a player wants to attempt something, just keep the game moving and come up with a number to aim for, procedure, or general rule that most closely applies to the circumstances at hand. The key is to remain consistent for at least the duration of the session and to be honest with your players if they ask about the logic behind it. Be open to change from one session to the next if a discussion unfolds. The important thing is that everyone is on board with the logic and having fun. The more you do this, the more confident you'll become in your ability to craft rulings on the fly.

The joy of playing a toolkit game comes from witnessing a more robust, feature-rich, and "complete" game emerging from the rules as you continue to play. A toolkit game presents the start of a process that can only move forwards through participating in it. A toolkit invites us to tinker, tweak, and expand as we move forwards in the moment, not just at the beginning. Where a fuller, denser game might leave us with more room to focus on the world and story because we already know most, if not all, of the rules that might come up, who's to say that the development of rules can't come into play as a central part of world/adventure creation and can't provide just as much joy?

This has all been from the judge's perspective so far. What of the players? One argument I've seen against toolkit games is that they do not give players the full picture, instead leaving them with a "mother may I?" mentality for trying to do anything. Ridiculous. A toolkit game does not mean that the judge comes up with new abilities and buttons for players to press without warning, thereby robbing them of an equitable and fair experience when playing in a shared world. It simply means that the rules which govern the world that players interact with evolve as the players continue to explore.

The players participate in the rules that govern the world they're interacting with as much as the judge inasmuch as both the judge and players discover the world's rules together through play.

How Toolkit Games?

There are some principles that are worth bearing in mind when considering a toolkit game like OD&D, 2X71, or whatever else.

1. Build trust. It's important that all players at the table trust that everyone is there for a good time first and foremost. Be fair, honest, and reasonable.
2. Be consistent. Trust emerges through consistency. Don't rule differently depending on the time of day or the weather. Build a logic that everyone can understand. Only then can a player actually feel like they're playing a game, not just hopping onto your personal roller coaster adventure. Why would anyone care to do so?
3. Be humble. Be open to discussion of rules and rulings.
4. Be nimble. Stay on your toes and keep the game flowing. That's what's important, here. Keep things moving and don't get bogged down in endless "what if" scenarios or minutiae, unless you're all after intense simulation. If that's the case, have at it, chief.
5. Don't chase completion. What does "complete" even mean, anyway? When do we know something is complete? Shift to an "enough" mentality: if whatever you have is working, keep going.

And as always...