Stop beating the Quantum Ogre

Been thinking about the quantum ogre. Something that started out as a nuanced point that has evolved into a take-down phrase for railroaded games which negate player choices. No matter which way players choose to leave a village, the GM is putting an ogre on the road out (so it's "quantum", in both places at once, unavoidable. In other words, Strahd).

Quantum ogres get fat when the GM is using the players to tell a story, and nothing they do matters because the GM is going to overturn their choices by changing the world.

Blorb is an alternative to quantum ogres. A blorby GM creates the world facts (or fact-generation procedures) beforehand as much as possible, and never changes pre-determined world facts for players. Elmcat, current president pro-tem of the Blorb Congress, can tell you about it, and for many folks, blorb is a fun way to create an emergent story at the table. As Elmcat eloquently puts it, "You don't decide important facts after seeing what the players chose...Blorb is making sure the prep isn't compromised so referee discretion doesn't undermine player choice."

That's a great goal, and respecting player choice is my favorite thing about blorb and the OSR: player choices should meaningfully impact the game world. Blorb has many benefits for game prep best practices and in maintaining a realistic world, and I recommend it as an important part of a healthy GM diet.

But keeping strict blorb can be exhausting in terms of prep, challenging to keep track of at table for poor tired GMs like me, and watching prep I am excited about not get used is hard on my poor GM soul. What do you mean, you don't want to fight that phantom ogre! He has a sick power and backstory... It's easier, as Shurebis argues, to have a 'negative space playstyle', where a GM quantumly leans into player choices and has fun despite their last minute prep and terrible memory.

Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett led an elite group of scientists into the desert to develop a top secret project, known as QUANTUM LEAP

Quantum leap, instead

There are lots of playstyles for OSR and trad games, and easier solutions to quantum ogres than strict blorb. I call my favorite solution quantum leaps, after one of my favorite TV shows (incidentally all about making and respecting choices).

Quantum leap in action: Player A makes a choice. That choice is going to mess with lot of already complete GM prep. The GM has three choices:

1. Change the world so that that Player A's choice doesn't ditch their prep (quantum ogre, boo!).
2. Change the world so that Player's A choice alters their prep, but doesn't completely overwrite it (quantum leap).
3. Change the world to lean into and magnify the effect of Player A's choice (quantum leap).

Unlike a quantum ogre, a quantum leap respects and rewards player choice, but also changes the game world to make the consequences of players decisions easier for the GM to handle off-screen (quantum leaps should never be seen by the players).

That might mean easy prep for the GM (the players kill the BBEG ogre king in the first encounter, and save the day and get cool toys and a parade--but there is another, secret ogre emperor, waiting to take their place).

That might mean minimal prep for the GM (you take the east road to avoid the ogre you cleverly learned about, but the road west hosts a limping razorbear, a much-easier fight (a re-skinned, nerfed ogre).

Or it might mean the GM gets to have fun in the negative space, leaning into the player choice (you are arrested for not paying the road tax, and your father has come to the jail to harangue you for poor life choices, when the ogre cultists attack!).

Either way, the GM intervening in the world (to downplay or magnify player choices) is not a quantum ogre, as long as the players see their choices making meaningful differences in game. Player agency is never erased, but often enhanced, the world shifting to lend their choices greater weight. Group storytelling is the art of leaping, not ogreing.

Quantum ogres have become a broad-brush straw man: I keep hoping my next quantum leap will be the leap home, to a place where ogres are free to change and roam, without slander.