The Alchemist & the Golem

A Ludic Alchemist’s Primer

Welcome, seeker of knowledge. If ye have arrived on this page, you must be one of the rare few craving discernment in arts esoteric. Herein we divulge to you a lifetime of secrets. The mysteries we explicate grant windows into the very soul. Of what arts do we speak? Sorcery perhaps? Too dangerous. Empiricism? Too esoteric. We teach a particular school of alchemy: roleplaying game design.

This primer prepares the mind for the subject matter, a theory of design, a theory of genre and a taxonomy of the fundamentals of roleplaying game design. We begin with an exercise for two individuals; a simple roleplaying game in fact.

The Alchemist & the Golem

Imagine you are a lonely alchemist, living alone in the ruin of your family’s ancient castle on a windswept tarn. To alleviate your loneliness, you follow the rituals, formulas and recipes to create a golem. Using clay from the lakeshore, you sculpt its form. At last, your creation now sits before you, inert. The final step is to write the 72 characters of the sigil of life onto a specially prepared magical amulet and then place the amulet around its neck.

You complete the ritual and your creation’s eyes open as it comes to life but when you speak, it does not respond. Through some quirk or error in your formulation, something has gone awry. After some experimentation, you attempt a written instruction which you hold in front of its eyes. It reads: Blink. The golem scans the word and then blinks. Success! After reflecting for a moment, you write another command: Hear me. And when you speak, it turns its head toward you. Now it can understand and respond non-verbally, but whatever error you made in your calculations seems to have caused the golem to only respond to written instructions. Undaunted, you write another command for it: Speak! The golem’s eyes track over the word and its stony mouth opens as words pour forth in an unending stream. Realizing your mistake, you hastily scribble another command: Stop speaking! And it falls silent. 

It seems teaching your new companion will require some patience. Despite this flaw, you are pleased with your work. To make your golem a better companion with which to pass the long days, you decide to teach it to play a game.  

The Golem Game

Sit with another human or similar creature who can read and interpret written instructions. You play the role of the clever alchemist. Your partner plays the role of a golem—a magical construct, sort of like a robot. Your goal is to play a roleplaying game with the golem. Thus, you must provide it instructions so that it may successfully play the game and engage with the scenario.

Golem Rules

• The golem understands human speech.

• The golem reads and understands written instructions, but it performs them without context, nuance or interpretation. 

• The golem may speak if instructed to. 

• The golem will enact any written instructions it is given as best as it is able.

  • The golem may not act independently of instructions—it will only act as it is instructed to the best of its ability.

Alchemist Rules 

The alchemist wants a companion with whom they can play a roleplaying game. Thus they must teach their creation to play. 

• The alchemist may issue written instructions to the golem. 

• The alchemist may speak with the golem, but it only responds if previously instructed to.

• Play begins when the alchemist issues the instruction, “Dear Golem, let’s play a roleplaying game.”

• To begin, the alchemist should attempt to the following:

  • Convey to the golem the setting of the game. What is the world like?

  • Convey to the golem what character it is playing. Who are they?

  • Convey to the golem where its character is in the setting. Where are they?

  • Convey to the golem a problem or situation it must engage with. What’s wrong?

The Alchemist’s Notebook

The alchemist should play the game with the golem for 15 to 30 minutes. When satisfied with the exercise, the alchemist issues a final instruction for the golem to revert to its human form. Afterwards, review the collection of instructions given to the golem. Debrief with the golem player. Use the following prompts to review:

1. Did you manage to play a roleplaying game with the golem?

   1. Was the golem able to make decisions and take actions in the role of the character?

   2. What emotions did the golem experience, if any? Ask them!

2. What instructions were clear? 

   1. Which were unclear?

3. Was the golem caught in any instructional loops or programmatic binds where it felt it couldn’t satisfy the alchemist's commands?

4. Which instructions produced the best results?

5. Looking at the instructions as written, do they represent a complete set of rules? 

   1. If you gave these instructions to another set of players, would they understand them? 

   2. Could they produce similar results to the game you played? 

   3. If not, what’s missing?

Please send your answers to the exercise to in the comments below. Next week, we shall further lay the ground for our investigation of and discuss the well spring for much of our work and provide you, abecedart, with homework.

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