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I can’t begin to explain how groundbreaking this summer has been for us creators of the Ealdsmyth TTRPG system.
Roger Speer, Greg Peterson, and I spent a few days together on a creative retreat, and what we emerged with is an intentional, even more immersive and meaningful system that we call “Ealdsmyth 2026.”
Or “Ealdsmyth 2.0.”
Or “Ealdsmyth 2e.”
Well, we can’t quite figure out what to call it, but it’s distinctly different from Ealdsmyth Classic, even though that first edition has the potential on its own to inspire player and Steward growth.
Though we needed to create the first version of Ealdsmyth using the reference point of D&D and many of its conventions that inspired the three of us, we also needed to branch out and create something that was distinctly ours.
That’s the new Ealdsmyth.
The psychology of it all
Those of you who have played our first iteration may remember the five motivations for character choices. We’ve streamlined that process and dug a bit deeper to create only four motivations. Those four motivations are inspired by Self-Determination Theory (SDT).
According to SDT, humans have three basic psychological needs: Autonomy (which corresponds directly with our Calling motivation), Competence (lining up with our Resilience motivation), and Relatedness (aligning with our Compassion motivation). SDT gets to the core of what motivates a person, and Ealdsmyth focuses on what motivates the characters they play. The fourth motivation that we include, Fate, relates directly to the understanding that sometimes we let go of intrinsic motivation and allow forces outside of ourselves to take control of the circumstance.
These four motivations also align quite well with Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy model. Frankl is renowned for enduring the horrors of a concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Germany and emerging to write his famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning. (If you haven’t read Man’s Search for Meaning, I highly recommend it.)
According to Frankl, meaning can be found primarily through three distinct avenues:
- Meaning through work & deeds
- Meaning through love
- Meaning through the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering
Like with self-determination theory, those avenues correspond directly with our first three motivations:
- Meaning through work & deeds = Calling
- Meaning through love = Compassion
- Meaning through the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering = Resilience
The fourth of our motivations aligns closely with Frankl’s teachings. According to logotherapy, Fate is what you cannot choose (such as suffering, loss, and death). Between fate and one’s response to fate lies “the last of the human freedoms,” which is the ability to choose one’s attitude toward fate.
Within the new Ealdsmyth system, a Fate motivation isn’t about controlling destiny. Instead, it’s about how a character meets what destiny hands them. A character motivated by Fate rolls their die to accept that fate, whatever it may be.
Motivation in conflict
If you ever want to bore me to tears, all you have to do is say those three words: “Roll for initiative.” I am notorious among my friends for absolutely hating combat in TTRPGs. That’s because I love TTRPGs for the shared storytelling that occurs. The minute all the rules and limitations of combat come into play, you’re often yanked out of that story into something that brings the party to a screeching halt.
In this new version of Ealdsmyth, we fixed that.
Building largely off of the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, we created a Conflict Compass that separates character reflex actions into four quadrants.
Rather than being statistically most likely to roll too low and have nothing substantial happening, you affect the outcome with each rapid-pace turn you take as a player. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, and often it’s a mixture of both. We take the “player narrates what happens if they roll the lowest or highest number on the die” convention from Ealdsmyth Classic and fold it into our new Ealdsmyth’s combat.
The result? One of the most fun sequences of rapid-fire events I’ve ever encountered (even if it ended in all of us dying). What started as a standard stagecoach robbery ended in my character being mauled by a flaming bear. The sole living robber did get away, but he was haunted by our ghosts for as long as he carried our treasure.
Conflict in the new Ealdsmyth has nothing to do with hit points or hearts, but it has everything to do with (you guessed it) what’s motivating each reflexive action. Each conflict motivation directly aligns with the motivations on the character sheet. The character in conflict can choose to Dominate (which aligns with Calling), Hope (aligning with Fate), Divert (aligning with Resilience), and Compromise (aligning with Compassion).
There’s a handful of other rules in the new Ealdsmyth when it comes to conflict—each of which helps to streamline the improvisational nature of it all—but my point is that conflict serves the story instead of the story serving the conflict. That sole distinction means everything for the player uninterested in mindlessly slaying for the sole purpose of acquiring arbitrary numbers for leveling up.
Why does this matter?
All of this matters because Roger, Greg, and I believe that TTRPGs have the distinct ability to transform the players into better, more socially conscious, more inwardly aligned versions of themselves. I’ve written at length about the tremendous potential for social-emotional learning (SEL) in tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), and I’ll probably continue to do so for decades to come. (Keep an eye out for my upcoming book, The Steward’s Table, which really goes into that aspect of tabletop gaming.) Incorporating these additional elements based on psychological research has been a game-changer for us (literally).
I’m eager for you to see the new version of Ealdsmyth, which should be made available to the public as soon as we’re able to get to that phase. In the meantime, would you like to playtest the new Ealdsmyth? Let me know in the comments below!
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