What is Bonsai and why are we making it?

Ethos Studios is a gaming company, but we specialize in a particular kind of game. We look for—and create—gaming experiences that leave the players with something when they’re done. We want to play games that help us to think new thoughts and give us new experiences. The best way that we know to do that is to play games that help us tell new stories. 

The Bonsai RPG system is a framework for collaborative storytelling. Ethos Studios started as a group of friends who enjoyed playing games together, and over the years we found that the best memories from our gaming sessions rarely involved some extraordinarily high attack bonus, or some particularly clever exploitation of the rules. Instead, we looked back on our time together and told the stories of our characters and the great things they had done and become.

When things didn’t go the way we expected, we ended up telling new, unexpected stories.

We started out playing pretty traditional 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons and had a blast. As kids and teenagers, we played D&D because it was fun to feel like you were part of a story—very much like the ones we so enjoyed reading and watching—except that we actually got to make choices. We got to be the hero or the villain, to succeed or fail according to wits and chance, and to give our best killer lines along the way. 

We didn’t fully realize it at the time, but D&D was fun for us because it was more than just making up stories - it had structure. It had rules. You couldn’t just say that you slew the illithid, you had to roll for it. You could have all the heart and bravery that you ever dreamed of, but when you’re out of hit points, you’re out of the action. Our imaginations were still running wild, but now they had hurdles to clear. And those hurdles made our imaginations stronger. 

The players wanted to accomplish a task and the DM, generally, wanted them to accomplish it, although with challenges along the way. Before we had D&D, every event in the story was the direct invention of a person. If the DM was in a good mood, you succeeded. If they wanted things to be more difficult, you failed. 

Once we had firm rules for things and dice that let us (within boundaries) randomize the results, surprise became a possibility. There was another storyteller involved – chance. Chance expressed in a structure. 

If you understood your character and had prepared yourself well for the right situation, you might succeed even when the DM expected you to fail. Conversely, if the rolls went badly, you might fail even when everyone at the table was rooting for (and expecting) you to succeed. 

When things didn’t go the way we expected, we ended up telling new, unexpected stories.

Lots of people experienced the same realization when they found their first RPG. Here was a game that took all the wonder and novelty of your favorite books and gave you a part in the story. We all got to share the creative burden and take part in the wonder.

“Worse, we found that with the same abilities and similar stats, it only made sense to make the same choices, and in doing so, tell the same stories.”

There comes a point, however, when the rules can stop working for you and start being a hindrance. For us, that point arrived in college. After so many D&D adventures and campaigns over the years, going through the same classes and the same levels and getting roughly the same abilities left us missing that original sense of wonder. 

Worse, we found that with the same abilities and similar stats, it only made sense to make the same choices, and in so doing, tell the same stories. If you’re a druid who can cast spells while wild shaped as long as you never use metal armor, then you’re going to build with similar equipment and similar feats in a similar order. With similar equipment and similar abilities, you’re going to gravitate to the same kinds of settings, and NPCs, and eventually plotlines. The rules, which had given us a place in the grand stories that we loved, were now constraining us to little more than variations on a theme.

That was when we started to create the Bonsai system. At first, all we did was strip out the class leveling progression from standard Pathfinder D&D and create some math to make everything—abilities, skill ranks, feats, base attack bonuses—purchasable. That meant that we could draw on the wealth of content that Paizo and Wizards of the Coast and other pioneers had created, but we no longer had to do it in any order or in any set combination. 

Right away, that changed everything—even our language, both in and out of the game. Instead of saying, “my character is a 5th level multiclass ranger/rogue,” we said, “my character is an archer, who has light fingers when she’s been drinking.” Instead of ending up with “a 6th level wizard with a specialization in Necromancy, and therefore forbidden schools of Divination and Abjuration,” we said, “he’s a magician, and a little morbid, but… he’s got a past.”

We’ve gone a good ways further since then. It’s taken years of small steps all in the same direction.

We call it the Bonsai system because characters change a little bit at a time, as improvements are made incrementally, instead of one big level up all at once. 

We call it the Bonsai system because characters change a little bit at a time, as improvements are made incrementally, instead of one big level up all at once. 

The real point of it though is to do what we’ve always wanted the rules to do for us – help us tell a better story. We don’t want our characters to wake up one morning suddenly able to fire two arrows at a time out of the bow they were using yesterday. A rule system that allows that makes the story less immersive and takes us further from relatable characters. Instead, if you meet another PC who trips his opponent and disarms him at the same time, you should be able to ask, “Where did you learn to do that?” And he should have an answer.

We want every ability gain, every combat skill, and every magical feat to be the product of the story we’ve told together. We want to take what already exists and create a new structure for incorporating that great content into truly great stories. And by truly great stories, we mean those that help us all grow and change. Just a little bit at a time.

The Bonsai system is still in its long playtesting stage, but we’re ten years into the project. We’re always gathering more data from our own games and those of our partners. We’re planning a public game to showcase the system in action, so other DMs and players can see how it works—session by session, feat by feat, rank by rank. And we’re assembling our XP tables and charts and rules into a comprehensive book so gaming groups can apply the Bonsai structure to their preferred RPG system.

If any of this sounds like something you’d like to know about when it’s available, add your name to our list here and you’ll be the first to know! In the meantime, we’ll be sharing the Bonsai take on all aspects of the game here and cross-posting on LinkedIn, where you can follow us for updates. 

Because the best time to get in on a good story is at the beginning.