An Early Look At Convoke

A coincidence involving a book club led me to make the acquaintance of David McEnulty, one of the two people working on Convoke, an RPG support application which has just entered (very early) beta testing. McEnulty said he'd read my master's thesis and wanted to get my opinion of his app. We had a pleasant video call that lasted almost three hours. I've already privately given him feedback on design, functionality, and marketing aspects of the tool. Below, I explain what it is and assess how applicable it seems to be for the average DM.

What Convoke Is

Convoke is an RPG support application designed to let the DM and players carry out certain parts of gameplay in between a typical group's regularly-scheduled game sessions. DM-facing functionality includes:

• Presenting structured options for individual or group player actions, such as shopping for equipment or speaking with NPCs
• Creating game scenario descriptions, complete with "choice nodes" (reminiscent of choose-your-own-adventure books) corresponding to likely player responses
• Calling for player votes on group decisions
• Responding to player actions by creating additional choice nodes or opening things up to traditional freeform player action

Player-facing functionality includes:

• Taking certain predefined actions, such as the aforementioned equipment shopping
• Viewing and responding to DM-created choice nodes
• Voting on the party's course of action (for whole-group choice nodes)
• Proposing alternative choices not initially presented

The app aims to extend gameplay beyond traditional sessions by enabling short (5-10 minute) interactions throughout the week. For example, if a session ended with players negotiating with a spaceship manufacturer, the DM could create a choice node presenting options for particular items to purchase, as well as potential conversation topics that the manufacturer would be likely to engage with. Players can then vote on these choices or propose their own alternatives through the app as they reach a group decision about what to do. Based on the party's final decision, the DM can create additional choice nodes or open the floor to free action from the PCs.

When Convoke Could Be Useful

Convoke's focus on continuing gameplay between sessions sets it apart from all other apps of which I am aware¹.

Convoke's core premise is that gameplay can and should be "smeared" (my term) throughout the week, with asynchronous digital interactions forming a full-fledged supplement to face-to-face sessions. If a given gaming group adopts Convoke as readily as the development team hopes, by interacting with each other in brief increments throughout the week, the group could gain what seems like a 10-30% increase to effective weekly gaming time. That alone makes "smearing" a genuinely good idea which merits further exploration.

There are plenty of campaign management applications out there, but most of them focus on providing wiki-like functionality for freeform text entry, not on supporting gameplay itself. Virtual tabletops (VTTs) provide more detailed and data-oriented repositories of character information, but they're intended for use during play, not between sessions. If Convoke can continually extend the kinds of gameplay that can take place within it, and, crucially, connect up with campaign managers and VTTs to source character and world data, it could successfully be sold as an interface for making good use of that information even outside of the traditional play session.

The degree to which you, as DM, would find Convoke useful will depend on how much you agree with the developers' decisions about which PC activities can or should be relegated to between sessions; whether your game's rules are too complex to work well with Convoke's primarily text-based campaign-management facilities; and the level of support Convoke will ultimately provide for expansion of its PC action taxonomy by end user DMs. That last one is especially important: in trying to be applicable to many different kinds of campaign, Convoke can necessarily only offer a limited selection of "smearable" player actions out of the box. Unless that taxonomy can be extended by the end-user DM, it's unlikely to be sufficiently malleable to suit most campaigns². I urge the developers to ensure that Convoke allows DMs to create their own kinds of actions through some kind of plugin system, or better yet, through an interface that doesn't require any coding.

Applicability to My Own Game, and Closing Thoughts

My own DMing philosophy generally doesn't favor extended solo play, and I've designed my game to encourage players to treat every decision with weight and substance, whether they're preparing for an expedition to distant and dangerous lands, or just deciding how to treat the neighbors near their newly-built house. Therefore, even activities like shopping and NPC interactions, which might be seen as mundane "pit stops" at other tables, are important parts of gameplay which should involve the whole group. Furthermore, I'm one of the few weirdos in the world who has built his own custom app to manage certain key sections of gameplay, so even if I do decide to start "smearing" gameplay, I'd probably rather build that functionality into my own app than adopt a third-party tool whose domain model is unlikely to match my game design.

However, setting my highly unusual game aside, Convoke's core premise -- that RPG gameplay can and should extend beyond the confines of weekly sessions -- is a promising one. I can't tell you how disappointed I've been in the landscape of RPG support applications, as I watch countless man-hours go into "new" VTTs, campaign managers, and AI content generators which are functionally indistinguishable from their predecessors. Whether or not Convoke is suited for every game table, it deserves accolades just for legitimately trying something new, and if the developers can successfully address malleability and integration with existing tools, Convoke could be responsible for changing when and where we play RPGs. I'll be watching its evolution with interest.