Given the ambitious purpose of Tales of Round Table, it's useless merely to read and opine about it - one has to do it. But then again, given that the purpose concerns first-time and, preferably, entirely naive users, perhaps any of us "trying it out" is compromised past the point of utility. I'm not that far down the road, but clearly, as distinctly not the target audience as I am, it's risky to present a personal conclusion as genuinely informed.

Patrons will recognize Zac Porcu as the instigator and interlocutor in the huge discourse on role-playing that made available to them a few years ago, and viewers here may recall the Sorcerer Musik game that he and Jann played in. He and Jann are now working on a role-plyaing game composed of easily-used cards transported in a small, nice-looking box.

Psychopomp is another of the many initial/proto game designs that Justin is musing over and playtesting, and he wanted to make sure it got into the scorching too. I had to think pretty hard about how to go into it, because it fits so strongly into a particular aesthetic and an existing set of variables, that I couldn't see any way to address it "on its own." So I took a risk, setting the whole conversation as a series of comparisons with existing games.

Justin and I shifted over to one of his other designs in progress, Origin, which has a nice values-based resolution idea and lends itself to "but that wouldn't be right" play among superheroes.

Part 1 (embedded below) goes right into my critique of one of his values-axes, i.e. a polarized spectrum, to address the perceived many/few or Trolley question as it applies to superhero stories.