The super-powered young (and not-so-young) godlings are now in action.
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Consulting
Here's where I post about my current role-playing game design consulting, with the permission of the clients. Sometimes it's a text piece, sometimes it's video or audio. Sometimes it's a discussion, and sometimes it's a playtesting session.
I do not insert my own design, writing, or editing into others' games. I engage with your goals and your aesthetic priorities to help you see your way through the questions or struggles you may have, to provide new information or perspectives, to listen, and to ask the tough questions. Check out any of the posts and videos to see how it goes, and whether you'd like it.
- If you want to become a client, please click on the "Come into the Lab" link to contact me for initial discussion.
- If we agree it's a good fit, then the fee is 1000 SEK + VAT (250 SEK) for three sessions.
Here's our play experience with Ola's Compact Stories, which is well-timed considering our recently-concluded season of Primetime Adventures. It's a chance to perceive precisely what distinguishes his design, and for him to see what to dial down or to dial up inside it.
Similar to my consult with Jared, I wonder whether Jerry and I are even comprehensible to a third-party listener. I know it'll be entertaining; we've known each other for almost twenty years, trading thoughts about life et cetera. I kept laughing out loud while editing. However, he's published big, beautiful games (Atlantis, Hellas), managing money and production in ways I can't imagine or do.
I think you'll find this one interesting. Jared and I have known each other a long time, and in a significant fashion affecting the history of role-playing design. We don't explain when we talk, we say things and the other gets to process them internally and to decide what to say next. We just take it as given that there's some connection made and go on to make our own, and there is no overt "work" concerning the game design.
Ola Jansson has been working on his Compact Stories for a while, with plenty of playtesting and revision along the way. But it's hit that point I've identified as critical, when the design questions and the presentation questions are bleeding into one another. With any luck I can put some of the work of the past couple of years at this site to good use.
I love this quote from The Mountain Witch: "All conflict is a form of combat." For Justin Nichols' Kinfolk, the issue is that he's got a big whole-game arc of whether the invading industrials can be successfully repelled or otherwise stopped by the fey folk ... and sure, you can make a chapter structure, and sure, you can think of points that accumulate through lower-scale actions and fights ...
Sean Hillman and I met to talk about his game, or proto-game, just notes really, Empire of the Dragon Lotus. For me it's a callback to about ... fifteen years ago, into the hothouse of the Forge and Sean's participation there. I think his original notes on the game from back then are in one of my stacked piles of papers.
Dan and I go way back although we hadn't met or interacted directly before; he was in at some of the earlier Forge days and has good memories. It's nice to talk with someone with those.
Prompted by our discussions in the comments across posts here, Lorenzo Colucci brought the relevant mechanics of his game in design, Crescent (working title), for some high-focus work with me.
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.