Stefano first talked with me about this game about a year and a half ago, at Modena Play. At the time, he was anxious about how it might be received, about whether or how one might be designated unsuited or ineligible for authoring such a thing, and about representation in general. Dozens of playtests later, and having weathered at least one internet storm based on exactly those things, he's not anxious any more. He's certain now - and pissed off in the very best way.

"Let's try it out" became a genuine hydra of extended play, especially for a game conceived as a swiftly-coiling drive into final conflict. We ended up with five sessions, some pretty long, and here are the last two.

My judgment calls, consulting thoughts, analysis, whatever you want to call it, are reserved for conversation with Petteri, but here are some things to throw out for general discussion.

The question being, what is the anchoring procedure for playing Tales of Entropy? When it is so easy to go awash and awry when one's character twists into what you didn't anticipate, or when one is now cast as Narrator with no idea of where to go.

Something has to make sense, to begin, to change, and to end. And that is the Grains. Neither "my character" nor "the plot" will work.

This discussion took place a while ago, at the end of February. I wasn't sure it had enough content to merit posting, but as it turned out, BPG found it to be a breakthrough. We've done an intense further session about that, which is tied into the Boiling Pitch seminar and you'll see it, or a text version, soon.