Ever since Sean talked to me about consulting for his project The Empire of the Dragon Lotus, I've been looking through old files and papers for the earliest work by that name that I remembered from him, fifteen to seventeen years ago. I wanted to review some points of interest - especially since what he was working with now seemed to me pale or lacking in spark, at least as I'd recalled being there, if not what exactly.
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Peluutin Palavaa pyörää (Burning wheel) joskus kauan sitten. Minun piti kertoa pelaajille (taustaa perinteisissä roolipeleissä ja D&D:ssä ja ehkäpä Menneisyyden varjojen kanssa) hahmonluonnista.
Part of hobby mythology concerns role-playing's origins as bringing tighter focus into table-top wargaming, such that within this or that battalion, or aboard this or that vehicle, the group can look closer and see Sergeant Bob or whoever running around, being a character, having opinions, and doing things.
Justin Nichol and I continue our discussion, or training, regarding game design. This session (in 5 videos) delves into the way we talk / the way we roll. The topic shifts quite logically from whether & when describing things colorfully works, to gaudy and painful consequences of moment-by-moment decision-making.
I've been working up a Design curriculum for role-playing for a long while, so when Justin Nichols approached me for a game design discussion that leaned toward mentoring, I accepted without reservation.
Here’s one of the two workshops I presented at Lucca. It was prompted by two short videos I posted here in the past few months: The role of the roll and Emergent plot techniques, which have led me to a generally larger argument.
Intent, Initiation, Execution, Effect - fictional things, probably the single most direct fictional content to be interfaced with real-people speaking and using rules, in the hobby. In a recent dialogue with Zac Porcu, he called it "the beating heart of role-playing."
"Everyone knows" what a relationship map is, but they're definitely not all the same thing, especially with these variables exposed:
A little about our group, because I think it's pertinent here - we're all active members of the LDS church, so we're more than passingly familiar with the source material that Dogs in the Vineyard builds on. We've been in a long-running (3 year) D&D game together, but someone wasn't going to be able to make this session and there wasn't a good alternate date, so I pitched the idea of running DitV for the remaining players, intended as a one-shot. Several of them haven't ever ro