The Games and Education podcast series by Keenan Kibrick is no small thing! I am very happy to be invited for a conversation there, and even more so about morality, explicit content, real-world emotions, and boundaries. That's what my 2003 publication Sex & Sorcery was all about.
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Seminar: Hearts & Minds
SEMINAR
What is this table-top role-playing thing? How does it work, what does it do, what kind of designs do which things? I've got some ideas, and so do you. This is where we talk it over.
Some of my posts here present a concept, game title, or a historical hobby event for discussion in the comments, so join in with a will. You'll also find interviews and conversations. (Soon I'll amend the Hearts & Minds blue button so you can post these things on your own.)
I'm also running what I guess I call "labs," which are organized and prepared at the Patreon. I run them on Mondays using Discord, and anyone pledging there can participate when they feel like it. I post the recordings here the following Monday with ongoing discussion in the comments.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
07 Sep 2018
Games: Sorcerer, Sex & Sorcery
0 comments
In the recent Globalism seminar comments, Alan Barclay talked about encountering ditto copies of Dungeons & Dragons probably bootlegged from the GenCon release in 1974.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
06 Sep 2018
Games: The Window, Champions, GURPS, Chivalry & Sorcery, Fantasy Hero, Mage, Dungeons and Dragons 1974, Legend of the five rings
0 comments
A conversation with Jonathan Tweet!
Posted by: Ron Edwards
03 Sep 2018
0 comments
... Has This Been Goin' On? Alternative equally music-meming title: My Only Friend, the End. Or, wait, how about, Stop! In the Name of What?
This is about how long we play, in real time. It can refer to the length of a session, how many sessions relative to a given fictional situation, how long
Posted by: Ron Edwards
03 Sep 2018
Games: RuneQuest, Dungeons & Dragons sensu lato, My Life with Master, Hero Wars, Amber, Burning Wheel, Everway, Fiasco, Kult, Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Primetime Adventures, Sorcerer, Spione, Swords of the Skull-Takers, Clover, Stock Birmingham 0:0, They're Onto Me: Red, Bacchanal, Zombie Porn, The Mountain Witch, The Beast, The Quiet Year, Chronicles of Skin
5 comments
Apologies for the buzzword ...
The idea here was to examine our respective region when we encountered role-playing, and to think about how role-playing got there, and in what form. It's only four people, representing two slightly different parts of Califoria divided as well by about six years (mid-70s vs. early 80s), the Netherlands at about the same time, and Argentina during the 1990s.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
26 Aug 2018
4 comments
The comparison has been around for a long time; I first encountered it in an early edition of RuneQuest. It may even have entered that status of "everyone knows that," but I haven't run into much reflection on its content.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
25 Aug 2018
Games: RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, Sorcerer, World of Darkness
13 comments
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."
Posted by: Ron Edwards
09 Jul 2018
Games: Exalted, RuneQuest, Champions, Dungeons & Dragons sensu lato, Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition, TFT: Melee, Over the Edge, Amber, Sorcerer, The Pool, InSpectres, Burning Wheel, The Riddle of Steel, Primetime Adventures, Blades in the Dark, My Life with Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, Spione, Circle of Hands, Lovecraftesque, Dirty Secrets, Mongrel, Undying, Zero, Hero Wars, Castle Falkenstein, Lace & Steel, Comme Il Faut
7 comments
Looking at the topic of distributing GM-tasks all sorts of different ways, which we all know well, but maybe its widespread use doesn't reflect enough of its potential.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
25 Jun 2018
Games: Follow, Cosmic Zap, Soap, Universalis, Durance, 1001 Nights, Spione, Firebrands, Alas Vegas, Primetime Adventures, The King is Dead, Polaris
7 comments
"Everyone knows" what a relationship map is, but they're definitely not all the same thing, especially with these variables exposed:
Posted by: Ron Edwards
17 Jun 2018
Games: Sagas of the Icelanders, Sorcerer, The Sorcerer's Soul, Resistor, Circle of Hands, Sprawl, High Fantasy, Legend of the five rings, Amber, Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition, Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition, Ganakogok, Pendragon, King of Sartar, Champions, Microscope, Deadlands, The Watch, Urban Shadows, It's Complicated, GURPS Goblins, Dogs in the Vineyard, Undying, Monsterhearts
2 comments
There is little, possibly no hope left in me that discussing role-playing as phenomenology has been time well-spent. "Sporadic cynicism" indeed. But every so often something happens to disperse it. In this case, it's Dustin DePenning, author of Synthicide, whom you may have watched in play with me over in Actual Play.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
11 Jun 2018
2 comments