Mid-design playtesting is perhaps the most intensive intellectual stage, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like gutting out a highly fatiguing task whose benefit, upon completion, is looking mighty obscure. This is our sixth session for Cosmic Zap, and in a lot of ways, it might have been the last. You can see, I hope, how the content we gained from it yielded real gold, but it’s mainly evident in the final two sessions, not here.
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Actual Play
This is where we do what we do! We celebrate our experiences with table-top role-playing games. Here are the ones I'm playing right now:
What are you playing? What do you see when you read the posts here? Comment at any post you like, or use the big green Start a Topic button at the top right of this page. People often include video or audio recordings of play, but text-only is fine too. Please feel free to attach documents, like maps or character sheets or brief sections of the rules you're using.
I trust you to work out how you want to talk about your games: just for fun, sharing & comparison, critique, or whatever. Please check out my best-practices manual for suggestions, but it's really flexible.
If you already do a podcast or other actual-play series, live or not, please consider yourself invited to embed a link as a topic.
For games in design, i.e., playtesting - yes, go right ahead, that's welcome too. For consulting sessions with me, which is different, see the Consulting page.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
20 Aug 2018
Games: Cosmic Zap
0 comments
When Champions was first published, most people involved in role-playing accepted, or even expected, to put in extensive effort before play. Today, plug-and-play is widely recognized as a virtue, whether justified by playing in convention situations or by citing friends who reasonably do not commit to complex nonsense before doing the thing they want to do.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
06 Aug 2018
Games: Champions Now
8 comments
I suppose that could be a promo tagline? "Psilocybin role-playing ..." no, probably not a good idea. But it's true that this session of Cosmic Zap was well-supplied with my little rules handout that finally made some sense, even if I have continued to change it up since, and the players were more versed in what the dice and numbers really did.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
25 Jul 2018
Games: Cosmic Zap
14 comments
I’ve played a ton of Vigil in the past year, but not posted about it much. For those arriving recently, check out my Comics Madness post Is your hate pure? for what it’s all about. More generally, it’s one of my three simultaneous superhero game projects, along with Champions Now and Cosmic Zap.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
23 Jul 2018
Games: Vigil
0 comments
Introducing Silverbeak! Because adding Monsanto to a welter of corporate and government ownership that already includes ICE, Blackwater/Xe, and the U.S. Army isn't too much, no, not at all.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
09 Jul 2018
Games: Champions Now
16 comments
Specialized viewing only: three D&D players working up the details for their 4E characters, because the DM wants to do a level jump, from 3rd to 7th. Even though each has looked through the books, this is a significant accounting/build task, so - only if you're interested.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
07 Jul 2018
7 comments
It's a dark dark game, so I guess that it's ... artistic? for me to have borked the video and arrived an an all-black-void recording.
I hope it can be fun listening anyway, but I really regret losing the explicit attention we were paying throughout this session. The player-characters did not interact at all, so it will sound like three soloists trading off, but the reality of play was far more social, attentive, group-ish, and generally engaged with one another.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
07 Jul 2018
Games: Monsterhearts
0 comments
How about that other superhero game I'm working on? And no, not Vigil, but the other other one, which I'm calling Cosmic Zap.
Quick review: this is work for The Chaosium, using HeroQuest as the chassis, specifically the HeroQuest SRD, itself a bit of a work in progress.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
04 Jul 2018
Games: Cosmic Zap, HeroQuest
1 comment
(First time posting here, at Ron's suggestion.)
Posted by: Theron
03 Jul 2018
Games: Champions
5 comments
From the Champions Now! Question Outpost:
Joel Davis - Ron, if I understand the playtest document (plus everything you've said in your videos), the campaign is built around two premise statements:
Posted by: Joel Davis
30 Jun 2018
Games: Champions Now
13 comments