Adept Play
Plenty of impromptu things happened at Gothcon. One was an off-the-cuff interview with Peter Malmberg, one-half the team of Rollspelsfika. The first couple of sentences are in Swedish, or my attempt thereat, but afterwards it’s in English. I’m pretty happy with the argument I make here in response to Peter’s challenge, which he put more…
My goal at Gothcon was to be, basically, not weird. I didn’t want to show up as representative of some sector of hobby identity, but as fellow role-player. I’ve been playing a lot of Sorcerer lately and felt like resting it a bit. I knew that the founding Swedish RPG was originally a RuneQuest hack…
This is posted as a PSA or didactic point that game design fumbles and bumps its way along, requiring “encounter with the enemy” in order to know what is and isn’t working. Nearly everything you see in the video underwent sandblasting after this discussion, so it’s an exercise in discovery. I hope that makes sense…
Some comments showed up at Facebook about the two Fantasy Heartbreaker essays, and I’m a little tired of facepalming. It’s been a long road of experiencing and reflecting upon what became of fantasy during my lifetime, and the original essays are a blink of a moment during that process. Let’s see what the long view…
The mystic world heard my cry, evidently, and has delivered a glowy burst of conversations about what dice do, especially when rolled in profusion. This time I have the pleasure of talking with Ben Milton, in an almost completely unconstructed, non-interview-like chat just because we like these dice things. Part 1 examines what big dice…
The concluding sessions for Sorcerer Marseille! I love it when the rolled outcomes make NPCs go batshit. At one point you get to see me act out the same stare that Cage is thoughtfully providing for you in the accompanying image. Session 4 finally brings the slow burn of the previous sessions’ mere weirdness into…
My son Erik, 11, joined me for a visit to Ulf’s in Göteborg (Gothenburg), for a one-night session of play. Ulf was kind enough to run things and to include his daughter Alice and son Franke, as well as another adult, Andreas, and Erik really wanted to try 5th edition D&D for his first time…
Evidently my Reflections by request video from Febuary 14 wasn’t too badly done, as I’ve received a lot of inquiries about continuing the discussion, especially the topics raised at the end. John Stephens contributed a lot of thoughts and attention to the development of role-playing, during what some think of as the strongest period of…
Psychopomp is another of the many initial/proto game designs that Justin is musing over and playtesting, and he wanted to make sure it got into the scorching too. I had to think pretty hard about how to go into it, because it fits so strongly into a particular aesthetic and an existing set of variables,…