Adept Play
Adept Play
Category: Combat rules
These posts examine the variety of procedures and the variety of meaning or story-operations for violent confrontations.
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Keeps on giving
Back in June, I played more sessions of original or nigh-original Traveller with Johan and Nathan. It has been one of the most pleasantly educational experiences of play that I can remember. We have really learned that most principles about “how it’s done” don’t apply to this early text and, I assume, to how the…
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Red-hood Iskra
The past weekend I attended Big Bad Con in Northern California. It’s a convention that heavily favors small press and independent RPGs. So, it’s an excellent place to find people who are up for just about anything and try out games you’ve wanted to play but just haven’t been able to pull together. The first…
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Organic Fastball Special
I love spontaneous teamwork that builds off the choreography of the moment. One player is in motion, another participant builds off what has been established without ambiguity or abstraction. A recent game of Hero Wars had such a moment. We are playing with the old module “The Legendary Duck Tower” written by Jennell Jaquays and…
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When “dark” was excellent
Here’s the Darkurthe Legends session from Lincon! Featuring several rather willing & able players, whom I hope to meet with again because they embraced many setting and characterization features, including asking questions, and they were genuinely interested in the formal but savage combat rules. There is one tragedy, which is that the final events of…
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The Fool of Druids & Bob Pepper’s Art
I enjoy a great deal of gaming culture from the late 1970s and early 80s. Two of those things are the card game Dragonmaster and Rolemaster. Both touch on nostalgia for me, but Rolemaster in particular is one of those games I enjoy going back to when I can. It has been a while. I…
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March 2023 Q&A
Even a couple of questions can go pretty deep. There’s a solid look at initiative and order during confrontations, and some development of the “reverse mullet” problem observed in many role-playing texts. Please check out the attached file to see our discussion at the Patreon. Sean identifies the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition /…
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February 2023 Q&A
Lucky 13th time – I hope you like it, because this was a beast of a question series, across a wide variety of topics. I even get to revisit the Finding D&D series regarding current IP/OGL shenanigans. I promised Alessio a couple of links so here they are: Presentation: Why Glorantha (and its games) and…
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Yikes
[This post is adapted from activity at the Patreon.] It would be nice to consider rapier fighting. If by “nice” you mean skilled murder with horrible, terrible instruments uniquely designed for exactly that. I’m thinking mainly about civilian violence and including off-hand instruments including other weapons, bucklers, and improvised defenses. Seriously, these things are nightmarish.…
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We’re keeping this crown
2022 really brought a Tunnels & Trolls workout here at Adept Play, me included. The post Or we’ll sic the fairy on you is primarily about another T&T game, played with a larger group, which continued into a notable second adventure which I’ll post about as well. In the video there, I mentioned some events…