Adept Play
Adept Play
Category: Consulting
Here’s where you can see my role-playing design consulting, with clients’ permission. Please comment at any post that interests you.
I am available for consulting! I do not insert my own design, writing, or editing into others’ games. I engage with your goals and your aesthetic priorities to help you see your way through the questions or struggles you may have, to provide new information or perspectives, to play a little bit, to listen, and to ask the tough questions.
Check out any of the posts and videos to see how it goes, and use the Contact link above. If we agree it’s a good fit, then the fee is 1200 SEK + VAT (300 SEK) for three sessions.
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Whodunit/whydunit
Claudio is working on Inquest, his notion of actually playing an invesigation and maybe, even investigating. A lot of people reading this have sweated over the fundamental contradiction: that the fictional “mystery” is no mystery at all to its author, and therefore how may role-players experience a mystery. So I’m hoping for some real discussion…
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Design Challenges for the Nibelungs
I’m ecstatic to report that the text & layout for In the Realm of the Nibelungs are finished, though publishing may take awhile: I still want to write up my introductory adventure, polish two DM flowcharts and finish a booklet of optional rules. In any case, let me look back on some design challenges: Tackling…
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Setting aside the explanations
The explanation for this image is wonderfully apparent in the second session. Tod requested consulting specifically about late-stage design, bordering on presentation and writing, concerning how to GM, which in turn includes how to present and teach the game. As people reading this probably know, this is my cue to do exactly what the client…
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Die Pädagogik der Volksmärchen
… “the pedagogy of folk tales,” or at least, of playing them. Johann’s game in design, Im Reich der Nibelungen (“in the realm of the Nibelungs”) draws on Germanic folk literature, including twisted forests, lost children, laws of magic, and monsters you can talk to. Its procedures begin with a smoothish hack of older forms…
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Who can say it and what they can say
It was good to hear from Jeff again, and especially good to know that he has been exemplifying the concept of “playful play” with his design of Levied Souls, during the two years since we discussed it. You can see those conversations and listen to the audio of playing the game as it stood then…
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Fun and games in the Book of Job
It seems to be my month for consulting on projects which have hunkered down in people’s notebooks for fifteen or twenty years, refusing either to get past a design hump or to yield gracefully into “not gonna do this game” status. The full name for this one is Variations on a Private and Lonely Hell,…
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The way forward
Manu’s Finding Haven began as a contest entry and runner-up in the 2013 Iron Game Chef, and the accompanying tale is familiar to me. Briefly, these contests degenerated quickly into a takeover process in which game designs disintegrated. I have a fairly reliable procedure in my pocket for this situation. The underlying logic goes something…
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Listening to the past
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…
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Let it bleed
Bleed as a term has arisen in and around the safety-techniques discussion of the past decade; I’m not sure who coined it or in what context. It concerns strong and possibly aversive or uncontrollable emotions that well up during play. If I’m not mistaken, at least sometimes it’s identified as undesirable or unsafe. Edoardo Cremaschi,…