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.
-
I anticipate a corpse count
Here’s our play experience with Ola’s Compact Stories, which is well-timed considering our recently-concluded season of Primetime Adventures. It’s a chance to perceive precisely what distinguishes his design, and for him to see what to dial down or to dial up inside it. It’s a continuation of the consulting seen in How “right now” turns…
-
The hardest questions have easy answers
Similar to my consult with Jared, I wonder whether Jerry and I are even comprehensible to a third-party listener. I know it’ll be entertaining; we’ve known each other for almost twenty years, trading thoughts about life et cetera. I kept laughing out loud while editing. However, he’s published big, beautiful games (Atlantis, Hellas), managing money…
-
Down here
I think you’ll find this one interesting. Jared and I have known each other a long time, and in a significant fashion affecting the history of role-playing design. We don’t explain when we talk, we say things and the other gets to process them internally and to decide what to say next. We just take…
-
How “right now” turns into what happened
Ola Jansson has been working on his Compact Stories for a while, with plenty of playtesting and revision along the way. But it’s hit that point I’ve identified as critical, when the design questions and the presentation questions are bleeding into one another. With any luck I can put some of the work of the…
-
Scaling down into fights
I love this quote from The Mountain Witch: “All conflict is a form of combat.” For Justin Nichols’ Kinfolk, the issue is that he’s got a big whole-game arc of whether the invading industrials can be successfully repelled or otherwise stopped by the fey folk … and sure, you can make a chapter structure, and…
-
The far east! which means what?
Sean Hillman and I met to talk about his game, or proto-game, just notes really, Empire of the Dragon Lotus. For me it’s a callback to about … fifteen years ago, into the hothouse of the Forge and Sean’s participation there. I think his original notes on the game from back then are in one…
-
Seeing through eyes that aren’t your own
Dan and I go way back although we hadn’t met or interacted directly before; he was in at some of the earlier Forge days and has good memories. It’s nice to talk with someone with those. The discussion began here in Compartmentalization/Defecting Luddite and it seemed to him to move best into Consulting, so here…
-
Dice: the love, the hate, the fear, the need
Prompted by our discussions in the comments across posts here, Lorenzo Colucci brought the relevant mechanics of his game in design, Crescent (working title), for some high-focus work with me. His concern is perfectly clear: if you are playing chess, then there’s a reason why dice aren’t involved, particularly dice rolls whereby a contestant can…
-
Three maybe-maybe-not heroes, and that is the point
I’ve moved into playtesting for Levied Souls, with the help of friends at Spelens Hus. It’s a long-term project with plans for multiple sessions, and so this first session was for character creation. By player request, it’s also audio only, athough I have set it up as a video for helpful captioning and occasional textual…