Adept Play
This content includes “investigation,” “procedural,” “cozy,” “murder,” and “noir,” among others, many of them incompatible. Play procedures vary greatly regarding methods for asymmetrical information and prepared backstory.
The following is a transcript of a one-on-one play-by-post session of my Wolves Upon the Coast campaign, Reavers. Wolves Upon the Coast is a combined fantasy iron-age setting and ruleset based on early D&D (ostensibly OD&D but it bears more resemblance to Basic played only fighters.). At the time, the campaign had been running for…
Sam and me just finished a game of The Hour of Dog and Wolf and reflected on our experience. This is a discussion about the themes/shared experiences, and the use of plot points. Sam played Angelo Scabo, a disorganized killer with visions of Saint Barbara in the small ex-industrial town of Charleroi, in Belgium. It…
Art by Jennell Jaquays from The Legendary Duck Tower Over the weekend, my spouse (Adrean) and I had some free-time, and we played a one-off of Hero Wars. I already had a character made, a beer drinking Humakti Duck, and Adrean was down to play as Duncan McQuack, Initiate of Humakt. I sat back and…
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…
This weekend I started a one-on-one Dirty World game with Robbie. Dirty World is a noir mystery/crime thriller game using an unusual variation of the One Roll Engine (ORE) created by Greg Stolze. I happen to like ORE quite a bit having played both Wild Talents and The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor previously. The…
So I got the chance to run a Lovecraftian-style scenario at this past weekend’s con, using the rules-light system Squamous. The scenario was inspired by some actual events around an oil company building a pipeline through indigenous land, but I changed the location, and changed the name of the tribe involved to something fictional, so…
I’ve recently started my first game of The Pool with a few friends in a tabletop Discord. The setting we all decided on was very mystery focused, with a supernatural influence in the background, and source of many colourful descriptions from people I’ve described the game to. One of my players made a detective kind of character,…
This is a joint post for the fourth and upcoming fifth sessions of both Väsen and Godsend Agenda. The first is being played very much rules-as-written with a published scenario, and the second is very much the GM’s personal version of the game, somewhat different from Jerry’s (the author; the game is in development). The…
In English-phonetics, that’s “skreck ee gamlah svair-ee-eh.” The Spelens Hus group is playing Väsen, which is a great title. It doesn’t mean horror or monsters, but the entity, essential being, or the term I used in Sorcerer & Sword for the exact concept, imminent. Viewers will notice that Max is taking time off (work stuff),…