Adept Play
Adept Play
Category: Emotions in play
The real participants’ emotions factor into play at many levels and at many points, sometimes as cause toward the fiction and sometimes as effects from it. Terms like immersion and bleed apply to some visible forms, but the social component of play carries emotional weight as well.
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A Spiritual Journey
I had a memory come back to me and I figured I’d share it. I had this friend named Sayler. I haven’t seen him in a long time. Sayler was an interesting and somewhat mysterious fellow. He was of German and Persian ancestry. He was stationed in Berlin with the U.S. Army when the wall…
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Devil Ex Machina
This is an actual play of a Sorcerer campaign called Devil Ex Machina. It is set in San Francisco in 2023 and I wanted the demons to have the vibes of malevolent, conscious artificial intelligence. Sorcery in our game is characterized by an obsession with programming, extensive use of IT, and getting lost in the…
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Taken by the hand to the downward spiral
Introduction Several months ago I had a chance to play The Plant, the solo rpg created by Jason Morningstar; if you would like to see what kind of results it can bring in terms of fiction, I attach the journal of my play, in Italian and English*: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AKoRiJ2CfjnBtwXC2ZrXP1HkYfWVIVYM/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SoyfjmISC0NLBQv6vhLjeMcDd89JL3pN/edit For those unfamiliar, the game is…
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I don’t like horror
painting by Jozzi but the moment Ron mentioned he had started a game of Lacuna with a couple of new people that showed up after Augustifesten and Kulturnatten (both weekend long cultural festivals that give the opportunity for all clubs at Spelens Hus to reach out to new people) I got itchy. He had introduced…
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The Tragic Passions of Sir Carabad
Ten years ago I played Pendragon (4th Edition 1993) with my friends Josh (GM), Adrian, Dan, Chris, and a few guests. The campaign lasted over twenty sessions, and sadly while I remember many stories I don’t recall many specific moments of play. So I asked the discord for some topics to narrow focus, and people…
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Thoughts, philosophies, ideologies, and demons
About when I think it’s time to retire the old email for good, as it mostly delivers spam whose algorithm is clearly confused, someone uses it for the only reason anyone should. Ransom contacted me to ask some questions about Sorcerer which led to this conversation. They were pretty deep questions, including positions regarding the…
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Roleplaying Is an Emotional Contact Sport
So last night’s Burning Wheel game was a rough, instructive and ultimately rewarding one for me. To explain why (to myself as much as you), I’m going to have to go into some detail about what has happened so far. You can skip to the “Reflections” below if you just want the takeaways. Setting We’re…
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Hantverksklubben 21: Feelgood
Yesterday we finally managed a new session of Hantverksklubben, our ongoing experimental GM-less freeform group. The theme for the day was "Feelgood", and it was a … mixed success. The original post in Swedish is here. The text below is translated using Google with slight touch-ups, but the language might not be perfect. — Finally…
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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,…