Adept Play
Adept Play
Category: Fruitful void
The fruitful void is my term for an effect that isn’t explicit in the rules we are using, but which often develops in some form when people play the game. A good example is provided by the game The Mountain Witch: “honor” is not represented by any rule or game term, and it is never mentioned in the text – but play very often results in events which clearly involve, escalate, and critique the concept of honor.
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Fights and delight
These would be Doyle (Fused Teacher/Gunkata, “disgraceful street poet”), Leonie (Focused Wardancer, “lithe lioness”), and Hans Horthy (Focused Cavalry, “getaway driver”), as I, Helma, and Hampus played them in Panic at the Dojo. Milo introduced us to the game and tried his hand at GMing for the first time. It’s a super fighty battle-map game,…
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Laser focus
I have always found it fun and useful to have The Fantasy Trip: Melee open on the table with its sister game Wizard nearby. Lately, I’ve done so at several public events, including Spelens Hus, a mall games demonstration, and the city library, as well as a couple of fill-in play sessions when the whole…
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Jack Cosmos and the Desolation of Smug
We had a couple of open sessions at Spelens Hus, which were filled by Space Rat, by Nathan Russell. The nominal franchise stars Jack Cosmos, the heroic Galactic Agent, but its many-texts content is either so satiric or so bad that no one can miss the fact that his arm-candy female companions actually do all…
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Where are you now? Don’t you care about your sons and daughters?
A lot of things came together last month in a fortuitous way. One of them concerns a social gathering for the local and state branch of the Miljöpartiet (Swedish Green Party; link includes language options), right where I play at Spelens Hus. It wasn’t a promotional event; in fact, it’s useful to understand that a…
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Halfway Heroes: Supervillain Showdown
Across three sessions: a bank robbery, a public unmasking, our protagonists finally have their show down, and a guest appearance by the most startling character of them all! Plus—the second death of the First Responder! James, whatever happened with that Marvel Super Heroes game David was running for you and Noah? There were a lot of session…
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Burning Dwarven Fortress
Back in 2019-2020, I’ve returned to TTRPGs by running “Burning Dwarven Fortress” campaign. It had been influenced by playing Dwarf Fortress video game back then. I’ve used Burning Wheel. Why? In Autumn 2019, I was looking for a game which suits DF’s theme as best as possible and BW was my comfort and kinda OK…
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The Void and Circle of Hands
Everytime I played circle of hands (I only played as player), there is some moment when the players want to do something against Rbaja or Amboryion. But nothing in the book helps you to do that. There is no written solution or explicit mechanics to deal with those cosmic forces, far beyond what your character…
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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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Wear your heart on your sleeve.
This isn’t directly related to a specific play experience, but rather a general subject that (for me) stretches from play to design to observation of other people’s play. I think it may be relevant to a few games that were recently played on AP, and maybe some of those that are being discussed/played right now.The…