Adept Play
This category concerns religion as a feature in the fiction of play. It might be a very direct (“the”) topic, or it may be a significant cultural feature, or anything relevant to what else is happening. A real person’s own beliefs and observances may be presented only if they are relevant to play and if that person is aware of the post or comment.
The above graphic shows the games I played during the Happening, whether organized by me or by someone else. The total games played by everyone there approximately doubled that number of titles. This post is about the two I’ve circled, which are part of my Cantos set of four games. They are weird, arty, intimate…
We have begun our third adventure for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, including one half-orc cleric-assassin for the Church of the Eternal and Fundamental Ordination, one half-elf fighter-assassin for the Church of the Ineffable Disruption of All Being, one half-elf fighter-thief who moonlights for the Disruption, and two half-orc fighter-clerics for the, well, it doesn’t really…
Sam and I sat down last week to record a conversation about a 7-issue run on Villains & Vigilantes we did along with our longtime creative collaborator Robin. Personally, I value how unprogrammed this particular dialog was. We excavated lessons from our play of Villains & Vigilantes that we’re excited to apply to our current…
It begins at another post, Finding a game in there, which muses upon “fire-axing” Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, first version, published 1977-1979. Briefly: using the rules as best as possible or practical, but for a subset of the content, disallowing various classes or concepts from the start. I’ve already registered a session at Lincon, in…
For the last few months, I’ve invited patrons to ask me things, which I grapple with and collect as a presentation at the beginning of each month.. I can’t say I really answer them in an Ask Advice fashion, although you’ll certainly learn what I think. Sometimes it’s “I don’t know.” The embedded link goes…
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,…
This afternoon my duet buddy and I will be playing another session of Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, and before we do I wanted to update my actual play record with two of the three sessions we’ve played since I posted last. Session 8: The Ambush The first session was occupied with the Wasp-Riders’ ambush of…
Our third proper session was yesterday, and my and my duet buddy’s Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha game is starting to heat up. Backdrop and Situation We settled on a backwater Orlanthi stead for setting, close to the road to Whitewall. ‘Our’ clan are the Maul-Mouths, Olontongi who stubbornly held onto their ways (and their rivalry with…
I’ve been working on this project for Lamentations of the Flame Princess for some time, and it’s finally jumped to the front of my working goals. Briefly, it shifts the location of the game to the Ottoman Empire, during the same canonical year, 1630. Our scenario concerns the ruins of the House of Wisdom, a…