Adept Play
Adept Play
Category: Settings
A setting is best conceived as a much broader scope than the situations in play, whether conceptual or geographic or cosmic. This section concerns how they are experienced in play, as opposed to direct textual references.
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Knowledge, Demons and Sacrifice
This game of Stormbringer (1981) writte by Ken St Andre and Steve Perrin. That game was played the 8 September 2025v at the Adept Play Happening in Norrköping. I made 9 pregen characters that the character could pick from. The book suggest to play with “3 to 6 players, probably with two or three characters…
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More Rolemaster Talk
I first posted this video as a reply at https://adeptplay.com/2021/01/21/rolemaster-reminiscing/ — at Ron’s suggestion, I’m breaking it out into its own post. I talk with Jon and Noah about our Rolemaster campaign from last year, and we discuss preparation, play, mechanics and more:
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One bad harvest
We’re finally playing Harnmaster for the long game, with four sessions so far. You can see my slow and deliberate prior uptake in Dialing down the fantasy and Grit and focus. If you’re not familiar with it (people seem to be 100% or 0% with hardly anyone in-between), Harn is a set of isles at…
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In the Face of the Shining Lords
It’s been a few games since I posted any updates about play in my post-apocalyptic space opera game, in the Shadow of the Shining Lords, so I thought I’d drop in with what’s happened since then. (note: if you’re one of my players, there are spoilers below, please hold off reading this for a couple…
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Hexcrawl & Jackie Chan
Sooo, my last year a friend GMed a campaign of Kevin Crowford’s “Scarlet Heroes” just for me. There is a short summary of our play: “Scarlet Heroes” worked well for this campaign but it’s my friend and the techniques he used I wanted to praise here. The level of communication and shared understanding between us…
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Hands-on content
I’ll lay this out the way I see it and have tried to present it over the past few years. I think the role of textual setting content is clear: it explicitly drives into playing situations, or it doesn’t. (So-called “scenario seeds” typically don’t.) However, one simply cannot tell by reading. Sometimes it seems overly…
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Grit and focus
At the Happening, I was determined to play a little bit of Harnmaster and Dangerous Journeys, both of which I’ve been poking at for many years. David brought Boot Hill too, and as it happened, the three make a nice set for discussion. Also, we were intrigued enough to play a second session of Harnmaster,…
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Dark + Sun + Pool
I am merely typical in dreaming about play in the world of the Dark Sun, as presented as an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition product in 1991. I am aware that it’s been developed by who-knows-who in God-knows-what media, and that all sorts of fandom wikis and whatnot have bloomed in the internet since…
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Gothcon 2024
This year I’m in “look, I have some things” mode, so I scheduled games of my own design and even brought printed copies for sale. Low-tech and totally pamphlet mode, but nicely printed for sure. I gave out a free copy of Cold Soldier with any purchase and handed out promo for The Happening all…