Adept Play
The term refers to the available, actionable scope of play during the course of a roleplaying experience. It may be composed of different locations or times, or concepts, and it is always composed of scenes (where someone is, what is happening) as subunits.
Now we’ve entered the “adventure” for our Bushido game. I think you’ll see a definite influence of Circle of Hands on all the players’ concept of what a fantasy adventure even is, and how characters relate to the society and to local communities. I think this perspective is very well-suited to this game in terms…
This is a bit of game design and a bit of an example for people interested in the “situations” topic I’ve been discussing lately. I asked patrons to make Whimsical Ways characters so I could try my hand at the instructions and notions I have for setting up situations for play, especially for the first…
Watching the Situation videos and reading all the comments made me think about a game I ran called The Cups and Coins Society. This was from late 2017 to about mid 2018. Sadly, we never finished the game due to life interruptions. I’m going to start with some context about the game and then get…
Last night we played Pathfinder again after a long hiatus – it was an initially somber occurrence, given that some of the reasons for not playing pertained to a player at the table losing a loved one, but by the end of the evening things turned joyous and people were having a lot of fun.…
This post continues on from the ongoing game described in Shadows, good bards, and a lot of rules and Horses on Squares. Athes and Fenja are in pursuit of Galen, a well-known bard who may be in possession of a cup, chalice, or cauldron belonging to the town of Ryeton. In the previous session they…
Working from the presentation and discussion at Situation: primary and primal, and drawing upon the game shared in Here comes trouble, now I want to show you exactly what I mean by scene framing, resolution (both successes and failures), and those weird black arrows in that circle diagram. I’m using our short game of “Whimsical…
At the Patreon, I began a deeper discussion of my breakdown of “setting” into three more useful terms: backdrop, situation, and scene(s). I presented it first in Circle of Hands and referenced it a lot since then. At first glance, these terms appear to be nested, in order from biggest to smallest, so that situation…
Over at the Patreon, I’ve been musing about and sharing iterations of my personal hack-and-whack job on Legendary Lives. It took a big jump after the discussion here at Monday Lab: Probable cause, and turned a corner at the dubious moment that I decided all the Imperial characters would have mustaches, yes, all of them.…