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.
Ever since Sean talked to me about consulting for his project The Empire of the Dragon Lotus, I’ve been looking through old files and papers for the earliest work by that name that I remembered from him, fifteen to seventeen years ago. I wanted to review some points of interest – especially since what he…
I ran a scenario of Miseries and misfortunes; about three sessions (plus some miscellaneous character creation and reflection). It is an interesting, though mayhaps incomplete, game, and one I do not enjoy as written. But there are many good lessons to learn from it. The scenario: https://ropeblogi.wordpress.com/2020/12/31/the-grimoire-heist/ . There were three players, only one known…
Nathaniel Duhring arrives in New Orleans, nineteen, broken, -hearted and otherwise. He has just fled the travelling circus that employed him as a freak act—the Puzzle-Pieced Paddy, surgically dismembered and reassembled time and again for the awed entertainment of cycling crowds. Nathaniel’s feelings toward the surgeon are hundredfold and conflicting—here is his mentor & tormentor,…
Metatopia 2020 was an online event held on Nov. 5-8. This is an annual conference that focuses on small press and independent game designers. Panels covered a wide variety of topics, and the quality, as is to be expected, was varied. Two panels in my mind stood out. They touched on issues of interest to…
I have to say, I feel a bit like Charles Marlow, relating a series of half-real half-imagined events to an unknown audience. "'Try to be civil, Marlow,' growled a voice, and I knew there was at least one listener awake besides myself." So far, we’ve seen the creation and reification of Laurence the Innocent, a self-hating…
The way in which we are playing the game: http://adeptplay.com/actual-play/some-osr-sandbox-play . Context: Player characters were chasing some bandits, but lost track of them close to the town of Saltmarsh (from a TSR adventure, U1 The sinister secret of Saltmarsh) and the fort of Morgansfort (from a Basic fantasy adventure of the same name at https://www.basicfantasy.org/downloads.html…
(This is a continuation of this post.) My campaigns are always electronically documented. After each session, I make entries for new elements and do a write-up of the session’s events. This was the only preparation I did. Unfortunately, against my hopes, the write-ups don’t capture the experience of playing Living Alchemy. So instead of writing…
Living Alchemy I've been working on a roleplaying game for half my life. I started it in the summer before college, sitting in the empty campus of UNL. I was about to leave for a another state, bitter about my life, bitter about leaving it. But this isn't about that. I recently finished an eight…