Adept Play
Adept Play
Category: System diagrams
This is a technique to examine how variables interact, focusing on specific procedures. Roleplaying is not a widget, so whole-system diagrams are not possible, but isolated sections are greatly clarified with this method.
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Lincon 2023
Where I played Darkurthe Legends and Spione (slated for upcoming Actual Play posts), and encountered lots of contact among people I knew and others that I didn’t. My schedule for the rest of the year is looking pretty full! I also presented a workshop, perhaps playfully titled “Our role-playing, ourselves.” Although it borrows from a…
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Cities as player characters
If a city or state were a character how would you express it? What would the attributes be? Do they have character classes? Would it have Advantages and Disadvantages? How would you damage or kill it? How would it attack or influence city/states around it? How would it grow, and what would it get XPs…
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Design Curriculum 4: I’ll get you a Satanic Mechanic
I’m not making any claims about the logic or organization by this point in our talks, rather, I’m hoping Justin isn’t thinking that I’m totally making it up as I go. It’s certainly been helpful to me to recognize what pieces I need to pull into their own how we play discussion so they can…
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Monday Lab: DIY Diagram
I like those diagrams so much that I feel lonely about it, and I was getting so irritated with being too personally talky during labs. that I was pleased to find the solution to both. “Bring your own,” I said, and led a little curriculum through making them. And finally that meant the insights from…
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Conversation: le mon mouri
This is an excerpt from my conversation with Ken Oswald, who contacted me regarding a bunch of role-playing topics. He was especially interested in the references he’d run across about Sean Demory’s 2002 game le mon mouri, so here is the bit where we went through its system diagram and talked about its content. This…
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Discuss: System diagrams, part 2
Here’s the follow-up to the earlier post in which Jason D’Angelo talked about my little diagramming habit. I’d planned to get this content into the comments there, but the games are so interesting and the diagrams are – I think – illuminating enough to merit their own presentation. I’ll also emphasize the point I make…
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Discuss: Primetime Chat
I’d really like to recover the nearly-unique power and fun of playing Primetime Adventures. This video is intended to help people join me. It’s about scenes and real-play as opposed to workshopped-play. I have a long history of discussing this issue, as I recognized it as a problem all the way back in 2005, and…
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To get a diamond, you crush the coal
I’ve stitched together two consulting sessions with Petteri Hannila, the author of Tales of Entropy. The first part is audio only, but please view rather than listen, because I’ve filled it all with visual content. I’m beginning to make these sessions work both privately and publicly. This client is a little different because the game…
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Conversation: System diagrams
I’ve been drawing these things for years. I’ve rarely discussed them publicly for a couple reasons, but busted one out for my Understanding the Pool seminar, and got to thinking about them again. Then Jason, who was saving my sanity regarding Adobe Premiere, asked me about them outta the blue, based on a discussion about…