Adept Play
Adept Play
Category: System Matters
System refers to any and all interactions which result in play, as a dynamic and changing form of fiction. These posts address its features at any scale or purpose of play.
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Time to Take a Stand
I had a great time running Mustering Out Blues last weekend, a two-hour session with four players, three “regulars” and one guest: Adept Play poster “Johann” took me up on my offer to get a little Traveller experience via the Pool, and created a character who would fit right in: ex-Fleet pilot Rory Cunningham, with…
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Arenas of the Old City
Last year sometime, I took the “Ronnies” course, which involved reading game texts, watching play, and thinking about the connections between them. There was even homework! The capstone of the course was designing a game around a theme (“Red Meat”) in 24 hours and getting it to play. The idea that came to me was…
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Running Fallout at a Con
So I ran some demo games for a company at a recent convention, the Fallout RPG and Star Trek Adventures, and I’ve been thinking over the experience. The challenge I had was the games were supposed to be only one-hour-long introductions, and the sample adventures provided were all uniformly railroads. My problem with having a…
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Designing for Misunderstandings?
I’m following up on a recent Discord conversation at Adept Play on the topic of designing RPGs in terms of experiences that the designer wants the players to have. I also want to make my concerns about this clear, as I think I haven’t articulated myself very well about this topic over the years. The…
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Emergency Room C
After some preparations discussed at the Discord (quoted below), I’ve finally run InSpectres. It was a mixed success, but I’m dying and preparing to immediately play it again — not least due to prior discussions: The course “Playing with the Pool” (which includes a section and activities regarding InSpectres) and several discussions and Actual Play…
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Workshop: No, Not Blackleaf!
Workshop #2 is now available here. If you’re a patron, be sure to check the recent Patreon post first, to get your discount code. Many thanks to the wonderful participants and all the points you raised: This space is for participants and, I hope, for people who get the recording, to continue discussing the topic.…
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I love the dice
We’re playing Sorcerer, online. Social context: I’m GMing and T, D, and P are playing sorcerers. I’ve played a good amount of 1-on-1 stuff with T, and a decent amount with T and D together. P joined us for a game of Hero’s Banner that didn’t get off the ground due to scheduling issues. My…
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Radioactive grit
This post continues from Apoc western, our EABA game begun last spring and repeatedly interrupted since then – but we continue, now with regularized schedules and increasing momentum. To review a bit, this is a bit of a retro-grim spin on the over-cartoonized “apocalypse restores the wild west” motif, set in an outlands town struggling…
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More Mustering Out Blues
“Mustering Out Blues” is an homage to classic Traveller I made by hacking the Pool, James V. West’s decades-old rules system (today we’d call it a “game engine,” I suppose). I’ve run a bunch of one-shots with it, but today I ran the second session of a campaign game, and I don’t want to brag…