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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Chase Mechanics in CORE
In last night's CORE session, three reality-sliders tumbled through four scenarios:– Resurrect Frankenstein's Monster & teach him love– Camel race to save the baby Jesus– National dance competition vs Evil– Car chase thru 1972 farmers market to deliver Pulsing Tesseract to The Spindle All these settings were mere justifications for me to playtest a few…
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Setting aside the explanations
The explanation for this image is wonderfully apparent in the second session. Tod requested consulting specifically about late-stage design, bordering on presentation and writing, concerning how to GM, which in turn includes how to present and teach the game. As people reading this probably know, this is my cue to do exactly what the client…
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RPG Conversation: The Pool
Over the last few weeks, Jon, Sean and I have been playing a game of the Pool in a fantasy setting initially slapped together using a single picture as inspiration (I think this is one of Ron's techniques, and I played in a game that Ross started this way years ago). This week's intended game…
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Die Pädagogik der Volksmärchen
… “the pedagogy of folk tales,” or at least, of playing them. Johann’s game in design, Im Reich der Nibelungen (“in the realm of the Nibelungs”) draws on Germanic folk literature, including twisted forests, lost children, laws of magic, and monsters you can talk to. Its procedures begin with a smoothish hack of older forms…
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Q and A at the Patreon
During December, I asked patrons if they wanted to throw me some questions, especially pretty specific to games that I’ve published or perhaps know well enough to say anything about. The idea was to collect a few and make a little video response, to be posted and discussed at the Patreon. A quick point: if…
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5e and Inspiration
I've been playing / running a fair amount of D&D 5e oneshots at the local games cafe recently (the owner says they often get RPG curious people asking about D&D and has persuaded some of the regular RPG evening attendees to run it more often). As a result of this I have been thinking about…
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Immersion
Yes, the title is clickbait. It’s merely a pun on the game we’re talking about … or does this topic turn out to address the loaded role-playing hobby term after all? You decide. Jon and I took some time to share experiences about playing The Pool, based on the games you can read about or…
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No Sword, a Sorcerer, and Competency
Due to some weird circumstances, I ran a 1-shot last night for a group I am an actual player in (as opposed to mostly GMing). It was for three of the players as the others could no make it (hence the 1-shot). The barrier was partially a social one: I do not know one of…
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From Confusion to the Concrete
See here for the first post in this series. We’ve played two more sessions of Worlds Without Number. After the first session, one of the players had to drop out—the player who had recognized my prep at the end of the first session and had me scrambling to prepare something else. I decided, since I…