Adept Play
Adept Play
Category: Trouble during play
Role-playing is not intrinsically difficult or delicate. However, its ease and availability have not been well-served through its history. These posts concern those moments when it does seem difficult or delicate, toward the goal of identifying how we make it harder than it is.
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Bearing the Torch for Everyone Else
After finding the book in my local game store, and having the game recommended by an acquaintance, I got inspired, recently decided to set up a Torchbearer campaign with IRL friends. I got quite hyped (part of the problem, maybe) about the game and put quite a bit of effort into preparing it, going to…
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Long Live the New York Red Box!
Worth Remembering In 2013 I was getting divorced. I’d hurt someone I loved very much, and it blew up a lot of ideas I had about myself. One night in the middle of that emotional car wreck, I called my friend Tavis for advice. He was the only divorced guy I knew well enough to talk to about…
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I flinched.
So we played Worlds Without Number for about 13 months, twice monthly with some small breaks and one or two large ones; probably 15-20 sessions in all. The game ended on a logical stopping point: after spending a few sessions somewhat aimlessly (i.e. with no strong goals) wandering around the Maze of the Blue Medusa,…
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Keep to the Path: Knavish Adventures in Keep of the Borderlands
This is my most recent experiment in playing a system in pure referee-style, six three-hour sessions of Knave in the famous B/X module Keep of the Borderlands by Gary Gygax. Previously, I attempted forty hours of a 5e West Marches Campaign which was a mixed experience. My sense of “referee style” is to stick adamantly…
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The Witch, the Wardrobe and the Crappy GM
This game has lasted for a while now – at least two and a half-year, with considerable breaks due to the pandemic situation, but still probably 60 sessions or more, overall. If you're unfortunate enough to have read my rants on Discord, you may know I do not consider it a particularly successfull experience. In…
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Haunted: A Tale of Two Agencies
Back in 2011 I submitted a game to the Ronnies based off the keywords: murder and whisper. I’ve played and revised the game quite a bit since then. I mention this in the spirit of full disclosure that the game I’m about to discuss is a game of my own making. However, I want to…
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Frog Pool fantasy
This is the single most brutal post I have presented or perhaps ever will present at Adept Play. So I’ll start with all the good things. The fictional adventure as atmosphere and topic was delightful. I offered a starting point which instantly became, from and for everyone, absolutely our own mostly-anthropomorphic frog fantasy. Lorenzo rightly…
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Roleplaying Is an Emotional Contact Sport
So last night’s Burning Wheel game was a rough, instructive and ultimately rewarding one for me. To explain why (to myself as much as you), I’m going to have to go into some detail about what has happened so far. You can skip to the “Reflections” below if you just want the takeaways. Setting We’re…
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Neck and neck
This is a joint post for the fourth and upcoming fifth sessions of both Väsen and Godsend Agenda. The first is being played very much rules-as-written with a published scenario, and the second is very much the GM’s personal version of the game, somewhat different from Jerry’s (the author; the game is in development). The…