Adept Play
Adept Play
Tag: Champions sensu lato
Champions was first published by Hero Games in 1981. The company has undergone multiple licenses, authorship, and ownership changes, and the game is represented by at least six editions.
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October Q & A
These things can take a lot out of me sometimes. Christoffer and James earn respect and probably sympathy for triggering highly motivated position pieces, and with any luck their actual questions receive replies too. I realized during editing that I didn’t quite land the point regarding changing-up actions in Circle of Hands. The idea is…
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Monday Lab: Probable Cause
Here’s a blessed event insofar as I can finally talk about role-playing content and procedures that are ordinarily kicked down the road. For me, Adept Play is a rousing success insofar as ideas can be introduced and resolved enough so that “next ideas” can actually be addressed, and I don’t have to spray down the…
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Presentation: The Death of the Superhero (retrospective re-presentation of a 2018 talk)
In November 2018, I presented some thoughts on the integrated history of American comics and the early superhero role-playing games. Briefly: The period from 1968 through the very late 1970s was marked by unusual ownership, editorial, and creative circumstances. This period’s comics provided the foundation for the development of early superhero RPGs like Villains &…
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All those dice hit the table
The mystic world heard my cry, evidently, and has delivered a glowy burst of conversations about what dice do, especially when rolled in profusion. This time I have the pleasure of talking with Ben Milton, in an almost completely unconstructed, non-interview-like chat just because we like these dice things. Part 1 examines what big dice…
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Design Curriculum 9: Dice injection
You can go all the way back to 1998 to see me saying, “I want to talk about point-builds and dice, so let’s get past some easy points about goals of play and get to the good practical stuff.” Twenty-one years later and people are still blubbering about “but but simulation.” I’ve repeated this plea…
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Design Curriculum 6: Alpha and Beta
I’ve shifted our focus more fully into the concrete experience of designing a game. I’m also finding it useful to consider the practitioner’s general outlook of “this is how I did it,” vs. the observer’s or analyst’s outlook of “but how does a person do it,” without falling into the trap of tossing it back…
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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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Designers on the road
Hey! Alex cleverly informed Paul and me that he wanted to do an interview after we were trapped in the back seat on the way to Lucca from our apartment (in Viareggio? one of those coastal towns). I can now boast that I was able to unburden my soul to a geisha! Because cosplayers count.…
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Monday Lab: Roll to Know
Usually I wait a week to post Monday Labs, partly to get enough time to edit properly, partly to keep at least something on a regular cycle at the site. But this time I couldn’t help myself, it’s been only two days and here you go. The reason is nothing less than an impressive meeting…