Adept Play
Adept Play
Tag: Vampire: the Masquerade
A horror-drama game by Mark Rein-Hagen (design lead), published by White Wolf in 1991.
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Workshop: What Went Wrong
Here’s the beast: all the things I think we should collectively consider as the social and commercial platform for role-playing’s history … and content, and emotions. Distribution, political context, money matters, subcultural effects, and more: presented not as momentary justifications, but as a layered history with a deep structure of cause and effect. Many thanks…
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Workshop: In/Over
We did it! This is about the authorities in play, which I put together both to form a single solid reference, and also to develop it past the basics and into practical use. The title refers to the distinction between authority over people, which is often a source of fear and pushback against the word,…
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Why things are the way they are
Mark Wallace contacted me for conversation about role-playing mechanics and emotions or the resulting content, among many other people. He’s written and published a lot about creative developments just outside or underneath the acknowledged media; see The Mark Wallace Experience for examples and enjoyment. He began the conversation with a bigger, relevant question: why role-playing…
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Vampire The Heresy
This is a report of an experience of Vampire The Masquerade played between 2003 and 2006. This was a play by forum game, on a French website (who is now offline), with more or less 30 players and 3 GM. The site functioned as a series of forums, each one used as a “scene”, generally…
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Historical technique
I’d like to start some group effort toward institutional memory of the historical role-playing activity. Here’s the D&D diagram I’ve been using for years, which I absolutely insist must be used rigorously by anyone who wants to use those syllables in a conversation. It helps to keep the title from bearing every imaginable generalization, along…
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Return to Apocalypse World
Very long time couple of non roleplayers friends wanted to play a rpg, and got into vampire with one of their friends, last year. I asked them a few month ago how it went. Julie, my long time friend, told me that she didn’t like all the thespian show she had to do, to precise…
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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 1: Re-inspiration
I’ve been working up a Design curriculum for role-playing for a long while, so when Justin Nichols approached me for a game design discussion that leaned toward mentoring, I accepted without reservation. At the beginning of this episode, we considered our options for the initial approach, and Justin preferred the “lab” version in which we…
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Humanity and morality in design
A conversation with Jonathan Tweet! I hope I do not bore anyone by repeating myself about the influence of Over the Edge upon me in role-playing, both in helping me return to enthusiastic play from a doldrums period and in providing me with a fresh view toward design. The DNA of Sorcerer lies back in…