Essays, actual play, theory talk, and general navel-gazing about story-focused roleplaying, aka “indie” games. And trindie. And OSR. If you’re small and scrappy, I want to talk about what you’re doing! If you’re fighting to grow, I want to talk about what you’re doing! Basically if it’s roleplaying (tabletop, freeform, larp, whatevs) and it’s not the monolith of D&D, it’s in my wheelhouse.
RinCon is coming up in Tucson this weekend and I'm gonna run myself ragged catching up with games I've wanted to run but simply haven't had time: Inevitable, an Arthurian-Western mashup about doomed knights holding off the fall of their kingdom. Cowboys With Big Hearts, a Jason Morningstar jam about sickly cowboys headed off for… Continue reading Not Enough Months But At Least There Are Still Cons
Readers may remember our terrific run with Handiwork Games’ a|state earlier this year. Just a great, smart game all around. Designer Morgan Davie took an old Forge-era indie fave and reframed it with Forged in the Dark tech, then went on to add several sharp quality of life improvements to the FitD framework as well.… Continue reading FiveEvil: An Unlikely Winner
Thought experiment: What’s the ugliest game book you’d still pick off a shelf if you came across it again for the first time? Indie snobs will of course claim it’s a whole long list, but the reality is that we really do judge a book by its cover. That’s why they have covers. Fair warning:… Continue reading Ugly Beautiful Books
Let me say up front that I love everything Magpie Games has ever put out. I go out of my way to play their stuff, and I’ve run nearly everything they’ve ever put out. Starting with Epyllion way back in the day, through Urban Shadows, Bluebeard’s Bride, Cartel, Zombie World, Pasión de las Pasiones, all… Continue reading Masks: A Late, Deepish Dive
Something interesting happened at our regular game night this week. It’s personal, not a sweeping theory or a review although there’s a bit of both in there as well. Summer is really hard to schedule and it’s worse if your group has kids. So I typically try to have a big campaign in the fall,… Continue reading Drawing a Blank
