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.
I thought it’d be a nice break from our most recent encyclopedic monstrosity to take a look at four surprisingly compact, recent-ish releases. I haven’t played any of these! These are strictly reviews, not critiques. Rebel Crown Available at Itch.io At a perfect-bound 63 pages, Rebel Crown by Michael Dunn-O'Conner and Eric Swanson is the… Continue reading Small But Fierce: Four Reviews for March 2021
An in-depth breakdown of UFO Press' sprawling technomagical RPG after twenty (!!!) sessions of play.
It isn’t uncommon for me to be called on to run a game on short notice. Locally we rotate GMs and sometimes the GM du jour has to bow out. Sometimes we’re between GMs and just need a filler. Sometimes it’s my turn but I’m not really prepared. There are a lot of games specifically… Continue reading Throwing It Together: Making A Quick Game Out Of Bits And Pieces
What happens when you get Burning Wheel's chocolate in PbtA's peanut butter.
My Diceology buddy MadJay Brown is running a Zinequest project for the next couple-or-so weeks: a superhero setting he calls Lifted: Vault 01. It's pretty rad! The zine will be the setting notes, plus notes on how to run it in Champions Now!, Forge co-founder Ron Edwards' take on the old Champions RPG and how… Continue reading Zinequest: Lifted (and I’m doing a hackbook)
