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.
English folklore, westerns, Arthuriana, fallen far futures…and time travel! That’s it, those are all my favorite genres and I got to play them all at RinCon, Arizona’s best local convention, late in November. I’ve been reviewing everything I ran, and Publishing Goblin’s Zoetrope: Death Didn’t Take is the last one on the list. Zoetrope: Death… Continue reading Zoetrope: A Very Silly Deep Dive
Second of three reviews from the latest convention I’ve got a fraught relationship with Westerns. Specifically, it’s hard to keep the Western genre in my head separate from the history of the American West. It’s a long-standing thing going back to when I worked professionally in game design. It’s evolved into both “this is gross… Continue reading Inevitable: The Deep Dive
Per usual, I overprepared stuff for RinCon this year. I set myself up to run six things! But what I did get to play all turned out terrific for different reasons. I’ll talk about one each week. Let’s get into it. First up is Through the Hedgerow by Jonathan Rowe, out of Osprey Publishing. Through the Hedgerow… Continue reading Through the Hedgerow: a Deep Dive
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
