The other day someone in the IGRC Slack talked about getting (back) into roleplaying recently and landing in OSR territory. But now he wanted to learn more about “storygaming.” Whatever that is! I’m deeply uninterested in staking a flag for anyone else. For my purposes, all storygaming means to me is post-trad play that is… Continue reading Games That Broke My Brain
Ways to think about characterization as you cultivate a storytelling mindset for your RPGs. Part 2 of ?
Off to the races again in my ongoing review of my most impactful small-press games of the twenty-teens. The year 2014 was the Year of the Trindie for me. That is, trad games (conventional GM/player authority split, capability-driven play) with heavy indie influence (classes focused on characterization as much as capability, new ways to handle… Continue reading A Decade of Indie Roleplaying: 2014
My current favorite metaphor for learning game rules: it’s compiling code in my brain. We started a Band of Blades campaign this week, right? It’s a Forged in the Dark game, so it’s based on the same set of ideas as Blades in the Dark and Scum and Villainy. Since it’s my third FitD game… Continue reading Band of Blades and Recompiling Code
The greatest gaming lab ever created is the Las Vegas casino industry. That lab's most significant finding is that humans crave two things in games: pattern completion and intermittent rewards. I've been thinking lately about how my favorite games leverage both of those monkey-level impulses. In particular, I've been thinking about how the very best… Continue reading Pattern Completion and Intermittent Rewards
