Matt Snyder's Dust Devils was the first RPG in the storygame style I really "got." I'm going to run it for the first time in more than a decade (!!!) at RinCon in a few weeks, so I refreshed myself on the rules the other night. It's quite a dive into the earliest ideas of… Continue reading Dust Devils: Blast from the Past
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
I read an interesting comment on the Club Slack this week (read to the end, there's an announcement) about our ongoing Godbound game. It was along the lines of “I didn’t expect this play out of that game,” in response to a little play report thread I started. I poked at that comment a little.… Continue reading Godbound, Between the Lines
My current Godbound game has gotten me thinking about games that have taken measures to ensure they’re fun to facilitate. I mean…running games is its own reward, of course. I could speculate as to why: my frustrated creative impulses as a failed novelist are high on my own list, as is the pleasure of hosting… Continue reading Certain Values of Fun
Yesterday I had an unexpected opportunity to run two similar games side by side. My friends Ralph Mazza (Ramshead Publishing, created Universalis, Blood Red Sands) and Jahmal Brown (indie con rock star, wrote Clockwinders for Fate Worlds, writing Cortex Prime: Supers) were in town for a week of gaming and escaping their icy wastelands. We had been batting… Continue reading A/B Testing: The One Ring vs Forbidden Lands
