We like to divide things, I guess. Often, it’s into binaries. Today, it’s a troika.1 There are three things I’m currently thinking about in RPG design, and those are story, emotional response, and interaction. I feel that word is very appropriate in this case; like a troika, these three are distinct, but must work together […]
So we’ve been discussing damage in Piece of Work. In a cybernoir story, eventually someone is going to get shot, stabbed, or clubbed. Mechanically, there are a lot of options available for tracking hurt—hit points, statuses, health levels—but each has drawbacks that doesn’t deliver the effect we’re after. We want something gripping but still lightweight […]
So, I think Primetime Adventures is a great game. So great a game, that we might well ask why we don’t just use it for everything. Well, because of reasons. Let me unpack that a bit. Some time ago, I was promulgating the notion that most of what makes a successful instance of RPG play is […]
People don’t just read texts as some kind of blank slate. We read them with assumptions and background knowledge, sure, but we also bring a particular set of tools to bear to understand them as we read them. You should really read Ryan Macklin on the subject of reading texts. OK, good. Now, I’m going […]
It’s hard to make RPGs that build, maintain, and deliver on tension at the right points of a story. Systems that don’t allow for tense scenes or palpable stakes just don’t have grip. And yet, if a system engages too directly with tension and action, the outcomes it produces feel trite. At worst, an errant […]
When you’re designing a game, it can be helpful to ask—and answer—”what do I want my players to describe?” It’s probably not the first question you want to answer, but when you need to ask it, you know you will. It’s not quite the same as “what happens in my game”1 because, importantly, it’s about what […]
While we’re generally all about Becoming Heroes, we’ve recently hit upon one part that is harder than it needs to be—character generation. Right up front, we ask you to decide eight traits, three circumstances, and three ties. We don’t give you a lot of guidance around selecting these traits and people get stuck around six […]
One thing we haven’t talked much about here is character flags—things about a character that signal what kinds of story elements interest the player. For example, if one of your players has a character with lot of skill in picking locks, then probably you need to throw some locks at that character. This is a […]
I’ve been thinking lately about the different kinds of play encoded in classic card games. It’s kinda cool, really: most card games are highly social games, in terms if where the locus of interaction lies. This means that they can do a really good job of informing the more game-y elements of our RPG design. […]
I’ve been thinking about immersion lately. I know it’s a dirty word in RPG circles—no one can agree on what it means, for a start. And I’ve not taken part in many of those conversations, so I know there’s a lot of thought on the matter that I’m missing. Here goes. I was talking with […]
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