Roleplaying Blog

[derigueur]

I run, and play, a lot of roleplaying games. Apparently I don't do a shabby job of either, from the feedback I get. It has occurred to me recently that there might be something in all this that would make useful material - either as a way of working through ideas, or as a way of offering thoughts to others on ways to improve their games

Comments

[reverancepavane]

Not to mention being a fanatical divide among many current game designers and their followers.
The current fad is to use the game mechanics to force narration. For example, Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies forces the player to narrate the effects of a contest, whilst Houses of the Blooded has a wager system that determines the results. Then there are the pure Storytelling Games such as Ganagarok, Fiasco, Grey Ranks, Polaris and Happy Birthday Mr Robot whose mechanics directly enforce narration, and whose designers were frequent players of Amber diceless (which together with Everway started the narrative movement in gaming), although both really required an experienced gamemaster.
Then for example there is Luke Crane who goes into a multi-page diatribe in the middle of Burning Empires that the game mechanics are more important than the narration, and the Old School Renaissance which, is not so much a nostalgia trip (although it is also one for me), but a reaction to the introduction of story-paths (such as the Dragonlance series of modules) in gaming.
Then you have the simulationist vs narrative divide (for example Runequest vs Heroquest [frex, HQ does not provide stats for NPCs, but rather suggests setting the opposition values according to the appropriate beat structure of the plot, whereas RQ was the first game which used a universal system for both player and npc/monster]).
Fun times.
PS: There is a Kickstarter pledge for Happy Birthday Robot currently, if anyone is interested. Although it is a game designed for kids, as opposed to say Fiasco

[derigueur]

You are like the Wikipedia of Gaming. Something comes up and you can name six games that handled the issue in different ways.

I *would* say I'd like a permanent link to your brain, but that would probably be dangerous and unwise for everyone :P