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BubbleGumshoe
I was very excited when BubbleGumshoe was announced because it seemed like the first iteration of the game engine that would be about detection first and foremost. What was the last roleplaying game you played that didn’t have a weird factor? Magic, super-powers, faeries, monsters of some kind: the weird is ubiquitous. Each of the iterations of ( Read more... ) -
Archipelago Actual Play
Yesterday I went to a London RPG Meetup and played a session of Archipelago, a game whose name I'd heard but which wasn't familiar to me. It was pitched as a tale for telling Earthsea; style stories - a collaborative world-building tool with a story back-end. From the game introduction:
Archipelago is a story/role-playing game where each player ( Read more... ) -
Conpulsion 2016
One of my Oxford gaming pals e-mailed our short-lived Apocalypse World group and pitched CONpulsion to us as a little reunion. I chimed in with enthusiasm, but after a small but unavoidable delay the other three dropped out and by then I’d booked flights. I booked the time off work, and thought nothing more about it. Occasional e-mails arrived with ( Read more... ) -
The Myth of the Fragmentary Story, Part 2: The Deep Blue Sea
Is anarchy the alternative to order? If we reject, implicitly, explicitly, accidentally, the imposition of either source of structure, what will actually happen at the table? If we are not playing Iconic characters, or if we are not engaging in a formulaic story, is there not a risk of becoming lost in the sea of non-genre melodrama, flailing about ( Read more... ) -
The Myth of the Fragmentary Story, Part 1: The Devil We Know
My new group in Oxford is at the start of an Apocalypse World campaign. The first couple of sessions of Apocalypse World are a collaborative world-building exercise and we’ve populated the world we built with some notable PCs, and now we’re poised at launching into the game proper. In the zero-session, the game follows the daily lives of the ( Read more... ) -
Cthulhu Games: Why Investigators Investigate?
(cross-posted to Google Plus in my ongoing attempt to figure out a way to make the Gametime concept relevant to the web we have nowadays ( Read more... ) -
True Love Match (Kapcon 2014)
I felt guilty, going into this game. If it worked - if it clicked - then five innocent people expecting goofy fun would get punched right in the feels.
The game was True Love Match, run at January's Kapcon in Wellington NZ. This was the game pitch:
Everything has been building up to this moment! Across this series, our lonely gentleman has ( Read more... ) -
Player Facing Scenarios
When the Forge spawned the "Indie Game Revolution", I was very sceptical. I took my line pretty far - I called out steve_hix over his award of "Best GM" at KapCon for his break-out Indie game, "The Lucky Joneses", a game about dysfunctional families that was finally released last year as Bad Family. I argued that the GM in Indie games had a much lower ( Read more... ) -
Providence Summer, 1961
Spend a summer in Providence, 1961! Bored teens and squabbling kids have to confront some hard truths as their comforting illusions start to break apart.I'm delighted to release this series pitch for +Robin Laws's Dramasystem (a.k.a. Hillfolk from +Pelgrane Press Ltd). Inspired by the film "Stand By Me", it's based on a game I ran a decade ago that ( Read more... ) -
Activating Players
I am a huge fan of EPOCH, Dale Elvy's game of survival horror. In particular, I am a fan of his idea of "Player Activation" - the idea that the total game environment, from system to presentation, needs to foster an interesting and collaborative experience. Dale's advice in the rulebook itself can hardly be faulted, and much of that advice can be ( Read more... )