-
Messy and personal vs. Simplified and random
…In which I try to clarify my thinking by writing an essay to myself. Hopefully you find it useful, too. GMs and players come to the table with a more or less conscious answer to the question: “What do I want from the game experience?” Do you as a player want to cash in on…
-
The perils and promises of shared worldbuilding
I recently finished GM-ing the 56-page scenario in the Blade Runner RPG starter set. This got me thinking about playing in established IPs, and how it differs from open-ended settings. Having tried both Middle-Earth, Alien and now Blade Runner as a setting, I honestly think I prefer surprising, anti-canon, shared worldbuilding in my games going…
-
Create the sci-fi character you want
The picture above is from a version of the Different Suns Character Generator. One thing that inspired me to start writing my own RPG was the notion that I would encourage players to “play just the character you want”. The spark came from the Year Zero Mini RPG. I’ve never liked the idea of a…
-
What is high-trust trad adventure design?
On Mastodon, I follow the rpg designer S. John Ross, who has been working in rpg publishing for decades. He is the man behind the rules-light Risus rpg system, the big list of rpg scenario plots, and a number of GURPS sourcebooks, among other things. I noticed he sometimes talked about “HTT”, or “High-trust trad”,…
-
Enjoy being a gamemaster
Featured image: A remix of this image by Diacritica – CC BY-SA 3.0 [This is an excerpt from my upcoming game Different Suns. I’ll post excerpts here on the blog as previews or sketches. Feel free to comment here, or reach out on Mastodon.] There are lots of resources out there about how to be…
Indre Auge Blinks 