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Secrets of the World

One fascinating thing about real history is the nature of knowledge. I was having a big nerdy talk with a friend today where she was recounting some history about ancient classics that had been lost and the variety of really interesting people who recovered some of them and what that meant. It’s the kind of […]

ICT: The Black Mage

Sorry about the hiatus, folks. Work is into a crunch and I am lucky to get to the end of the day with enough energy to watch TV, much less put pen to paper.  Still, trying to wrestle this beast to the ground, since I don’t want this idea to wither on the vine. So, […]

ICT: Classes Part 2

Ok, so you’ve got a nice shiny die representing your class. That’s all you need, right? Well, sure, we could leave it there, but that would be kind of dull.  Instead we’re going to jazz it up with a little bit of crunch that really shines a light on what a class does. At the […]

ICT: Classes Part 1

Classes in ICT are explicitly designed to carry a lot of weight. They have their own rules, with the idea being that you need to learn the core rules, but beyond that you only need familiarity with the rules relevant to your class or classes. In this sense, it’s a bit like 4e, but unlike […]

ICT: Distinction, Plot Points and Gear

DistinctionsIndex Card Tactics made use of distinctions – 3 per characters. For the unfamiliar these are descriptors without die values.  Some of the ones we had in play included “Poor sense of direction” and “Very good at WANTING to be a knight”.   Players may add a single distinction to a roll: if the player […]

Index Card Situation

This is not technically part of Index Card Tactics, though it’s related, in that another part of ICT is that it uses situation generators like Two Guys With Swords. This is another such tool (and don’t worry, I’ll be getting onto classes and equipment and so on). This trick works best for a group of 4 or […]

Index Card Tactics

I was talking about this with Ryan Macklin last night and I had a moment of “huh, I should write this down” so here it is. At Pax East, I ran a game of what can probably best be described as tabletop Final Fantasy Tactics.  Early in the con I had run a game of […]

A Thesis

Not Particularly Contentious: GM Skill/Quality strongly impacts quality of play experience. Only Contentious In a Fake Way: Choice of game system strongly impacts quality of play experience. My (Possibly Contentious) Thesis: As quality of GM increases, the impact of choice of game system on quality of play experience diminishes  (though it is unlikely to diminish […]

Why Anime Conflict is Hard

I called this out as too long for twitters, so here it is. In Everway, Jonathan Tweet laid out a model for resolution of uncertainty in RPGs that’s been pretty foundational to a lot of thinking. Basically, when faced with a moment of uncertainty (such as a conflict) there are three factors that play into […]

Sealed Envelopes

One of the neater little susbsystems on Road to Amber is something that equates to an automated system of sealed envelopes. The player receives the meta-object, which contains any number of seals, often sequential, but sometimes parallel. Each seal has its own requirements to be opened, such as being in the right place, using the […]