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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Not sure if this is a handout or just a placeholder, but it fell onto my screen tonight. Additional thoughts Make sure to keep the NPC cards. If you do this more than once, you can start adding them to the table beforehand and changing the number of new vs existing NPCs used. If you’re […]
I ran a game last night on relatively little prep. I was using Dave Chalker’s Marvel Heroic RPG-D&D 4e hack, and I threw together some notes to create the adventure as quickly as I could and threw them up on google plus, just because they’re a nice showcase of how I think (NARCISSIST). However, fate […]
Affiliations are one of the neat ideas in the Marvel Heroic RPG. They touch upon what I had to say about normal the other day because they are (arguably) the central part of any roll you make in Marvel. That is to say, you could conceivably make a roll where none of your powers, distinctions […]
Yesterday, I stole one idea form Bulldogs! and today I’m going to steal another. Back in the day, Feng Shui presented a very interesting way to handle skills that worked very well for it’s wide, loose model. In short, a skill represented three things. The first, Physical Ability, was the traditional meaning of a skill […]
Before I start, let me give a quick plug for a young gaming blog, charactergen.net. The authors are a pair of talented and inspired writers who are already off to an excellent start, and promise many cool things yet to come. Anyway, it should be obvious that I’m a big fan of Bulldogs!, and if […]
I cheat a bit when I run Leverage and its variants. According to the rules, when the GM spends a PP to create something, it’s created at d6. I’m less kind, and when I create things, they’re d8s, and for all intents and purposes, I have an infinite budget of d6s that I can use […]