Canon is the past in the play. It establishes facts which have gone before. It doesn’t mean it can’t be retconned afterwards but for the most part it is immutable (or at least it should have immutable facts and mutable descriptors, the latter of which may be changed due to Context. Context is the present…
Category: Out-of-Character
Man vs…
The topic of conversation this morning in the car was the substance of plots. Traditionally, we have plots which are Man versus Man (and yes, I intend to keep the male pronoun because anyone who would be sensitive to it likely has stopped reading a long time ago). Man versus Man This describes the quintessential…
Site refresh
Bear with us while we engage in some site jiggery-pokery. Those of you who subscribe to the feed shouldn’t notice any difference. Also it’s a bit harder to tell who wrote what post at the moment, but that’s OK by me – it makes it look like I’ve written more!
The usual fare
I don’t remember where I got this but it always made me think about the perfect stag do. It’s originally from the first edition Dungeon Master’s Guide and really proves that, to a degree, roleplayers of the day were ugly virgins. I listened to an early episode of feartheboot on the way into work this…
I bought a book today…
…entirely because it was illustrated and designed exactly the way I want Q to be paid out. I spent a few minutes leafing through it and in my minds eye transposed the text and art to that which I envision for Q. Looking over my Q notes the other day reminded me of the parts…
Your rights … under Section 44 of the UK Anti-Terrorism Act
This kind of thing gives me the shivers. Two disabled blokes were detained by UK police for suspiciously opening a white envelope and looking at police men in public view It’s been asked about 20 times now when I’m going to London with the job and I’ve been wanting to put it off. Anything to…
Six Role-playing Annoyances
Here are some annoying habits that players can exhibit in your game. There are some suggestions as to how to deal with these problems, either by encouragement (as another player) or enforcement (as a GM). Playing yourself, but with armour Problem: the character has the exact same personality as the player, which means that every…
Out of Character
A couple of days ago I wrote about and got some very interesting comments about how this is relevant to games. On the Story Games forum they talk about Improv Theatre and how drama and story is made up of those things which are unusual or out of character as long as there is context…
Status: Refugee – Perspective Selection
One thing that was bugging me about this game was that which we’ve discussed on a number of occasions about different games: scope. If you are playing refugees with only a small number of worlds available to you, the sheer scope for play is mind-boggling. This then probably requires either a lot of work on…
Heroic imaginations
This is probably more suitable for infurious because it’s riffing off Guy Kawasaki. Nurturing a heroic imagination takes five actions: Maintain constant vigilance for situations that require heroic action. Learn not to fear conflict because you took a stand. Imagine alternative future scenarios beyond the present moment. Resist the urge to rationalize and justify inaction….
Action is character
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “Action is character.†A few years ago a friend of mine came up with the theory that we often play our polar opposites in games. The players under scrutiny here were myself and himself and our characters were a honourable charismatic paladin and a sneaky cutthroat backstabbing rogue. I disagreed at…
sometimes you have to wear your work clothes to the doctor
SXSW covers “Confessions of Superhero” which shows the strange and seedy world of superhero lookalikes… We see Joe McQueen demolished by the heat inside his colossal Hulk costume — on a record 106-degree day, it’s a brutal 130 degrees inside the emerald-tinged mass of foam … Superman chugs milk right from the jug; Wonder Woman…
All the games I’ve played (and GM’d)
I commented to Matt the other day that the last time I actually *played* in a game was when he ran the original WatchTower game in 1998. This got me to thinking that although I’ve read a lot of games, and I’ve played in a lot of campaigns, I haven’t really played lots of games. …
More on sexism (plus registration and comments)
I’ve turned off registration for comments because it should be off. Bit of a mea culpa there. I am enjoying the discussion on sexism in RPGs which has been continued on thedeadone.net and Mary’s blog. I wrote: “Some game companies are currently trying to market cute and fluffly and romance and “social†games to women…
It’s about starting conversations with new people
I started a little storm in a teacup with my last post. Even got someone else linking to me. And some of the comments on that posting (e.g. “Enh, I went and read the Late Gaming post, and it’s so stupid, I couldn’t even work up the energy for a reply.”) just prove the point….
Differing Methods of Character Generation
Over the last few years I’ve come to appreciate different methods of character generation. I’m not especially keen on point allocation systems due to concerns that they are unrealistic because a) not everyone is equal and b) they’re prone to abuse by min-maxing. (I find the latter to be more evident in games where you…
Pickup Games
We’re not talking about games which are designed to get the GM a date with the hot new girl in the gaming club (as mabmorrigan will likely relate happily later) but rather games which can be started quickly, how to pick up a game and get started and the pitfalls of doing so. Games that…
Roleplaying As Education
I have a list that is rapidly growing of things to post here, but for some reason this is on my mind just now, so… When I was growing up, roleplaying was that weird thing you did afterschool that no one was entirely sure wasn’t some form of devil-worship. The stigma seems to have abated…
DG update…
As I may have mentioned, I’m in KinnyGraham’s DeltaGreen game. The other night, after losing one agent to the nameless horror and receiving a chewing from our DG contact, my character came to two startling revelations. There is something horrible out there. Something unworldly. Something that wants to kill us. But it’s all separate incidents….
2300AD revival
Am busting out for another game now that kinnygraham has booked Wednesday or Tuesday for a continuation of our much delayed DG campaign. To this end, paulk has nabbed his friends ivorw and jonathanl to join up. I’m intending to introduce them to the world of 2300AD. I’m not 100% sure of the system I’ll…