The last days of Atlantis are upon us, in more ways than one. Wood Ingham’s Chariot Indiegogo campaign hit the thousand pound threshold, which means I’ll be writing a supporting cast expansion for the game. It’s in the nick of time, too. There’s only a day left to join the campaign. I encourage you to […]
Jason Corley asked a couple of questions about yesterday’s article on diegetic game design. I answered. Here’s how it went down. Interesting…how do you distinguish this type of design from purely representational design? By addressing social and thematic elements, and by reverse-engineering game-oriented concepts into things in the world. Example: “Mr. Johnson” is a […]
Misunderstood and awaiting revival, diegesis is one of the distinctive features of the 90s revolution in RPG design. It’s a fancy word though, so let’s stop and unpack. I’ll start with a dictionary definition: the lowest form of analysis. the telling of a story by a narrator who summarizes events in the plot and […]
Guest author Wood Ingham is a poet and storyteller. He used to write a lot of role-playing games, including a bunch for White Wolf and Onyx Path. His latest one, Chariot, is still funding, and you should support it at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/chariot-roleplaying-in-an-age-of-miracles#/. The words and opinions below are his. Note that your host removed the “Fuck” in […]
It’s writing crunch time for me, so I’ve got to leave the blog alone for a week. Hey, I’m good for guest articles if you want to send them. They should be about games and 90s culture or otherwise be interesting. Speaking of 90s culture, I leave you with something glorious: Split Second, the Rutger Hauer […]
I nuked most of the old blog, but some posts were popular enough to bring back. Due to a technical hiccup I brought back a post with notes on rules light Storytelling (the system that powers Chronicles of Darkness, previously known as the new World of Darkness). This is not that article, but another I […]
Some Trinity Continuum fans (and a few creators) hated Aberrant. Hated it. It’s on my mind because the new edition of the game will bear a bit of my influence, since I designed a chunk of the core systems that all Trinity and Scion games will use. Aberrant had the best setting in the series. I used to […]
A couple of weeks ago I found out this was still on DrivethruRPG. It’s the Storyteller (“er,” as in the pre-2004, not Storytelling/Chronicles of Darkness, which is a fine game of its own) system as published in Dark Ages: Vampire (pre-20th Anniversary, though the new version is also a fine game) but stripped of all […]
Joe Carriker posted this describing his 30th gamer-versity, about encountering the Red Box. Read it. Maybe you’ll remember your start. I did. It’s my 30th too. I knew about D&D from a camp for kids who scored high on some tests, I think. I chose animation and writing as my focus (the camp was on […]
Poet and storyteller Wood Ingham is also a past game designer for White Wolf and Onyx Path. We get along well. Like me, he’s struggled with bringing a certain amount of artistic legitimacy to games without wrecking the distinctive things they do. I’m a stretch goal for Wood’s new project, Chariot, a game about the […]
