Essays, actual play, theory talk, and general navel-gazing about story-focused roleplaying, aka “indie” games. And trindie. And OSR. If you’re small and scrappy, I want to talk about what you’re doing! If you’re fighting to grow, I want to talk about what you’re doing! Basically if it’s roleplaying (tabletop, freeform, larp, whatevs) and it’s not the monolith of D&D, it’s in my wheelhouse.
When is a game “published” anyway? Is that even the right word these days? “Released?” I’m old-fashioned. In my dumb head, a game isn’t really out in the world until there’s a dead-tree book available for purchase. Even if 80% of my new game purchases are PDF. Like I said: dumb head. There are two… Continue reading A Tale Of Two (and a half) Trophies
Hey folks. You've probably noticed I went silent for a couple months. It wasn't on purpose, but it was the culmination of stuff both within and outside my control. Been thinking a lot about the work I/we do here, goals and the overall environment of gaming talk. Two big realizations have recently shifted my thinking… Continue reading Hello Friends (and another podcast is up)
This is ostensibly a review of Trophy Gold from Jesse Ross (Hedgemaze Press) and Gauntlet Publishing. But it’s not a very good review. It will not rate the cover art (okay) or the quality of the rules (great, actually) but instead, it will say some slightly pretentious things and then end abruptly. I didn’t get… Continue reading (Not A) Trophy Gold Review: Guest Column
I went to my first major in-person convention this past weekend since 2020 and it was, as you might expect, really weird. But I got to run and play a lot of mostly new-to-me RPGs. I attended Forge Midwest in Madison, WI back in April, but that’s a pretty small event. 30ish people maybe? Two… Continue reading In-Person Gaming Got Weird (Again)
I was reminded of a favorite bit of stagecraft I really enjoy doing. It's a trick I indulged in running Trophy Dark (longer review coming next week) for a couple very new gamers at a recent local convention. They were all in on the storygame elements, they hadn't had enough training to make assumptions about… Continue reading Stagecraft
