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.
I posted the 2014 edition of my ongoing “Best of the Twenty-Teens” series recently. In it, I called 2014 “The Year of the Trindie,” which got me thinking about what trindie even means. There’s quite a lot in that space as I conceive it: conventional (“trad”) power and resolution arrangements paired with unconventional (“indie” aka… Continue reading A Few of My Favorite (Trindie) Things
Hello hello! It's another week of lockdown here at IGRC World Headquarters. I've been homeschooling my daughter, wife's working from home like most everyone I know. Oh and I finally subscribed to Zoom! So I'll be looking for opportunities to play online that fit with my full-time dad schedule. On to the series. Almost done.… Continue reading A Decade of Indie Roleplaying: 2017
Howdy everyone! How's your isolation going? Today was the first day of having my daughter home, figuring out some homeschooling/unschooling strategies for the upcoming weeks. We're taking a break, so let's talk about 2016 in indie RPGs. This was the first year I couldn't track everything coming out. Kickstarter became the primary funding/marketing venue for… Continue reading A Decade of Indie Roleplaying: 2016
For posterity's sake: This is the week the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. I'm torn between feeling like roleplaying is frivolous nonsense, and wanting normalcy as my country realizes this is the real deal. But! I have lots of readers who also crave normalcy, and online play is a great way to while away the… Continue reading A Decade of Indie Roleplaying: 2015
Off to the races again in my ongoing review of my most impactful small-press games of the twenty-teens. The year 2014 was the Year of the Trindie for me. That is, trad games (conventional GM/player authority split, capability-driven play) with heavy indie influence (classes focused on characterization as much as capability, new ways to handle… Continue reading A Decade of Indie Roleplaying: 2014
