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.
Editor: Guest author Jason Lutes writes about his lengthy fantasy sandbox game and how he made it happen, West Marches style! I recently wrapped up a 40-session “sandbox” fantasy campaign, taking a cue from the “West Marches” approach popularized by Ben Robbins (of Microscope fame). According to a series of blog posts Ben wrote to… Continue reading Western Wilds: an Expedition into the West Marches
So what’s in that big indie Bundle of Holding, anyway? I spent $24 to find out. Here’s a quick rundown based on my quick read-through of every title. Normally I only like to write about things I’ve played, but time’s running out on this. Girl Underground A late-generation PbtA game about a girl and her… Continue reading Bundle of Holding: 10 Quick Reviews
There’s a new game shop in town, just opened yesterday. It took over a space that had also been a much beloved local game store for, like, two decades (after moving into the space from one much closer to our university). I dropped in today to check it out, feel out the new management, see… Continue reading FLGS
Something that occurred to me just this year: having an encyclopedic knowledge of RPGs hasn’t actually made me happier. In fact it’s probably made me less happy participating in my hobby, because I don’t share the same assumptions as the players with whom I spend most of my time. It’s given me all the tools… Continue reading The Usual Suspects
We played four sessions of Tales of Xadia over the past couple months. Tales is the first complete and self-contained game to come out of Cortex Prime, the third generation of the Cortex ruleset by Cam Banks. My personal experience with long-form Cortex play was a rough start with Serenity way back in the day,… Continue reading Tales of Xadia and the Limits of Canon
