Observations of the Fox

The moment when an action is declared, the moment when the narrative suspends, when abilities are consulted, and when dice are rolled. It’s a split second in the game world, but time gets suspended in the real world outside. We don’t know what’s about to happen, and there’s a good chance that the system won’t be able to make a solid interpretation of events either and it will take the imagination of the players and the GM/Narrator to consolidate the flux into a new narrative path. TTRPGs are a fluctuating balance between the mechanisms of play and the flow of the story. I’ve always found the tension of suspense unfolds moment by moment and scene by scene. But the moment of suspense that makes or breaks a game is always the moment when dice are about to give their result. The bit that makes or breaks this is the way the die roll is framed by the rules and the group of players. Is something good going to happen? Is something bad going to happen? is this roll going to be moment that t...

  What is a tactic more than a tool for control over a situation? This applies whether you are referring to combat tactics, political tactics, or social tactics. Each is a part of a toolkit that helps its user gain advantage in a situation. Other terms could include stratagem, trick, ruse, or scheme. I guess that generally, most of my recent game designs have used skills and abilities this way. Each of these is not a self-contained chance of achieving a specific type of task, but rather a tool that can be used in a variety of different ways and situations, mixed and matched to apply leverage to different activities as needed. This kind of reflects the way I’ve seen things unfold in life. There are some people who have a limited range of techniques that they apply to the world around them, and maybe those techniques work for them reliably, but it’s just as likely that they just don’t go beyond their comfort zones, only sticking to the types of activity where they know their tact...

I like the idea of a nemesis. It’s generally not that realistic, but it’s a clean way to get some drive and control over a story’s narrative. I’m actually starting to like the narrative idea that everyone has a soul-mate. However, the twist is that we don’t know whether the soul-mate is a lover, a platonic companion, or a nemesis. The soul-mate is someone who completes you, but you don’t really get to choose how they complete you. Who would Superman be without Lex Luthor? Who would Batman be without the Joker? Who would Thor be without Loki (I’m thinking just as much about mythology as Marvel comics and cinema in this one) ? The nemesis always sit in the background and drives the story as an antagonist when things aren’t necessarily moving of their own momentum, but the same could be said of a lover or some other regular companion. This might be a fun avenue to explore in a game some time (or at the very least in the supplement to some sort of game).

  (Sorry about the delay... big week at work)  One of my biggest challenges is getting time for things. This has been especially true in the last few years, as a lot of my time has been focused on becoming a teacher and finding ways to transfer my knowledge to a new generation. It might actually be due to my role as a teacher (or my fox-like love of being a trickster and revealer of secrets) , but besides my general lack of time I love challenges. I love trying to work things out, and solve puzzles. I love giving people challenges and seeing how they might solve the same issues. No two people will solve a puzzle or challenge in exactly the same way, and there lies one of the fun things about RPGs for me. I’m sure I’ve told the tale of my most frustrating game convention module, which was an L5R mystery where all the players were expected to be investigators. Sure, it’s L5R, everyone could have solved the issue in traditional samurai manner by assigning blame, cutting down pe...

  To reveal… For me, this prompt links pretty closely to the earlier ones like “unexpected”, “sign”, “destiny” and “mystery”. Things that might be revealed in a story might recontextualise elements that have come before, in turn providing a new way of viewing the familiar, and a different way to understand events that might have been taken for granted, Revealing the story is a big part of the experience when engaging in a tabletop RPG session, revealing the truth behind a setting or scenario could easily be a part of it, and so could revealing the “winner” if that’s the style of game being played. None of us know how things are going to play out, and if we did the game would lose a lot of its mystique. Revealing is letting the drama unfold, and allowing it to play out to it’s natural conclusion.