Observations of the Fox

The premise is simple... I have a group with a total of about 25 kids, 10 minutes a day, 5 days a week.  On any given day, most of them will be there and some of them won't. It can be pretty random which kids are there on each day, but there is almost never all of them present at the same time. Some of the kids don't want to play a game, and a couple may actively resent being forced to play (in the situation I've been working through, two students are actively trying the sabotage the game).  The game is played out over several days, weeks even. So rather than a 20-30 minute turnaround on each cycle, the game has a drawn out melodrama... which also means that it can feel particularly unfair for those players who get eliminated in the earliest rounds. So I need to accommodate for all these things... above and beyond the regular requirements of a social deduction game. I'm going with the basic framework of "Werewolf/Mafia". One quarter to a third of the players w...

I have a class of academically gifted young high school students. Here in Australia, they are year 7, which makes them on average around 13 years old. It would be fair to say that since these kids are targeted as "gifted and talented" many are socially awkward, and more than a few share traits that they're probably on the Autistic spectrum at some level. I've already posted a few times about the high school gaming club I ran a few years ago, and since I'm currently unable to run this (for ongoing reasons that have now been a concern for 2.5 years), I've decided to experiments with a social deduction game using this class of students. The reasons are basically two-fold... A lot of the kids are smart, they work things out really quickly, and understand how connected systems can impact on one another. There has been a lack of social cohesion among them and I've wanted to get a sense of fun and community back into the class as we wind down toward the end of th...

Getting inspiration from other RPG designers is one thing, but I like casting my net a bit wider. Articles, like this one , help to give me the feeling that I'm on the right track with my design theory.  I've mentuoned a few times that running games and workdbuilding are both like developing a recipe. A single ingredient is linear, monochromatic, even boring. A pair of ingredients adds interest, especislly if they vary in proportions through the dish. Three or fout msy add further imterest and depth... but when you add toi many, or add conflicting ingredients, the various dlavours start working against each other and you end up with a mess. This kind of idea is a decent chunk of the t3ason why the guide to my current game system us called the "SNAFU SRD and Cookbook". Knowing ehat goes together, how it goes together, and what can go wrong if the wrong things go together is the key to producing something classic snd memorable. This is not to say experimentation is bad....

    I've set up title cards for short videos before, and I've been enthusiastic for the before as well. It's probably the AuDHD/"Neurospiciness" that alwas gets in the way of me completing the project, but hopefully this time I stick the landing.

I like reading other people's posts about game philosophy and design. Like this one I've played most of the games listed here, and generally agree with the sentiment that people should be willing to try new games...even just as one shots. Knowing what I do about the games, it's an interesting progression. I like the way it builds with ideas, showing new elements of what game design can be. I think there are some lesser known indie games that could have really explored the concepts better, but for folks taking baby-steps away from the juggernaut that is D&D, there is often a need to go with something that has a name and a community associated with it.  Naturally, when I read posts like this, I want to scream about other Indie games...like I did for DURF a few weeks back, or like I've done for others over the years (or even just the game mechanisms they use).   image from here  which claims the source is actually here image from 

You know what?... it's probably not surprising, but I solved the issue I was having in the last post , and I actually had solved it months ago. The problem with my recent thoughts has been that I wanted a bit more grittiness and depth to the conflict resolution system. I had broken conflict down into a multipart die roll with successes on an initiative roll giving an action in the combat round for every degree of success obtained, then each successfully gained action would be rolled separately. That turned out to be pushing the system in directions it was never intended to go, so I've gone back to the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) methodology. I'm also utilising the basic fundamentals of the rules rather than adding new concepts with conflict working as an exception in a " design by exception " model. This game is meant to be about telling dramatic stories, the conflict system applies to physical violence, arguments, riddles, psychic showdowns, and anything else w...

One of the things I've struggled with in the SNAFU system has been the balance... This might be a balance between restricting character choices along specific narrative or mechanical paths (much like " Powered by the Apocalypse " games do), or offering complete freedom of choice to players (like " Freeform Universal " games do). It might be a balance between complex rules (like " Rolemaster "), or simple ones (like " Honey Heist "). Knowing a variety of games and how they handle things can be a mixed blessing. It's really good to see how different designers have handled situation that they see their players getting involved in... it's just as important to see the gaps they've left and whether these gaps are deliberate elements of " fruitful void " or whether they just haven't been noticed because they didn't consider that players might be doing these within within narratives driven by their systems.   Within this...

As I sat in a hospital last week, intravenous drip in my arm, I had a whole heap of revelations and moments of satori. Now that I'm in a state to write about them, do you think I can remember them? I remember that there was stuff about the direction I wanted to take the "SNAFU SRD and Cookbook", including the idea of writing up a basic 'zine that covered the core rules and only the core rules. That's basically what most SRDs are anyway, and I've started thinking about the layout on that part of the project. The aim this time is to include avoid forgetting any of the important bits, while making sure I trim away anything superfluous. That's tough. At this stage I've tried to trim it down to 16 pages, but it's more realistically looking like 20. There's also some vague recollections about those augmented reality games like Pokemon Go, and a few others that I've played over the years. I was imagining these from the perspective of a modern urba...

I've been trying to tell people for decades that D&D hasn't been good for the wider community of independent RPGs, and RPG designers. However it's really felt like a lot of people couldn't understand this... so it's interesting to see when other people have the same ideas, especially when those ideas seem to come from different perspectives. I'd generally considered the problems of D&D to come from it's ludo-narrative dissonance (the way the game claims to be about one thing, while its systems of play don't support, and actually hinder, the kinds of experience it claims to offer) . I hadn't considered these ideas...     ... I hadn't considered the "trickle-down economics" factor (or lack thereof), but it makes a lot of sense based on what I've been seeing over the years. The whole thing has been really stifling as a designer. I don't know if I want to write any more at the moment, but I wanted to get this thread saved fo...

Sceletus has had its soft release. There's still things that need to be changed about it. Included in that are needing to add in a few more images and finish off the book about the political groups that exist in the setting and how they can be used to manipulate stories in the game. Here's the page for the Game Jam that it's been submitted to. and Here's the page for the game itself. I'll probably put it up on DrivethruRPG soon as a paid version, so get the free edition while you can.