Observations of the Fox

Facebook post used by permission (written by Jeah-François Vincent) So many of the points I've addressed in this sequence of blog posts are present in the Facebook post...in a bad way. Let's go through a few of them, one by one... The group plays one game. We've already established the three way tension that plays a part on most game sessions. Different games pull on the narrative flow in different ways, and at different ties during the course of play. This can mean that the same group, with the same narrator, can have a very different play experience during a session if they play with one game system compared to another. Honestly, this isn't a totally bad thing, it's just a predictable thing... if you go for too long with the one game system then you end up in a bit of a creative rut, but it also allows everyone a bit more control over the flow of play because they know how and when the game will try to exert an impact. The horror that some players express when reg...

The average length of productions has crept up by around 32%, from one hour and 21 minutes in the 1930s to  one hour and 47 minutes  in 2022 (see chart) The Economist, 2023 The top 10 grossing movies of the year in 1981 averaged 110 minutes. By 2001, the average was 126 minutes. In 2021, it was  131 minutes . Center for the Digital Future, 2023 However, a typical D&D session can last anywhere from  2-6 hours or more . Some groups prefer shorter sessions of 2-3 hours, while others may play for longer periods of time. Quora, 2023 Most D&D sessions fall within the range of  3 to 7 hours . This timeframe offers a balance between allowing for meaningful gameplay and ensuring that players and the Dungeon Master don't become too tired. Dicedragons, 2023 A couple of random cherry picked bits of data to start off this post...and this isn't even including the various "cinematic experiences" that are split into multi-part releases. So this generally indicates that ...

Today I shared The Law at the Echuca Game Store as our little part of Free RPG Day. Nothing official, just running a free game and distributing some pdf copies of it to those who were interested. In most previous sessions I've run for people, I've created pre-generated characters. This time I had a little longer to work with, so I spent half an hour or so creating characters with the players (using prompt sheets and images) then running through a two and a half hour introductory session. Like most games of The Law, the early stages of the game were met with a bit of confusion as the game unusual dice dynamic was adjusted to, but by the end of the session everything was feeling good. Good enough that players who had barely extended themselves beyond D&D were interested in playing again. I certainly count that as a win. Another good bit of news is that I've got my display board working again. We'll see how things go from here.

Playtesting elements of a game system at a convention can be a risk. If you run a game with the regular crowd, they know what to expect, they play the way you expect them to play, you facilitate the play experience the way you'd normally facilitate the play experience... it a low risk environment, ot's almost a control group wnere you know how most of the variables will play out before the session has even started.  Running a game at a convention has the added wildcard of random players (or at least players who you don't meet up with very often). Often if there are players you know, there might be a couple of subgroups, and there will be an added dynamic temsion between them. This ramps up the chaos, it's probably not as good for testing the fundamental concepts of a game because if things go wrong, you'll never know if it was the underlying system at fault, explanations of the system, uncooperative players, or simply a nexus of negatives. On the other hand, if ...

I've been working on some ideas...again. One of which was kind of paralleled by a comment recently made by  +Ian Borchardt . I've been thinking of a way to randomly generate sectors, tower blocks, and notable characters for games of "The Law". Generally, that's the order the generation would be done in...starting wide, putting things in context and gradually narrowing in on the details. Part of the idea might be to allow players (or even request players) to develop the home sectors and towers that their agents come from...narrowing down on specific people might be a bit more problematic, but maybe an agent could define notable people from their floor, and maybe the adjacent floors...but sectors change over the course of decades, buildings are built and demolished in timeframes of years, and notable people rise and fall over the course of months or even weeks. By the time an agent has finished their time in the academy, the people who were once notable may b...

One of the younger players in my LARP has decided that he wants a gaming experience that is deeper than what we've been able to provide with the 10 players that regular show u to our live events. His mother has bought him a copy of D&D, and has invited a few members of the LARP to run his first tabletop game for him. I've been volunteered to run the game. I would have suggested a simpler game like Dungeon World, or even one of my own game designs; but she's bought him D&D, so that's what we'll be running with. I guess it is the biggest roleplaying game, and was probably the only RPG available in the local bookstore (or local toy store, or local pop culture store...or wherever it was purchased). I asked what version of D&D it was, and the response was simply "the easy one"..."the one kids can play". Given that is was purchased in the last couple of weeks I can only assume that 5th edition was acquired. Now I just need to work out a...

One of those "if I had enough money..." fantasies which keeps recurring to me is the idea of a live soundtrack for an RPG. This would have a reflexive interaction with the game as it unfolds, as the adrenaline pumps, the tempo of the music increases... as the character head to an industrial sector of the city, industrial music takes a stronger element in the mix... if they head to the more elite parts of the city, we get more jazz and classical overtones... in the ghettoes we get the various musics of the people who form that community. The whole thing becomes the ultimate mash-up, continually setting the tone, continually evolving... certain NPCs and villains might even have their own motifs that are inserted strategically into the jam when their influence is felt. Morw than the turn of phrase used in games Powered by the Apocalypse , the person running the game truly becomes the MC... rapper, revolutionary, voice of the people.  I'm revisiting this idea becau...

Over the past couple of days, a meme flood has come crashing through my G+ feeds. The basic gist of the thing is to have various people describe how they GM a game using only a GIF animation. I used the "I regret nothing"/Whose Line is it Anyway? GIF that featured as my header image in my last post. Because I often run games loosely hanging onto the reins as the players direct the story, introducing elements here and there to see where the players might take them, and often pulling in previous character actions to later stories, regardless of where they might have gone initially, and where those actions might take things again in the future. "Oh, you remember that unknown computer chip that you stole on the way through to the main mission and then pawned off for some quick cash to buy that gun you wanted... it's actually a spare part needed to regulate a biological containment unit which is slowly degrading. You've probably got 24 hours or so before the curren...

Today I intended to spend an hour or two watching a roleplaying game being played out over a Google+ Hangout. It was being hosted by  +Kyrinn S. Eis , pretty similar to something that I've run at conventions before (characters with little understanding of who they are, waking up from cryostasis, we then explore the characters as we explore the world), but using her own system (something that I offered some suggestions on during the week). In her time, it was 8.30pm on Saturday night, which made it 10.30am on Sunday for me. My wife Leah was sick, so I didn't go along to my regular Sunday LARP, and the recent upgrade to our internet has made Google+ Hangouts vaguely possible. I hadn't really participated in one before, but watching it seemed a good way to put my toe in the water. I engaged the hangout just after the starting time, and became swept away in the game, with two other players ( +Ethel B  and  +Keith Bailey ). The biggest issue I had was a sick wife at the...

One of the valuable lessons from Dead and FUBAR'd was a fundamental success. It's something I was planning to incorporate in greater detail in the player's guide "A Lowlife's Guide to FUBAR", so seeing it work quite well was a great thing to see. The core FUBAR game embodies the artistic concepts of dadaism at a fundamental level. Players are all pulling at the narrative in different directions. Protagonists aren't linked except through a communal story origin. The rules provide random input into the storyline. This is all well and good for a sandbox style of play where anything goes; but when a coherent narrative is desired, these elements could be considered distractions. A simple ruling that links the protagonists in some way has done a lot to pull the narrative into focus. Following the standard FUBAR mechanism of rolling three dice and allocating them between categories gave the players an idea of how the dice work before play formally be...

In my readings and podcast listening, I’ve noted a few people discussing the idea of collective GMing, especially in regard to the notions of dividing up responsibilities such as narrative framing, awarding experience and determining if a character is “being played correctly”. Each of these is a very different topic, but the last one has seen some controversy. So that’s where I’ll be turning my attention. GMing is a delicate art of maintaining a collective dream (that mysterious thing that many people refer to as a “Shared Imagination Space”), and by keeping a degree of authority imparted to them by the gaming group. In traditional roleplaying games, a group might impart virtually limitless control to their GM. They allow the GM to frame scenes, tell them when to roll dice, and then tell them how the results of those die rolls manipulate the unfolding narrative. Often, in this type of set up, the players don’t even mind when a GM fudges die rolls just to ensure their story unfo...