Tag Archives: advice

Who Watches . . . Civil Disobedience and the Wall

Posted on July 2, 2019 by Fraser

This post was first presented on 23 Jun 2019 at Patreon. The Wall is a game about being part of an occupying force and the ethical challenges the characters will face in trying to maintain their humanity – or at … Continue reading →

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Mechanics Informing Spotlights

Posted on October 24, 2017 by Fraser

About a month ago, I wrote about sharing the spotlight among characters in RPGs, why it’s important players get a chance to have a character in the spotlight, and how you can make sure that happens. But since the spotlight … Continue reading →

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Someone Else’s Great Big Wall

Posted on October 11, 2017 by Fraser

So I’m giving another listen to Dr. Kenneth Harl’s Barbarian Empire of the Steppes series from the Great Courses. This is maybe my fourth listen-through. Especially with Dr. Harl, I can listen to these series over and over again. In … Continue reading →

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Getting In the Spotlight

Posted on September 27, 2017 by Fraser

One of the challenges for designing an adventure is to have it both appeal to the players and insure their characters have a chance for the spotlight. Even when one know how to provide a character with a spotlight, the … Continue reading →

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Angling Away from Saxon Britain

Posted on September 14, 2017 by Fraser

So, D&D happened last night (as I write this). We took up a lot of time getting characters ready. D&D is at its most complex with character choices, especially if you come at the game as a complete novice. Without … Continue reading →

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The Sword at the Edge of Wuxia

Posted on September 6, 2017 by Fraser

A good friend of mine (hey JJ!) asked about creating characters from a genre like wuxia using Sword’s Edge. Would one do it mechanically or narratively? Would one use SFX? I didn’t really give an answer, but I’d like to … Continue reading →

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Building a Non-Combat Challenge in Sword’s Edge

Posted on August 31, 2017 by Fraser

In the last post, I shared with you some of the thoughts I had about building binary challenges. This and the other recent posts grew from discussions with a friend in the UK, Bruce. Much of this sprung from a … Continue reading →

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The Binary Challenge in Sword’s Edge

Posted on August 27, 2017 by Fraser

In the last couple of posts, I’ve written about some of the perceptions and ideas that helped design Sword’s Edge, how I view failure and the purpose of Momentum. Let’s now look at an example of a binary challenge and … Continue reading →

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Representing Momentum in Sword’s Edge

Posted on August 23, 2017 by Fraser

In my last post, I tried to illustrate some of the thinking regarding success and failure in Sword’s Edge, and specifically with Momentum. This time, I want to talk about how one can represent that in the narrative. To reiterate, … Continue reading →

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Studio Firebase Oats Rakka

Posted on July 19, 2017 by Fraser

Neill Blomkamp isn’t resting on his laurels but is creating some amazing speculative fiction shorts. Both Rakka and Firebase are out now, and each of these provides tons of inspiration for both writers and RPGers. I’m only going to look … Continue reading →

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