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Weaving Stories

My RPG games follow a format which avoids railroading, without any need for elaborate settings or difficult NPC relations. I call it ‘story weaving’, because it lets me stretch the metaphor.

The Quantum Ogre and the Massive Idiot

Here is a silver piece, old woman. Now tell me my fortune! What will I see on the road?

Treasure Type P

A,D&D gave monsters random treasures like this: Type Gold Silver Copper Scroll Potion Magical Item S 100-600 1-10 - - - - P 100-800 100-400 - 20% 15% - The system goes like this:

People who want to work with others on an RPG naturally tend towards Google docs. It seems so easy. They send the link out, people make edit suggestions, and you click ‘approve’ or ‘deny’. Everyone’s generating spells, and spelling corrections at 100 kph, and it all looks great.

LaTeX vs InDesign

I think it’s fair to say that Adobe’s InDesign is the standard publishing tool for RPGs, or at least the most common among the most well-known RPGs. However, it’s clearly inappropriate for BIND.

Random Encounters Disarm Chekov's Gun

Chekov’s gun poses a real threat to some games. If a group playing Vampire: The Masquerade (‘VtM’) encounter a Ravnos, spinning illusions, and confusing mortals, then the next time they hear about unusual events, they will assume that the Ravnos did this. Clearly - the Ravnos is part of the plot! After all, VtM draws heavily from literature; or rather, it draws a lot from the idea-spaces of people who like to analyse literature while telling you that they analyse literature.

Having a Bash at Travel in BIND

They say you have to playtest, but they forget that I’m a lazy man, so when it came to travel rules, I didn’t feel like simulating a bunch of journeys. So it’s time to get the computer to do the work for me.

Against Collectors

I sometimes feel that collections can imply something shameful, and it’s especially potent in RPGs. It has something to do with wanting to horde, rather than use; to own rather than do. I can’t fully articulate the feeling, but it has something to do with one thing coming from on high as the ‘definitive’ idea, the ‘canonical’ item, idea, or procedure, which then makes everything else wrong in comparison.

Extrapolation & Necessity

When designing Fenestra, I noticed it had no magical universities. I really mean ’noticed’, rather than ‘stipulated’, or ‘invented’.

The Module Decalogue

Ronald Knox wrote ten rules on how to avoid ruining a murder mystery with an unsatisfying solution. They apply very well to writing and running RPG modules, with a little alteration.