Theory

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.

The Cost of Shared Narrative

RPGs with a shared narrative mechanic - where players and the GM both come up with interesting people, results, and situations - come with a cost. They pull focus away from the puzzle elements of the RPG, and that’s my favourite element, so I can’t see myself enjoying shared narration mechanics.

Dungeons Need More Space

The dungeon ecosystem doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I think Tolkien has a fix.

No Introduction Necessary

It’s been commented that BIND has no introduction, saying ‘what is a roleplaying game?’, and I don’t think it needs one.

Spreadsheets are Great

Whenever I’m unsure about a rule, I pull out a basic spreadsheet, and start populating numbers.

Always Say the Target Number

A player rolls the dice, and the table watches the result, like a roulette ball bouncing about. Rothgar has a +4 to make the jump, but the chasm demands a Target Number (TN) of 12.

Real Time Passing Between Games

RPG Vloggers chatting about Gygax note on real-world time-synchronization have got me thinking about really using this rule. In case you haven’t heard the idea - Gygax demanded that every day which passes in the real-world, one day passes in the game. The troupe starts and ends their games somewhere safe, like a tavern in town.

System Realism Matters

A hundred paces down the dark tunnel, you see dozens of goblins dancing round a fire and singing about eating anything that moves.

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I Want Realistic Dragons

Weighing into an ancient (or at least senile) fantasy debate, I’d like to go back a step. The debate usually goes like this:

The Open Source RPG Dream

The cynics say that we keep reinventing the wheel. They say we have too many RPGs, mostly doing the same thing, and why bother to write yet another RPG about elves and magic swords? And they have one thing right - we should stop re-writing RPGs from scratch. Instead, we should change them.