Tag Archives: Opinion

Articles, Editorial

What GMs Want

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Starting last year and continuing into this one, there have been stories about a “dungeon master shortage” in the TTRPG hobby, specifically meaning D&D Fifth Edition. D&D rocketed up in popularity in the last decade or so since Fifth Edition was first released, but that means that some of the game’s liabilities have finally caught up with it. D&D was never great on rules clarity, but Fifth Edition, while aiming for simplicity on the player side of things, finally and completely left the DM in the lurch as the rules for that side of the screen were either executed poorly or, in many cases, removed entirely. Given the edition’s rise in popularity, the demand for DMs has completely outstripped the pool of game veterans who cut their teeth on earlier editions and could use their experience to fill in the gaps left in the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide.

While there is no acute GM shortage across the rest of the hobby, the travails of D&D have brought the game-running role back into focus. Many indie games over the last decade have eschewed having a single player take on running the game (called both GMless, implying no need for any facilitation, and GMful, implying there is still a need for facilitation but it is split amongst multiple players), but the traditional “one GM-many players” paradigm still rules the roost across the spectrum of popular RPG designs. As the D&D hobby is finding out quite painfully, if you’re singling out one player to take on more responsibility, you’ve got to help them out.

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Articles, The Independents

Fabula Ultima Review: A Golden Table Talk JRPG

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Epic stories of larger-than-life heroes destined to accomplish great deeds fighting against fearsome villains and tragic antagonists! Fantasy worlds brimming with magic, wondrous locations, and uniquely bizarre monsters! Challenging battles that will call for clever tactics, cooperation with allies, and tricks up your sleeve to win! If you’ve played Japanese roleplaying games like Bravely Default, Chrono Trigger, Granblue Fantasy, Ocotopath Traveler, or (duh) Final Fantasy, the premise might be quite familiar indeed. This, however, is no video game. Neither will it take you through a predetermined story, however many branches it may have, thought up by writers and enabled by coders you’ll never meet. Instead, grab some dice and prepare to put your own tabletop twist on the genre you love, with a story and world of your own creation. Welcome to Fabula Ultima, created by Emanuele Galletto and published by Need Games!

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Articles, System Split

System Split: Burning Wheel Hacks

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Burning Wheel is past its twentieth birthday. The game, a famously complex child of the Forge, is one that everyone seems to either love or hate. I personally love it, but in this week’s System Split I’m extending a fig leaf to those on the other side (or at least those who tried to love it and bounced off).

Burning Wheel is a game predicated on its detail; thanks to its long lists of traits, skills, and lifepaths each one of its mechanics operates in a way that is predicated on its setting, itself a nerd-among-nerd’s joy of medieval history (via Desmond Seward and Barbara Tuchman) and Tolkien (via, well, Tolkien). You can’t really take much out of Burning Wheel and have it remain Burning Wheel…when the designers tried to take things out of Burning Wheel, they ended up with Torchbearer.

That all said, just because Burning Wheel is all layered into itself like an indie RPG biscuit doesn’t mean that there aren’t buttery nuggets we can take out. Those systems, like the mechanics around Beliefs, can certainly stand alone even if we usually see them in the context of something more. With that in mind, I turn to the subjects of today’s pondering. Hot Circle, a clear riff on Burning Wheel, is written by Casper Dudarec and aims to take the core mechanics of Burning Wheel down to a simple and portable core. But wait! The Gold Hack, more of a riff on the recent editions of Burning Wheel (i.e. Burning Wheel Gold), is written by Martin Van Houtte and…aims to take the core mechanics of Burning Wheel down to a simple and portable core. Huh.

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Articles, Solitaire Storytelling

Solitaire Storytelling: Desperation

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Welcome to another Solitaire Storytelling! Until now, Seamus has been the one leading the way on solo games coverage here, finding a lot of interesting gems among all of the recent releases. Now, though, I’m throwing my hat in the ring and seeing what solo gaming has to offer. My first game is not only a solo game, it supports between one and five players. It also comes from one of the best known names in the narrative and storytelling game world, Bully Pulpit Games. In addition to a few straight-up RPGs like Night Witches and publishing other designers’ games, like Star Crossed, Bully Pulpit Games and its lead designer Jason Morningstar are likely best known for Fiasco, a comic game of Coen Brothers-style antics and table improv. The game I played this week takes a card-based format like that of the newest Fiasco edition and uses it for a very different purpose; instead of comedy we’re leaning into horror.

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Articles, Crowdfunding Carnival

Crowdfunding Carnival: August, 2023

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Welcome back to Crowdfunding Carnival! While I’m not in Indianapolis this month, I’m still working to sift through all the cash-in board games and sexy elf minis to bring you the best in RPG crowdfunding from Kickstarter, Crowdfundr, Backerkit, and Gamefound. It’s Kickstarter and Backerkit that are really carrying the month this month, and I have ten campaigns that I’m excited to talk about.

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Articles, Level One Wonk

The Game or the GM?

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One of the most controversial questions in the tabletop RPG hobby is ‘What makes a good game’. Entire philosophies of play are built around the idea that you don’t need much in the way of mechanics, and entire other philosophies of play are built around the idea that those mechanics are essential to creating the desired experience in a session. The reality, of course, is messier than either of these. We’ve all heard that “Every game is good with a good GM”, but that doesn’t actually mean that every game system that makes its way to a group’s table is, well, good.

In order to fairly review a game you need to understand what the game brings to the table, yes, but you need to understand the same for your GM. Good GMs can run good games with bad systems by working around or even ignoring aspects of a game system, as well as supplementing the system with experience or house rules from other systems and campaigns. Similarly, bad GMs can create bad experiences with good games by interpreting rules too rigidly or loosely, failing to do the right amount of prep for the system, or using the mechanics for situations in which they weren’t intended to apply. While no game can fix a bad GM who is truly set in their ways, good games can, though good writing, help inexperienced GMs avoid the pitfalls I’ve mentioned.

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Articles, Level One Wonk

Turning the Page on Digital Distribution

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The last ten to fifteen years of the RPG hobby have played host to a veritable explosion of content, from highly original new games to revivals of decades-old games and everything in between. A significant building block of this renaissance was digital publication. Instead of shelling out thousands of dollars for a print run and then having to find a distributor, a designer could create their game in PDF form and put it up for sale on a marketplace like DriveThruRPG, all for no upfront cost beyond whatever time it took them to design the game in the first place. This has made roleplaying games cheaper, more diverse, and more accessible than ever before.

The trouble with digital versions of RPGs does not lie in their economics; the real issue is that RPG PDFs are treated as ‘digital versions’, as facsimiles of a game whose platonic ideal is a bound paper book. I won’t mince words: Selling identically laid out books and PDFs is and will always be a usability failure. The way we use books and the way we use our digital reading devices, be those laptops, tablets, or e-readers, are completely different, and trying to use the same document these two ways usually leads to a suboptimal experience in both.

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Articles, Editorial

The Ink That Bleeds Review – An Immersive Dive Into Immersive Journaling

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“My friend Adam feel that bleed, and games that aim for it, are ‘comparatively cheap, short-term pleasures… a bit like jump scares.’ My experience is so the opposite.

I think immersive, bleedy journaling games are act of purging ourselves of narratives that aren’t in our interests and enlivening ourselves for the temporal world.

I’m totally going to show you how.”

So writes Paul Czege in The Ink That Bleeds – How To Play Immersive Journaling  Games, and I’m going to show you some of what’s inside and what it made me think.

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Articles, Editorial

Cowboy Bebop RPG Review

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Adaptations are dangerous business, and that’s true no matter what medium you’re working in. Licensed RPG adaptations fall all over the map; for every The One Ring you get rules for Power Rangers contracting tetanus, and for every Star Wars there’s a Fallout. Reimagining old properties stays risky even if you’re staying in the same medium; the live-action reboot of Cowboy Bebop was a cautionary tale, albeit not quite as badly panned as live-action Death Note or live-action Ghost in the Shell. But what happens if you take Cowboy Bebop, the celebrated anime, and make it into an RPG? Well, in this case, something kind of magical.

The Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game was developed by designers from Italian company Fumble GDR and published by (also Italian) Mana Project Studio. While Mana Project is mostly known for publishing 5e settings, Fumble has a fairly impressive list of original games, including Not the End, a heroic game using an original ruleset called HexSys. A variant of HexSys powers Cowboy Bebop and, while it employs elements from games you likely know, it is completely original. The result is a game that feels like jazz; there is structure, rules, and even system mastery, but the mechanics create a loose, free environment to tell stories. And, because this is Cowboy Bebop, the stories center around bounty hunters, the bounties they’re chasing, and the memories from their past that haunt them.

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Articles, Crowdfunding Carnival

Crowdfunding Carnival: July, 2023

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Welcome to Crowdfunding Carnival for July! When the majors are away, the indies shall play, and that’s exactly what’s happening right now. The Free Leagues and Kobolds of the world are toiling over their GenCon booths, but we still have some fabulous campaigns going on just under the con circuit radar. For those collectors out there fear not, there’s one big league campaign going on and it includes five alternate covers for the main book. And if you want to take a look back, this month’s retrospective includes a great underdog story and a less-great story of a five year old campaign that was fulfilled only a couple of months ago. For all that and more, read on; your wallet will not thank you.

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