mastodon 4.7.3TTRPGs and more. Norwegian. Played a lot between 1988-1993. Rediscovered TTRPGS in 2017. Still playing! Preferring systems that are rules-light, conversational and fiction-first. Preferring adventures that are not primarily about fighting.
Mini-review of The Dispossessed (1974) by Ursula Le Guin.
First of all, I'm proud to have finished another book in this day and age. My mind feels ravaged by time, newsletters, short web articles and witty Mastodon posts. Anyway.
This sci-fi novel still feels fresh, 52 years after it was published. Well done, Ursula!
In short the book follows a protagonist from a 170-year old anarchist experimental society on Anarres, the moon orbiting 1/3
"A question-based RPG".
To re-ignite the creative spark, I've been toying with the idea of writing a game that revolves around questions -- both when it comes to scenarios, and for resolving situations during play.
For the scenario: From the big picture to small details. "Why is the city abandoned?", "Who lived in this house?", "What do we want to do with our findings"? The GM provides locations, NPCs, hints -- The players come up with the answers, Brindlewood-style. 1/2
Worth remembering. These are classic «market warfare» tactics, so easy to forget.
Help! Have I been contacted by an autonomous AI agent trying to secure a ttrpg writing commission? You decide!
Here is a screenshot of the e-mail I received. No links to any samples, references or a portfolio. Checking the e-mail adress, I find that "agentmail.to" is... an inbox API for AI agents!
Have any of you experienced this? I guess it is some enterprising ttrpg cottage industrialist trying to make some easy money? I wasn't prepared for this kind of personalised spam. #ttrpg
Interesting comparison of various «game engines» in rpgs, trying to define games in more clearly defined «families» rather than broad terms.
https://open.substack.com/pub/zotiquest/p/fiction-engines-pressure-engines?r=az15p&utm_medium=ios
Loose thoughts about how patterns of play could be visualized as figures or diagrams. «The Flower of Return», if a persistent base is where the PCs consistently return to, a «Four Questions Cube» (for shared storybuilding), a «Three-tier Pyramid» or «Three dominoes» for a sequence of linear, structured ‘acts’ and so on.
From today’s trip to Kistefos, an outdoor sculpture park and art gallery space near Oslo. A magical place, aways an inspiration for profoundly weird encounters. On the huge blue head sculpture called «BLUE» by Marianne Heske, is written: «on crying a river».
Little Beaver - Get into the Party Life (1974). I listen more to groove-based music than melody-based music, and this is such a laidback gem (with completely inappropriate lyrics for someone like me):
Back to RPGs:
Latest complete play experience was The Girls of the Genziana Hotel. It's a Carved from Brindlewood game, which means that the players came up with the answers to the central questions in the mystery, and the GM improvised off a range of NPCs, locations and possible clues.
I enjoyed it, and it became a horror game in the sense of making us really feel what it is like to be at the bottom of the social hierarchy, without any inherent...
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