Here’s a question that’s occurred to me quite a lot over the past couple of weeks, since Gen Con. I offer it up without much preamble, save for this: Whether you’re hacking a tightly focused game like Apocalypse World or devising a campaign for something broader, like Dungeons & Dragons, you’re almost always moving around a game’s central axis. Maybe you’re in a tight orbit. Maybe you’re drifting away. But at some distance from that gravitational center, you presumably break free and enter either the void between games or the gravity well of some other shining touchstone. So:

When are you no longer playing the game you purport to be playing? When are you so far removed from your game of origin that you no longer tell people that it is what you are playing?

“It was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Tyler and I just gave it a name.” —Narrator, Fight Club

First things first, you should probably get your hands on Apocalypse World.

D. Vincent Baker has created something remarkable with Apocalypse World—it’s a major conversation piece and probably a landmark in the development of RPGs. The influence of this game can already be felt throughout various design circles and it’s a conversation you maybe want to be a part of.

Vincent Baker is also today’s entry at “Fuck Yeah, Gamemasters.” You know about that site, right?

Actual GMing methods and styles are, so often, on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Vincent Baker set out to give them names. I applaud his motive and his decision to pursue the goal. I’m not sure I care for the names he’s chosen. He’s presented his GM principles dressed up for a desert-wasteland post-apocalyptic world, but big deal, right?

Apocalypse World was my first purchase at Gen Con 2010. I set out to get it early on the first day. I knew I needed to be conversant in this game.

// Read this one.

Hamlet’s Hit Points presents a system for analyzing stories based on nine beat types and the story’s ups and downs between hope and fear. In the book, beat maps show both the beat types and the emotional movements in an easy-to-digest way.

We wanted to make the icons and arrows we used to build those beat maps available under a Creative Commons license, so you can build your own beat maps. There are two archives available, one containing Adobe Illustrator (.ai) files and the other containing Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg) files. Each package also includes the specifics of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

• Illustrator archive
• SVG archive

Craig S. Grant is the fine illustrator who created these graphics, and we thank him for letting us release them this way for your use.

We hope you find these images useful, and that you get excited and make something with them!

Hamlet’s Hit Points Icons and Arrows by Gameplaywright LLP and Craig S. Grant is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://gameplaywright.net/hamlets-hit-points.

Jason Pitre recorded the GenCon seminar that Matt Forbeck, Stan!, and I gave on the intersection of games and stories. Check it out (along with the audio of a few other seminars, all recorded with permission) at Jason’s Genesis of Legend Publishing website.

GenCon Seminar Recordings

(In addition to recording these, Jason was also the eBay hero who bought my GenCon ENnie dream date.)

On Wednesday evening at Jillian’s in Indianapolis, BoardGameGeek was deservedly awarded the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming among a field of nominees that included BoardGameGeek, board game Chaos in the Old World, and roleplaying games Kagematsu and Montsegur 1244.

Matt Forbeck presented the award:

Thing 027 from Things We Think About Games is about awards:

Awards for games can mean a lot of things.

Some awards reflect informed opinions of play and popularity. Other awards just mean the game won a popularity contest, or just that a lot of people had heard of that game.

The argument that awards don’t many anything is well known. We can probably stop having that argument now.

The thing I like about the Diana Jones Award is that it’s not limited to recognizing games. BoardGameGeek is a great example of something great in our industry that ought to be honored. I’m glad to see that it was.