“Valve’s got a great process. They run through it. They iterate like crazy on stuff. They throw stuff away when it doesn’t work. They find ways to rapidly prototype. I think everything else in games gets iterated a gazillion bazillion times. When I look at these poor level designers and how much of their work gets thrown away, it’s heartbreaking. But, it’s what you have to do to get a piece of art finished.

It’s the same with writing. Once people make that connection, ‘Oh, good stuff takes time. If I want the writing to be good, I’ll have to invest some time in it.’”

— Game writer Susan O’Connor

(via Gamasutra)

This is just what’s stewing in my brain right now.

Fantasy Flight Games’ new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is a formidable-looking thing. Between this look at the game’s contents and this description of the pre-release demo scenario, I’m getting a little wary:

Be among the first to experience this revolutionary new storytelling system with the introductory adventure, “A Day Late, A Shilling Short,” designed to walk new players through everything they will need to know to play.

From what I’ve seen of the game’s design, and what little I know about its design goals, I believe this new edition will be fun to play but… will it be fun to learn? A walk “through everything you will need to know” doesn’t sound like, you know, a great adventure experience. It sounds like an orientation. It makes me wonder, just how much will I need to know to play?

>> Keep reading

If you’re not careful, Google Wave becomes just another play-by-chat option. Everyone’s typing at once, filing their character’s actions in order, creating a mess of information from which meaning must be extracted and the narrative of play recombined, like a puzzle. Everyone’s submitting pieces with one hand and everyone’s putting them together into something cogent with the other. It’s why play-by-chat typically strikes me as somehow both tedious and hectic, demanding a lot of attention for not a lot of reward.

My hope is that Google Wave will play a little bit differently. To do so, though, it has to be used as something other than a chat program with an editable backlog. Instead of focusing on its ability to let us communicate via chat, and instead of focusing on its real-time behaviors, let us focus on its shared editing options and degree of persistence.

Let’s use it breathe life into a few documents, instead of rushing to smother us with entries in an ongoing chat.

// Read this proposal for gaming through Wave

I’m happy to announce that Gameplaywright Press is sponsoring what looks to be a terrific new Halloween story-game: Cthalloween! (@cthalloween) This is the new Twitter-based storytelling experience from Jay Bushman, in the vein of last year’s Halloween story-game, “War of the Worlds 2,” (@wotw2) and such Twitter-theater affairs as the Death Star battle reenactment, “A New Group of Signals.” (I played Red 10. You choked up when I died.)

Check out more of Jay’s inventive next-gen narratives via his Loose-Fish Project website.

Positioned halfway between neo-fiction and Twitter game, Cthalloween is a massively multiplayer online storytelling event (MMOSE?). To participants — like you, maybe — it’s collaborative semi-improvisational storytelling. To readers not in the know, it’s like a massive, mysterious play breaking out on Twitter. Either way, it’s a fun way to scratch your narrative itch on this eldritch holiday. Inside your Twitter account, elder gods are on the rise, bringing with them a new season of insanity and gruesome death. It’s what Halloween afternoon is for.

Want to play along? Just check out the Cthalloween wiki, devise a character for yourself, and get your Twitter account ready by Halloween day. Jeff and I may play along on our own Twitter accounts, or on the heretofore untapped Gameplaywright account (@Gameplaywright).

Need a quick primer on all this Cthulhu business? I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend Kenneth Hite’s wise and hilarious Cthulhu 101.

Many thanks to John Kovalic (@muskrat_john) for the Cthalloween “Twitterthulhu” logo!

Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough from Visual Story TAs on Vimeo.

Have a look at this: it’s a prototype for D&D play using Microsoft’s tabletop Surface technology.

What I see is something pointed in the direction of the interactive tabletop we’ve been waiting for… but not something that would significantly improve my play experience. It recreates a lot of things that happen in a D&D game, but I’m not sure it makes them faster, more vivid, or more informed. Those are three core things that an active tabletop would need to contribute to play for me to treat it as anything but a luxurious toy.

// Read what I want from the table