Today, on Twitter, Rob Donoghue (@RDonoghue) asked:

GMs: If you strongly object to dice fudging, do you equally strongly support data transparency, such as visible enemy stats & Powers?

After some dialogue, Tracy Hurley (@SarahDarkmagic) wrote:

To turn it around, why shouldn’t players fudge their own rolls so that they have more control over their own narratives?

All of which makes me want to zoom out a little bit and ask a survey question:

When do you fudge the dice? Why? Do you have predefined circumstances in which it’s legal to cheat? Do you go on instinct? Do you never fudge at all?

I imagine our answers will vary based on the games we play and why we play them—what we get out of play. That’s fine. Whenever the question of dice fudging comes up, I tend to think of D&D, the game in which I learned to fudge dice and became aware of why and when I did. Is it the lingua franca for this conversation?

// What’s your answer?

In this fascinating thread over at Story Games, a few Apocalypse World players are wrestling with one player’s actual-play issues and discussing some of the edges of the Apocalypse World GM’s job. (I think.)

In that thread, you’ll find some discussion of whether or not one GM’s approach to play is meant to be “part of GMing” Apocalypse World. One issue that has arisen is whether or not the habitual importation of GMing techniques learned from other games, and not endorsed by the game text, can lead to trouble (and a clash, it seems to me, of expectations with results) for GMs.

This forms an immediate question in my mind: If a technique is not a part of GMing Apocalypse World… what do you call it when a GM running a game of Apocalypse World uses that technique? Is it a custom MC move? Is it a hack of the game? Is the MC not quite running Apocalypse World at that point?

As someone who had a lot of trouble engaging the manuscript for Apocalypse World as a stand-alone text (I kept interpreting it as a meta-commentary and let the hype surrounding it influence my earliest readings), and as someone who has barely played and never GMed the game, I’m not qualified to say what you’d call it when a GM imports non-prescribed techniques into actual play of Apocalypse World. What do you think?

Another week, another question from my tumblelog that I think is best served by hearing multiple voices sound off on the subject. I could sound off on this alone, but I know some of you have approaches that I haven’t thought of, so let’s hear them. This time, it’s a question of GM style and tactics, applicable to a wide variety of games:

How do you reward character development or revealing character history in a game?

// What’s your answer?

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!