by Will Hindmarch | Mar 5, 2012 | RPGs, Story
Jason Morningstar wrote this on Google Plus: Questioning assumptions: In roleplaying games, how come we only play each scene one time? Here’s what I wrote immediately after reading the question (so this is probably just a reflection of my habits and presumptions...
by Will Hindmarch | Mar 1, 2012 | Question, RPGs
This discontinuity in arguments about RPGs fascinates me: miniatures-based situations get in the way of RP and narrative, apparently, while games encouraging players to draw frequent maps and diagrams do not. What is it about molded plastic figures or the precision of...
by Will Hindmarch | Feb 24, 2012 | Creativity, Design, Video Games
This isn’t about the unfair treatment of professionals who dare to voice unconventional ideas. We won’t discuss here the specifics of ugly incidents making the rounds online lately. Comments that stray into that turf will be deleted. This post is about...
by Will Hindmarch | Feb 17, 2012 | Design, RPGs
This post has been sitting unfinished in the drafts folder for years, waiting for a breakthrough to finish it. You are that breakthrough. You know that overused moment in film and television where someone levels a gun on someone else and issues an ultimatum? “Do...
by Will Hindmarch | Feb 14, 2012 | Uncategorized
This post is actually two posts—maybe three—but I’ve chosen not break it up because they’re all entangled in my head so I’m sharing this more or less as it occurred to me, which is honest, at least. An idea you don’t agree with might come to...
by Will Hindmarch | Feb 11, 2012 | Creativity, Musing, Play, Question, RPGs
I’ve wanted to do this but never have. Have you done it? The idea is simple, the execution complex. For each major chapter in your RPG campaign, you use a different game to resolve the action. You hack and modify the games you want to use like crazy, some more...
by Will Hindmarch | Jan 20, 2012 | Design, Fantasy, Play, RPGs
I laid out seven cards I’d selected from Paizo’s GameMastery deck, Urban NPCs, in a row at the middle of the table, where both of my regular players could see them. Without any preview or overview, I tasked my players with answering the questions below. (I...
by Will Hindmarch | Jan 19, 2012 | Musing, RPGs
Each roleplaying game is a city. This is what I’ve been thinking about as I’ve been turning over definitions of roleplaying games and story games in my head, these past few days. RPGs and cities are two of my favorite things to read about and explore. I...
by Will Hindmarch | Jan 17, 2012 | Hamlet's Hit Points, Question, RPGs
I love the question, “What is a roleplaying game?” I loathe the same question. We all contain multitudes. Apparently, I’ve recently taken to talking about roleplaying games and story games with one of my weekly gaming groups in a particular way. What...
by Will Hindmarch | Jan 13, 2012 | Musing, Question, RPGs
The Reverb Gamers blog prompts, from Atlas Games, have inspired quite a few game bloggers this month. The project offers thirty-one prompts for thirty-one days of January blogging. It’s a fine idea. Alas, without the time to devote to daily blogging, I’ve...
