worldbuilding
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Multitudes, not mechanics
TTRPG design consists of a bunch of different things, and the relationships and interactions between them lead to something hopefully greater than the sum of its parts. What are the things we’re concerned with when we design a TTRPG? Well, a lot of people would say “mechanics”. You might define mechanics as the rules and Continue reading
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Time bubbling
Timekeeping is important when you’re running multiple groups simultaneously in the same world. Doing this means you get to do half the preparation, and might get to re-use preparation on a second group. It’s pretty good GMing practice for people like me, who want to play a lot, but can’t find easy ways to play Continue reading
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Not ancestries, factions with food preferences
I started writing this at one time, and then realised it dovetailed with a conversation that Sandro and I were having on discord about food. So I mushed them together. Ancestries are boring. Don’t use them. Instead, develop factions with each other, because they come with built-in red barrels. To do so, pull from the Continue reading
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What’s your apocalypse?
I was writing a post about a timekeeping technique called Time Bubbling (coming soon!), and I realised that there was a worldbuilding technique that I think is essential to most fantasy worlds that we play treasure-hunting in: Apocalypsing. Don’t worry, this one will be a quick one. Most D&D-likes are post-apocalyptic. When you’re world-building, the Continue reading
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Minimalist Lore
I can’t speak for the Dark Souls games, but in Sekiro, which I’m told is similar, story is told obliquely, through torn off pages, off hand mentions, and item descriptions. We were talking about this on a discord this morning, and I was thinking about how it worked, so I’ll use an example from the Continue reading
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Fantasy post-apocalypse western? Part 1
I was thinking about the themes of traditional westerns, spaghetti westerns, chanbara, and Red Dead Redemption 2, which I’m playing again, largely because I love the wildlife. I’m not an expert in any of these by any stretch, but I’m interested in the assertion that Dungeons and Dragons is a western in the Manifest Destiny Continue reading
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