Recent content by Emberashh

More often than not games of all types are much more fun when you play them as intended. Its way too easy the suck the fun out of a game by houseruling away frictions or adding things that weren't designed to be there. Its the same effect outright cheating can have, it that it can actually...

I keep getting banned from Reddit for mildly suggesting Nazis should be met with violence, and I ultimately like this place better for staying in touch with the hobby.

If you want emergent gameplay, you need interactive systems, and the more you add to those systems, the more emergent possibilities the game can foster. The reason OSR games, for example, have a culture of player skill and creativity being emphasized over mechanics is because improv is a...

Something that can always stand scrutiny is the assumptive frictions that Crafting systems, whether its tabletop or video games, tend to always have. This is the angle I approached it from with my own take on Crafting, and while I'm still a ways off having an actual written system to show off...

I'd add that Sports is a good one to consider here as well, though people tend to think I'm speaking illiterate pig latin when I suggest that Baseball can inform RPGs. Improv Theater is another one that I've also harped on about, as it is a game.

Tl;dr - Lot change, updated docs, lot thoughts. So over the past two weeks, Labyrinthian has undergone a rather fun flurry of design work, as while my focus is still on bringing the Engine up to a single hollistic revision, I did begin to let my mind wander into what Im calling Content...

For those that want to see some rules, I've attached the draft for the Adventuring subsystem. Still wants some polish, but aside from Activities which will come later its all there.

Every game should have pooping rules.

The thing about ajudication is that its just a middle man to improv. This isn't strictly a bad thing, as maintaining Tone is an important concept in improv (even more so with narrative improv, which is the specific flavor we're dealing with in RPGs), but the usual structure of a GM handling its...

An argument I've favored is that if you want true agency, you should design the game in such a way that it doesn't care how the player plays it. For example in my game's system for moving around, the game anticipates that people will game it by running in circles and doing all kinds of 'gamey'...

I haven't read the whole thread, but Im going to jump in from the OP. This is correct, and this is referred to as volition. Volitional engagement is a wonderful thing, and something a lot of games, including RPGs, could stand to focus on building. These are also fair assessments, at least...

So, TL;DR, I have a lot of thoughts and I'm going to share them. If you like, you can peruse the attached docs though don't expect anything you can play or even necessarily grok. These are just some interesting things I've been putting together that will help give context to my game, whilst also...

I sidestepped the problem by getting rid of target numbers.

Strictly speaking a lot of that was never supposed to be solely on the GMs plate to begin with, and its a weird self perpetuating aspect of the hobby that even people who absolutely hate it will turn around and say "yeah, only one person needs to actually know how to play the game". There's...