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The idea that providing stats to an NPC who has none defined or further developing them between sessions make them more real or objective is something I find profoundly silly. The idea that say when I played the prelude our Vampire Amsterdam Chronicle that my character, Ariel Mataan, was less...

The reason this matters, is because some people want to gate keep that feeling of being there in the moment behind a particular process. This is no different than Method Actors believing they have some sort of special sauce (and that other approaches to acting are inauthentic). They are wrong...

So right now, I am running a game of Blades, for a crew of hawkers (for an in-person group). We use what I would call moderate myth in that I prepare only what I feel I need for the next session. This prep is binding secret backstory meant to highlight the conflicts of interest that exist...

@Bedrockgames You are also challenging the integrity of the play experience of many people's games and doing so without regard to the experiential quality of those games (something you get your druthers up about on a regular basis). You also are regularly (whether meaning to or not)...

I adore Monsterhearts, but it does not really have rules for romance. It has rules for attraction and social leverage because they are exploring possibly unwanted attraction (as in being attracted to someone despite yourself) and the sort of twisted social dynamics you often see in supernatural...

Apocalypse World doesn't feature that sort of prep (if we are running it according to its instructions). The game tells you how to prep (fronts in First Edition / threats in Second Edition). When the game says "always say what your prep demands" it means fronts/threats. You cannot take the...

This is just fundamentally untrue of games like Apocalypse World. The GM has framing authority. They just have restrictions on that framing authority and a differing agenda than simulating a world. 95% of the differences lay in how the GM role functions. My interface as a player in Apocalypse...

By casting every game that works differently than the model of play you prefer in a single bucket you risk providing a wildly inaccurate view of other people's play experiences and the individual games in question. It would be much more accurate to simply call them "games I don't enjoy" for all...

Autonomy and ability to impact your environment in a meaningful way are both necessary conditions to have sufficient agency. I personally that both exist a spectrum where having too much or too little will have a negative impact on play. What I really want is enough autonomy to deal with the...

Let's start with this - can we all agree that different fictional situations (and the position of the player characters within) provide different levels of agency over the fiction? That for instance, a player who is playing a political dissident serving a jail sentence would have less agency...

As an addendum, a Torchbearer test is not an abstraction because it does not model a fictional process. Tests sustain the momentum of play by either resulting in a character achieving their aims or gaining a condition / generating a twist. Fictional positioning is an input on resolution, but the...

More explicitly Torchbearer integrates GM Judgement of fictional positioning directly into the rules in a constrained way. If the player wants to do a thing, they describe what they are doing and what they hope to accomplish. The GM then determines the Obstacle by consulting the factors involved...

In the sense that no game rules (or any rules really) are binding on any given person sure. But there is nothing inherent in being the GM that grants authority not granted by the game.

Just finished Greedfall last month. Now, I am starting to dig into Thaumaturge on my PS5. Really digging the Flaws and how they shape the options available to you. Also, the way the magical world intersects with the mortal world. Hoping to see more quality AA games like this.

So, flashbacks in Blades do not work the way the author mentioned. It's not spend stress => get result. All a flashback allows you to do is declare an action your character previously took to prepare for this moment. You still have to make whatever roll would be required and cannot use it to...

I play in one in a weekly in person game (currently playing a prequel game to Final Fantasy 8 using a custom Cypher System hack) on Tuesdays. Run by @RenleyRenfield. On Wednesdays, I play in an online game run by @Manbearcat along with @hawkeyefan. Currently we're digging into Scum and...

Not likely. The closest we would likely get is Cosmere and the reason is fairly simply - our games tend to focus more on social conflicts and relationships, with occasional bouts of violence (albeit usually player character initiated). It's important to me that the game still feels thoroughly...

After Accountability (which is the most crucial skill any human can have) it's the ability to maintain enthusiasm and take joy in other people's creative work. It cannot be simply about showing off your own creative chops if it's going to last. These are also the same key skills for every player.

By and large combat in most tabletop roleplaying games is already slow and boring. Making it even more slow and boring is not really a desired state, especially when you can design debuffs that impact in a way that alters the dynamics without taking away the ability to play the game.

Not at all. It is important that they are capable of operating in the space they are expected to operate in. Too much efficacy is as much a problem as too little.