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It’s almost weird how they all seem to start exactly where he doesn’t want them to end up.

I pulled my off the shelf and boxed them up. Every time I've gotten rid of RPG books I've regretted it.

Same with the writing, but not the musicals. Gah. No thanks. Different strokes and all that. Yes, they are different mediums but there are clear areas of overlap to each of them. If RPGs are collaborative storytelling games, then it just makes sense to look at other collaborative endeavors...

Not to me. Systems are interesting in how the mechanics interact with each other. I can present challenges that can be honestly engaged with using any system, even an utterly minimal one. All you need to a basic level of consistency. We're defining game differently. To you the game is the...

Yeah. That does seem to be the trend. Same. As I said above, I had a lot of that in my head already but a lot of things clicked when I encounter improv and PbtA. Well, it's true. Video game devs have been seeing it and talking about it and analyzing it for years. They've advanced to the point...

Eh. If given the chance gamers will optimize the fun out of the game. The fun part is generally the challenge and risk of losing. Playing better and playing to win necessitate minimizing risks generally and the possibility of losing specifically. So with that in mind, the "best gamer" would be...

Exactly. If you have the ability to simply declare yourself the winner, winning and losing are irrelevant. So if you can simply declare your own goals and decide when you've achieved them and that's how you define winning and losing... It's not the success ladder that's the draw for me. It's...

To me, the only thing you need is the task-resolution mechanic because collaborative storytelling is duller than dirt. You need something to break the deadlocks and inject chaos into the game. Given their druthers, most gamers would simply narrate themselves winning all the time with zero...

So how do you prevent yourself from just going beast mode and winning as the referee? How do you maintain that neutral arbiter that's required for these games to work? Yeah, that's almost completely alien to me. RPGs aren't sports or competitions, so there's zero need for scoring or winning...

Wild. I'm literally the opposite. I struggle to deal with rules that are move involved than maybe one side of a sheet of paper. I'd much rather do things ad hoc in the moment from general principles and move on. Any time spent looking up or learning the rules is time better spent on actually...

To me, that sounds like the literal beating heart of an RPG. The game is the conversation. That conversation centers what’s possible in the fiction. That’s basically the one (or one of the few) unique thing(s) about this style of game. And you don’t like that?

As long as that list also included passing off all the overpaid manager’s actual responsibilities to their underpaid staff instead of doing it themselves, then yes.

So you’re a regular referee for RPGs, not competitive, and know something about game design. Okay. So how can you not get that it is absolutely trivial for the referee to be a neutral arbiter? As you said, “It's quite difficult to trust the same entity with playing the opposition and handling...

Depends on the context. OSR game, dying’s easy. 5E game, dying’s hard. Around the gaming table, comedy’s easy. Week six of a three-month tour of the Deep South as a LGBTQ+ standup comedian, comedy’s hard.

Are you generally a competitive person? And have you ever run RPGs?

A recent study shows that “Provisioning decent living standards (DLS) for 8.5 billion people would require only 30% of current global resource and energy use, leaving a substantial surplus for additional consumption, public luxury, scientific advancement, and other social investments.”...

The need for people who don't like a thing to try to erase it from existence is always mind-boggling to me. You don't get to control what other people like or engage with. If you don't like something, don't engage with it...don't have it at your table. You don't like it therefore no one in the...

We just finished the last episode. It was a really good resolution. A bit gorier than I like for a detective show, but then most of the Nordic and Tartan Noir stuff might as well be mystery-horror with how gruesome some of it can be. I hope they get another series.

“Thanks for the head’s up. I’ve had a lot of fun with you at the table so I hate to see you go. If there’s anything I can do to make things more fun or engaging for you let me know. There will always be a seat at the table for you.” The reasoning might involve a lot of stuff outside the game...

What do you think you’d need/want besides what’s in the core rules and the Age of Umbra frame?