All Known CORE Books & PDFs
While working on the upcoming CORE Complete book, I thought it would be good to assemble a list of all worlds... (Comments: 2)
CORE COMPLETE -- Status Update
The condition of CORE COMPLETE right now is: Mechanically — how to play it — finished and in active playtesting. * Pedagogically — how to run it — still designing an optimal approach. This is because CORE is built to facilitate a specific type of play: one I can’t assume your group is... (Comments: 0)
CORE Roundtable [video]
Ready for a jargon-filled game design deep dive? In this recent "CORE Roundtable" hosted by LegendsOfTabletop, we go into the weeds of CORE design philosophy, Hybrid Systems, Universal Mechanics, Psychic Content, Experiential Narrativism, Fruitful Voids... (Comments: 2)
Empirical Agency: A Spectrum of Design
Once upon a time, when my only RPG experiences were fairly crunchy games and my own campaigns were heavy Sims, I believed that there was a spectrum of design when it came to mechanics, and that spectrum ran from "playability" to "specificity." I was wrong. Let me clarify; The spectrum... (Comments: 17)
Oblique Strategies for GMs
[resurrected from the S-G archives] So, as people know, Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt once created a deck of cards called "Oblique Strategies" to serve as prompts for creativity. Although mainly intended for use by musicians, the ambiguous nature of the cards' contents can often be applied to other... (Comments: 0)
PbtA Moves: Types and Normalization
Ben Roswell of Small Planet Games has put together this breakdown of mechanical effects across four classes of PbtA Move. The general idea is that a well-designed character class should have moves that cover all four of these quadrants: (Comments: 4)
Schematic of a Classic Murder Mystery
Start by drawing a relationship map of all the characters. Give each character a letter or short abbreviation so you can also make an indexed table with rows corresponding to these characters. Give the table three blank columns. Label the columns "motive", "means" and "opportunity".... (Comments: 12)
Tabloo - Table Formatting Tool
ANNOUNCER: Hello, friends in RPG space... Do you make a lot of tables when designing games or adventures? Do you find it a pain? Do you wish it could be somehow... automated? SFX: RECORD SCRATCH ANNOUNCER: Well check out dis shiz, homies. TABLOO is a free interactive table... (Comments: 6)
The Possible and the Virtual
I've been studying a lot of Deleuze in the last few weeks. Because of this, I have a giant bundle of tangled thoughts working their way toward design-oriented theories, but they are difficult to elucidate and may take me some time. Today one such idea crystallized, and here it is... Deleuze... (Comments: 14)
Theory Ramble - Hybrid Games, Expectations and Plot
Different artforms have different expectations, and some of the games already residing under the ever-stretching aegis of "RPG" are so different from each other as to be effectively different artforms. (Fuckin' Yay!, I am all for ludological diversity. I just don't give a shit about the state... (Comments: 1)