Many years ago, a friend of mine was once asked by a friend in common what RPGs were. He said “well, a bunch of people sit around a table and roll funny dice, and whoever rolls a one, they’re dead.” He wasn’t wrong.

My argument in part two is really as follows: Firstly, that when we’re roleplaying, we’re doing three things at once - playing a game ( Read more... )

Here’s a thing I like to say which isn’t entirely true but it sounds good and it points to interesting thoughts:

In improv, everything you say is automatically true (“I’m police! Pull over!”) but there are usually strict rules about what you can and cannot say and when and how you say things (for example, you can only say two word sentences). RPGs ( Read more... )

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There is occasional nonsense spouted that ttrpgs are not emulative of other media and should not be thought of as such. This is broadly very silly: if they are not emulating media then they would only be simulating the real world, and a Star Wars rpg would be impossible. But I do think a lot of people making this argument are coming back to the GNS ( Read more... )

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Sometimes it feels like all TV is weird now, because it all has to be eight to ten episodes and tell one gigantic story, and set up series two but also stand alone and ensure that every episode is brilliant but also that you watch all the way to the end… and so shows like The Office or The Sopranos just couldn’t exist. And then you have Only ( Read more... )

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One of the innovations of the early internet was “long games”: games made up of comment chains on forums where the only way to lose was not to reply or for the game to end. One popular long game was trying to post a statement that the subsequent poster could not find objectionable in some way. One of the best moves in that game was:

“I don’t think ( Read more... )

I think most of us know and resonate with the prayer of seeking the strength to change the things we can, and the serenity to accept the things we cannot and the wisdom to tell the difference. Few remember that it was coined by Reinhold Niebuhr, a prominent 20th century American theologist and political thinker who was trying to construct a kind of ( Read more... )

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