This is a followup for my last post, which talked about player skill vs character abilities in video games and LARPs, but focused on "combat mechanics". Player skill comes into other areas as well.

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I'm trying this whole 8tracks thing instead of doing a bunch of links to places, in part so I can have audio for the obscure stuff. It has it's own weirdnesses, but *shrug*.
First Half

• Fast Forward by Maximalism
• Rewind by The Paper Raincoat
• Can't Wait by Kate Klim
• I Will Wait by Mumford & Sons
• Nothing Changes by Anais Mitchell Feat. The Haden ( Read more... )

This post has some Undertale spoilers. You should play it!

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So, it's been a while since I talked before about interesting failures, and I feel like a lot of what I want is actually orthogonal to dice and more in the direction of "interesting complications".

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Playing Undertale made me think about what video/computer games I find particularly meaningful or impactful. So here's an annotated list of questionable interest to anyone else. RPGs:

• Chrono Trigger: This is my choice for "canonical JRPG". It's noteworthy for a few places that break your assumptions, and time travel is great. (Also, I played it ( Read more... )

So, thinking about dice in tabletopping while dicelessly HGing Chuubo's has got me thinking about what I like about random dice roles in tabletopping. And I think it mostly comes down to interesting failures.

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In response to Zan's Spring Rebirth playlist. Some of these are just Spring-y and some of them are just wings-y, but it's all good.

• Icarus, Jason Webley
  
• Uffington Hill, Playing Rapunzel. I found this group… because they were playing at some event I couldn't go to in London? I really like them.
  
• Seasons, Coyote Grace. Not finding this linkable beyond ( Read more... )

So, I talk up Apocalypse World a lot. One thing I like about it is that all the stuff that's specific to a character fits on a single sheet of paper. Not just your stats and stuff, but the definitions of all the special moves/key stuff you have, and the ones you could get by leveling up. Apocalypse World does this by having well-defined character ( Read more... )

Fanfic. Inspired by OJ's Beyond the Wall game concept.“You are a slave, Neo. You, like everyone else, was born into bondage… kept inside a prison of smell, of taste, of touch.” Morpheus leans back in his worn leather chair. He smiles. His eyes are a night of falling stars ( Read more... )

So, a while back I talked about how I didn't necessarily feel it'd work well to add dice to a Chuubo's-like game. But for some reason I've still been thinking about it periodically, mostly in terms of a hypothetical Chuubo's x Apocalypse World game called "A Wish Chang'd World". But I hadn't really convinced myself of anything until I started ( Read more... )