Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

Continuing on from the last post about my abortive Game Chef entry, the one major thematic element I didn’t manage to handle properly was Skin. When a character loses a scene, he may suffer an Injury - a negative trait that breaks the character’s Skin.

If your Skin’s broken, ( Read more... )

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

I never managed to finish my Hamlet’s Hit Points inspired entry in time for Game Chef this year, but late’s better than never.
( Read more... )

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

The annual GameChef contest has rolled around again. This year, the ingredients are CITY, EDGE, DESERT and SKIN. Normally, I’d leap at CITY, so I’m deliberately staying away from that - creativity through constraints and all that. I’m still fuzzy on what I’ll do with DESERT ( Read more... )

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

When last we left our hero, he’d run a marathon. Other highlights since then:

• The wedding (HUGE SUCCESS)
• Honeymoon in Iceland (also fun; considerably less ice than expected though)
• Intracytoplasmic sperm injection, as we found out we were extremely unlikely to have kids using ( Read more... )

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

‘It must be a great feeling’ said my aunt afterwards.

‘Not really,’ I said.

‘Everything hurts. I feel like I’m recovering from major surgery.’

‘Ow,’ I added. ‘Ow.’

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Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

Certain people on twitter have taken to using ‘up periscope’ or ‘down periscope’ to denote going on or off the internet in order to get some work done. For the last few weeks, I’m not sure if I’ve been stuck at the bottom of the ocean or ashore on a sandbar; either way, ( Read more... )

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

As a spin-off from last week’s thoughts - one element that works well with antagonistic PCs is the concept of ‘temporary’ characters. If you kill off my 12th level D&D elf wizard who I’ve levelled up from 1st, that’s a big thing. If you kill off the elf wizard I came up with ( Read more... )

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

I asked if there were any games where the PCs are not working together, and a few examples were suggested. Cold City is a great example of how a strong group structure can be used in a game. All the characters are part of a secret police force set up to deal with left-over ( Read more... )

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

Writing adventures (and I’ve been doing a lot of that lately), I was struck by the odd gap between the player’s side and the GM’s material. What’s the first or second chapter in most RPGs? Character creation - how to make your player character. Your singular, lonely, self- ( Read more... )

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve always thought that the desktop metaphor for computer interfaces was incomplete.

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