10 by 10 room

A fantastic thread on the forge and possible the most important ever: Food, food, food. TonyLB talks about his experiences with combining the social experiences of food and gaming – apparently homemade dim sum worked really well for him. There’s some good craftwise advice there.

See also the previously mentioned Tables and Chairs thread on StoryGames, where similar comments are made about the power of kitchens. Or, check out the Sons of Kryos podcast discussing the importance of food.

Cooking and sharing a meal with friends is a both social ritual and creative event, not done for a public stage but for the benefit of your assembled friends. I think this makes a fantastic analogy for gaming.

You know Bomberman, the cute guy fighting puzzles with bombs?

He’s changed. Scroll down to the video.

(Via Kotaku.)

A recent RPGNet thread discussed how to tie up loose ends in an in-genre way. In a Buffy game, there was a nasty villain who was defeated, but the players were stumped about how to deal with him. Killing him felt “out of genre” at this point, but there was no other convenient way to stop this villain from becoming a threat again. John Kim observed>

There are many possibilities which have been suggested. Strangely, though no one seems to have asked about who the characters are. Who are your characters, and what are they like?

It’s interesting how often we’re willing to address a situation in a game without looking at its most fundamental elements: the players and their characters. I find that the most useful Actual Play accounts always begin with who the players are, and what characters they’re playing, before describing any kind of setting or events.

You’ve heard of the Fantasy Heartbreaker, now try the Fantasy Heartburner. That’s right, a roleplaying game designed solely to fix what’s wrong (for the author) with Burning Wheel.

From a comment on Jim Henley’s blog (in the aftermath of what seems like a very cool Burning Wheel campaign).

Interested RPGNet thread on the Virtues / Limit Break mechanics in Exalted. There’s some interesting discussion about the kinds of drift and metagame-think regarding this part of the rules, which some consider to be important to the core story of the game.

An RPGnet post from Loseth discusses ‘realism vs. verisimilitude’ in two popular games, The Riddle of Steel and Burning Wheel. Both these games are known for a “gritty” depiction of combat, but it is said they differ on being realistic, and seeming realistic.

Ben Lehman is looking over some artists for Bliss Stage. Along the way, I saw a link to the art of Wen-M. Check out his Uniforms group 3, a depiction of the (fictional) black hoodie uniforms of a crew of high school students.

Here’s what I like about this picture: despite the simple elements – a static tableau of various characters with the identical clothing – there’s a certain movement in the art that suggests that there’s more going on: that these is a snap shots of stories and social dynamics that are already in play in this group of people. That is what is invoked, from simple extrapolation form a solid piece of artwork.

Does anyone else see that?

This is Pinyon Creek, a town I’m running for players in Dogs in the Vineyard. The straight lines are marriage or children; the dotted lines replace romantic relationships, with the arrow showing which way the attention is going. Everyone is just townfolk, except for the PC in the top right corner.

There’s more to the town, but you almost have enough fodder as is, do you not? What’s more: I ran this town for Valentine’s Day. Of course.

The original town: txt / pdf. (From here.)

Self-promotionally yours: my review of Active Exploits Take 2, a diceless roleplaying system from Politically Incorrect Games.

A very important thread at Story Games: “Tables or Couches?“

Seriously! It’s talking about how people like to play games, and the idea that we should consider the requirements that our design choices place on how people play and interact.

Let me spin things a different way: perhaps we shouldn’t just be thinking about making games to fit a fiction (“Let’s make a story about demonology”), but also tailor games to certain social situations (“Let’s make this game to fit the social framework where the players on a long road trip / in a regular church group / trying to cook while playing.”)