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04
June
2022
Jason Tochi of 24XX fame wrote a great post a little while ago about what he calls the three layers of rules: social, fictional, and abstract. If you’re interested in game design it’s a great way to think about things, especially in more rules light games. Where do the unspoken rules go? Probably to the social and fictional layers. This post is in the news again as Jason shared a version included in the rules for his new game, Alight.
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31
May
2022
My friend Alex discusses Fuck You Design, an interesting response of sorts to my post about negative space in RPGs. His post in turn has me wanting to write more myself. I love simple systems, so I am always looking for a good minimalist one. The problem is so many miss the mark. It takes a lot of care to make one that isn’t just you filling in all the holes with D&D as you remember it. Carcosa is a good setting in my mind despite missing a lot of details because what’s there is enough to help get you the rest of the way. Some adventures lean so far into terseness you run them and realize you are doing all the work. OD&D doesn’t tell you what a helmet does, but there is enough to the game you can house rule something coherent. If it didn’t tell you what armour did that would be way more annoying. Anyway, this is enough for now. Read the post, it’s great!