Category Archives: Out-of-Character

Resolutions: Dealing with Canon and Context

Canon is the past in the play. It establishes facts which have gone before. It doesn’t mean it can’t be retconned afterwards but for the most part it is immutable (or at least it should have immutable facts and mutable … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Out-of-Character | Leave a comment

Man vs…

The topic of conversation this morning in the car was the substance of plots. Traditionally, we have plots which are Man versus Man (and yes, I intend to keep the male pronoun because anyone who would be sensitive to it … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, In-Character, Industry, Out-of-Character, Qabal | Leave a comment

Site refresh

Bear with us while we engage in some site jiggery-pokery.  Those of you who subscribe to the feed shouldn’t notice any difference.  Also it’s a bit harder to tell who wrote what post at the moment, but that’s OK by … Continue reading

Posted in Out-of-Character | Leave a comment

The usual fare

I don’t remember where I got this but it always made me think about the perfect stag do. It’s originally from the first edition Dungeon Master’s Guide and really proves that, to a degree, roleplayers of the day were ugly … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, GM, Out-of-Character | Leave a comment

I bought a book today…

…entirely because it was illustrated and designed exactly the way I want Q to be paid out. I spent a few minutes leafing through it and in my minds eye transposed the text and art to that which I envision … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Game Design, Out-of-Character, Qabal | 8 Comments

Your rights … under Section 44 of the UK Anti-Terrorism Act

This kind of thing gives me the shivers. Two disabled blokes were detained by UK police for suspiciously opening a white envelope and looking at police men in public view It’s been asked about 20 times now when I’m going … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Out-of-Character | 2 Comments

Six Role-playing Annoyances

Here are some annoying habits that players can exhibit in your game. There are some suggestions as to how to deal with these problems, either by encouragement (as another player) or enforcement (as a GM). Playing yourself, but with armour … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Out-of-Character | 10 Comments

Out of Character

A couple of days ago I wrote about and got some very interesting comments about how this is relevant to games. On the Story Games forum they talk about Improv Theatre and how drama and story is made up of … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, In-Character, Out-of-Character | 7 Comments

Status: Refugee – Perspective Selection

One thing that was bugging me about this game was that which we’ve discussed on a number of occasions about different games: scope. If you are playing refugees with only a small number of worlds available to you, the sheer … Continue reading

Posted in Game Design, Out-of-Character, Status: Refugee | 10 Comments

Heroic imaginations

This is probably more suitable for infurious because it’s riffing off Guy Kawasaki. Nurturing a heroic imagination takes five actions: Maintain constant vigilance for situations that require heroic action. Learn not to fear conflict because you took a stand. Imagine … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Out-of-Character | Leave a comment

Action is character

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “Action is character.” A few years ago a friend of mine came up with the theory that we often play our polar opposites in games. The players under scrutiny here were myself and himself and our … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Out-of-Character | 5 Comments

sometimes you have to wear your work clothes to the doctor

SXSW covers “Confessions of Superhero” which shows the strange and seedy world of superhero lookalikes… We see Joe McQueen demolished by the heat inside his colossal Hulk costume — on a record 106-degree day, it’s a brutal 130 degrees inside … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Out-of-Character, WatchTower | Leave a comment

All the games I’ve played (and GM’d)

I commented to Matt the other day that the last time I actually *played* in a game was when he ran the original WatchTower game in 1998. This got me to thinking that although I’ve read a lot of games, … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Out-of-Character | 4 Comments

More on sexism (plus registration and comments)

I’ve turned off registration for comments because it should be off. Bit of a mea culpa there. I am enjoying the discussion on sexism in RPGs which has been continued on thedeadone.net and Mary’s blog. I wrote: “Some game companies … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Industry, Out-of-Character, TTN | 5 Comments

It’s about starting conversations with new people

I started a little storm in a teacup with my last post. Even got someone else linking to me. And some of the comments on that posting (e.g. “Enh, I went and read the Late Gaming post, and it’s so … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Game Design, Industry, Out-of-Character | 2 Comments

Differing Methods of Character Generation

Over the last few years I’ve come to appreciate different methods of character generation. I’m not especially keen on point allocation systems due to concerns that they are unrealistic because a) not everyone is equal and b) they’re prone to … Continue reading

Posted in Game Design, GM, Out-of-Character | 1 Comment

Pickup Games

We’re not talking about games which are designed to get the GM a date with the hot new girl in the gaming club (as mabmorrigan will likely relate happily later) but rather games which can be started quickly, how to … Continue reading

Posted in GM, Out-of-Character | Leave a comment

Roleplaying As Education

I have a list that is rapidly growing of things to post here, but for some reason this is on my mind just now, so… When I was growing up, roleplaying was that weird thing you did afterschool that no … Continue reading

Posted in GM, Out-of-Character | 1 Comment

DG update…

As I may have mentioned, I’m in KinnyGraham’s DeltaGreen game. The other night, after losing one agent to the nameless horror and receiving a chewing from our DG contact, my character came to two startling revelations. There is something horrible … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Cthulhu, GM, In-Character, Out-of-Character | 1 Comment

2300AD revival

Am busting out for another game now that kinnygraham has booked Wednesday or Tuesday for a continuation of our much delayed DG campaign. To this end, paulk has nabbed his friends ivorw and jonathanl to join up. I’m intending to … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, GM, Out-of-Character | 1 Comment