Der PigDog's PigBlog

One of my obstacles to play is my fear of creating content: what if I get it wrong? What if it's not good enough, there's not enough of it, it's the wrong sort? (It would be dreadful to have to  practice  that sort of thing. (I'm saying that with my tongue in my cheek; of course you have to practice!)) This only applies to GMing. Creating a character is usually easy. Since character creation and scenario creation are the same task under different headings, I know the fear is irrational.  I don't feel this fear when I'm making content on the fly, because there I'm simply responding to prompts or gameplay demands in play, without time to worry. So "no prep" games, and games where prep is both communal and a part of play, like Monsterhearts and It Was a Mutual Decision, don't stress me out. Nor would My Life with Master. I'm stressed out by games like Sorcerer, Wuthering Heights, and Bushido, where I have to make a bunch of stuff in advance. D...

The following is experimental! I came up with these rules after reading lumpley's  Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven's Ars Magica: A Quaint & Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore  and mulling over the purpose of a dedicated GM in my own gaming . I haven't played with them yet. At any time, make a common move. When you don't have a main character in a scene, and everybody is silent, make an MC move. When you don't have a main character in a scene, and someone rolls a miss, make an MC move. If everybody has a main character in a scene, anybody can make MC moves, but not moves targeting their own character. One person shouldn't make an MC move immediately followed by a character move, nor a character move immediately followed by an MC move. Remember, the game is not a series of moves. It is a conversation about fictional events in which moves are triggered. Common moves Start a scene from scratch. Turn to another player and ask where their character is, what they are...

This post has some bad language in it, including gendered and homophobic slurs. It Was a Mutual Decision 's pitch is strong, incredibly strong, maybe the single best pitch for a game I have ever heard: you are in a breakup, as civil or toxic as you like, and one or both of you may be a horrible rat-human monster. Oh, and the game ends either when you've both gracefully exited the relationship, or one or both of you are dead. Also, it's a team-based game: all the boys play the girl, and all the girls play the boy. -- Every single time I have delivered this pitch, I see eyes light up. It's so obviously fun, funny, and resonant. Cover of It Was a Mutual Decision with a thumbs-up representing my positive opinion of the game Unfortunately for the reader, there are no digital copies, it is not currently in print, and the writer has no immediate plans to make it available again. I ordered a copy off ebay but it got snatched by porch pirates. Luckily when I was complainin...

"You've ruined everything. I will hate you forever." A game for three players, A, B, and C, shifting roles. Brief definition of a human being for play purposes "Human being" is a keyword I've found useful in playing several narrativist games. When I say so-and-so is a human being, I mean that they are not a structural literary type (pro- or antagonist), a cardboard cutout, a stereotype, a pawn, a monster, a simple player stand-in, or a political or moral idea given fictional flesh. Most human beings have all of the following  Name Age Ethnicity Social class Income (or none!) Hometown Current city A job, and previous work experience (or none!) Sexual and romantic relationships (or none!) Friends (or none!) Family (or none!) Hobbies and interests Material resources  It isn't necessary to fill out every detail, just enough for our current play. You can always add more later. Scenario creation I Player A creates the main girl, a human being between the ages ...

The first half anyway. As is usual in these superhero movies, it gets worse the longer you think about it. 3/5. Sorry folks, this review is lower quality than you might be used to getting from this blog, it's been a long day.  The film lacks thematic unity; its first half sets up really interesting, incisive questions, and then the back half ignores them in favor of yet another "destroy a cgi city with little or no actual human cost" drearily familiar from Marvel. (Yeah there's also the invasion sequence in not-Palestine/Ukraine by not-Russia/Israel, but that's very clearly  not  the actual climax of the movie, just a bit of added stakes. Plenty of brown people die in that fight scene, off-screen.) Superman's interview with Lois was the height of the movie. I keep trying to remember the character's name, I know it's not Peter Parker. Clark Kent. Fuck. Great chemistry. Big fan of Rachel Brosnahan going back to House of Cards. This whole line of question...

Regular readers will remember that in my work-in-progress fantasy heartbreaker Coup Étrange, "HP" stands for "hero points" which are supposed to be spent throughout play. (Actual design is notably lacking on this subject.) Meanwhile real wounds, with game-affecting consequences, belong to a separate subsystem, which is usually only engaged when the character is hit by an attack and they are out of HP. Readers may also recall my suggestions (I don't remember where I put this actually) that some kind of barbarian or berserk warrior could get +1HP/HD killed, keeping the rage machine fueled. So the idea is, you start every scenario with a random amount of HP, in a range fixed by your level and class; say, Xd6+1 for a level X fighting-man. You can increase your current HP past your starting HP, all the way up to, say, 6*X+1 for that same fighting-man. Meanwhile you're also going to be spending it to avoid damage and do cool shit in combat (design work needed here...