Der PigDog's PigBlog

The PbtA community regularly refers to a distinction between "hard" and "soft" moves,. But this distinction is foreign to the game Apocalypse World itself, and should not be backported to it. You can run an internet search to see people trying to establish this distinction in that game. My reference edition here is Apocalypse World 1e (2010), because it's available for free . Cover of AW 1e We find our first reference to the hardness of a move on page 117: Generally, limit yourself to a move that'll (a) set you up for a future harder move, and (b) give the players' characters some opportunity to act and react. A start to the action, not its conclusion. However, when a player's character hands you the perfect opportunity on a golden plate, make as hard and direct a move as you like. It's not the meaner the better, although mean is often good. Best is: make it irrevocable. When a player's character make a move and the player misses the roll, th...

Played two games of Murderous Ghosts with Misha, Divya, and Ken. I was the MC for the first game. Ken was the MC for the second game -- his first-ever time MCing! Unfortunately, I don't remember the sequence of pulls or moves precisely, so this  Before play I thought up a pretty detailed chronology of the violent act which spawned the ghosts. A husband, the owner of the hotel, found his wife cheating on him. He castrated his wife's lover and tossed their twin babies in the fireplace, and then hung himself. His wife clawed her eyes out in despair and slit her own throat. The precise chronology turned out not to matter at all during play. And the whole thing was more complicated than it needed to be. We started off with "Fang" finding the husband's corpse, still swinging, dripping someone else's blood from its hands. Fang recalls that he doesn't want children any time soon. Fang moves to another room, a richly appointed living room, where he finds the burnt ...

 Trigger warning: school shooting Werewolf with a gun, photo by Pumpkin Lizard on Deviant Art, a reference image during the game After last session, I realized I had made a mistake. I shouldn't have asked the other players "What do you want from the other main characters?". My intention was to push the main characters towards each other, but this was wrong. I shouldn't encourage the other players to make any particular decision, or have any particular orientation towards each other. Even apathy is fair. It's a valid move to isolate yourself from the others, play cold, and only interact with side characters. I said as much to the others, and instead asked them two two-part questions: What identity have you constructed for yourself? How secure are you in that identity? What do you want? What do you fear? My inspiration for the first question was Apocalypse World; at the end of every session, you're supposed to ask each player if their character is satisfied with...

We did a bit of a refresher since it had been two or three weeks since the last session . Refreshed both rules and the situation at play. I explained the string economy and asked everybody what their character had done last session. Everybody was, of course, able to remember their own activities, with just a few additions from me. I also read through the list of thematic objects, and asked if everybody was interested in them, and told them that if they wanted another topic dealt with, they had to bring it into play themselves, but that they can always talk about it outside play too. I wanted to revisit some threads that got skipped over last time. Evann's Fae had gone for a walk in the woods with her friend before the party; what happened there? I was interested in her feeling of alienation/inhumanity, and I wanted to push her into some decision about her place among humans. So I had the Green Woman, the Fae's mother, a 7 foot tall naked green lady, freeze time and greet her d...

CW necrophilia Here's the playlist I made and have been listening to as I prep the game: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ih9SFciZe1a38sHqXWDsP?si=d7552f0144114e5f Played with my partner Misha, our friend Divya, Divya's boyfriend Ken, and our friend Evann. Misha has played a little bit of wargamey DND with me, Misha and Divya have played in the last session of Monsterhearts, and Ken played one session of some kind of DND before. Otherwise, no RPG experience. We spent a really long time -- maybe too long? -- talking about the nature of play, how it works, what the skins do. Ken and Divya (werewolf and ghost, respectively) chose their skins eagerly. Misha was happy with infernal, and Evann eventually settled on fae. The game is set in  Hudson, Ohio, where Ken grew up. 20k residents. Majority white. Educated, middle class or higher. Headquarters of Jo-Ann Fabrics. He did not like it there, and does not want to go back. The seating chart is still a great method of scenario prep. ...

A game of Monsterhearts! Misha, Lani, and Divya. Lani has played a good deal of 5e. Misha has played my vampire game and some OSR. Divya completely new. I explained the concept of the game -- play out the messy lives of queer teen paranormal romance and horror, like in Vampire Diaries, Twilight, and similar. Turned out we had very view Twihards in attendance (actually I was the only one) and the most common reference point was Riverdale. I also explained the medium of roleplay, conversation. You say what happens for things under your authority. In this case, just one character, for whom you advocate, their thoughts and actions. I say everything about the other people and world, though I'll often ask the others to say things instead. We read aloud the principles for the game. We read aloud the skins and everybody picked one. Lani chose werewolf, Misha vampire, and Divya infernal. This got the group buzzing. The skins are such fun! I talked about the dangerous topics we ...