Spider Queen

I think it would be a good thing if more players were high maintenance players. I'm a high maintenance player. What does that mean? Well, there's something to be said for thinking of being high maintenance as engaging with the story outside of "office hours", i.e.: sending reams of character backstory, fanfiction etc to the GM. If my players are that engaged, I regard it as a huge bonus, and a vote of confidence. But that's not what I mean here. What I mean is this: I pipe up and talk to my GM about things that don't work for me or that I don't like. Obviously I do this out of session time, not at the table. But I frequently take a while to get my thoughts in order and compose a message explaining what rubbed me the wrong way and why. Bonus points if it comes with a list of potential fixes or other helpful suggestions. Is this a slightly overbearing way of letting your GM know about your preferences? Sure. It helps if you're good friends, or at least h...

 A tiny, tiny post today. I've been working on writing things for the game I'm putting together (an unholy fusion of Risus, Blades in the Dark, and other games from around the place that I'm sure I'm cribbing from but can't exactly recall). Specifically, one section I've worked on, part of the GM section, was "Why make this game?" Terribly self-indulgent as it sounds, my point was to get some thoughts down about what the game does , and especially what it might do differently  to other games that would help people run it by telling them what sort of dynamic I was shooting for with my design decisions. Sort of like telling someone just starting Blood (a 2.5d game from the 90s) "Don't try and play this like Halo, or it'll be deeply unenjoyable. Here's what the developers were thinking when they put it together..." The point I'm rambling around to is that I get a feeling sometimes from commentators on the indie rpg scene that the...

I've been tinkering with and expanding my very-nearly-a-Risus-hack from a while ago. Specifically, I was thinking about character roles. One of the things that's brilliant about Risus is that you get to define your character archetype - in fact, you get to pick several archetypes that apply to your character in different degrees. I'll try not to get sidetracked on this discussion - I've started and scrapped posts about it before - but archetypes are really, really useful in rpgs. I make the case here that genre and tone are effectively the most important parts of an rpg, to the point where if you have those dialed in, you can pretty much run a satisfying game with, maybe, a super-slim rules system. In fact, the rules are almost unnecessary, because they're there to tell the GM how certain situations play out, and if you have a super clear vision of the genre and tone, they'll tell you the likely outcome of any given situation. And character archetypes are basic...