In writing fiction, a popular concept to make things harder on your main character is a concept called, “Yes, but; No, and.” At a high level, you present a character with a challenge and then ask the ever-important question of, “Did the character succeed?” If the answer is...
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One of the channels that keeps popping up in my YouTube feed is Puffin Forrest. It’s a guy who animates stories from RPGs he has played or run. For the most part I get a laugh out of these or shake my head at the shenanigans he has had to put up with on both sides of the screen, and then I...
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I grew up in the 1980’s when D&D came in two flavors: Basic and Advanced. Back then, we just played the game and didn’t worry about table safety and how people felt. That was in a large part for two reasons: First, we lacked the experience and lexicon to describe the concept of table safety....
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The night was cold, the fireplace was roaring, and we were gnawing on the delicious ratatouille and fresh baked bread our host Leslie had made. We warded off the three adorable pups as we idly chatted and a few people lazily looked over the Monsterhearts skins. It finally happened, my lady and...
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Recently a gamer friend sent me a message asking for my perspective about a situation that unfolded at a game table where they were a player. In the situation, some players and the game master were directing a player on how to spend her turn. Shortly afterwards, an article began circulating on...
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I’m going to leverage another writing concept for today’s article. In fiction writing, there is a concept called “scene and sequel.” Of course, most of us think of a “sequel” as something along the lines of Empire Strikes Back or The Two Towers. However, the...
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I was playing in a game where Amit Moshe (City of Mists) was running us through a noir based supernatural game. As our characters were running around, using our powers to chase down a cult, and playing a generally narrative based game, Amit said something that solidified a bunch of nebulous...
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I just finished reading “The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World” by Adrienne Mayor. If you have any inclination toward including encounters with historical Amazons in your game — either as player characters or nonplayer characters — this work can serve as a go-to...
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I’ve been working in computer security, in some fashion, since the early 1990s. One of the key concepts in this field is to separate processes on computing systems, so they can’t talk to each other or read/write data between each other . . . unless done so in an explicit manner. This...
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Several years ago while I was working on my fundamentals before I started my stat degree, I took a creative writing class as an elective*. For one of the assignments, the professor had a local poet visit and speak to us about his craft. I remember his readings being very interesting despite...
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