Module Construction: LARP and Tabletop
In response to this post, +Matt Lichtenwalner asked: LARPing’s not my bag, but I am curious about the module building and how it relates to ‘traditional’ module building.
DtD design
The Barrows: A Dust to Dust Boardgame
With constructive and much-appreciated feedback from friends, I’ve created another boardgame for Dust to Dust. As with its predecessor, and the Duel Arcane, the goal is to create uniquely setting-appropriate ways to pass the time with your friends, mostly using pieces that characters already have a reason to carry on […]
LARP Design: Law and Justice
In response to a question from a reader, I’m tackling what is, in my limited knowledge, one of the great unaddressed issues of LARP-running: the long arm of the law and imprisonment, both by PCs and against PCs. Now, I bet you’re thinking of that one time there was a […]
LARP Design: the Module Party 1
LARP-running has any number of challenges that tabletop gaming can’t reasonably face. The specific case I want to talk about today is module parties. I assume modules aren’t a significant part of salon LARPs, though of the three salon LARPs I’ve played, two included adventure sequences outside of the main area […]
Two Alternate Settings for Domain Play
While writing my recent post on Birthright, I got to thinking about other settings that could use its model of domain play, reskinning concepts appropriately. These ideas aren’t fully fleshed out by any means, and I don’t have immediate plans to run either of these – though developing a riff […]
Design Diary: Resolution Mechanic
This is another post about my work in progress, Quintessence of Dust, where I lay out the game’s resolution mechanic and how I’ve gotten there. The first post and starting point on this topic is here.
Design Diary: Quintessence of Dust
Dear Design Diary, While I was away for Thanksgiving, thanks to the unflagging support of Kainenchen, I started working with some ideas for a new fantasy roleplaying system for tabletop. I particularly want something that borrows a bit more from the style and substance of LARPing, without sacrificing usability. When […]
LARP Design: Magic Items
There are a lot of lessons of good game-running that carry over between tabletop and live-action gaming. This post, though, concerns itself with an area in which the two are quite different. As usual, I’m talking about a certain band of LARPing, not all LARPing. (There are almost no statements that […]
The Lore Game: Knowledge Skills in Tabletop Games
With a lot of my posts about game design, I talk separately about how things work in tabletop games and live-action games. When I came to the topic of lore skills, I first discussed how they work in a number of local LARPs, because I feel like LARPs have a […]
LARP Design: Lore Skills
When it comes to structuring a robust lore game, many games include knowledge or lore skills. These skills serve, on one level, as background: a character-sheet indication of who the character is and what she does. On another, they represent a path for additional exposition. In some games and to […]