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Tabletop role-playing

Alice is Missing

Spoiler warning – this talks about how Alice is Missing works and is played out, and as it is a mystery game, you might not want to read on if you’d prefer to be surprised by developments. Intro and apology Ok so first thing is to say that I don’t actually own a set of […]

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Board games Conventions Larp Tabletop role-playing

A week of new games!

Last week I was away at an informal roleplaying con with a group of old friends. There were a couple of dozen of us in total, and 18 different games (mostly playtests) were run – an impressive variety and range. Games that I played Bluestockings is designed and was run by Liz Lovegrove, of Rise […]

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Larp Tabletop role-playing

Playtesting

This last month or so has seen a whole bunch of playtesting activity. Playtesting is what you do when your game isn’t yet ready for publication/release/whatever your final intention for it is – so you run an unfinished version of it and ask the people involved to feed back to you on what they thought […]

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Larp Tabletop role-playing

Scene but not herd: spotlight scenes in freeform

What’s a scene? In the theatre, it’s a self-contained section of action, often signalled by the curtain going up and down or the actors going on and off stage. In a game, basically the same thing, except it’s often signalled by the GM saying “Right then… what do you want to do next?” In traditional […]

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Tabletop role-playing

Rise and Fall

“Dystopias come from somewhere, and they go somewhere. They appear because someone is able to convince others that they are reasonable, and they disappear because someone is able to exploit their weaknesses. They rise, and they fall.” The other weekend I got the chance to playtest Rise and Fall, a new (GMless and prepless) storygame […]

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Card games Conventions Tabletop role-playing

Dragonmeet

Not just about meeting dragons! Dragonmeet has new owners and a new venue – is it still relevant, interesting, fun? Dragonmeet is London’s one-day games convention, and it’s been going since forever. I first went in 1983 or so, when it was run by Games Workshop, but before they’d become evil. More recently it was […]

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Larp Tabletop role-playing

Anonymous lines and veils

Suppose you don’t want, for whatever reason, a particular topic or activity to be included in a game you’re about to play. You’ve been asked if you have any such requests. But suppose you also don’t want to have to talk about it? What are lines and veils? The concept of flagging up material that […]

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Tabletop role-playing

Odd Fellows and The Turing Shroud

OK, this is going back a bit now, I’ve got some catching up to do! A few weeks ago I went to (fairly) sunny Surrey to playtest a couple of tabletop Call of Cthulhu scenarios: Odd Fellows and The Turing Shroud. The two friends who’d written and were running them are gaming buddies from decades […]

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Larp Tabletop role-playing

When the Dark is Gone (again)

When the Dark is Gone [edited to add: written by the wonderful Becky Annison, who can be found here among other places] is a prepless tabletop roleplaying game about a group of people who many years ago, as children, travelled to a wonderful magical world. The game catches up with them as adults, reunited in […]

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Larp Tabletop role-playing

Playing story games with intent

A few days ago I went for the first time to the Storygasm group, a London-based bunch of role-players who specialize in story games. This particular get-together was called with the plan of exploring the Play with Intent guidebook, written by Emily Care Boss and Matthijs Holter. This document contains a set of methods and […]