Barrier to Entry

Games are fun. They are challenging (or can be), they are social (or can be) and they are good escape from the realities of life (or can be). Its not about a small (cultish) group of hobbyists any more. With the advent of mobile phones, even my mother is playing games actively.

It sure didn’t use to be like that. There’s some truth to the old stereotypes of people in capes talking about summoning demons in a basement. Well, we didn’t use to wear capes, but anyhow.

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New Games by Guild Redemund

kiltamerkki_peleihinI’m cheating with the topic but at least you are reading still, right? These games are not “new” per se but hacks and adventures. There is our newest collaborative Fiasco playset, an agnostic fantasy adventure (though it does have Dungeon World threat sheet) and a game that is built on Matthijs Holter‘s Archipelago.

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Season of the Witch, Part 4

session4bThough it seems we have more than enough of timing issues with this campaign we are managed to have an awesome fourth session yesterday. And even though we have been using Eldritch Sigils for a few years for the campaign it seems we can still find minor details that need correcting.

It seems like ages ago when I was GMing ANKH to my friends after school and just had to tweak the rules of the game to suit my taste. It might have been twenty years ago but I’m still doing it. And for the life of me I cannot see the reason why?

Why cannot I be satisfied with the rules as written?

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Writing Cliques & Powers

cliquesnpowers3Yesterday’s ramblings about stealing and using or losing it didn’t spark from nothing. It was inspired (more or less) from last Friday’s gaming session.

For a few years now I have had a custom of gathering my oldest friends for sauna and roleplaying games in January. This year it almost didn’t happen since we had a chance of location. We ended up not having a sauna but we did have great time with my newest game Cliques & Powers.

It all started out as a joke. I just randomly asked that wether we should have a fantasy or teenage type of game. My players immediately got excited about playing teenagers and I got stuck with creating such a game. As usual I went with Archipelago. Continue reading

Season of the Witch, Part 2 (and 3)

It took us some time to get back to this (well, actually about two months) but finally returned to colonial America. Since I’m already writing a campaign debrief on this forum I decided that we do not really need another one. Thus this post is mostly about stealing stuff from other games to improve your own.

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Love in Innsmouth

Archipelago 3 by Matthjis Holter has become my “go to” game for oneshots. I might have only written one game for it (as it is) but when I get an idea for a story that might work as a game it is usually the first one to pop up in my mind.

Today I was thinking about a Solstice scenario and while listening to H.P.Lovecraft’s Historical Society’s excellent albums I began to wonder how could I capture the feeling of Shadow of Innsmouth in a way that all players could enjoy it. Aaaaaaand I was quite quickly thinking it in an Archipelago way.

I might not be able to write it all but here is the quicky summary (a draft at best) for “Love in Innsmouth” (or something).

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Using My Draft Piles for Something, pt. 2

Last year I wrote about creating characters by using the otherwise worthless cards I’m left with because of active drafting. This is a continuation of that, somewhat based on Tommi Brander’s comment on the earlier article and somewhat based on something Ville said on our forums.

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The difference between CoCian and BWian philosophies of skills

Roleplaying games can represent stuff about real life that you don’t necessarily stop to think about. I’ll write about one here, the difference between how Call of Cthulhu and Burning Wheel handle skills, and what those differences say about human capabilities. And why it matters quite a lot to me, personally. Continue reading