Daily Archives: March 15, 2006

Review: Phil Brucato’s Deliria

Posted on March 15, 2006 by admin

Deliria is a fascinating game and ultimately worth your money, but it isn’t without its problems. It raises several questions. Can a genre be effectively “owned” by a particular line? What’s the role of incremental design in a hobby that’s…

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Why the Lumpley Principle is Horseshit

Posted on March 15, 2006 by admin

This truism of RPG theory is garbage. It doesn’t mean it was a stupid idea, but it’s fairly representative of several collective neuroses that afflict the hobby.

This is it:

“System (including but not limited to ‘the rules’) is defined…

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Two Types of Gamers, Two Types of Games

Posted on March 15, 2006 by admin

Lately, I’ve been wondering of what we call roleplaying games are really two to four different forms that have been clumped together by the fact that the hobby has a terrible creative culture. Not to beat on the Forge any…

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Folk Theory and the Discourse of Power in RPGs

Posted on March 15, 2006 by admin

Bits of this have been percolating in my head, and some recent posts on [info]mearls‘ journal reminded me that I want to get back to it.

One of the distinctive elements of roleplying is a strong (if…

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Immersion and the Method

Posted on March 15, 2006 by admin

Here’s another bit where I talk about how it’s unfortunate that gamers don’t go for cross-disciplinary thinking in a big way.

Observe this:

http://urdwell.blogspot.com/2006/02/immersionism-accepted-wisdom-and.html

This is rediscovering the premise of method acting. The Staislavski Method’s basis is that you can’t…

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Immersion-Fu!

Posted on March 15, 2006 by admin

After reading comments and thinking, I have a few further words about Immersion.

It’s easy to diss a strawman version of Immersion for one reason: inauthenticity. We are not our characters and cannot be our characters, ever. All critiques of…

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Food Is the First Thing; Morals Follow On!

Posted on March 15, 2006 by admin

I admit it; I am a bit clueless about trends in RPGs sometimes. For example, until hints of it showed up on my own LJ, I was largely unaware of exactly how bitter the argument between immersionists and story-focused “narrativists”…

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Five Rough Problems With RPG Design Culture

Posted on March 15, 2006 by admin

1)The really insidious thing about most RPG discussion and writing is that it attempts to convert active play into passive consumption of the text.

2)The subtext behind a lot of game design is the designer’s (acknowledged or not, commerical or…

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Five More Rough Points About RPG Design

Posted on March 15, 2006 by admin

1) The degree to which an RPG is complete as a single product is the degree to which it undermines attempts to support it. D&D’s completeness is a excellent reason not to buy a anything else for it, especially since…

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Five Gamer Fallacies

Posted on March 15, 2006 by admin

1. Obviously X written this way because the designer didn’t know about my special area of interest, experience or some bit of relevant trivia.

By far, this is the main thing fans really should shut the fuck up about. The…

Posted in Tabletop RPGs: Art Without Prestige | Tagged | 1 Comment