Origins 2019 Recap: Roleplaying Games Edition

Well, it's just about a full month later, but I'm finally getting the second half of my Origins 2019 recap online! While I got to demo a few boardgames, where the core of my time went was the Games on Demand room, where I played a potpourri of tabletop RPGs for hours. If you're unfamiliar with the event, it features a large number of GMs and facilitators who run various tabletop RPGs that they want to see played. Players sign up, show up for a slot, and pick a game off of a menu offered by the GMs. It's a great way to try out some games you've heard of, but never gotten to the table, and I took full advantage of that. From Inception-esque therapy to a zombie drama that felt straight out of The Walking Dead, here's the adventures I had at this Origins...

My Star-Crossed Moments at Origins 2019

The Sunday of Origins 2019 was winding to a close, and I was making my way through the dealers' hall, seeing what was on sale. There I was, catching up with friends at the Bully Pulpit booth, seeing what the company had on offer. And there it was, one last copy of Alex Roberts' Star-Crossed. The final copy, almost as if it were destined. I told myself that I wanted to make a sweep of the hall, that I wanted to be sure that there wasn't anything else I wanted to buy at Origins. I made my way through the rest of the hall, but it wasn't long before an unassailable feeling took root in me.

I knew. Not two minutes after walking away from the booth, I knew. There could be nothing else, there was nothing else. But to explain this, I'm going to have to back up a couple of days...

Game Stories: Why RPGs Need Game Designers

I love boardgames. Interestingly, my involvement in boardgames increased dramatically shortly after my involvement in the tabletop roleplaying hobby; this was around 2011, as the second wave of new and popular boardgames started sweeping over America and Wil Wheaton's Tabletop had its genesis. Because I got into boardgaming and RPGs at around the same time, I start thinking about how they relate to one another, and what benefits tabletop RPGs can reap from studying other tabletop gaming...

I Made a Thing: Schism Song Alpha

So, this time around, I've got something new for all of you: a game that I'm slowly starting to polish up. It's inspired by the likes of Bastion, with a dash of Apocalypse World, and it's been through a lot of mental revisions already! Someday maybe I'll break out into the story of how radically this initial alpha has changed from my initial conception of the game.

And this is what I've wrought! MWAHAHA! Um, er. So what I'd love you to do is to read it, have a look at it, and try it out. Let me know what sorts of speed bumps you find in the game, stuff that really needs clearing up, or ways that it falls short of its goal, which is to pull together a vibrant story. The structure of the game is heavily inspired by the concept of music jams, and I'm interested to see how well that translated.

And though I'm short on time these days, I'm open to running a session with people over Google Hangouts.

Schism Song Core: Alpha v0.1

Review: Mythic Mortals

Who doesn't want to take the battle to titanic foes, wielding super-awesome powers in cool action scenes? I know I do, and that's exactly the itch that Mythic Mortals aims to scratch. You play as humans imbued with the spark of ancient gods' power, fighting back when the Ancients come back to reclaim the world. (There's a little more to the story than that, but I'm condensing.) The game's goals are to give players a fun, vibrant, action-packed experience that's also very straightforward to learn and play.

I received a review copy of this game for the purposes of this post.

Character Building: Swords Without Master, Christmas Edition!

First things first, if you haven't played Swords Without Master, you need to. It's a sword-and-sorcery RPG that draws on the roots of the genre, and it's the most evocative game I've played, fantasy or non-fantasy! Here's what you need to know, first and foremost: it's a game of perilous deeds, mighty Rogues, and wondrous adventures. And we're going to create a character for it, a very...special character. After all, it is the Christmas season...

Game Stories: Dungeon World

Surprise! I'm not just talking about board games in this series! As I write up these posts, I know that I don't want to stray from my RPG roots, and those roots are what this post is about. So welcome to Dungeon World, a game about something that I call "pulp fantasy", filled with larger-than-life heroes and villains in a fantastical setting. It's the Powered by the Apocalypse game which is the most widely-known in the RPG community, for good reason--it's a really fun game that riffs off of familiar fantasy adventuring with style.

Review: Girls Elsewhere (a Heroine RPG Supplement)

Upfront point: massive apologies to Josh, because I said I'd do this review a long time ago. But there's no time like the present to change that! Girls Elsewhere is a supplement to Josh Jordan's storytelling game Heroine, which I reviewed previously on this blog last year. It's a supplement that expands the types of stories that you might tell with Heroine, and it's a wonderful way to broaden your scope of storytelling for the game.

Review: Heroine RPG by Josh Jordan

Hello again! Perhaps I do stand a chance at getting the blog updated semi-regularly now. This time around, I'm reviewing +Josh T Jordan's game Heroine. (PDF is found here.) It's an RPG that gives players roles in the story of a young girl who enters a strange Other World (think of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or Alice in Wonderland) and is challenged with saving it by growing as a person.

(As full disclosure, I received an electronic copy of Heroine for review purposes.)

Becoming: an RPG of Legends

Becoming is a pretty sweet game. I'm just gonna say that off the bat, and because it's past 1 AM here, I'm gonna keep it brief for all of you. (Getting in a quick post before I head off to CONvergence, wot?) It recently funded, and they're looking for a little more money for an awesome stretch goal. So get over there and check it out, once I explain why.

dSection: And Then I Take My Turn...

So, hi. That went nowhere fast. One weekend, I was at a con, then I came down with a case of "con crud", and the next week, I was off at a hospital helping to install and run tech support for my company's software. Now I'm back! Let's hope that I don't stay away quite so long next time. This time around, I'm covering Hollowpoint's unique initiative system, looking at how it encourages quick, violent action. As before: this is NOT playtested, and is possibly horrendously out-of-balance because it whacks up some core ideas in the game. I tinker; it's what I do with this post. Tinkering with things generally makes them blow up.

dSection: Escalate! Escalate! Escalaaaaaaaate!

I am so sorry for the horrid pun. "dSection" is an idea that I had a while back that I'll probably carry out for a few posts. My intention is to have a series of posts where I delve into various games, dissect out an element from a game's rules system, and then discuss how to apply it back into D&D, as a model for how to do it with a more traditional game. I'm doing that because D&D is a nice baseline that everyone in the hobby knows and can relate to. For the debut, I'm gonna take a closer look at part of Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard. As one last note: this has not been playtested in any way. Mostly, it's my mulling over an idea. So take that into account if you've got critiques; this is more about the base idea, and not the details.

Ludicrus Gaming: Why This is Ludicrus

Hello there! I'd imagine that most of you folks are coming here from my old blog, The Player's Side of the Screen. You might be wondering a few things. Most importantly, why a new blog (and name)? Of secondary importance, what the blazes does "Ludicrus" mean; am I just a bad speller? The answers to both of those are, unsurprisingly, linked. So sit tight, and let me lay it all out for you: what Ludicrus is, and why I deemed it necessary to shift things up a bit.