Edward Turner
Roleplaying
Story games are great fun, but who has the time? Gathering with your dearest friends, entering a land of whimsy and wonderment, and embarking upon life-changing adventures… ugh. That’s four to six hours of sheer delight! Some of us have TV shows we want to watch. … read more »
Roleplaying
Love. It’s a many-splendored thing. It’s all ya need. It will, we are told, lift us up to where we belong. And yet, while love stories are omnipresent in media, even if mostly as tacked-on subplots, they don’t have a place in most roleplaying games. … read more »
Roleplaying
When you think about RPGs, you usually think about rolling dice. From the humble, six-sided cube, to the iconic d20, to the absurd, hundred-sided Zocchihedron, there’s seemingly no end to the variety of dice out there. Their potential grows even further when you factor in … read more »
Roleplaying
Most horror RPGs rely on the strong hand of a GM. Whether it’s the crunchy, complex investigations of Call of Cthulhu or the unpredictable, rules-light chaos of Dread, there’s someone at the reins to make sure the players are suffering. GM-less story games, however, have … read more »
Roleplaying
In many roleplaying games, it’s the GM’s job to get the level of conflict just right. They provide the goons with guns kicking down doors, giving the players a common antagonist to unite against. A GM gives a story momentum. In a GM-less story game, … read more »
Roleplaying
Metrofinál Transantiago, by Jonathan Walton, is a story game about the apocalypse. Not a minor disaster, the complete end of days. Eight bodhisattvas—people of such unimaginable spiritual power that they are essentially gods—are wandering the world as it crumbles into ashes. Their task: pave the … read more »
Roleplaying
J.R.R. Tolkien’s influence lies behind a lot of modern fantasy gaming. It’s no secret that Dungeons and Dragons is, to put things politely, a big sloppy pile of appropriated concepts. The elves and dwarves you see in you player’s handbook are based on Tolkien’s elves … read more »
Roleplaying
The Deep Forest is a reinterpretation of The Quiet Year, a mapmaking game about a small post-apocalyptic community’s struggle to survive in a harsh environment. But in this game, it’s a community of monsters, who have just driven invading humans off of their land. Read more »
Roleplaying
Many story games, including big names like Fiasco or Kingdom, are built around scene framing. In these games, players take turns setting scenes, stepping into a temporary Game Master role in an otherwise GM-less game. When you’re the scene-setter, you decide where the next scene … read more »
Roleplaying
Fiasco by Billy Pulpit Games is one of the best-known examples of a “story game” RPG: narrative-heavy, rules-light, often made for GM-less one-shot play. Popular for being featured on the first season of Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop, it’s stayed relevant because it’s great at what it … read more »
