Tag Archives: game systems

Feline interlude, 5/29/25

Posted on by Henry

Life has been very full of baby recently. I don’t have a full post for you.

I’ve been lucky enough to play a bit of Cities Without Number with a neighbor and some friends. My other games are basically on hiatus, but being able to start early, end early, and walk less than ten minutes to and from game is amazing. There’s also no way I could be doing this without sometimes bringing baby Gibby with me, or sometimes coordinating extra support for Ley. Asking Ley to take care of the baby without any support while I go play RPGs is no good. Having a two-month old is a lot of work.

Cities Without Number, like other Kevin Crawford titles, could really use some editing. It’s… acceptable. The text is definitely better organized and written than some other RPGs or boardgames I’ve seen. Some of Crawford’s verbosity adds evocative texture to both system and setting, and his approach certainly produces consistently fun results. But…

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Building Consent (in RPGs)

Posted on by Henry

Consent is vitally important to RPGs (especially horror RPGs), yet is often taken for granted. Often, consent’s building blocks—trust, plus shared social expectations, desires, and goals—are only analyzed after something has gone wrong and the illusion of agreement is broken. I don’t think anyone needs to constantly check for consent at every new moment in their games, but you can save yourself some anguish if you establish those building blocks before playing.

Why do I think consent is so important in RPGs?

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Game system flavor & optional rules

Posted on by Henry

This is pulled from a conversation I had recently about optional rules.

Rules combine to make systems, and systems create flavor by shaping the permissible and supported space of a game. Any skillful or willful group of players (the storyteller is a player too) can play outside the rules of the game system they’re using—that’s normal!—but that play isn’t supported by the system, and it isn’t part of the flavor the system creates.

Optional rules are opportunities…

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Define Your Terms! Talking about RPGs

Posted on by Henry

Let’s start with the title.  When I say RPG, I (usually) don’t mean rocket-propelled grenade.  Usually.

No, this post is meant to unpack the terminology surrounding role-playing games, and to be used as a future point of reference.  I’m also going to refer back to Mattias’ excellent post about role-playing, because he did such a damn fine job of describing what role-playing is.

All three of us have written about role-playing games (check out the GMing category, and look at the older articles).  Yet for the most part our posts have assumed a certain level of familiarity with RPGs and their terminology.  I’ve certainly presumed that other people know what I’m talking about; but what the heck does it mean when I call a system “sparsely elegant“?

In an effort to minimize confusion, here’s a quick primer that will begin to bring you up to speed.  I’ll do my best not to cover things that were done better elsewhere (see Mattias’ article, really), but there may be a little bit of overlap.

The terminology and topics that I plan to cover…

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