Pursuit
I’ve always been interested in the idea of a horror game where the player is the monster. Though not generally regarded as a horror game per se, in the party game Werewolf the players each take on the role of…
Tag RPG
Other Lives
Isn’t it strange how complex and overwhelming our feelings about fictional people can become? There is a conflict of impulses: The sympathetic and the dramatic. We want characters to be happy for the same reason we want our friends and…
The Contract
Rules are most of what defines a game, but there tends to be a method, a principle, by which a game’s rules are applied, and these principles, the meta-rules that dictate the design of the game to the designers, are…
Balance and Expression
The capability that games offer for self-expression is exciting, but can also be onerous. In much the same way as we are made uncomfortable by articles telling us what the way we move or dress or speak says about us,…
Agency and Narrative
“Anyone who prioritizes the delivery of narrative over support for player agency fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the medium.” – Bizarro Hepler I recently encountered this quotation in my twitter feed, and it got me thinking. I generally agree with…
Playing in Character
Game genres are a strange and many-splendored thing, a grab-bag of features and perspectives and settings which came together through common usage and convention. The games came first, then the words to describe those games, then the genre classifications built…