One of my biggest challenges as a designer is figuring out what success looks like for me. Do I want to make something that gets streamed? That makes a ton of money? That wins awards? That gets praised by designers I admire?
Of those types of success, there's also some that align more or less with what I'm good at. I'd love to be praised by the serious designers I know, but I think my wheelhouse is action adventure games that pair well with good friends and jokes.
Jul 6, 2020 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
There's a lot of reasons D&D defaults to colonial violence (killing things to take their stuff) but one reason I hadn't really considered: the game has fairly few hooks for discovering alternative solutions.
Violence is the one clear answer that always works in D&D. The ways to do it are written in big letters all over the character sheet. There are other options, too, but it's less clear how they can achieve goals.
Jun 29, 2020 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Relevant to recent D&D discussions: I look at the concepts in games in terms of what they allow/support/encourage.
Allow is pretty easy, since tabletop RPGs are books, whereas you are a person. No matter what the book says you can do whatever you want. Unlike a videogame modifications are free and can even be easy to a point.
Jun 11, 2020 • 24 tweets • 4 min read
Okay, I promised some things from my personal DW2E notebook. Some of these things improve some of the bad parts of DW2E, but I don't think I can cover all of them today.
As a quick disclaimer: these are my designs only.
Jun 11, 2020 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
I want to highlight Ajey's comments here because they are _completely and entirely correct._
DW is at best a reflection of where I was as an ally 10 years ago, and even then it has a lot of things that are entirely racist, sexist, or ableist and which I did not notice.
Ajey is right that I followed him. And I followed them for exactly this kind of content: to point out how I am racist, wrong, and not living up to my ideals.
May 28, 2019 • 9 tweets • 1 min read
The more real superhero comics get the worse they are. Solving global warming with Superman will never address the kind of real world changes we need to make. If Gotham has a shady new drug, The Wayne Foundation asks just poor more money into social services.
Superheroes have unrealistic tools, so they need unrealistic problems.
Apr 2, 2019 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I finally finished Firewatch and I like it a lot. But I'm fighting the urge to consider it not a "game" due to the lack of meaningful choice.
I think I'm wrong, so let's try this:
A game is interactive art the gives the user a constructed objective.
Art here being the tweet-length encapsulation of the definition Scott McCloud brings up in Understanding Comics: human activity that doesn't grow from a basic survival instinct.
Feb 11, 2019 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Credibly accused abuser Zak S was a notable part of the OSR, but fuck if I'm going to let hime drag down the whole scene with him. You want good OSR stuff? I got your covered.
Looking for melancholy delves in to strange shifting planes as in Alice In Wonderland? Gardens of Ynn by Emmy Allen is hot shit. The procedures around creating a shifting 'dungeon' of crumbling fey gardens is beautiful.
This entire thread is excellent, and the underlying point (nobody is in RPGs today for a payday) is very true. But it can also seem to paint a picture of a dying sales market, and so I want to offer some other perspectives on this in particular. (Thread)
