Deeper in the Game
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Deeper in the Game
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From geekdom to freedom

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Game Hype: Dragon Slayers
I had picked up GILA games Dragon Slayers a while back and just hadn’t gotten around to reading it. Which is a shame because I think this game actually does a lot of really clever things in a very understated way. Gameplay-wise, I think Dragon Slayers hits a lot of buttons for what many modern […]
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December 22, 2025 at 1:59 AM
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Murkdice’s 12 NPCs – A fun little NPC flag system
Murkdice wrote The Only 12 NPCs You Need and it feels like a great little meta tool to throw on top of whatever game system you have where you need to have NPCs with motivations and goals. I’ve always found that a better way to prep and run games; the players play the NPCs, the […]
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December 9, 2025 at 1:58 AM
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The Right Nightmares
There is a fun space in RPG stuff you can play with; hard enough topics, but not so hard or tough it makes you feel depressed and shitty. One of my friends basically pointed out the fun of it is that you can make “fighting back and winning” against the shitty issues part of the […]
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December 3, 2025 at 1:52 AM
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Game Hype: Threadcutters
I had crowdfunded Threadcutters and just recently got the physical copy. In this game, you’re playing supernatural assassins who are running hits on supernatural entities that control one of the four worlds. It feels like a meeting between John Wick, White Wolf, Persona videogames, and Machineries of the Empire. Each assassin gets blessings from some […]
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December 1, 2025 at 1:52 AM
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Loading Screen Infodump – in your tabletop
We just finished our Primetime Adventures game; a fun little thing was I made episode title cards using The Evangelion Title Card Generator. Between that and recent thinking about making quicksheet documents, it occurred to me that maybe for the setting heavier games, you could prep a little single screen/page bit of setting info, to […]
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November 21, 2025 at 1:48 AM
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An example of a Quicksheet
Since I got hype for Fallen Blades / Endless Stars, I put together a little quicksheet document in Google Docs and figured it’d be a good example to point to. How we organize it Well, I’m using Google Docs because it has a lot of different functions that work well for my game circle; you […]
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November 8, 2025 at 1:12 AM
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Character Keeper – Fallen Blades / Endless Stars
I set up a Google Sheets set of character sheets with drop down menus for the Mazesword Moves & Guardian Powers. It’s nothing complicated but it should handle the player character sheet side of things. Anyway, this is a good chance to talk a little bit about online character sheets and VTTs. Generally we’re juggling […]
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November 6, 2025 at 1:10 AM
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Facilitation Fatigue Part 2 – competing access needs
Earlier this year, I wrote about facilitation fatigue – the build up of fatigue of doing coordination around play, not playing itself. Organizing schedules, teaching the game, tracking/cleaning up shared records/notes, etc. Over in a Discord conversation, people were talking about organizing online files for play, and I was sharing an example of one of […]
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November 5, 2025 at 1:10 AM
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Game Hype: Fallen Blades / Endless Stars
I picked up a copy of Fallen Blades / Endless Stars and only just got a chance to look at it today. While both Galactic & Going Rogue give you those great Star Wars heroic / tragic structures of fighting an evil empire in space, Fallen Blades / Endless Stars focuses in on the Jedi […]
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November 4, 2025 at 1:10 AM
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The Best Conflict
Last night in our Primetime Adventures game, I saw what was probably the best stakes for a conflict ever. Our campaign is conceptually like if you took Evangelion and mixed it with Control – people are using power armor to fight supernatural anomalies; the suits are also not safe and have costs to pilots using […]
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October 27, 2025 at 1:01 AM
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Setting and Campaign Magnets
I’m looking at old Legend of the Five Rings stuff to do a conversion to Sword Opera, and along the way ?I’m having lots of thoughts about 90s RPG design around settings and broader theory. Campaign Magnets A “campaign magnet” is an idea in the setting, designed to inspire people to build a campaign around […]
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October 8, 2025 at 12:40 AM
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Do you play to win?
There’s a few conversations I’ve seen online and on video about the issue of challenge in RPGs and it reminded me of the main reason I start The Same Page Tool with this: Do you play to win? a) Yes, you totally play to win! The win conditions are…b) Good play isn’t a win/lose kind […]
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October 8, 2025 at 12:40 AM
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The dungeon as story vs. the dungeon as game
There’s some discussions going on around dungeon crawling in RPGs, especially with stuff like Dungeon Meshi or Frieren being amazing stories that do use dungeons. However. I think the thing sometimes people miss is that the dungeons are interesting plot points and set dressing, but the key role they play in those stories is about […]
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September 24, 2025 at 12:32 AM
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Forbiddances and Forbidden Wishes
Devin White had a post on Bluesky, about how things being not chosen in RPGs has it’s own interesting aspect. (In the example, it was a spell having extremely annoying side effects. It also makes me think a bit about Momatoes’ ARC game where recharging spell uses often involves harsh costs like giving up a […]
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September 24, 2025 at 12:32 AM
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How bad do you want it to hurt?
There’s intersections going on between games I’m playing in and conversations online in multiple places about RPGs and what level of rawness they bring to the table. ** We’re playing Primetime Adventures. The characters are fighting memetic entities that are slowly eating people’s memories and existence, a bit of a cross up between Satoshi Kon’s […]
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September 24, 2025 at 12:32 AM
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Apocalypse World & the missing Fiction to Clocks
(I swear I wrote a post about this before… but it’s not coming up on my searches so… here we are) Over on a Discord, someone was talking about clock mechanics in games and how they’re generally unsatisfying. I agree; most games took the idea of “clocks” from Apocalypse World, or one of the PbtA […]
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September 24, 2025 at 12:32 AM
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Stressors vs. Conflicts
A thing I see people mix up, sometimes, in games which focus on emotional conflict & drama, is the “stressors” vs. the conflicts. Let’s use a movie example – Pan’s Labyrinth. The conflict for Ofelia is surviving her abusive stepfather – physically, emotionally, etc. The ongoing civil war, is A conflict, but is not THE […]
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September 22, 2025 at 12:32 AM
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Itchio Game Bundle for Diana – need games
https://itch.io/jam/help-diana-moon-thrive-fundraiser-aid-bundle Folks are putting together an itchio game bundle to fundraise for my friend Diana. If you have games, zines, or other things to drop in the bundle, please help! Diana has been the tech master for our Reclaimers streams and has been probably the most active on the RPG scene out of all of […]
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September 7, 2025 at 12:28 AM
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Nobi Nobi Sword in Play
This weekend I got to sit down and play Nobi Nobi: Sword with two friends and see how it actually runs. It did not run too far from what I expected, but here’s some thoughts. First, the set up was easy since all you’re doing is choosing a pregen character type and pulling out a […]
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September 11, 2025 at 12:35 AM
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Game Hype: Trespasser
I picked up Trespasser which is a paranormal, post apocalyptic military RPG (specifically zone fiction & military moe). Influences include Stalker, Roadside Picnic, Forever Winter, Girls Und Panzer, and probably a bunch of other things I’m not up on. Apparently sometime in the future, there’s a big war and despite the hypertech being thrown around, […]
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September 7, 2025 at 12:28 AM
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Plot Clocks vs. Pacing Flips
I’m running Primetime Adventures and just read ARC, so pacing mechanics are on my mind, specifically the subset of pacing systems that bring a campaign to an end. This could be an exact number like Primetime Adventures, or it could be looser like ARC, Polaris or Poison’d – you can see it coming but it […]
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September 7, 2025 at 12:28 AM
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Game Hype: ARC by Momatoes
I bought ARC some time ago, I just didn’t have the brain focus to read it. I not only wish I did, I also wish I bought it even sooner, because it seems like the perfect kind of game for my circles. So the broad premise is you create a fantasy setting where a great […]
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September 7, 2025 at 12:28 AM
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Nobi Nobi Sword
I picked up the Nobi Nobi RPG collection and have started looking at these RPG microgames. My take from an initial skim is that this is probably a fun set of “intro RPGs” that are great for pick up games and one shots, but would not be a general recommendation for folks looking for a […]
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September 2, 2025 at 12:28 AM
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Primetime Adventures & The shift in stakes
I’ve been running a Primetime Adventures campaign while taking a little bit of a brain break from our Errant campaign. PTA is nice in that I typically spend 10 minutes prep between sessions – I write down the first scene of the session, a couple of plot twists that might be good for play (which […]
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September 2, 2025 at 12:28 AM
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GM Prep – a little like hiking
It’s been years since I was last hiking, but something occurred to me. GM Prep is a bit like deciding what you’re taking with you when you go hiking. If you bring the right stuff, your experience is more comfortable, easier, and you’re ready for problems. If you bring too little, you have to do […]
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August 27, 2025 at 12:27 AM