Hey Vincent Baker 

Hey Vincent Baker 

Hey Vincent Baker ! I just got the hard copy of Unframed and have been lovingly imbibing its pages along with some Bruchladdie Peat Project.

I gotta say, your essay is sublime. Its wonderful when you can ‘get inside’ one of your favourite designers headspace  for a while. This struck me the most, even after playing almost exclusively PbtA games for the last few years:

Take a few minutes to think about how the world is, how things work, and what people are like, in principle, in the abstract. You’ve probably been doing this already, by gut, as you’ve been imagining the game and getting excited to play. It won’t hurt to make it explicit.

Cultivate principles and contradictions as a way of thinking of things. Find the principles underlying the characters in the books you read, the setting design in the movies you watch, even the real-world physical principles that underlie the weather and the social principles that underlie the communities around you. Find the contradictions that make one character stand out from others, that motivate a character to act against her allies or herself. Notice to yourself the contradictions in your friends and in your own experience.

When you improvise a place with inbuilt contradictions, you do more than give it character and detail. You give the players something to fix on, hook into, bounce off of, talk about. They can use it to position their characters and set them up for action.

Gold, solid gold. I thank you for opening my brain to your maelstrom yet again!

The map from session 2 of our Katoomba overgrown by nano-tech sentient plants game.

The map from session 2 of our Katoomba overgrown by nano-tech sentient plants game.

The map from session 2 of our Katoomba overgrown by nano-tech sentient plants game.

Cast is Oni the Faceless, Scarlett the Battlebabe, Silk the Brainer, Sun the Touchstone, and Tai the Savvyhead.

We have angelic children that are overtaken by a plant virus, a holding in an old eye-max cinema, rival warlords from sunken sydney sending biker gangs to raid and harass…

Its all pretty wicked.

Ok folks, I need your help!

Ok folks, I need your help!

Ok folks, I need your help!

I’m running desperately short of NPC wants and body parts to follow around in our AW game.

I’ve used the DW instinct list for inspiration, which is kinda helpful, but its the body parts I’m drawing blanks on when I leap forward with named NPCs…

There are only so many folks that follow their gut, their dick or their cowardly heart around.

Any evocative ideas? Lists even?

This will be my OutlawHeir’s Stronghold: The indomitable Broch. I Love brochs :)

This will be my OutlawHeir’s Stronghold: The indomitable Broch. I Love brochs 🙂

This will be my OutlawHeir’s Stronghold: The indomitable Broch. I Love brochs 🙂

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k2GK5e8jrjQ/T5QLlPN1_8I/AAAAAAAACBQ/cv_k6awWGBA/s1600/mousa_broch_kite_aerial_photo_02.jpg

So.

So.

So… I’ve went to the Saga Musuem today in Reykjavik and despite its ‘staged’ appearance, was sufficiently inspired to stay home tonight ( instead of hitting the town or doing yet another failed northern lights tour) and play some Sagas solo, using a set of runes to ask some provocative stake questions and work the agenda. Haven’t decided which playbook to go with yet, but will update as I go.

We have been having a lot of fun with the Seidkona’s Volva rune-casting move and inspiring all sorts of wonderful…

We have been having a lot of fun with the Seidkona’s Volva rune-casting move and inspiring all sorts of wonderful…

We have been having a lot of fun with the Seidkona’s Volva rune-casting move and inspiring all sorts of wonderful norn fated events into the game. But the player of the Seidkona was wondering if we could incorporate actual runestones or runebones into the mechanics. I feel rather stumped since the Futhark have so many meanings and variations, but perhaps was thinking of coding the runes to a tag for each?

Feoh could be tagged with ‘feared’ for instance, or ‘burned’, whereas Radah could be tagged with ‘re-conciled’ or ‘relocated’, and Is could have ‘isolated’ or ‘alone’ tagged to it.

Maybe with a draw equal to a player’s wyrd that then set some precedent for the scene, like a FATE invoke or compel – narratively influencing the results of moves and the direction of the scene, rather than mechanically re-inforcing them either way.

Thoughts? Is this too much?