#RPGaDAY 2017, Day 21: Best Game With the Fewest Words

“Which RPG does the most with the least words?” asks #RPGaDAY on Day 21.

Ah! That’s simple — It’s John Harper’s Lady Blackbird. You get a movie serial opening throwing you right into the action and promising amazing moments, a peek into an imaginative setting, and worldbuilding in the character’s stats. There’s magic, ’cause this person has it. There are fantasy races, because this one is one. There are large beasts floating in the nether because they’re only mentioned in this one diagram. It’s a game that does so much in a tiny little packet where half of the pages have a half-page worth of material repeated on them.

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#RPGaDAY 2016, Day 16: Keeping Track of NPCs

Another question from Tracy Barnett, “How do you prefer to keep track of your game’s NPCs and characters?”

When I’m in a face-to-face game, I use index cards (which should be on sale right now at the beginning of the school year), but I used to use a binder. For online games, I use a word document.

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#RPGaDAY 2016, Day 15: Player-Driven Gaming

Well, it has been quite a bit of time since I’ve been able to write about #RPGaDAY. Truthfully, I was busy laying out roleplaying game books and other miscellany. One of these projects was Unknown Armies, which has a group setting and character creation section that’s really fun, which leads into this day’s question about the role of a GM in your games.

I started gaming in the 1980’s. Back then, the way to play roleplaying games was you players were just that: playing in the GM’s story. The person making up the game world and the story was a Dungeon Master or a Game Master. That guy was never referred to as a “player”. Most games didn’t allow for any player to affect the world except for reacting.

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