The 20' By 20' Room

Jonathan Walton's Anathema

Posted by Neel Krishnaswami on September 15, 2006 at 03:31 PM

Over at his personal blog, Jonathan Walton has been cooking up a homebrew freeform version of Exalted, called Anathema.

I'm posting a translation of a PC I played below the cut....

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Dolphin game thoughts

Posted by Neel Krishnaswami on May 19, 2006 at 10:13 AM

Here are some random thoughts about Jonathan's dolphin game.

One difference between dolphins and people is that (as far as we know) dolphins don't use language. So a dolphin rpg should not require the use of language. This is not an insurmountable barrier, though, since intentionality -- being able to imagine the responses of others -- has been observed in plenty of animals besides humans, and I think that act of sympathetic imagination is the essential feature in roleplaying. So, one design constraint is to make it playable without words. This shouldn't be too hard, though, because improv-ers do it all the time (eg, making the actors use nonsense syllables in the improv).

Another difference is that dolphins have this cool sonar thing, and  we don't. Somehow I'd like the game to require the players to locate stuff using aural cues rather than (say) visual cues, just to get that feature of dolphin-ness across.

State of the Memeage

Posted by Ginger Stampley on December 1, 2004 at 11:45 AM

I posted about writing exercises a couple of weeks ago, but since then, there have been a number of changes that I should mention for those who are interested in gameblogging goodness and prompts to inspire posts.

Game Dreams, hosted by Doc, have gone the way of the dodo. Goodbye, Doc, and thanks for all the fish.

Bryant is probably too modest to admit that he still very occasionally posts a Monday Mashup.

Nuadha is trying to get back on the wagon and post Wednesday Weirds on a regular basis.

Li is now doing Lunchtime Polls with questions of interest.

And Scott, who has just started a blog dedicated to one-shots and convention games, has the start of a meme going. Maybe if a bunch of us answer it, he'll keep posting.

Last, but not least, there's a yahoo group that gets prompts for some of these memes (Wednesday Weird, Monday Mashup, and IRE for sure). The group even has an RSS feed for those of you who'd rather see it in your aggregator than your mailbox. Contact Bryant if you want to learn how to make your meme posts show up on the list automatically.

15 Questions, answers

Posted by Neel Krishnaswami on November 24, 2004 at 03:07 PM

Here are my answers to the gaming questionnaire Ginger posted.

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15 Questions

Posted by Ginger Stampley on November 23, 2004 at 11:36 AM

Our own Matt Snyder is too modest to mention that he has a gaming meme going in his LiveJournal. I've answered here, and I encourage the rest of you to go answer it too and give Matt some warm fuzzies.

Lunchtime Polls

Posted by Ginger Stampley on November 18, 2004 at 12:32 PM

My friend Li's experiment with asking about Supers games was so successful that she's now doing Lunchtime Polls, the first of which is about your favorite historical period for RPGs.

I'll also use this opportunity to stump for Game Dreams, the most recent of which deals with religion and RPGs. Go forth and gameblog!

Lexicon sighting

Posted by Bryant on August 30, 2004 at 10:36 AM

Morbus Iff is starting a Gamegrene Lexicon. It's not tied to a specific system, and in fact the nature of the world isn't even defined, so this is about as loose as a Lexicon setup gets -- it'll be interesting to watch it develop.

Meanwhile, I'm considering a Vampire: the Requiem Lexicon covering Las Vegas. Interested parties should comment or drop me a line.

24 Hour RPG

Posted by Bryant on July 23, 2004 at 02:49 PM

The 24 hour RPG concept has its own site, and there's currently a "Grand Act" going on. I'm not sure about that particular chunk of terminology, but I shall not be churlish: I like the 24 hour game concept. It seems to me that there's some value in a shotgun blast of concepts, polished or not. I wouldn't expect a slew of new campaigns out of this, but I would expect a slew of new campaign ideas, if you see the difference -- it's a writing exercise with a twist. I am in favor of anything that gives me new ideas to play with.

Game Dreams

Posted by Ginger Stampley on June 18, 2004 at 01:22 PM

Mitch Evans of Doc's Blog has decided to pick up where WISH left off with a new writing exercise, Game Dreams. He posted the first one today. Those of you who need a writing exercise fix, head over that way.

The Last WISH

Posted by Bryant on June 12, 2004 at 10:26 AM

Ginger has posted her last WISH. If you've never participated or read the WISHes, you've been missing out. Without Ginger's example of gaming blogs as discussion forums, I wouldn't have started the 20' by 20' Room. And so I wanted to answer the final WISH here.

Tell me your favorite war story. Why is it your favorite? What does it show about your character or the game/campaign you were playing? What does it exemplify about why you like gaming?

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