Threads of Narrative: Managing Open Worlds in Tabletop Roleplaying

Game Masters of tabletop roleplaying games have to create a story that works well, and that can often be difficult not only because a story has to be engaging, but because it’s difficult to keep track of the way in which a story will unfold; it’s easy to forget about some minor elements, or conflate them too heavily with the main plot, and wind up coming to a screeching halt. One great way to handle this is to think of each plot as a thread; it develops from the previous events in sequence, but will eventually be brought to fruition by the players’ actions.

Continue reading “Threads of Narrative: Managing Open Worlds in Tabletop Roleplaying”

Case Studies in Formatting

I’ve been a bit behind on the latest updates for Street Rats, partly because I’ve been working on figuring out ways to get Street Rats unified into a more coherent document that does away with some of the wasted space (and partly due to working on other projects, I must admit): I consider the 200 to 300 page range to be the ideal for independent publisher games, especially since Street Rats has no art in it at this point: it’s over eighty thousand words long, needs editing, and really needs to be improved to meet commercial standards. Most importantly, however, I don’t want it to look longer than it is and turn away potential players.

Continue reading “Case Studies in Formatting”

March Status Update

I’ve been meaning to get better about blog communication stuff, and this will be the place I do so. I’ve got a number of projects underway right now, and some I’ve got brewing in my head and I may or may not start once I get stuff done.

Before I get started, I’d like to point out that working on multiple projects is a good thing for me right now; I write whenever I have a good idea or inspiration for design, which means that individual projects grow a little more slowly, but mechanics get more polish and I have much greater net productivity.

Continue reading “March Status Update”