tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2657266526705426756.post3678200430136941839..comments2024-03-26T04:58:54.326-04:00Comments on The Wandering Gamist: Trilemmajedavishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586249502818922886noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2657266526705426756.post-77362028571079196992014-10-22T22:02:30.077-04:002014-10-22T22:02:30.077-04:00Thanks for dropping by, and well said!
Perhaps I ...Thanks for dropping by, and well said!<br /><br />Perhaps I will have to look into Torchbearer, then; I was interested by the kickstarter but did end up passing at the time. If they've done logistics in an engaging way, then it would certainly be worth reading and running in order to learn from it.<br /><br />I have yet to take a crack at the OPD contest; my visual skills are frankly atrocious. I've been looking at running some one-shots recently, though, which operate under very different constraints from my usual style - their requirement for temporal brevity might play well with limited space.<br /><br />Planning informed exploration games is hard, and seems under-discussed for the level of interest Western Marches generated. On the OSR side I think one paragon of the viewpoint is Courtney at Hack & Slash, though their work is much more dungeons-and-traps focused; perhaps I just need to expand my reading list. I look forward to your thoughts on world engineering!jedavishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08586249502818922886noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2657266526705426756.post-27184181249020248152014-10-22T14:16:38.977-04:002014-10-22T14:16:38.977-04:00Hey, thanks for the kind words. You're right, ...Hey, thanks for the kind words. You're right, I don't identify as an OSR gamer, I like all sorts of games. The thing I dig most about older-school games is the sense of genuinely players striving and the concrete tangibility of the campaign world. In more drama- or character-focused games, the focus is subtly shifted toward /portraying/ characters who are striving. This is awesome, too, but a different experience.<br /><br />After a long hiatus, my fondness for OSR was rekindled by, of all things, Torchbearer, which (being extremely mechanically bound) is not very OSR. The experience it produced kinda blew my mind, its laser focus on dungeoneering logistics (e.g. the sheer concreteness of the ever-present threat of darkness and starvation) caused the table to erupt in player-initiated planning in a way I'd never seen before.<br /><br />Torchbearer, like most dungeon crawls, needs a bit more up front planning than character-focused urban intrigue - this, plus the very cool one-page dungeon contest, is what sparked my short adventures project.<br /><br />Most of my recent blog posts are me trying to refine my GMing and GM-planning approach for this sort of gaming. Offline, I'm slowly building up a project that fits the term 'world engine', as you mentioned in your blog post about open vs. living worlds (http://goo.gl/smXVDH). One day it may see the light of day.Michael Prescotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04704966067758312492noreply@blogger.com