You can read part 1 here. Navigating the Territory In the first post of this series, I talked a lot about harder moves and softer moves, how to make them, and what those terms mean. I argued that any move can be made harder or softer, and that there’s no quick and easy rule to […]
In the Powered by the Apocalypse community, we’ve gotten used to a few pieces of terminology we use regularly—in particular, we talk a lot about soft and hard moves. Steve Segedy of Bully Pulpit Games wrote a post all about soft and hard moves, aptly titled “Soft and Hard Moves in The Warren (and other […]
In this series of posts, Brendan will tackle games outside of the tabletop RPG realm, dissecting them for any useful tidbits to apply to tabletop RPG design. XCOM 2: a game of soldiers, aliens, bad calls, upsetting mistakes, a really cruel RNG (random number generator), and many, many explosions. There’s a tactical level of squad-based […]
Vincent Baker gives some excellent advice about making Non Player Characters in the Principles section of Apocalypse World: “Name everyone, make everyone human”. He instructs you to give them straightforward, sensible self-interests to help drive the fiction, so your players will care about them when something terrible happens. The text doesn’t really tell you how […]
I want to talk about winning, win conditions, and whether RPGs can accommodate them. And perhaps more importantly, whether RPGs should incorporate win conditions. (more…)
Blasting the bad guy [in Masks] is way easier than telling a rival that you admire them or admitting your fear…
