Like most designers, when I get a stray idea for a game mechanic I try to exercise the discipline to make a note of it. Here’s where I can’t speak for other designers: I almost never use them, because they are misconceived by dint of their very nature as stray ideas. Mechanics for their own […]
Search Results for: dramasystem
A Column about Roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Early episodes of television series sometimes seem perfectly wrought in retrospect, ably setting up the themes and situations that the ending pays off. Others evolve from the original conceptions the writers set out for themselves in their pitch documents. “Parks and Recreation” gives us a textbook example. […]
DramaSystem Resources Articles The DramaSystem SRD – A reference document for writers and game designers to create their own products derived from DramaSystem Supporting Characters as Foils – Robin D. Laws uses GMCs to manipulate a PC’s dramatic poles The No-Response Response – Robin D. Laws on pacing scenes to maintain suspense Going Full Caliban – Robin D. Laws […]
A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws When I run Hillfolk in a single session demo, I downplay the procedural resolution system. In the mode of play DramaSystem is tuned for, the extended campaign, the procedural system does the job set out for it. (For those who haven’t played yet, a procedural scene is […]
I was wondering when someone would run a DramaSystem LARP using Emily Care Boss’ brilliant live action adaptation of the rules as seen in Blood on the Snow. The answer, it turns out, is last November. The Twin Cities’ LARP House, a group dedicated to Nordic-style play in America’s Scandinavia, ran two events using the […]
Yung Chang’s documentary China Heavyweight, now streaming at a video service near you, follows the impact of a high-school boxing program meant to recruit amateur fighters on two young men who buy their coaches’ promises of a way out of their poor tobacco-farming community. In addition to providing a window into cultural change in today’s […]
Up until the middle of the 20th century, when class distinctions started to soften and an egalitarian ethic took hold in the West, differences in social status remained a key concern of the English-language storytelling tradition. Today’s audiences sometimes have trouble understanding why Tess of the d’Ubervilles doesn’t leave and set up a hat shop […]
A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws I designed DramaSystem to allow groups to impose their own dynamic on play. It gives you a framework and lets you decide what to do with it. So when it turns out that one-shot games tend to take on a cutthroat edge, that’s not because I installed […]
“I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger.” —Walter White, Breaking Bad Every month the DramaSystem Series Pitch of the Month Club brings you a new and unique series pitch for the Hillfolk RPG. For December, Jesse Scoble draws you into the dark and violent world of border drug trafficking with Narcocorrido. Here, narcotraficantes and […]
As a result of the Hillfolk Kickstarter, the DramaSystem is now available under two open licenses; the Open Gaming License and the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution Unported License. It is not a teaching document structured to show you how to play and enjoy DramaSystem, but a reference document for writers and game designers to create […]