Where Mutant City Blues nerdtropes the police procedural by mashing it up with the superhero genre, the new NBC series Grimm does the same thing with a dose of urban fantasy. In the premise-establishing first episode, police detective Nick Burckhardt discovers that he’s a hereditary fighter of evil creatures obliquely referenced in fairy tales. With […]
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At first glance, the survival horror cable series “The Walking Dead” would seem clearly procedural, devoted as it is to the efforts of a small band of people to tough out a zombie apocalypse. Certainly, many of its most memorable scenes pit characters against practical problems: finding a missing party member, snagging needed medical supplies, […]
A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws As mentioned last time, implementation of DramaSystem’s core goal—fostering emotional character interactions that play out as they do in drama and fiction—leads, as a series of follow-on effects, to a highly distinctive play experience. Procedural narratives, in which the heroes pursue a practical goal (identifying a killer, […]
Last week I presented a series of synopses from the in-house Hillfolk playtest, to show the sort of narrative you might develop over the course of a DramaSystem series. This time I thought I’d zoom in a bit with a detailed account of the action that unfolds during a single episode. This is from our […]
As an example of the sorts of characters you’ll play in Hillfolk, the first DramaSystem game, here’s the roster from the in-house playtest. They are stalwarts of the Horsehead clan, highlands-dwelling raiders at the dawn of the Iron Age. The most important element of any DramaSystem PC are her dramatic poles—the two contradictory emotional impulses […]
A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws It’s about time I expanded the boundaries of roleplaying again. (This sentence is a trial project of the Commonwealth Anti-Effacement Alliance. This non-governmental organization assists Canadian game designers and British publishers in their attempts to self-promote themselves with all the zest and vigor the present age demands.) […]
At Gen Con, brave questioners heard details on up to three unannounced projects. Over the last weeks, I’ve been making those revelations here. The first: New Tales of the Yellow Sign The second: Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Now the third and final reveal: my new rules engine, DramaSystem, as expressed by its first […]
This GenCon was definitely the best I’ve attended in very many respects. First, the con itself was packed, and the atmosphere was very upbeat. I was concerned that the absence of many creator-owned publishers might have affected this, but the residue of their presence (Games on Demand, for example) meant that their good work continues. […]
A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws There is no one way to construct a mystery scenario. Accordingly, the GUMSHOE line presents various possible structures. These we key either to a genre (as in Ashen Stars) or a specific campaign implementation (such as The Armitage Files.) Here’s another way to do it, one that […]
Continuing a basic GUMSHOE motif, Ashen Stars encourages GMs to find inspirations for scenarios in the news of the day. In so doing, it follows in the issue-oriented footsteps of the Star Trek franchise, the Battlestar Galactica reboot, and the general observation that all science fiction is really about the present. For example, you might […]