I make small tabletop roleplaying games that showcase concise mechanical ideas. What if violence distorted the characters’ view of reality? What if players failed the first time they tried anything? How can parrying with dice feel active?
My first work published in a curated collection was a horror game scenario called Disorder based on one of my favorite short stories. I've since put several games online, mostly for game jams. Again, I like little mechanical ideas.
Here's my problem. I can barely stand content generation, by which I mean writing the scenarios, characters, and locations that make up what players actually do when they play a tabletop RPG. I like using scenarios, but for some reason the high of writing and sharing mechanical toys dwarfs my ability to write down what you're supposed to do with the toys.
Thus this blog. I plan to use it both to share those small mechanical toys and to encourage myself to generate playable content. To narrow the scope from “any game content” to “actionable results,” I'm starting with a focus on material for one of my one-page games, the main idea of which was “Simulate the delight of augmented movement in an immersive sim of the BioShock mold.” Static Shock is a tabletop RPG I made for a game jam on itch.io. I don't think it's my best work, but it is the one I'm most excited to expand on after my current project. I expect I'll rewrite the mechanics almost completely, but the feel is there already.
Speaking of my current project, at time of writing, my pre-kindergarten child has been asking me about The One-Way Road, my in-development Into the Odd hack about Ancient Near Eastern underworld mythology. If you stick around, you'll probably see material for that, too.
Thanks for stoping by. Come back soon, would you kindly.
Default thumbnail photo is from BLM Nevada via Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.