Rewriting Your Game From Memory
@lamemage gives hard advice. Rewriting Downfall from memory suuuuucks. There's a thing I do when I design games — this is real secret squirrel, behind-the-curtain stuff — which is that after I've written a draft or two and playtested a bit, I take everything I've written and just put it away. Make a new […]
Ben Robbins | May 6th, 2014 | classic, Downfall, Eden, game design | 5 comments
Defining Story Games
But first a caveat. Nailing down definitions can turn into a horrible quagmire, particularly when we're tackling words that lots of people already use but define differently, or use without an actual definition just a case-by-case "I can't explain it but I know it when I see it". But without definitions words can be treacherous. […]
Ben Robbins | October 29th, 2012 | classic, story games, theory | 10 comments
Our Ground is Level and Our Table is Round
A lot of people have asked me to talk about how we do things at Story Games Seattle. We've had a lot of luck getting hordes of people to sit down, play games and have fun. What's our recipe? If you're bringing new people into gaming you could say there are actually two phases. The […]
Ben Robbins | May 1st, 2012 | classic, organizing, Story Games Seattle | 5 comments
"How is this possible? How can I enjoy role-playing games without a GM?!?" (ECCC 2012)
The GMless RPG workshop at last year's PAX was so much fun that when Emerald City Comic Con was looking for gaming panels, I decided to pitch it again. I expected a handful of people to show up, maybe five or six at most. After all, this was a comic convention with almost no previous […]
Ben Robbins | April 17th, 2012 | audio, classic, ECCC, talks & interviews, theory
We Are Here to Game
Next weekend is Fabricated Realities (the "I'm sorry, did you say gaming inside of artwork?" con) and the awesome folks putting it together asked me to say a few words for the zine. They'd heard tall tales of the welcome spiel from our Story Games Seattle open game nights, cunningly crafted to help people shake […]
Ben Robbins | May 28th, 2011 | classic, organizing
Antagonism 101
or, being the right kind of mean "So, you're trying to expose government corruption. Well, a car drives up, and a bunch of guys jump out. With guns! And… they shoot you! Uh, dead! Conflict!" "Allll-right…" We play a lot of story games where there's no GM, and each character has an arc or agenda […]
Ben Robbins | December 2nd, 2010 | classic, how to play, story games | 6 comments
Pitching New Game Systems, or "Let's play Star*Axe!"
Back in the day, if I had a new game and I wanted to get other people to try it, I might have said something like this: "Let's play Star*Axe! It's sci fi, kind of buzzmetal-grunge-future. You play space vikings sacking colony ships and planetoids, killing lots of stuff under the watchful eye of your […]
Ben Robbins | August 28th, 2010 | classic, organizing | 11 comments
You Will Miss That Really Cool Game
Go Play NW is coming up. If you're going, here's a shocking statistic: you will miss 95% of the games. It's basic math. A hundred people, with an average of five people per game (or less) means twenty games per slot, and because of those pesky laws of time and space, you'll only be in […]
Ben Robbins | June 14th, 2010 | classic, GPNW, organizing | 6 comments
Character Monologue: Tell Us What It's Like To Be You
Our heroes have just come back to town after exploring the wastelands, and the GM asks Fred what his character, Skark the scavenger, is doing. "He's looking around to see if he can buy some more shotgun shells, then he'll check in at the weather tower to see if they picked up any new radio […]
Ben Robbins | October 13th, 2009 | classic, GMcraft | 20 comments
Shippensburg Adventure Game Camp
Nearly thirty years ago, there was a summer camp for D&D. Yes that's right, a summer camp where instead of basket weaving and archery, you played Dungeons & Dragons. I went all five years it ran, three years as a camper and two as a councilor. And yes, it was awesome. There is about zero […]
Ben Robbins | May 20th, 2009 | 80s gaming, classic, history, Shippensburg | 8 comments
Benefits of Tyranny
If the internets are to be believed, the world is filled with tyrannical "behold my works ye mighty and despair" GMs, game masters who dominate the table and tell their story with the players as witnesses or minimally free-willed participants. They go by many names: storytellers, railroading illusionists, social puppet masters. Tyrant GMs. There are […]
Ben Robbins | February 11th, 2009 | classic, syndromes | 21 comments
Making the Party: Wedge Issues
"You're playing a grizzled veteran detective? But I'm playing a grizzled veteran detective!?!" Simple stereotypes are great starting points for character creation, but it also means it's super-easy for two players to wind up with character concepts that look identical. Increase those odds by an order of magnitude in class-based rule systems ("but I'm playing […]
Ben Robbins | October 6th, 2008 | classic, GMcraft | 5 comments
Braunstein: the Roots of Roleplaying Games
In 2005 I was standing near the registration booths at GenCon, flipping through the event catalog while the posse debated where to go first. I had already scoured the listings online, but as I glanced across the pages I spotted a word I had somehow missed before: Braunstein. I knew what Braunstein was (sort of) […]
Ben Robbins | August 6th, 2008 | Braunstein, classic, history | 61 comments
Treasure Tells A Story
If you've played in any of the basic dungeon crawling analogs, you've experienced that magical post-combat moment: treasure anticipation. There's loot — you know there's loot — but you don't know what it is yet. Your brain is awash with the endless possibilities, visions of the shiny wonders that could be stashed in the ogre's […]
Ben Robbins | June 26th, 2008 | classic, GMcraft | 22 comments
West Marches: Running Your Own
Alarming fact: brave GMs all over the place are taking up the torch and starting their own West Marches games. Scary isn't it? I've already had some private email conversations about how one would actually build and run a West Marches of their very own. Maybe you've got the bug too. Early symptoms include a […]
Ben Robbins | May 12th, 2008 | classic, west marches | 314 comments
Bad Trap Syndrome (part 2), Curing the Bad Trap Blues
You are in a room. Before you are two doors. On the floor are ancient runes that say beyond one of these doors you'll find the cure to the bad trap blues. Choose wisely! Door 1 — Writing a language of traps To make more and better interactive traps we would need a language for […]
Ben Robbins | March 20th, 2008 | classic, syndromes | 16 comments
Bad Trap Syndrome
"We approach the door." "Half way down the corridor you step on a trap and darts fly out of the walls! The first character in the marching order takes" (roll roll roll) "7 damage!" (scribbles damage on character) "Okay, we keep going. Someone open the door." I'm willing to bet that in all the hours […]
Be Interested
When you look out from behind your GM screen at all those beaming faces, there is a natural human tendency to focus on what is interesting. Chuck is doing cool stuff, so you pay attention to Chuck. You react to what he's doing, which means the game world does too. The other players aren't doing […]
Ben Robbins | February 27th, 2008 | classic, GMcraft, west marches | 5 comments
Grand Experiments: West Marches (part 4), Death & Danger
As I've said before (and any of the players will tell you) West Marches was dangerous by design. Danger encourages teamwork because you have to work together to survive. It also forces players to think: if they make bad decisions they get wiped out, or at least "chased into the swamp like little sissy girls" […]
Ben Robbins | December 9th, 2007 | classic, grand experiments, west marches | 35 comments
Grand Experiments: West Marches (part 3), Recycling
Did you read part 1 and part 2 already? No? Go do that. Running frequent on-demand games is a lot of work, but because the campaign was set in a fixed region there were ways I could maximize the reusability of some material I prepared. Recycled Maps: Evolving Dungeons Maps were a good example — […]
Ben Robbins | October 26th, 2007 | classic, grand experiments, west marches | 10 comments
Grand Experiments: West Marches (part 2), Sharing Info
Players sharing information was a critical part of the West Marches design. Because there was a large pool of players, the average person was in about a third of the games — or to look it the other way, each player missed two-thirds of the games. Add in that each player was in a random […]
Ben Robbins | October 22nd, 2007 | classic, grand experiments, west marches | 16 comments
Grand Experiments: West Marches
West Marches was a game I ran for a little over two years. It was designed to be pretty much the diametric opposite of the normal weekly game: 1) There was no regular time: every session was scheduled by the players on the fly. 2) There was no regular party: each game had different players […]
Ben Robbins | October 17th, 2007 | classic, grand experiments, west marches | 184 comments
Initiative: the Silent Killer
"The main thing to remember is to do everything in an orderly, step-by-step fashion. Deal with your players' actions and reactions one by one instead of all at once, or you will never be able to keep track of what round it is, and who's doing what when." – Dungeon Master's Guide, 1979 In what's […]
Ben Robbins | August 9th, 2007 | classic, syndromes | 34 comments
Don't Roll, Think
DM: "You see a few white, eyeless fish, and various stone formations in a pool of water about 4′ to 6′ deep and about 10′ long. That's all. Do you wish to leave the place now?" Player 1: "Yes, let's get out of here and go someplace where we can find something interesting." Player 2: […]
Ben Robbins | July 15th, 2007 | classic, syndromes | 42 comments