Ode to Joy: Ping Pong the Animation

Ping Pong is an Anime about two high school boys who play table tennis. But first, an introduction. I’ve been thinking about writing a series of posts for a while. A long while in fact. They’re going to be centered on the human mind, its limitations, as well as its limitless potential, through the madcap

Between the Cremorne Gardens and the Limehouse Lurker…

…Lies a game that is pretty much astounding. It has made me rethink a lot about what you can do with a focused campaign. I feel the same way as I did upon first encountering Apocalypse World back in the day – Every campaign game idea I have, I can’t help but go “yeah, this

Zâr – This Time It’s Readable

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time these months getting Zâr into a revised edition, and I released it recently – it is only in English at the moment, but if I may say so myself this is a much more readable version, and doesn’t constrain itself to a two-hour timeslot (but there is

It’s Time for A Zâr

Originally posted on Augury Ignored:
My good friend Henrik Dithmer (going by the ominous online alias Rakatung) has his roleplaying scenario Zâr up on his itch.io – for free! The madman. The game was originally developed for the Danish roleplaying convention Fastaval, and it’s a gem. Rakatung’s mind is a cornucopia of roleplaying weirdness in…

How to watch a movie

When I wrote my Bachelor’s Thesis, I chose to look at how gender roles were adapted from Shakespeare’s King Lear, to Ran, the classic samurai film by Akira Kurosawa. At the time I had watched Ran once when I was a teen, and had recently rewatched it, and given that several genders had been switched

Developing Narratactics, from It’s Always Sunny in Rome, to Zâr

I went to Fastaval this easter, and ran my scenario Zâr – a persian-inspired techno-mystical dreamwalking/exorcism scenario, for a good 70 or so people in total. It was a weird project I started last year as a prequel to Ahriman, a mecha-scenario heavily inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion. It slowly morphed into something quite different,

Thoughts on The Years of Rice and Salt and Spirituality in Gaming

Originally posted on Augury Ignored:
Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2002 novel The Years of Rice and Salt is, for me, one of those extraordinary, perspective-changing reads. It’s become something of a comforting re-read over the years, and remains a beautiful, thought-provoking, and highly spiritual work. Its central conceit is an alternate history of Earth where the…

An introduction to consumption for Creatives – Session 0

It’s time to get a little weird. If you’re a creative person, no matter what discipline, your brain needs to be fed. Reading books, listening to music, watching films, it does not really matter what you do, as long as you somehow Consume. The following couple of blog posts will contain a guide for how

What happens in the woods`? Three encounters for Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game

Sometimes things just naturally converge. I was considering what happens in the woods of the Woodland, painting idly with watercolour, and eventually I figured that my results could be images of how the denizens perceive the dangerous woods. So here are three encounters ready-to-use for your campaign. The Demon-Bird of the Old Thicket You would

Principles of building creative skill

After my musings on Root, I’ve been thinking a lot about why we categorize some games as beginner, and others intermediate, and I realized it bugged me quite a bit. I think it’s mainly the gatekeeping inherent in the phrase, and how often words such as “entry-level”, “beginner” and “newbie-friendly” have been used to separate