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

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

The State of the Woodland: Root RPG review part 3

I believe we are currently living through the onset of a golden age of the RPG hobby. It is really not many years ago that tabletop roleplaying games were fragmented in their design philosophies. Trad games, Indie games, Old School Renaissance, Nordic Larp, Danish Fastaval scenarios, were all pretty much their own thing – players

A ruinous absence: Root RPG review part 2

Before you go on, read my first impressions here. Otherwise it might look like I’m savaging the game, which I’m really not. A part three will follow soon, where I talk more broadly about intersections in TRPG philosophies, and how they relate to Root. Into the woods? In the section called “What is the Woodland?”

Elephants and Mosquitoes (or why I love both garbage art and masterpieces)

Disclaimer: I don’t particularly like evolutionary analogies, and I don’t think the one I’ll put forward today really has any truth to it, when it comes to actual biology. Think of it more as a picture, an image of how various artforms proliferate in various ways. The average lifespan of a savanna elephant is about