The Gaming Philosopher

The results are in! I got distracted by other things halfway through the competition, so I played only about half of the games. I haven't played any of the top 3, and in fact only one of the top 7 games, so I guess that there is still some good stuff for me to try out. I'm flabbergasted by the fact that Their angelic understanding has scored an average of 5.99. I changed my own mark to a 9 at some point. There can be some disagreement about marks, of course, but I cannot imagine how anyone could score it below a 7. This piece has beautiful writing, interesting thematic content and does new and impressive things with its medium. It's a difficult piece, sure; but if you don't understand something, just refrain from judging. As a judge, you are called upon to judge a work of art, not to tell us how much you "liked" the experience of playing it. If you don't understand it, you shouldn't be judging. (Yes, I'm kind of mad at this injustice, a...

I have created a full set of beta rules for Comrade Stalin . It is a simple, yet (I hope) tactically and socially complex game that slightly resembles games like Mafia and Werewolves. Comrade Stalin explores the fear, paranoia and ruthlessness of totalitarianism ... while you are having fun. To play, you need to download the rules and the roles . The roles are presented in an easy-to-print format: simply cut the pages in half to get role sheets. Please playtest this game and tell me about your experiences! You can post here, e-mail me (victor@lilith.bb, except that it is "cc" instead of "bb"), or post wherever you like and put a link here. Thanks in advance! All playtesters will be credited in future versions of the rules.

Introduction The first session of my 3:16 campaign was stellar . The second session wasn't as good. It wasn't bad, and fun was had, but in some respects it was quite problematic. All the previous players attended, plus one new player, Lenny. I had her make a character as if an old character had died: start from scratch with weapons, but start with slightly higher abilities than a true starting character. Our team thus consisted of Lieutenant Sektor ("by the book"), Sergeant "Mad" Mina ("recalcitrant"), Corporal "Iron" Sue ("Rambo") and the new character Soldier Fabio ("man in the mirror," i.e., very vain). Last time, I had prepared the planets in some detail. This time, I wanted to make room for more player input, so I rolled the planets on the random tables right in front of their eyes; except for AA, which I chose by hand. Overview of play Rubens The first planet was planet Rubens, a radioactive planet ...

First draft of the roles! There are currently enough roles for a game with 9 players. Every role, except Stalin, has the ability to spy . Once during the game, this allows to you look at one goal card of one person. You cannot show the card to anyone else, though you can of course make claims about what you've seen. Whether people believe you is up to them. Once you have spied, rotate your character sheet 90 degrees to indicate that you've used up your one chance to spy. Some rules indicate that you can refresh your ability: this means that you get to rotate your character sheet back to the normal position, and you can use your spying ability again. Every role also has two special rules. The Favourite (King) True loyalty : If you have a single goal card which means that you must kill Stalin, it instead means that you must protect Stalin. If you have two goal cards indicating that you must kill Stalin, they have their normal meaning. Hated : If Stalin dies, all surviv...

Introduction Shooting the Moon by Emily Care Boss is a game I've had in my possession for a very long time, but which I'd never played before. (I think. I may once have started a game with Jasper Polane, but if so, I don't think we managed to finish it.) Last Friday, I got online with Sam Ashwell and Emily Short to finally play this thing. Both of them had played it before. Emily once, I think; and Sam quite often. Like Breaking the Ice , Shooting the Moon is a game about love. (At least it claims to be a game about love. See below.) Whereas the former game shows two people coming together, the latter gives us two Suitors fighting over the Beloved, who is also pursuing a dream of his or her own. Creating characters: the rules Character creation is where the rules of this game really shine. It is very much a group activity, so much so that we did most of it before we chose who would play which character. (We finally decided that I would play the Beloved.) The ...

Background: Stalin's Story A long time ago -- late in 2005, it seems -- I created a role playing game called Stalin's Story . It combined the structures that Vladimir Propp found in Russian fairy tales with a totalitarian Stalin figure. One of the players is Stalin and has unlimited power to kill people and change the rules; the others are either actors trying to tell a Proppian tale or courtiers trying to use the tale's elements to have each other killed. I never played it, because I had serious doubts about the game achieving my design goals. However, I just found a post by Harry Giles who says he has played it several times, and goes on to say that “Stalin’s Story” is rich, multi-dimensional, original and scary fun[.] He is definitely being too charitable in that piece, but I do need to talk to him about his play experiences! But this blog post is not about Stalin's Story . Thematic content Stalin apparently still occupies my brain. I've just gotten...