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s can and often do ask did you just make that up 2 they can look for patterns if every time they break an agreement they are immediately told about a renowned tracker fearsome bounty hunter or relentless constable hot on their trail they could reasonably conclude that this is just a habit that the gm has 3 they can question the consistency it s reasonable to think that a carefully planned setting with clockwork components will operate logically a world driven by improv may be more likely to have loose ends twists or reversals of fortune that beggar belief when we talk about low prep i think we often have the goal of creating something that feels indistinguishable from high prep to continue the analogy we want to put the players in an elevator in outer space apply a gentle acceleration from a cobbled together engine and make them think that outside their opaque box there is a whole world working its gravity on them this may sound deceptive as though i m suggesting that the gm tricks the players but i think there s another layer to this where the analogy gets more complicated there s a really fun experience that sometimes comes with running a game where the session ends and the players are thinking that was cool i wonder did the gm plan that or was it improvised and the gm is thinking wow that was cool how did that happen i think that the players elevator sitting on a world built by an exhaustively prepared gm or being pushed through space by an engine built by a seat of the pants gm is enclosed inside another bigger elevator one big enough to hold the gm and their world or their engine and that outer elevator is experiencing forces too what s causing those forces is it an intricate game system tuned precisely to tilt the balance at particular moments is it hundreds of pages of lore that implant their subtle tones in the reader is it pages and pages of random tables covering every conceivable situation is it something from another game half remembered at just the right moment is it the group just getting in sync with each other is it an appointment in 15 minutes and something big better happen to end this session i ve read and listened to commentary from people who ve been playing rpgs far longer than i have from time to time there will be a note of i ve seen it all before this dungeon has x this system has y these players have the wild idea to play a party made up entirely of z and this very experienced player has a story from 35 years ago where that exact situation already happened and it was fun but they don t feel the need to do it again the more time you spend inside the elevator the more you feel like you know exactly what s happening outside of it and what s about to happen next i don t think my conclusion is don t try to understand your fun because maybe it will not be fun anymore one of the reasons ttrpgs are special is that they have generative elements there is something in every game at every table that is generating something new and unexpected it can happen that after awhile whatever is being generated no longer seems new and unexpected then it may be time for a shift but there are so many shifts possible the combination of the game system setting players play environment are extremely complex and it s hard to see and know how all of those parts will interact it is hard to play without being inside some kind of moving box wondering who or what is pushing you around and if you eventually understand how that box works you can swap it for another at october 11 2026 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest tuesday 1 september 2026 the many rolls of mythras i m not sure how much i have to say on this topic but prompted by seraphim seraphina s write more short blog posts here i am for the past few years i have not rolled to hit i have just rolled for damage this evening i played in a game of mythras we rolled to hit we contested those rolls with parries we used the contest results to choose special effects we rolled saves to avoid the special effects we rolled for damage location only then did we roll damage and sometimes we rolled to endure the damage we call this simulationist because maybe hitting and maybe not and maybe parrying and maybe not and maybe specially affecting and maybe not and where you hit and how hard you hit and maybe enduring and maybe not are all parts of a real fight real fights are also fast and this is not particularly fast wrapping all this up in one roll captures the flash of action the impact that can t be undone unfurling it into components lays out the brutal effects in detail they re both powerful and dramatic in their own ways we had an interesting conversation afterwards the rules light games we usually play are clearly faster but there s something to be said for slowing down zooming in and having the system generate the texture that we re used to narrating with less scaffolding i don t have a conclusion here except that i m grateful for the diversity of experiences that the hobby provides yes i know i ve just given examples of diversity in characters bashing each other with clubs but like i said this is a short blog post at september 01 2026 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday 31 august 2026 presenting mysteries like uketsu i recently read strange buildings by uketsu i m used to mystery stories that writers try to embed in a realistic setting they ll add some drama around the mystery a family traumatised by loss an investigator losing everything because of their single mindedness mismatched partners struggling to work together uketsu instead seems to say if you re here for mystery i ll give you 11 case files each with multiple questions and with overarching connections the heightened reality where all of these questions exist is game like how could all these weird things be going on well we re here to solve mysteries so we have a stack of them as a gm i m wondering what i can take away from this book this is what i m come up with 1 the gm can also be a note taker 2 list the unanswered questions 3 npcs have their own theories 4 have multiple mysteries 5 leave room for a second interpretation the gm can also be a note taker uketsu includes diagrams in his mysteries he repeats them and highlights different aspects when the investigator is trying to work out the order of events he often uses little boxes with flow diagrams like this at first glance this may seem like spoon feeding information to the reader but i think of it more as an invitation to try to solve the puzzle the mystery is tough enough without scattering the key elements across multiple paragraphs in an rpg the facts are spread across conversation details are easily missed many players make notes and share them here i m suggesting the gm writes or draws simple snippets at the table for my group i think that would quickly become a shared note with the gm and players all adding to it the important information is shared in conversation but so is a lot of flavour and chit chat writing a quick shared note highlights the importance of information character names where they were at certain times known grievances between them solving the mystery isn t just collecting puzzle pieces that s just step one and crucially if investigators don t get that right it s hard to progress so why not make it collaborative list the unanswered questions this is pretty basic but what is the mystery uketsu states the questions clearly if there s any ambiguity about it that will be a big stumbling block i usually play rpgs where players choose their own goals stating the central questions of a mystery is more about saying this is what is unknown here rather than this is your objective here npcs have their own theories uketsu s supporting characters frequently have their own explanations for events even as they ask an investigator for help that seems very natural if they re invested in the solution they should already be trying to work it out it s also a secondary source of information what biases and grudges are exposed by their theories have multiple mysteries consider a party of pcs trying to cross a river and finding the ferryman murdered if they re inclined to investigate the obvious question is who killed the ferryman taking a lesson from uketsu i d try to add further questions why is there a sign next to the crossing strictly no cats on board who painted the exquisite portrait of the ferryman hanging in his cabin why did he choose this place for the crossing when there is a narrower section of the river nearby these individual mysteries may be related to the murder or they may be independent if related they help break the challenge up into increments if unrelated they still may have some reward or may just be red herrings misdirection may sound like a frustration in an rpg but for investigative play the decision making is focused on which leads to pursue in what order as long as the cul de sacs aren t too time consuming they allow for variation in outcomes if all leads are successes where are the meaningful choices the other benefit of adding additional questions is that there is no guarantee that the players will solve everything if they solve part of a mystery it gives them some sense of achievement leave room for a second interpretation this might be the trickiest lesson to pull into a game i m thinking here about investigations that are closed the solution seeming to fit all the evidence and then a small doubt is raised is there something more a classic version of this is where the killer is identified but then it is revealed that the accused is covering for someone else taking the fall on their behalf it is sometimes a darker twist to the events something even worse than was initially revealed this extra element can be the icing on the cake of a mystery running rpg mysteries we tend to worry will the players be able to solve this building a mystery with at least two valid solutions and expecting them to find both seems like a stretch but i think a better question is not will they solve it but rather will this be a good experience in play which may be closely linked to will this feel fair it feels fair if you had all the required pieces and you understand now how they fit together in a logical way it feels unfair if clues were never revealed or if the solution is overly elaborate such that you would never have arrived at it i think there s probably more rpg tips to glean from strange buildings than i have done here i haven t even discussed the maps of which there are many but with uketsu s work it seems fitting to leave some loose ends to follow at august 31 2026 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday 24 august 2026 being online among cats and books death of a hobby and the linked posts at the end of it prompted me to think about my own relationship with creativity and being online i first built a website to share my writing in the 90 s since then i ve had a bunch of different projects fiction essays poetry videos podcasts games comics shared in different ways not linked to each other mostly in most cases i didn t sign the work or identify myself in some cases i had numbers to look at and could see how many people looked at the work in other cases i didn t have that i m proud of most of the stuff i made much of it isn t online anymore but i have my own copies backed up i sometimes feel a pang of regret that i don t have all this gathered together showcasing everything with my name on top inside a blink tag and sometimes i am relieved that i chose not to do that i ve been on and off social media sporadically again sometimes with my full name published and other times without i m a private person i also like to make things and share them there s a strange tension there also and this is one of the hard parts of social media a part of me gets too caught up in engagement numbers i try not to pay attention to that i have used and really liked a browser plugin that hid all those numbers on social media everything was just a thing someone said rather than a thing someone said with 10 000 up blorps and 2 000 re blorps but ultimately i think blogging and other slowly produced work suit me better i have been active on discord to varying degrees the best outcome of that has been making genuine friends who i have played games with and collaborated with one of whom i met recently and others i ll hopefully be meeting later this year though most of my activity on discord has been chatting to strangers who i may never interact with again often taking part in a recurring conversation about an aspect of a game sure there s a blog post somewhere that says most of whatever needs to be said on the topic of the recurring conversation but a it is not particularly easy to find blog posts and 2 people want to connect they want to feel like they talked it over rather than just read it i get that years ago i was involved in a meditation group i attended twice a week for a long time and it was really good for me one interesting aspect of that time was that once i became a regular attendee i began to see patterns in how other people attended some people would come to meditation a valuable and worthy past time which is also frustrating and boring in need of a tool to deal with an immediate problem a quick fix they might attend only once and often with intense enthusiasm before and after the session and then they d be gone if you hang around an rpg discord long enough you also see people coming and going extremely excited about games and their plans to play maybe talking about play rather than contending with organising a group scheduling risking sessions that may disappoint is the quick fix solution to wanting to play i ve certainty spent time and energy talking about play prompted by wanting to play i think the internet is too quick for some things some experiences are naturally slow and don t really fit the acceleration that the internet applies to all things this post is in danger of sounding like advice i don t mean it to i sometimes struggle with being online and knowing how much to engage i m working these things out for myself and i wish the best to anyone else trying to navigate this stuff ️ ️ at august 24 2026 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest wednesday 19 august 2026 regicide and the travel campaign as mentioned in the last smiling fox episode i ve been travelling this summer the trip has been amazing but we re here to talk about games i got into regicide shortly before leaving playing a few games solo and a few 2 player games i was instantly impressed with how the standard 52 card deck could be used for this type of game i grew up on card games with rules like the 5 of hearts is the best card unless someone has played a club where there is little or no mnemonic support ...