Flaming Monkey

Every time I’m going to run games at a convention, I tell myself that this time I will start working on it earlier, so I’m not left trying to do everything at the last minute.

I’ve yet to pull this off.

Now I’m coming up on TBR, where I’ll be running a game of The Roach and a swashbuckling pirate adventure game of my own devising. Fortunately, there’s not a whole lot of prep for the former game other than familiarizing myself with the rules well enough that I can explain them to others, but the latter game needs world building, a plot, and pregenerated characters, none of which are finished yet.

The good news is that it’s still a couple of weeks until the con, which means I may be panicking early enough to be able to get it all done with time to spare.

Next time though, things are going to be different….

Over on Story Games, Christian Griffen said:

Some games like TSOY have goals that, when fulfilled, allow for character development; they give XP. However, those are single things; imagine what you could do if you had story arc elements that people can earn and chain together in different ways to then trade for character development!

It’s a really excellent concept, with lots of potential for generating great play.

Vincent’s big scary claim:

Character ownership arises from system. Character ownership does not underlie system.

That’s it?

That’s it.

That may be it, but he does take the time to explain what he means, and it’s an interesting way of looking at character ownership. In short, Vincent says that while character ownership may not be an illusion from either an actual play perspective or even a system design perspective, it is an illusion from “the point of view of a technical description of roleplaying.” It might not sound like much of a difference, but it’s an important one (at least for purposes of game theory).