August 12th, 2006
Hey, all, 
Ok, I’m getting just a little bit sick of flagging viagra and cialis sales site URL posts as spam.
Also, I want people to be able to post here and to see their comments online immediately, without having to wait for me to say that, yeah, they’re ok. Mostly, I don’t want people to think I might not want to hear what they have to say.
Of course, the operative word there is people. I really don’t want to sell phentermine here, mostly because I just don’t know what phentermine is… (and before you post a comment to this effect, I’d like to keep it that way, please, thank you vey much!)
In that spirit, I’m going to be trying out a number of Word Press plugins in the next few days. If you detect any problems, please bear with me whilst I endeavour to fix them.
Cheers,
J.
Posted in Administrivia | 2 Comments »
August 9th, 2006
Hello, all,
After a looooong delay, I’ve finally managed to post an Actual Play report on our TSoY sessions during the most awesomest June Retreat.
The actual AP report lives here and is rather long.
Because it might be useful, I also posted the initial situation here.
Lastly, I posted all the keys we came up with here.
Also, this marks the end of my reporting regarding the retreat. I posted about My Life with Master here, about Torchbearer here, and about The 101 here and here.
Up next, I’ll be trying to collect some thoughts I’ve had about Dogs in the Vineyard, which have been gathering dust in the back of my mind.
Cheers,
J.
Posted in Actual Play, Gaming | Comments Off
August 7th, 2006
Hi,
“Hey, dude, playing games isn’t nerdy or childish. Games are awesome! I don’t care if you want to play 2nd edition D&D with your homebrew rules and I’m more interested in a big game of Cops and Robbers in the park. Stop what you’re doing and GO PLAY.” – Martin O’Leary, in Rob Donoghue’s thread.
Cheers,
J.
Posted in Gaming | Comments Off
August 5th, 2006
Hello, all,
Last weekend, we playtested Galactic, the new game by Matt Wilson, of PtA fame. As is rapidly becoming a tradition of mine, I’m going to post the in-game stuff we generated here, while the actual playtest comments will be emailed to the game author.
The players were me as GM, my wife Ana, Ricardo, and Rogério, at whose house we were playing.
Because that’s where the book begins, I’m going to start with the Ship Captains:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Actual Play, Gaming | Comments Off
July 28th, 2006
Hey,
At the Forge, where else? Linky thingy.
Cheers,
J.
Posted in Actual Play, Gaming | 1 Comment »
July 25th, 2006
Hey ho,
At long last, this is my playtest report of The 101, the game I sketchily laid out in my last post.
This report is going to be sketchy as well. Mainly, that’s because almost everything important that needs to be said about playing it, I’ve already said it, in person, to the game author, at the sessions.
Still, I think the game works rather nicely and is worth the buzz, so there.
Context: Recall that the playtest occurred during my June Retreat. (Yeah, this report is kinda late.) Players were myself and my wife Ana, Rogerio, the house owner, and Rui, the game author.
We played exactly three sessions of it. The first two were run by Rui and the last one was run by Rogerio, as Rui wanted to see what the game looked like from the other end.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Actual Play, Gaming | 1 Comment »
July 22nd, 2006
Hi, all,
Ok, now that the playtest report for Torchbearer is out of the way, I’m going to be taking some time to write my impressions about The 101, a game under development here in the Lisbon gaming community by friend and fellow role-player Rui Anselmo.
Before I do that, however, I want to post a little bit of what the game is about, for those of you who don’t know Rui. First off, for the linguistically capable among you, here’s the post that started it all.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Gaming | Comments Off
July 20th, 2006
Hi,
Whilst I’m typing, Mo does it again. CKK is Catharsis, Kairosis and Kenosis.
The post is a few days old already, but in case you haven’t yet, you should check it out pronto:
Immersion Goals Borrowed from Literary Theory
Cheers,
J.
Posted in Game Design, Gaming | Comments Off
July 17th, 2006
Hello, all,
First off, this has been a long time coming. What follows is a description of a fictional world, or part of it, that was used to playtest Shreyas Sampat’s new game Torchbearer.
Secondly, this is really just a placeholder. You’ll note that the text doesn’t make many comments on the game itself. That is by design. It was agreed between Shreyas and me that the playtest comments would be submitted directly to him for his review, before being posted publicly.
Nonetheless, in my opinion, the game world we developed for the playtest is way too cool to keep to myself, so I’m posting it here.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Actual Play, Gaming | 2 Comments »
June 20th, 2006
Hi,
While I get ready to write up lengthy Actual Play stuff from my retreat, check out ICSI, a drill by Joshua “El Fuego” BishopRoby.
I’ve always known I wasn’t the only one in the world to ever grasp the Mother May I concept. Still, when someone else writes something insightful about it, it surprises the hell out of me, and I am left reeling in wonder of how I used to play like this all the time and not know it.
Cheers,
J.
Posted in Gaming | 6 Comments »