Role-Playing

Remember that game of Shadowrun I mentioned before? It died after some three playing sessions. However, it had too much potential & time spent on creating the ideas behind it to go to waste, so we decided to have another go at it, with a different GM. The basic idea is that each character has a single theme related to activism, with social activism and environmentalism being the main topics. As the antagonist we have the all-powerful & ever-present corporations which symbolise all that is wrong with the world of 2070: pollution, inequality, social instability, racism etc. What brings the characters together is the common goal of breaking away from the flawed society and creating an utopia somewhere where the evil companies can’t touch them. What is still left to be seen is how they intend to do this in practice - it is quite possible that it won’t happen at all. Regardless, it will be (and to some extent has been) an interesting chance of looking at society and how it is changed, through the medium of role-play. ...

It’s not something I usually write about1, but I read a few (older) posts by Thanuir about railroading, and I thought about commenting those posts. I’m basically going to claim that 1) railroading is not (entirely) bad, 2) it happens in all games, and 3) it is not even a very good way of talking about the phenomenon, instead one should use the terms Montola uses. This is a warning, so that if you already agree and (or) know what I’m talking about, you can skip the rest. ...

I noticed something when I happened to watch a tv-program on games. It seems (and this is in no way rigorously analytical, just a hunch) that a (computer) game has “role-playing elements” if there is any progression in the abilities of character played. ...

Kouvola Chronicle is finally (and regrettably) over. Now for the traumatic recovery.

I’ve been writing larp characters for some time now. It’s been taking a lot longer than I suspected, partly because I’ve changed my way of writing a bit. I used to write with a flow-of-consciousness method, but I’ve been slowly learning and adopting process writing. I think the result is a bit better (and there are less typos and mistakes), but the downside is that I have to use more time to get (roughly) same results. Nevertheless, the characters are mostly written. ...

We’ve played Mike Pohjola’s new game Tähti (Star) for a few times. ...