Old Men Running The World

The TTRPG viewed THrough monocles, addled by port.
  • The Most Romantic Thing (On The RPG-mediated search for Experiential Validation)

    A version of this essay was originally published in the TEETH RPG Newsletter.

    A former girlfriend once asked me what I thought the most romantic thing was. Blindly missing the prompt to say something cute, I mused that the most romantic thing would be to die leaving a vast unpublished catalogue of complex and near-indecipherable work for your heirs to discover, so that you became both an enigma to those who knew you and an out-of-time legend whose eccentricities echoed down the ages, like Diderot. She looked at me in a way that suggested that she did not think this was the most romantic thing, which perhaps goes some small way to explaining how that whole situation did not persist. But the important thing is that while I am not casting myself as Diderot exactly, I am likely to leave behind a vast catalogue of near-indecipherable work if anyone remembers to look through the leftover chaos of folders, notebooks and documents once I croak my last. 

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  • 7 Things Which Will Make You A Better Player In Any RPG

    This was first published via Kieron’s newsletter, a while back.

    One of the things which I’ve been chewing over since getting back into RPGs is that there’s so much advice for GMs and so little advice for players. I keep thinking over why – though the whys aren’t what I’m about to write about. This is prompted by seeing some folk believe that there was no such thing as general player advice, and all advice is system/genre specific.

    Which got me thinking. Do I think that’s true? As the list below shows, I don’t.

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  • Trophy Gold: A Review

    Let Me Take You To One Side And Bend Your Ear About The Fine Role-playing Game Called Trophy Gold.

    A version of this article was originally published on the TEETH RPG newsletter.

    Trophy Gold, by Jesse Ross, is the game that I am most regularly recommending TTRPG people read and play. It’s not what I thought it would be, while also somehow being exactly what I wanted. A complicated feeling! But it scratches quite a profound itch. 

    In the space of the following sentences, I shall try to explain.

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  • Trophy Gold: Another Review

    This review was originally posted to Kieron’s newsletter . It’s been edited slightly, as there was a whole section about how folks often unsubscribe to the newsletter when I wrote at length about RPGs, which clearly isn’t needed here. A note on content too – I don’t trace the genealogy of mechanics at all. This was written as an entryist review to speak to a curious audience mostly unaware of the indie rpg scene of the last decade and change.

    I’ve been searching for treasure for a long time. I have my freeform player-narrative games. I have my doomed horror games. I have my classical adventure games, in various traditions. I have a whole bunch of games that do great things which are entirely separate from all the things that D&D did and does. But I didn’t have a game which found a precise spot I craved satisfied two core things at once.

    In short, I had an itch. Trophy Gold scratches the itch. It scratches the itch firing a crossbow bolt through it. It is intensely co-operative. It is intensely merciless. It was exactly what I needed.

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  • An Interview with Jesse Ross, Creator of Trophy Gold

    Gold, GOLD! Etc.

    A version of this interview originally appeared in the TEETH RPG newsletter.

    In this article Jim talked to Jesse Ross, who was the creator of one of our favourite experiences in the past year, Trophy Gold. This is an excellent grimdark horror RPG which in turn is builds on Ross’ success with the horror one-shot machine of Trophy Dark. Go back and have a read if you want some context for what all the fuss is about. Or better still, play a few games of the Trophy games, we are fairly certain you won’t regret it.

    Anyway, here’s a (very slightly edited) transcript of the correspondence between myself and Mr Ross. (And, fwiw, we’re now very excited about forthcoming The Piper’s Call…)

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