This Week in Dice Tales
This week’s Dice Tales post is Backseat GMing, aka the equivalent of trying to lead from the follow position in ballroom dance. Comment over there!
Posts Tagged ‘book view cafe’
This week in Dice Tales
There was no post last week, but this week you get “Open Doors and Brick Walls”, about those moments when the GM and the players see a challenge completely differently, and how to identify and resolve those mismatches when they happen.
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Dice Tales duo
The two most recent Dice Tales posts are “Breathing Room,” on the necessity of downtime and “filler” in games, and “Best-Laid Plans,” on what you do when the story goes in a different direction than you expected.
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All the news that’s fit to print
I have survived our housewarming party, and with that in my tail-lights, let me catch up on a few things. And by a few, I mean a lot.
Like my newest Onyx Court story! “To Rise No More” is the tale of Ada Lovelace’s childhood friendship with faeries, and also her ambition to build herself a pair of wings to fly with. No seriously, I didn’t even make that part up. (The wings, not the faeries. But she did also refer to herself as “Babbage’s fairy helper,” so, y’know. Maybe not that part, either.) It went up at Beneath Ceaseless Skies on my birthday, which I found to be excellent timing.
Shifting gears to a different series, the Barnes and Noble blog has just revealed the cover to Lightning in the Blood, which is the upcoming sequel to the still-upcoming-but-will-be-out-next-Tuesday Cold-Forged Flame. As I said on Twitter, I didn’t know until I saw it that one of my life goals was to get a Giant Hunting Cat onto a book cover, but I can check that off my list now!
And while I’m at it, I’ve finally gotten an excerpt from Cold-Forged Flame posted to my site. One week — one week and it will finally be out . . . .
Also, I’ve been busy with the Roundtable Podcast, hosted by Dave Robison and Marie Bilodeau. And I do mean busy, as I’m in not one but two episodes. The first is part of their “Twenty Minutes With” series . . . which, with the introduction and everything else, wound up being more like Fifty Minutes With. But dear god, the introduction alone is worth it: Dave Robison has a habit of describing his guests in epic terms. I have never heard my own life sound so much like a superhero origin story.
So that’s the first episode; the second is part of their “Workshop” series, wherein a writer (or in this case, a writing pair) describe a project they’re working on and then get feedback from the assembled hosts. We dug into an urban fantasy premise for this one, a setting where a new drug is causing people to develop magical powers, and had lots of thinky thoughts on both the way the drug fits into the world and how to write the “psycho ex-girlfriend” trope in a sympathetic and complex manner.
And finally, I’ve got myself a brand-new setup on Imzy. Where by “brand-new,” I mean “there’s basically nothing there yet” — but I figured I should mention, for those who are busy exploring this new site. Then, having done that, I decided to spend my other community-creation slot on putting together one called Dice Tales, which is a spin-off of the blog posts I’ve been doing at Book View Cafe. Speaking of which: the most recent installments there are “Keeping Up with the Joneses,” on power escalation over the course of a campaign; “With Great Power,” on the GM’s ability to screw players over and responsibility to use that wisely; “GNS,” on Ron Edwards’ old Gamism-Narrativism-Simulationism framework; and then a two-parter that consists of “Game Planning I – Arcs, Acts, and Chapters” and “Game Planning II – Sessions and Scenes,” which are pretty much what it says on the tin. But the Imzy community is not just a place to reblog those posts; I’m hoping it will become a great discussion of storytelling in RPGs more broadly. So if you’re on Imzy and you find that kind of thing interesting, come on over!
Dice Tales roundup
Man, I’m behind on linking to these things. Have a bunch of Dice Tales posts!
“PvP(ish)” — on how setting up PCs to be in conflict (or at least contrast) with each other can be a good thing
“Older and Wiser — Or at Least More Powerful” — on character advancement in a campaign
“In Medias Res” — on the narrative challenges of introducing a new PC mid-campaign
“Every Title I Can Think of For This Post Sounds Like Spam” — on the mechanical challenges of same. (All my title ideas had to do with making things bigger, helping them grow, etc.)
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Another Dice Tales batch
As I have been busy with the house move, once again you get a batch of Dice Tales links, my ongoing series over at Book View Cafe.
We’re continuing the discussion of character creation, in three more installments: Finding Flavor, which talks about how the advantages/disadvantages section of the mechanics is my favorite place to generate a character concept; A Matter of Leverage, on how gaming has influenced how I think about setting a character up for a story; and Team Players, where the collaborative aspect of character creation takes center stage.
Comment over there!
Catching up on Dice Tales
Traveling and moving house and so forth have kept me so busy, I’ve neglected to link to my recent Dice Tales posts. (Fortunately I had the foresight and organization to get them written and scheduled well ahead of time, which is why the posts themselves have continued unabated.)
So now you get a threefer! The first post, Coping with Failure, talks about what happens when the dice say “nope, not happening,” and how you keep that from derailing the story/turn it into a narratively positive thing. So You Want to Be a . . . begins our discussion of character creation, and Decisions, Decisions goes through the choices you have to make when creating a PC for a game.
As usual, comment over there!
IN ASHES LIE now available in ebook!
Following on last week’s release of Midnight Never Come, this week we have In Ashes Lie out from Book View Cafe and various other retailers. So if you’re looking to complete your Onyx Court ebook collection, now you can!
. . . and that’s from me for a while. I’m leaving on a jet plane, for Imaginales and Forbidden Planet.
Dice Tales at BVC: “Preserving Agency” + The Once and Future Podcast!
Two links for you today!
The first is my latest Dice Tales post at Book View Cafe, on the topic of “Preserving Agency”. How do you handle social manipulation (or outright mind control) without taking agency away from the player?
And, as a bonus for this Monday, I’m on The Once and Future Podcast talking about a whole slew of things, from the Memoirs of Lady Trent to gaming to anthropology and more. Enjoy!
Onyx Court 1 and 2 soon to be out as ebooks
I’ve been holding off on a whole lot of news while I waited for the new site to go live; now that it has, you should expect a number of things in quick succession. 🙂
Since Midnight Never Come and In Ashes Lie have reverted to me in the U.S., I’m putting out ebook editions of them through Book View Cafe. If you click on those title links, you’ll find you can pre-order the ebooks at a number of sites, including Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, and Kobo; or if you would prefer to buy from Book View Cafe, Barnes and Noble, or Waterstones, those will be available soon. Midnight will be out on the 17th (that is, next Tuesday), and Ashes the week after.
Dice Tales at Book View Cafe: Different Challenges
This week over at Book View Cafe, I’m talking about “Different Challenges”: physical vs. mental vs. social, and the different ways those get treated in play.
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Dice Tales at BVC: Keep It Moving
The most recent installment of Dice Tales at Book View Cafe is “Keep It Moving,” talking about things that can disrupt immersion, and strategies for mitigating those problems. Comment over there!
Two more Dice Tales posts up
Because I was traveling last Monday, I neglected to link to that week’s Dice Tales post at Book View Cafe: Shared Delusions,” discussing the techniques gamers use to help everyone imagine the same thing (or at least a close enough facsimile thereof) while telling the story. This week’s post expands on one aspect of that and talks about “Costuming.”
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Dice Tales at Book View Cafe: When the Bough Breaks
We briefly interrupt the Five Days of Fiction to bring you the latest installment of Dice Tales at BVC: When the Bough Breaks, discussing what happens when trust breaks down between people in a game. Comment over there!
Dice Tales at Book View Cafe: Trust Each Other
This week I continue my theme of trust in RPGs, this time talking about how it’s necessary for players in a game to trust one another. Comment over there!
Dice Tales at Book View Cafe: “Trust Me”
This week’s RPGs-as-storytelling post over at Book View Cafe is “Trust Me,” the first of three posts digging into the role trust plays in making a game go well.
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Dice Tales at Book View Cafe: “The Character Lens”
The Dice Tales series continues at Book View Cafe with “The Character Lens”, discussing how RPGs have affected the way I think about and write characters. Comment over there!
Dice Tales at BVC: “From OOC to IC”
Over at BVC, my weekly post on RPGs and storytelling: “From OOC to IC,” talking about the shifts between those registers, and when and how they blur into one another. Comment over there!
Dice Tales at BVC: Metagaming
This week on the Book View Cafe blog, I talk about metagaming — which is maybe not as bad as people usually think. Comment over there!
Dice Tales at BVC: “Serendipity”
Another week, another Dice Tales post at BVC: “Serendipity”, discussing emergence as a quality of RPG narratives. Comment over there!
