Scampir

Be the Choster you wanna read

  • He/Him + They/Them

One Canuck built the #ttrpg tag and the #mecha tag. And that was me.

Cohost Cultural Institution: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots
Priv: @Scampriv


I am totally going to buy this game when I have the cash. Here's the thing that gets me. It's on the itch page:

Pale Dot is a GM-less game where everybody will work together to create a strange setting and subsequently envelop it in cosmic mystery. The players will embody cosmonauts as well as one of 5 setting elements:

  • The Cosmic Wilderness (strange creatures and environments)
  • The Wondrous Endeavor (the space program and its tech)
  • The Forgotten Ones (the ancient visitors)
  • The Tides of Uncertainty (the mysterious forces)
  • The Omnipresent Danger (exactly what it sounds like).

And here's the thing. This is pretty standard BoB. These read like pillars in Galactic 2e. But right now it's clicking with me that the strategy of the pillars is that they are slices of the GM task that the game is built around. GMing can be very all-encompassing! I think the DMG says that you're responsible for the world, the challenges, and the rules which can be very daunting. But what Pale Dot, just the itch.io page, pulls me back into is that if GMless veers into GMfull, then there could be an opportunity to divide up "traditional" gm tasks into the "pillar" format.


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in reply to @Scampir's post:

I feel like until I actually started hearing actual plays of BoB, the draw of a diceless gmless system beyond mapmaking hadn't really clicked for me. But now that it has, I can't help but think of it when I'm watching media these days, regardless of genre

yeah it reminds me of that writing advice that's like "get the cat in the tree, then get the cat out of the tree." I feel like connecting intrigue and mysteries to pillars, if that's what's going on here, might get a stronger "i discovered this" reaction out of me than if the table crowd-sourced something.