Scampir

If you don't gel with this pitch, a context-based FitD action rating that other players can give you contempt tokens if they think you're abusing it, you better mute #exilium. Because this is truly what I think about roleplaying games all in one spread.

Blades in the Dark has this requirement of you to start the daring heists and breakneck schemes of the game in media res. You begin play of The Score, the actual thing happening, in the middle of it. There is an Engagement Roll to determine how well everything went up until this point. You begin play in action. You start grappling with challenges and obstacles and consequences immediately.

This was an ice-water shock to me when I first heard about it. I liked the proposal (who doesn’t like having fun faster?) but I really had to reconsider what I had thought about games up until this point. Thinking about it, the general ttrpg starting point of a genericized idea of a fantasy inn (in practice an interchangeable term with pub, or tavern) has been long derided in the broader play culture. I can provide points on how the Engagement Roll highlights what the struggles with the inn start are: First, it siloes a space that could be played in into a procedure. Second, it categorizes that roleplay as undesirable, and it shifts the focus of the game through this excision. When looking at the change it makes to the tone of play, it changes the start of play to being in action and not at rest.

trying layout for the first time is like working out and not knowing if your form is correct. i mean i know what i see in the video but i don't know what it feels like to have good form. It feels like i'm at the gym alone again and like, nobody really cares about what i'm getting up to but doing my own layout presents that same anxiety of being witnessed doing something wrong. The Sisyphean insecurity of improvement.

Here's a spread for Exilium. I went back to what's on itch right now and saw that i never explained effect. Taking the time to revise and edit with what I have learned about writing since, I wanted to try connecting what I've learned about policy writitng with what I noticed about reading Mothership. All the rules are broken up into short instructions and descriptions. It's a series of small sentences that get the point across. In this way, It appears as very modular and ready for layout. Maybe that's oobvious to everyone else, but that's something I had to discover last month 👍.