The Move Itself This article was made possible by the generous support of our patrons. Please consider joining them by supporting us on Patreon. Catching Someone’s EyeWhen you catch someone’s eye, roll+Hx. (If an NPC, roll+Cool.) On a 10+, choose 2: they’re provoked, inspired, alerted, charmed, unsettled, or reassured — or else choose 1 that they are, but […]
Apocalypse World: Catching Someone’s Eye, Part 2
Accommodations: When the Rules Don’t Land This article was made possible by the generous support of our patrons. Please consider joining them by supporting us on Patreon. In Part 1, I laid out the idea of moves’ tolerances, the implicit flex and play that moves in Apocalypse World are designed to include. I pointed out that moves as […]
Apocalypse World: a Deep Dive into Catching Someone’s Eye
Part 1: Intro, Basics, and Moves’ Tolerances This article was made possible by the generous support of our patrons. Please consider joining them by supporting us on Patreon. At the end of April 2026, Meg and I released a preview of the core playbooks and rules of Apocalypse World 3rd Ed, including a new basic move: Catching Someone’s […]
Art Games: a Quick Outline
I take one college-level contemporary art class and I think I’m educated! This article was made possible by the generous support of our patrons. Please consider joining them by supporting us on Patreon. Framing A little while ago in a contemporary art class I presented a few of my own games as “art games.” By way of introduction […]
Apocalypse World, PbtA, RPG Design & Development, RPG Theory, The Demon Tree, Under Hollow Hills, Warriors of the World Ablaze
A PbtA Thought Experiment: Controlling Outcomes
This article was made possible by the generous support of our patrons. Please consider joining them by supporting us on Patreon. It follows this previous piece: A PbtA Thought Experiment: On a Miss. Prelim 1. John Harper’s “Crossing the Line” Way, way back in the first days of PbtA, literally in 2010, John Harper wrote about custom moves […]
Powered by the Apocalypse, part 12: A Move Nuance
Using Apocalypse World to Outline and Draft Your Own RPG Here in Part 12, I point out a detail in Apocalypse World’s playbook moves that you might have missed. This article was made possible by the generous support of my patrons. Please consider joining them by supporting me on Patreon. Chaotic Presence I’ve got a series of playbook […]
Revisiting GNS
This article was made possible by the generous support of our patrons. Please consider joining them by supporting us on Patreon. It used to be part of my job (self-employed) to advocate for the Big Model’s terms. I never chased people around the internet and corrected their usage, an impossible task, but when people came to my spaces, […]
The Ways The Machine Controls Us
This article was made possible by the generous support of our patrons. Please consider joining them by supporting us on Patreon. Hello world. It’s Dec 2024 and things are fully on fire. As they always have been, but perhaps more under the blindingly obvious late-stage extractive capitalism that is the incoming Trump/Musk administration. Folks are nervous, and angry. […]
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven’s Ars Magica: Playtesting Begins!
Click here to download the rules and join the playtest! From the game: If you haven’t seen Roger Corman’s 1963 film The Raven, starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre & Boris Karloff, this’ll be a little harder to explain. Wizards don’t concern themselves with the affairs, great events, wars, or politics of non-wizards, what they dismissively term “the Mortal […]
Troupe-Style Play
Here’s how we’re laying out troupe-style play in the Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven’s Ars Magica playtest document. Part I: Troupe-Style Play If you haven’t played role-playing games troupe-style before, this should be a pretty good place to start. Let me lay it out for you. Main characters & Supporting Cast: You can think of your wizard as […]
