@SJohnRoss@dice.camp
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

SJohnRoss

@SJohnRoss@dice.camp

You examine the S. John closely, but find only a small tag proclaiming him a product of the Frobozz Magic Game Designer Company.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

SJohnRoss, to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

The big challenge I usually face when I run workshops isn't explaining causal chains; most people get that pretty instantly. The big problem is getting to the point where causal chains even make sense as a topic.

The huge hump to get over is to talk a designer/GM accustomed to the tools of low-trust design (objectives, obstacles, encounters, offered choices/menus, etc) to think in terms of problems. It's a tiny thing but it feels HUGE and I sometimes can't guide them to it.

SJohnRoss, (edited ) to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

Ugh. Just saw someone blatantly violating my copyright over on Ye Merrye Drive Thru, to the tune of an entire book.

I strongly suspect it's an innocent mistake, something devoid of malice or sneaky intent ... but ugh. I mostly just hate having to email the DTRPG people; they've never been easy to work with on anything, and previous copyright-violation issues have been minor nightmares.

#TTRPGPublishing

SJohnRoss, (edited ) to Nostalgia
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

Pondering the publishing gimmicks of my childhood:

  • Pop-Ups (sometimes with bonus sliding/rotating)
  • Scratch and Sniff
  • Red-filter secrets
  • "Invisible ink"
  • Flexidiscs
  • 3D w/paper glasses

There were others, but those I actually enjoyed. Some, I was not the target audience for (like "panels of fur for some goddamn reason").

My only nostalgic pang is realizing the flexidisc is the most deaddy deadest, because only hipsters and hardcore collectors have phonographs anymore. 😮

SJohnRoss,
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

@Johnnephew Nice!

SJohnRoss, (edited )
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

@peteramthor Yeah, I've glanced at a couple and they are something else! Alas, the intersection of "pop-up books" and "books about stuff I want books about" has drifted far apart over the years. 😭

SJohnRoss,
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

@119v0080 Astonishing! Also nifty. 😲😊

SJohnRoss, (edited ) to worldbuilding
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

I'm seat-of-the-pants about in some ways, but there's some arbitrary math guiding the scope of . The most important is probably the 1/8th rule, which says I cannot explicitly describe more than 1 location in 8 ... for every building/etc I describe, I need to leave 7 for the GM and/or later development. This is both a maximum and my target, so I'm trying to get very near to that 7:1 ratio but without exceeding it, price-is-right style. [continued]

SJohnRoss, (edited ) to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

When I try to describe to a designer unaccustomed to it, the Half-Dozen Rule often fills their eyes with horror.

Them: I need to design prep for SIX approaches?
Me: Twelve. Sorry about the name.
Them: [sweating] Uhh ... Violence and ... Convincing? Um ...

But once you have some tools, it's not hard to hit that tiny minimum. Recall some of the tools:

  • Problems with problems
  • Causal Chaining
  • Fuel-Sourcing
  • People Up
  • Five Root Forms

Try it. It's (really) fun. 😊

SJohnRoss, (edited ) to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

Of the twenty-something fantasy city-books highlighted in the biblio, Eidolon (and Sel-Kai) might take the "pleasantly surprised" award, because I've never been a Shadow World fan (still not) ... But my preconceptions were unfair to this book, which is Really Very Good. While it has some of Amthor's usual tics, they often end up serving, rather than undermining, the design. Dragon magazine called it the jewel of the Shadow World crown, and I agree.

SJohnRoss, to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

I know I'm twenty years late to the party but this morning I'm excited about Markdown. 😅

SJohnRoss, to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

I feel like posts are dwindling. Are we losing activity after the initial rush of post-bird arrivals ... or are we getting plenty but newer users aren't hashtagging, or using a different tag? Or is everyone out frolicking in the grass? 😅

SJohnRoss, to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

Folks sometimes ask me if I'll ever just publish an all-in-one article describing in detail.

I have long intended to. My main problem is that, every time I draft it, its ideal form seems to be a kind of mutant pick-a-path "Choose Your Own Socratic FAQ" monstrosity and I hate that. 😅

Eventually I'll just surrender to that, resign to it, and do my best to make it funny.

nickdrawthing, to random
@nickdrawthing@dice.camp avatar

The doctor sent me to get a "full workup." Sounded fine, but when I got there they STOLE A BUNCH OF MY LIQUIDS!

SJohnRoss,
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

@nickdrawthing We must not allow them to sap and impurify our fluids!

SJohnRoss, (edited ) to worldbuilding
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

More demographic mapping today. This is an early draft of the four dominant cultural/faith/language clusters as represented by Human inhabitants. There are no "race cultures" in the Candle Islands, though there are plenty of people who believe there are. For example, the spots of red are Saman Humans (Humans who are culturally Fjurin, Rolig or Grazny), which many Imperials dismiss as "Humans who think they're Dwarves I guess?"

SJohnRoss, to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

I've find these two city books inspiring. They're old books, but fairly new to me. Not only do they have the Gamelords signature table-wise design, they're also a rarity: a pair of books, describing a pair of towns, on opposing sides of a local conflict, each given the full treatment (Skully's Harbor and Fort Bevits is another such pair, in the Lejentia line). They're also subordinate towns to the larger Haven boxed set and (alas, never-completed) expansion modules. #TTRPG

SJohnRoss, to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

I honestly have no idea how many #TTRPG books there are fitting the description "sourcebook devoted to a single fantasy town." I know there's more than a hundred, but I don't know how many more. Could be 200, 300, more? My personal experience is with less than that (I've read only 80 or so, a cross-section across the decades) but if anyone ever wants to publish a comprehensive list, they'll have me on their cheering squad (and on their volunteer list, if they need any). 🥰

SJohnRoss, to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

I often extoll the virtues of Action-Mystery by talking about the GM side (mysteries are easier to design, easier to run, have more pacing handles).

But the player side is even juicier. There's magic in piecing together dangerous truths on dangerous time.

"The volcano's gonna blow; we need to evacuate the town!" is a great straight-action seed, but having that same truth dawn on you as you investigate is potent in a way a simple call to action seldom is.

#TTRPG #AdventureDesign #HTTRPG

SJohnRoss, (edited ) to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

While the five root forms are an arbitrary chunking/distillation of a complex design issue, they're a useful set of chunks for eyeing centrality.

Just as higher-trust adventures tend to cluster multiple problems, higher-trust problems tend to cluster multiple "forms."

The Huzrael in Toast, designed in part to be an example, are simultaneously Imperiled, Misplaced, and Failing.

Three of their number (Hirash, Jaina and optionally Amrad) embody At-Odds and/or Harmful.

SJohnRoss, to VideoGames
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

I am genuinely enjoying #BG3, as I assumed I would, but good golly, I think I'm literally losing count of the number of Enigmatic Hyper-Powerful NPCs Who Just Pop Around to Strum the Plot Threads And Smirk At Us Because They've Been Privy to the DM's Notes. 😮

#Videogames #BaldursGate3

GIF of a line from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. "It's high. It's very high."

Ashigaru, to random
@Ashigaru@dice.camp avatar

@SJohnRoss The old Risus homepage was one link I deleted. 😭

SJohnRoss,
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

@Ashigaru I deleted it first. 😈

SJohnRoss, to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

[briefly perks up at chatter about a new Discworld RPG]

[notices it's Modiphius]

[sighs]

[perks right the fuck back down]

SJohnRoss, to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

I've worked for Wizards of the Coast a couple of times as a freelancer, but back in the early 90s they offered me an in-house job. I turned it down for several reasons, mostly because it wasn't a good enough offer to move west to work for a publisher I had no particular admiration for.

Within two or three years, declining that job felt like dodging a bullet, and it's felt like dodging a bullet a few dozen times since.

The latest round of layoffs is another notch on that old, old bullet. 😬

SJohnRoss, to worldbuilding
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

I caught myself doing that thing I sometimes do where I let a random linguistic coincidence drive a worldbuilding decision.

I then encouraged it to continue. 😅

#WorldBuilding #TTRPG

SJohnRoss, to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

When I was in high school, a gamer-buddy and I would skip school to go to the base library, and we'd use dice to select a random book for one another.

We'd part company for an hour, go to our favorite comfy chairs in the library, and just rummage through the random books. Then we'd meet up and talk about it.

We only did it a few times, but, in terms of education, each of those days was worth more than a month of the school-days we skipped to do it.

#Fogey #Reminiscing #Randomness

SJohnRoss, to random
@SJohnRoss@dice.camp avatar

Some FRPG lines produce only a single city book, some never produce one at all, and some lines really dive in. The MERP line was a diver-inner of the first water, with (maybe?) more books dedicated to invidiual towns than any RPG without a fire-breathing ampersand. AND they're all pretty dang GOOD. I'd be coy, though, if I pretended it was hard to pick a favorite. Thieves of Tharbad, by Lisa Evans and others, is just too cool. Very fine work. #TTRPG #MERP

A fragment of the town map from Thieves of Tharbad.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • JUstTest
  • mdbf
  • ngwrru68w68
  • modclub
  • magazineikmin
  • thenastyranch
  • rosin
  • khanakhh
  • InstantRegret
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • Durango
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • megavids
  • GTA5RPClips
  • tacticalgear
  • normalnudes
  • tester
  • osvaldo12
  • everett
  • cubers
  • ethstaker
  • anitta
  • provamag3
  • Leos
  • cisconetworking
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •