Personable Thoughts

  In a confluence of events, I ran my first session of Mothership this week, after having played it most weeks for the last six months or so, coinciding with the Paul Beakley of Indie Game Reading Club posting his review of the game. I think it is a well articulated critique, echoing some points made in Dwiz' review over on Knight at the Opera (now sadly unavailable). However, as a self-professed "system-curious indie guy", I think Paul underestimates the value of a simple but effective chassis (or at least, he comes to the conclusion that it is not what he wants out of a game). The strength of the stress system is how simple it is to interact with - yes, the rules in the booklet may not be enough to fully drive play on their own, but perhaps that was never the intention? I would argue that the core rules of Mothership offer just half of the game, with the other half left open to be filled by modules or an enterprising game master: The quality of the rules should the...

  This December, I am participating in the Covert Critic blogging extravaganza, as celebrated by the bloggers nesting in the Prismatic Wasteland Discord server, inspired by Clayton Notestine's 2024 Gifts for RPG Designers . This is a very fun exercise, and has me reading things I otherwise might not have picked up. Today: Swineheart Motel by Ty Pitre, AKA Mindstorm Press . Swineheart Motel is a system-neutral horror adventure for modern settings, set in and around a roadside motel deep in the forests of northern America. A podcaster has gone missing (the horror!) and the players are tasked with finding him. This is all contained in a 40 page zine, to the best of my knowledge only available digitally. Art is sparse, but what's there is bespoke and good. Instead of more spot art, many pages have little hand-written quotes, possibly attributed to the missing podcaster, though this is unclear. What is beyond doubt, however, is that they work well for setting the scene with their ...