Datum by Datum

I've been thinking about making quests and supplemental material for Tharstradt, my fantasy campaign run with slightly modified Savage Worlds mechanics. So I thought I'd write some stories and backstory here. It was 990 in Tharstradt. Quite early in the year, frost was still covering much of the plains of East Flach, a southern province isolated by the Nenalta and Saltshimmer rivers from the rest of Tharstradt. Benjamin Worldhorse and Graham Cedenach were on their way to the nearest Great Road station, two more days to go on foot. Ben had pasty white skin, was of middling height and slight build. Graham was an obvious immigrant to East Flach with birch colored skin, standing absurdly tall for anyone in the Flachlands at 6'10". The two of them were carrying tokens granting democratic rights to each of them called Seals of Citizenship. Their town of Gilurhall had pooled resources together and constructed each seal to the exacting specifications codified in the laws of ...

Lately I've been watching loads of Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek: The Next Generation . It made me really want to play an RPG that allowed people to explore that type of wonder in space. Star Trek's episodic approach is what separates it from being a pure space opera. That's an oversimplification, but helps to frame why I love and enjoy Star Trek. You can estimate the budget of any Star Trek show like The Next Generation or Enterprise by looking at the fake rock walls that exist on every single planet. The starting point of these walls is obviously fabric and paint, but the ending point is an alien world. For anyone who can suspend their disbelief, the optimism of Star Trek makes the kitsch of Star Trek feel just a bit more genuine. I've been working on making a tabletop RPG that is largely inspired by these things. The goal is to convey Star Trek's characteristic optimism and wonder while allowing the players to build characters that they can rely on, bo...

I was recently reading this article by Rock Paper Shotgun 's contributor Sin Vega. I was suddenly reminded of the numerous struggles I've had when trying to convey any sense of history or meaningful presence as a Game Master in various tabletop role-playing games. Surely video games have an advantage in this arena as they offer a real physical place in relation to your character(s), which is simply impossible to maintain beyond small arenas in the tabletop realm. However, the elegance and effectiveness of purely using imagination to fill in the holes you didn't even know were present in a setting is pretty spectacular. A person... ...in a place. It's totally acceptable if a game has idiosyncrasies all over the place, but hits just enough marks to convince your brain that its setting is a real enough place. Fallout 4 is a game full of "jank" on multiple levels. In terms of believability, the skeletons that litter its world only make s...