Dice Deliberations

Introduction On Friday, I gave a keynote speech at my Dungeons & Toast Toastmasters group. This is the first-ever Toastmasters club designed to meet the needs of RPG players and gamemasters.  The speech was called "The Three Secrets of Tywardin" and began with the story of a lost city found by characters deep in a large forest. I went on to explain that the characters only found the city because the players showed an interest in some scene details and improv turned into a multi-day storyline. I explained that the shift from the normal improvisation of details to enabling the characters/players to help direct the story is called Sandbox gaming (also known as open world gaming.) I then provided some tips on how to easily add sandbox concepts to existing games without changing those games. The speech was a big success, and I was asked to provide notes on it, so people could go back and refer to it. Rather than writing down the whole speech, I'm going to summarize it, wh

  Monte Cook Games always excites and impresses me with their new products. Numenera was obviously transformational, The Strange  has amazing potential for multi-genre play, and Invisible Sun , in addition to its obvious quality has transformed how I play RPGs in General. Their newest Kickstarter is for a completely new concept...a horror setting which can either be used stand-alone *or* connected to any other game you are playing, using a new translation mechanic they call the "House" setting. Introduction Some basic concepts, based on the literature or interviews with the team: Based on playtests, your translated characters, from other games, feel like themselves. The game has about 50 hours of content, and is replayable based on choices you make. More important, you don't play it all at once...you might have 1-2 sessions, then escape...until the House pulls you back in. When you leave the house, you permanently leave or gain things that you take back to your "norm