After a year of absence, I’ll give this instance another shot, things have gone better than I expected.
Writing as a fan of the americano, I think we should just call it what it is. After all, what’s more american than taking something good and watering it down?
Alternatively we could call it the italiano since that’s where it originated. Or “café à l’eau” perhaps, what’s more Canadian than randomly adding french. Calling it “canadiano” feels too “freedom fries” to me.
yeah, it’s one of my favourite coffees. I like perc-brewed black coffee already, americano has all the, uh, “perks” of it but also the richer flavour of an espresso. So good.
I don’t disagree, but I think there are other ways to break up the text flow too. However, those do require more graphic design which also costs.
Using art to break sections up is probably its only practical purpose, and I agree it does help with that, but IDK if it’s as core as the author of the article seems to take for granted.
Are RPGs expected to contain lots of art? I’d like to examine that starting point. I admit I only skimmed the article but I didn’t see any analysis of if less art means less sales. I wonder if people are trying to adhere to the standard set in games like D&D and PF, but those have art because they can, not necessarily because they must.
Blades in the Dark is extremely highly regarded and has some art, but certainly not tons of it. Microscope and Kingdom haven’t got any, as far as I can recall.
haha yeah I love worldbuilding and spend tons of time on it but I have learned to understand that that time is just for my own benefit and almost never has any relevance.
I second this approach. The way I handle it is to think up several ‘powers’, whether they are villains or factions, which have their own agendas, and I keep track of these in a notebook somewhere. As time passes in the game, I jot down notes about how (if at all) their plans are affected by the players, and where they’re at. It gives me stuff for the NPCs to talk about that the players can explore more, and if the players don’t, it gives the world a very lived-in feel. In one campaign, there was a war between neighbouring countries that just progressed in the background, utterly unaffected by events of the game, but people remarked on the gossip coming in from across the mountains throughout the story, it felt cool. Other times, something that’s rumoured for a long time becomes abruptly relevant, which creates a cool sense of buildup and payoff. Either way, you win.
This is something blades in the dark expressly codifies by having “faction clocks” that are essentially this exact thing, and it’s yet another way BitD is a really good training tool for GMs.
At surface, that sounds a lot like what I do. Looking at the post, it’s a bit more organized than my approach, but I have a very similar general style. It’s a really good way to get the positives of railroading (control over story direction, ability to actually prepare stuff) while giving the players real agency and decisions (the story changes if you first intersect it in a roadside tavern instead of in the thieves’ guild, you don’t just meet the same questgiver and start the same sequence)
There are still a lot more people on twitter.
Oh neat. I knew there had to be more comms than I was seeing.
It’s not the same situation as freedom fries at all, but it has the same sort of cringe feel to me. Just like french fries, the americano isn’t really american. We’re not ‘sticking it’ to anyone here, so it rubs me the wrong way a little. I hardly have a strong opinion on it though.