@ludopolitics@dice.camp
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ludopolitics

@ludopolitics@dice.camp

Asst Teaching Prof, CMU. Indie game designer, teacher, scholar, parent. ENG/中文.

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ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

This guy created a super-indie tabletop RPG for his MA thesis in architecture, which looks really cool. Too bad it's not gotten any traction on Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yourtroubledcity/your-troubled-city

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

I just learned that Pittsburgh is the headquarters of extreme pogo sticking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS6kL6G4GZ4

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

It's been a minute; let's do this again:

If you are a Tabletop RPG nerd and have less than, say, 500 followers (or think you have less than 500 that are actually active):

  1. Write a post to introduce yourself and your particular nerdery, if you haven't already got one pinned.

  2. Reply in the comments with a link to or copy of that post.

  3. Share, check back to find people you want to follow, all that.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

@LeviKornelsen

Hi folks, this is me:

https://dice.camp/@ludopolitics/112278380605545658

Summary: I've been making weird indie RPGs for a long time, and I now teach game design at Carnegie Mellon.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

I know people (including me) get stressed that it feels like it keeps getting harder to get attention / sell copies in RPGs as a result of everybody being able to make and publish games now...

... but I like to think it means we've reached the "indie music" stage of RPGs. Like, anyone can record a song and throw it up on their MySpace page (or equivalent), and that's great. That's what we wanted to happen! There's more great games than you could ever read or play.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Oh no. I think I just started a new game draft that's a heavy For The Queen hack with a lot swearing?

RAPTOR NEST (working title)

You are a real piece-of-shit who, for some reason, owns a fucking raptor — a semi-autonomous spaceplane gunship. And not because you’re a soul-contracted client soldier, bankrolled by an evil-ass gigacorp or star empire, either. No, you’re the doomed owner of a fucking FREE raptor, beholden to no one but yourself, you poor hopeless fool.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Okay, so this might be happening.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Wondering if I've reached the point in adulthood / the indiepocalypse where I have increasingly less motivation to design stand-alone games, because I can just hack something together to support whatever I want to play?

There's just so much stuff out there. And one of my favorite styles of design & play (freeform larp or tabletop scenarios) doesn't demand commercialization or formal publication for stuff to get played.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Seriously thinking about a Palladium retroclone, because I am the person in the "sicko" gif.

It could be called the Aluminum System, but you'd have to pronounce it in the British way, with the invisible extra i.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

My next personal game-design project looks like it'll be re-theming, redesigning, and repairing a 1962 Gottlieb pinball machine. It's gonna be a lot of work to produce 1 single copy, likely the only version of the game that will ever exist. But it'll be magical.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Hi TRPG braintrust!

What are some interesting CC-BY or otherwise open TRPG games that my students could potentially adapt into video games?

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Last few years, I've been feeling that @megueyb + @lumpley's Apocalypse World and Avery's most recent half-dozen games (since Quiet Year) -- plus everything released since -- have left me thinking a lot about "responding to a prompt" as the micro-foundation of TRPG play.

I don't know if I can fully articulate it, or put it into a clouds-and-arrows diagram. And, in the end, it's not particularly complicated or insightful. But I think it helps reframe TRPGs (and all play?) in useful ways.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Part of it is what this approach leaves out: it doesn't assume a GM, or dice, or more than 1 player, or any other of the "standard" TRPG trappings that often come with some RPG theories and perspectives.

It also doesn't specify much about what can be a prompt (anything can be a prompt) or how people respond to any given prompt (they can respond in countless different ways). But it allows for snowballing in the sense that one player's response is often a prompt that invokes additional responses.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Thinking more about it, I feel like the "responding to a prompt" stuff was perhaps initially made clear by stuff like Baron Munchausen, Breaking the Ice, @megueyb's 1001 Nights, etc. -- early games that avoided standard RPG design tropes in favor of structuring narrative in other ways. And that came full circle with card larps, Companion's Tale, Quiet Year, For the Queen, keepsake & solo games, etc.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

It's also, I think, broadly inclusive of everything that TRPGs have become and will continue to expand to be, at least for a while. And it works as a framework to bridge TRPGs and other types of games, since it's possible to view all play as responding to prompts.

It also doesn't necessarily require that accurate or deep communication is happening between different players, or between players and game materials. That can happen, but it's not required or assumed.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

These structures & processes can take the form of designed objects, certainly, but they can also be more abstract, like methods, procedures, perspectives, patterns.

Often a prompt built into the mechanics is not so much a direct provocation -- though it can be that -- as much as it is an opportunity or an affordance. Frex: drawing a card & answering one question in Quiet Year is a pretty direct prompt. But an MC or player-side move in AW is more like an opportunity -- inviting you to pick it.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

You don't need a digital Campaign Manager tool if you never have time to play something that's not a one-shot.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Before Twitter dies for good, I really need to archive @epidiah's thread about why the Bullwinkle Party Game is the best system for running Dark Souls. https://twitter.com/epidiah/status/1487081775117615112

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Finally heard back from the guy who made an indie RPG for his MA thesis in architecture.

It stalled out on Kickstarter because HE DOESN'T USE SOCIAL MEDIA and had no way of promoting it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yourtroubledcity/your-troubled-city

ludopolitics, to random
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That thing in games where game designers are both minor celebrities and also often among the least important people in determining what actually happens during play.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Just upped my pledge for
@WarBirds's new game LUMBERJILLS, which is SO CLOSE to being funded. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unrulydesigns/lumberjills-a-war-birds-game

At the higher backer level, you get to suggest an NPC, so I'm poking around to learn about people like the Chinese merchant marine sailors who served in the UK, and then were forcibly deported for racist reasons afterwards, despite many of them marrying British women. https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2022-08-17/How-the-UK-deported-thousands-of-Chinese-men-who-served-in-WWII-1cyfURb1gac/index.html

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Here's a draft cover layout for my game idea inspired by "Robotech: Invid Invasion," featuring everyone's favorite gender-nonconforming musician & revolutionary: Lancer!

I will definitely hire an artist to create a cover image that doesn't infringe on anyone's IP, if it gets that far. This is me just trying stuff out to inspire myself.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

I tried out a new assignment this semester, for my "Intro to Game Design" course:

I assigned my students to design 3 levels inspired by the mechanics of Hitman GO / Lara Croft GO, but with the theme switched to Netflix's new Carmen Sandiego TV series.

The levels are really good, y'all.

annaleen, to random
@annaleen@wandering.shop avatar

Where do psyops come from? Find out in my forthcoming book STORIES ARE WEAPONS, now available for pre-order! Want a signed and/or personalized copy? Order one from the glorious Green Apple Books today! https://www.greenapplebooks.com/signed-annalee-newitz

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

@annaleen No, but their stuff looks super interesting. Thanks for the rec! Actually, Wolfe's books look really useful for something I'm working on right now.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

I got to participate in an early playtest of a student's TRPG this week, which they're trying to finish as part of an independent study.

It feels like an early-mid 2000s indie game in many respects: you play members of a relatively new cult and follow your characters' journey as the cult grows and comes into tension with both the local community and itself.

It has hints of @PaulCzege's MLwM, Steve Hickey's Soth, and @jmstar's The Roach (good company!), but is also clearly its own thing. Neat.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

I just found out about the Adventure Time RPG. What a tragedy.

It would have been so much fun with a rules-lite system + random tables/seeds for adventures.

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