theiddm.wordpress.com

Enrique “NewbieDM” Bertran joins Ego Check once again to talk about his new Patreon campaign. I wanted to talk with Enrique to discuss the success of Critical Role and how other intellectual properties might capitalize on that formula

François Alliot, designer of the Reigns series of games, discusses his Tinder-inspired approach to probabilistic narrative game design. He talks about his quest to find a great “flow” for his games and how he wants to surprise players. We delve into the design of Reigns and ponder how adaptive game design might develop in the future. François shares his influences regarding the focus on emerging narrative games, and he also provides some news about what he is working on next – including a tabletop version of Reigns!

I’m joined by Jana Flesher, a professional nurse midwife who also happens to be both a player and DM in various RPG campaigns I’ve been involved with over the past three years. She talks about her 10+ years of experience running various RPG systems including Dungeons & Dragons and Dungeon World, and specifically offers tips for running tag-along NPCs and engaging the motivations of player characters. Jana also details her professional role as a midwife and speaks to how gaming has increased her ability to cope with any situation her professional work can deal to her. Throughout the episode, we both provide examples of games we share both ends of the screen, which leads to some great conversation about principles of tabletop role-playing games.

Her article this month on character tensions uses wonderful imagery to demonstrate how characters are affected by internal tensions and external forces: Imagine for a moment everything your character cares about—Love, Friendship, Family, Country, Ideals, Religion, Tradition, Self, and Things More Specific For example, Parenting could be identified as very important while the satisfaction level with Parenting is low; this would be a good place to 1) explore and clarify why Parenting matters to the patient and 2) determine strategies for raising the satisfaction level of Parenting. The first step for us is identifying what values are important, and the next step is taking actions that are connected to those values. When designing playable or non-playable characters, consider not only random tables and other tools for designing the characters – also consider responding to the Valued Directions Worksheet from the perspective of that character.