One day these may blossom into beautiful Posts. Today they are just slush.
revisionist terminology: anti-narratology
fictional → imaginary, makebelieve
character → (imaginary) person
setting → (imaginary) world
(You’re an adult; assume “imaginary” is implied from here out.)
scene → moment, event, the time and place when…
plot, arc, theme → no
character development → ways this person has changed
Aaron Trammell's "The Privilege of Play"
Deeply frustrating book. Some really great archival research, and some really interesting arguments about how geography and professional networks intersect with race and the hobby. Whenever the archival stuff gets interesting or complicated, or whenever there's an opportunity to develop the arguments further, though, it tends to retreat into boilerplate not really moored to the evidence he's dealing with. It feels rushed, more than anything, as though the author spent a decade of diligent work in the archives mine and then was told by a publisher "okay, we can do this, but you have to get it out before people stop caring about Gamergate." (Too late, surely?)
the Narnia campaign structure
The campaign as a series of mini-campaigns, with PCs isekai'd into the secondary world. Between each mini-campaign, advance the time PCs are in Earth by like five years, and in Narnia (or wherever) by 1d6 centuries exploding or whatever.
Smaller cultures of play
Journaling games - got big, something something bluebooking
BroSR - these guys suck but their style is genuinely interesting.
Quests - such an interesting version of the form, one GM, many players with one PC, feels like a response to player flakiness
on the big cultures of play
Throwing my hat into this ring pretty late, and I'm still not sure where on the obvious-untenable spectrum this hypothesis is. But if you take a look at the evolution of play styles mentioned by John:
 |
| obv the lines of influence are way more rhizomatic than this |
part of what you get, I think, is a progressive intensification of the elements of (tabletop) RPGs that aren't as well served by other media - at a time, of course, when those other media have become a bigger and bigger components of people's lives.
Classic play presents itself as a series of escalating, fair challenges; fairness, in turn, allows success to be legible. Classic play is built with assumptions for tournament play and open tables, and, above all else, is a game. Trad play, by contrast, can be read as a form of play built for the established "table," a small group of people who will experience the same events - event which, if properly finessed, might add up to a story.
So we have stories and games - two familiar aesthetic forms occupying the same strange new medium, TTRPGs. This dichotomy, present in many ways before the medium itself, is still with us today. But they've both evolved in ways to take advantage of the differences between this medium and others. There are a lot of games to be legibly good at or stories that are well-paced out there.
Exalted delta combat charms
[Weapon]-Wife Wisdom
Δ: train with an acknowledged
master of a weapon or armor (or absence of armor) that you have not
fought with before, or win three fights in a row with it, using no other
weapons to attack or defend for a month.
Whenever you fight
with this weapon, +1 Prowess. Whenever you fight opponents who are
exclusively using weapons and armor for which you have a variation of
this Charm, an additional +1 Prowess. The bonuses of this can be applied
twice, once for weaponry and once for armor.
Call the Blade
Δ: grant a name to a weapon or suit of armor for which you have [Weapon]-Wife Wisdom. Treat it with respect.
With a moment's concentration, you can banish this weapon to Elsewhere (if you are holding it), or retrieve it from there.
[Weapon]-Daughter Bequeathal
Δ: train
someone, who acknowledges you explicitly as their instructor, in a
weapon for which you have [Weapon]-Wife Wisdom. After they survive an
attack alone defending themselves with the weapon, receive their sincere
thanks and blessing.
Double the effects of [Weapon]-Wife Wisdom.
When you train someone in that weapon, they gain the benefits of
[Weapon]-Wife Wisdom themselves.
Wild-Eyed Berserker Onslaught
Δ: take a Morale of 12 in a combat.
+1
Prowess. If you take a morale of 10+, +2 Prowess. If you ever take a
morale of 4 or less, lose the benefits of this Charm, although you can
gain it back by taking a Morale of 12 again.
Heavenly Guardian Defense
Δ: be
mentored in combat by a Celestial Lion; or, face attack from a Wyld
Hunt, 2nd circle demon, or similarly threatening opponent without
retreating an inch or suffering a scratch.
The first time each day you would die in combat, remain unscathed instead.
Defense of Celestial Bliss
Δ: having mastered Heavenly Guardian Defense, forswear its use for your most formidable opponent yet.
Upgrade Heavenly Guardian Defense to twice a day.
Ready in Eight Directions Stance
Δ: wander
alone and blindfolded for at least a week, surviving at least one
ambush; if you are already blind and have a way around that, stop your
ears instead.
As long as your attention is primarily oriented towards the possibility of being ambushed, you cannot be.
Δ: having mastered Wild-Eyed Berserker Onslaught and Ready in Eight Directions Stance, draw a circle in the ground with your weapon, declaring (then, and again to anyone who appears) that you will kill anyone who crosses or disturbs it until the next dawn or dusk (whichever comes later); carry through this promise to the doom of at least one person.
Draw a circle in the ground with your weapon, swearing the oath that won you this Charm and enter into single-pointed meditation on the infliction of death. The first being to consciously cross or disturb your circle shall die by your hand, whether they be the Maiden of Battles or your own child.
