ars ludi

art of the game, roleplaying game theory from the brain of ben robbins

Archive for the ‘uncategorized’


Define Busy

“Fire up the Orbital Mind Control Lasers! Aim them at the Seattle area!”

Bob thinks I’m being lazy and ignoring ars ludi, but it’s not true! I’m actually just really busy.

On the volunteer front, I’m helping organize Go Play NW 2010, plus I’m organizing weekly meetups for Story Games Seattle. That’s right: slaving away so that you, the people, get to game more. No, no, hold your applause.

But don’t think I’m sacrificing all my fun to do dull admin work. I’m gaming a ton: 11 games last month, and that’s without a convention or anything adding density. Three Microscope games, three Mouse Guard, four pickup story games at meetups, and (ahem) one Star Wars Saga — hey it was Run Club, I had no choice. So yeah, poor me.

Wait, you want more? You may have noticed that little thing called Microscope in the list. One year of playtesting, and I continue to demonstrate that the fine art of perfectionism is not dead, revising and refining and flat-out hacking out chunks with a chainsaw when I realize (eventually) that they don’t serve my purposes. Sometimes it does take three dozen games to realize something’s broken, but luckily I’m very patient. No sacred cows here, or at least none with all their limbs.

Anthology of Game Blogs

I got my copy of Open Game Table, The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs.

Is there some ars ludi in there, you ask? On yeah. The Braunstein: Roots of Roleplaying article is reprinted, along with all five West Marches articles and Making the Party: Wedge Issues.

My only regret is that because of concerns over copyright, the original plan to include some reader comments along with the articles got scrubbed. I really would have liked Major Wesely’s replies to be included with the Braunstein article — what could be more fitting? The reviews of the anthology have included a lot of nice comments about Braunstein, and it’s nice to see both Major Wesely and Dave Arneson getting some well-deserved recognition, plus gamers learning about their roots.

…hmm, just one post in two months? Well it’s not like I normally post on a schedule, but lately I’ve been knee-deep developing microscope. More on that later.

Lame Mage Gets A Blog

In case you haven’t seen it yet, I’ve spun off a second blog specifically for Lame Mage stuff.

Why a second blog? The Lame Mage blog will have things like product updates, release information — all the kind of stuff that to me just clutters up Ars Ludi.

It is also a place where I can kick around upcoming projects, game ideas I’m working on, plus some actual play from games we’re trying out. And I say we, because there are a few other partners in crime that will be posting on the other blog as well.

Or to look at it another way, Ars Ludi is the place for things I’m fairly certain are complete ideas or would be useful to other people, whereas (in addition to publishing info) the Lame Mage blog may be a glimpse inside the sometimes incomplete and dangerous internal development process. You have been warned.

Search Ars Ludi

Added a search field. Don’t ask why this wasn’t there before. Sheer madness. But it’s there now, so search away.

Couldn’t you have just searched with Google? Yes, but if your search string was part of an article title every single post was returned because all the titles appear in the sidebar of every post. Oooh, messy.

Guide my GenCon

Say I was going to GenCon in a day or two (because I am). My current plan it to wander aimlessly through the mighty sea of gamers, but this shows a certain lack of strategy.

Where should I go? What should I do? What are the things I absolutely should not miss?

Gimme the scoop.

Three’s a Crowd

After many revised release plans, Like Father, Like Son (Trial of Dr Null) is out the door and looking for heroes to kick around.

Following my own advice, I always try to have the next project underway before the last one is out. Otherwise it’s just too easy to sit around and noodle over the thing you just released.

I’ve already been working on secret project “scotty” (with my two equally secret collaborators), but to keep it company I’ve been working on the first book in the Worlds Collide series (with brief forays into the second book when the mood strikes me).

That should be enough to keep me busy, right? Well due to popular demand I’ve decided to screw up that schedule and wedge another project in there too, which we’ll just call “the little yellow book” for now.

It should be easy to fit in because it’s little, right? It says so right in the code name.