Game Design Scratchpad

If I have things to talk about regarding game design that aren’t specific to Mnemonic, they’ll go here.

Why So Sillious?
Twitter’s not working, so you get a thread in blog post form instead. “Why are all your safety examples so…silly?” No one asks me this but I think about it, so here’s the answer: I sometimes write silly examples for uses of safety measures first and foremost because I don’t think it’s fair for a reader to have to experience traumatic material in order to learn how to safely handle traumatic material.Read More...
Addressing the CharacterWriting
What if the rules were explicit about not talking to the player at all?
What is Free Play?PBTAHouse rulesSpitball
Powered by the Apocalypse games (and actually most roleplaying games) have a tendency to elide the part that tells us how to play roles. Can we talk about that, is that okay
The Pennyway RuleForged in the DarkHouse Rules
A house rule for Forged in the Dark games that replaces harm, trauma, stress, and resistance with a more cohesive mechanic that grants players more agency over what happens to their characters within the story.