Flaming Monkey

There’s an interesting thread over on Story Games (and yes, I do realize how many of my posts are related to Story Games) about playing games at cons with people you know versus playing with people you don’t know.

Personally, when I play prefer a mix, as I’m more at ease socially if there are at least one or two people that I know, but playing with people I’ve never met (or only know from online) means getting to experience new styles of playing and new perspectives on games. When I GM I prefer the balance to lean more toward people I know, as I’m more comfortable running a game if I’m at least somewhat familiar with the players.

The thread’s also got interesting points about getting to know the people you’re playing with, so it’s well worth a read.

Over on Story Games, Willow Palecek posted an alternate setting for The Mountain Witch called Battlestar Fujiyama. It looks pretty interesting, with the usual set of Dark Secrets replaced by ones that include things like being a Cylon agent, and the Zodiac representing what Colony the character is from. If you’re a Battlestar Galactica fan, it’s well worth checking out.

As part of the Designing Dresden series of posts over on the official Dresden RPG site, Rob talks about why they chose the Fate system as the base for the game.

We want to make sure that when the group consists of the fae halfblood daughter of Jenny Greenteeth, the lover of a Muse, a Kung Fu wizard, the Autumn Knight and a pizza delivery guy, that everyone gets to be awesome.

So to do that, were going with Fate. It’s not the only game that this is possible in, but for our purposes, it’s the best match.

Sounds promising, doesn’t it? I’m definitely looking forward to seeing this one when it’s ready to go, especially given how well the boys at Evil Hat have done with games like Spirit of the Century.

And did I ever mention that I played a small part in getting Dresden and Evil Hat together (for the game I mean, since Jim and Fred already knew each other)……?

A Story Games thread that might be of interest, particularly to Amber GMs (since it’s a situation that seems to happen a lot in Amber games):

Keeping players together when their protagonists diverge