Previous Topics

6/6/2003 talysman: Talk Trash 2Nite: first draft
ok, I need to catch up on all the game design ideas that are waiting to be finished, so I've finally gotten the "Jerry Springer" rpg to the point where…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: talysman, Mike Holmes, Ron Edwards.

5/29/2003 talysman: trading for editing
I was discussing game publishing with a friend who is about to publish two of his rpgs and hit on an idea I haven't seen mentioned, so I thought I'd…
In Publishing
Participants: talysman, Matt Wilson, samdowning, Jerry D. Grayson.

5/28/2003 talysman: Daemons of Strife and Love post-mortem
as part of the process of rewriting my Iron Game Chef contribution for actual distribution, I've decided to go back through the game and analyze what was wrong, what was…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: talysman, Mike Holmes.

5/12/2003 talysman: dungeon crawls and relationship maps
in another forum, I started a discussion about GMless role-playing (defined loosely to include any shared or rotating GM duties.) I started the thread mainly because it was obvious from…
In RPG Theory
Participants: talysman, Mike Holmes, Matt Wilson, Ron Edwards, efindel, jdagna, John Kim, Gordon C. Landis, Emily Care, Thierry Michel, Bill_White.

4/17/2003 talysman: The Troubadours of Verticaille
I have no real plans to charge for Troubadours, but since some people have said they actually want to play it, I will clean it up somewhat and distribute it…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: talysman, Ron Edwards, Mike Holmes.

3/29/2003 talysman: Gamist/Narrativist hybrid: possible or impossible?
I thought I'd throw out some thoughts/questions that have been churning in my mind for a while and see what other people concluded. a lot of these questions have surfaced…
In GNS Model Discussion
Participants: talysman, Clinton R. Nixon, Ron Edwards, Mike Holmes.

3/17/2003 talysman: Court of 9 Chambers: system overview
as I've mentioned recently, I'm working on the playtest document of the most recent version of The Court of 9 Chambers. I'm almost ready to post the PDF, but I…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: talysman, Spooky Fanboy, Mike Holmes.

3/7/2003 talysman: Gamism (split from Elucidating / microcosm)
I'd also correct the statement about Gamism. I don't think it's concerned with matters of character power, necessarily, or with winning (although a "sense of winning" might be different matter...)…
In GNS Model Discussion
Participants: talysman, Ron Edwards.

2/6/2003 talysman: Iron Game Chef?
with all this talk about Simulationist games, I've been wondering: is Mike Holmes about to run an Iron Chef Simulationist competition? it's been almost four months since the last one...…
In Site Discussion
Participants: talysman, Mike Holmes, Jack Spencer Jr, Ron Edwards, Maurice Forrester, Shreyas Sampat, Dave Panchyk.

1/22/2003 talysman: [Court of 9 Chambers] Flashback Rolls/Conflict Resolution
hi, all. I have run into a potential problem with the Court of 9 Chambers game mechanics; when I described a new feature which I considered innovative and exciting to…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: talysman, clehrich, Tony Irwin, Michael S. Miller, ethan_greer, Shreyas Sampat, Dave Panchyk.

11/25/2002 talysman: Court of 9 Chambers: new description mechanics
I've been working on the next version of "The Court of 9 Chambers", something a little more robust while still maintaining that flexible minimalist feel of the first version. the…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: talysman, Emily Care, Valamir.

11/21/2002 talysman: Symbolic-Language Gamemastering (from Chunk Theory, from El
not sure if this will be helpful, but here's a sort of crude version of a potential "chunk" language that is not quite as crude as the "36 story types"…
In RPG Theory
Participants: talysman, Emily Care, Mike Holmes, Le Joueur, M. J. Young, JMendes.

11/15/2002 talysman: Promotion (split from Mainstream)
[quote="Ron Edwards"] John (Talysman), dude, please, all that belongs in [i]another thread[/i]. I'd rather not have to lock this one, but I don't think I've encountered this much resistance about…
In Publishing
Participants: talysman, quozl, Ron Edwards.

10/22/2002 talysman: Sorcerer Humanity/Demon concept for non-horror games
I came up with an interesting approach to Humanity and a game concept that only tweaks a few Sorcerer rules slightly. I'm not sure I will be able to use…
In Adept Press
Participants: talysman, Ron Edwards.

10/20/2002 talysman: what I did for Iron Game Chef: the Court of 9 Chambers
I waited a few days before starting my post-mortem, so that I could think about the game a little more. obviously, when I created the concept of the game, I…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: talysman, Paul Czege.

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Subsequent Topics

7/15/2003 talysman: Cafe Press publishing
we've known it was coming soon for a while now, but Cafe Press just put up information on their website about selling print-on-demand books through them. you can do set-up…
In Publishing
Participants: talysman, rpghost, Paul Czege, jdagna, Mike Holmes, Clay.

8/15/2003 talysman: an approach to multiple simultaneous GMs
over in the Smacked Upside the Head with a Guitar thread, which I just now noticed (having just gotten back from a trip,) Michael (anonymouse) raised the idea of swapping/reversing…
In RPG Theory
Participants: talysman, gobi.

9/4/2003 talysman: "The Gamers" film as example of actual play
reading about the D&D3.5 assassination attempt reminded me of a DVD I watched recently made by an improv/film group called the Dead Gentlemen. the video was called "The Gamers" and…
In Actual Play
Participants: talysman, Mike Holmes, Jack Spencer Jr, rafial, MonkeyWrench, Ron Edwards, Andy Kitkowski, Jeph, hyphz, quozl, MachMoth, Michael S. Miller.

9/12/2003 talysman: another take on "the character doesn't exist"
I've been catching up on the various threads about this whole issue of "do the characters (and presumably, game world) have any kind of existence aside from what the players…
In RPG Theory
Participants: talysman, pete_darby, Marco, Gordon C. Landis, John Kim, Cemendur, Valamir, Hunter Logan, M. J. Young, Alan, Eric J-D, contracycle, simon_hibbs, Christopher Weeks, AgentFresh, Walt Freitag, cruciel, Jonathan Walton, Mike Holmes, Jack Spencer Jr, Ron Edwards.

1/27/2004 talysman: [Court of 9 Chambers] example/flow of play
I've decided to set aside some projects and go back to other projects, such as The Court of 9 Chambers. I'm pretty much set on the mechanics, which haven't changed…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: talysman, Mike Holmes, hix.

2/15/2004 talysman: GMless gaming techniques
Michael's thread on GMless play was slightly derailed by a technical discussion on how to do it, and he asked that technical discussed be moved elsewhere. I agree that it's…
In RPG Theory
Participants: talysman, Valamir, clehrich, Ron Edwards, Noon, Emily Care, Mike Holmes, M. J. Young.

2/20/2004 talysman: limitations on creative agenda
here's an idea I've had floating around in my head for a couple weeks. recent discussions in the thread about Mike's Standard Rant #7 prompted me to post about this…
In GNS Model Discussion
Participants: talysman, Ron Edwards, james_west, Andrew Norris, Emily Care, cruciel, xiombarg.

4/6/2004 talysman: my "house rules" die mechanic
as I've mentioned, I'm developing a set of core or "house" rules that I will adapt to specific games in which the setting is the primary focus, sort of the…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: talysman, Emily Care, Mike Holmes, Ravien, clehrich, anonymouse.

9/26/2005 talysman: [Court of 9 Chambers] first playtest
in the second half of august, I took a trip to the east coast (Boston/Providence area) to visit with friends and basically unwind before starting another big project. while there,…
In Actual Play
Participants: talysman, TonyLB, Emily Care, Mike Holmes, Arturo G..

10/11/2005 talysman: [Last Breath] What's Missing
taking a cue from Ben, I figured I'd start a thread about my own October Ronnies entry, Last Breath. you can find it here. naturally, there's a lot of play…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: talysman, TonyPace, Graham Walmsley, Ron Edwards, hix.

10/13/2005 talysman: applied RPG Design Patterns
John Kirk referred us to his work in progress, RPG Design Patterns, a few threads ago. I didn't say anything at the time, although I thought the book is shaping…
In RPG Theory
Participants: talysman, Mike Holmes, John Kirk, Vaxalon.

11/5/2005 talysman: suggestions for rapid RPG prototyping
someone pointed me to this article on rapid game prototyping. it's specifically about computer games, not roleplaying games, but I was struck by some of the similarities to the Iron…
In RPG Theory
Participants: talysman, Paul Czege, Ron Edwards, Noon, Roger, contracycle, Warren.

11/15/2005 talysman: The Secret of Sim
On another forum, someone asked point-blank "what is Simulationism?" because he didn't quite understand it from the essays. This is understandable; although many of us have an idea of what…
In GNS Model Discussion
Participants: talysman, nikola, lumpley, MatrixGamer, Nathan P., Joshua BishopRoby, cruciel, komradebob, timfire, John Kim, Mark Woodhouse, ctrail, Silmenume, Joel, Caldis, contracycle, M. J. Young, Mike Holmes, ewilen, Ron Edwards.

11/16/2005 talysman: [The Saint's Golem vs. The Devil's Dragon] comments on November Ronnies entry
since Ron suggested this time that everyone, not just people "sitting out" this round of the Ronnies, should help start thoughtful analysis of the Ronnies submissions, I figured I'd start…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: talysman, Tobias, Sydney Freedberg.

11/29/2005 talysman: [Last Breath] first playtest: altering play flow
Yesterday was a quick playtest of Last Breath, my October Ronnies submission. Quite a bit went on during my Thanksgiving vacation and the playtest kept getting postponed; we finally managed…
In Actual Play
Participants: talysman.

11/30/2005 talysman: Reward Cycle III: hybrids
this thread isn't actually a spin-off of Reward Cycle I and II, but it may address some of the minor definition disagreements occurring in those threads. this thread is really…
In GNS Model Discussion
Participants: talysman, Ron Edwards, Mike Holmes, M. J. Young, Sean.

2/21/2006 talysman: BW website broken?
I just tried using both Firefox and Internet Explorer to access the Burning Wheel site, and it seems that most of the dynamic (PHP) pages return just a blank page.…
In Burning Wheel
Participants: talysman, rafial, abzu, Thor Olavsrud, Iskander.

4/4/2006 talysman: New Drill
As those of you who also read the 24 Hour Game forum on 1KM1KT know, I just designed a solitaire tabeltop roguelike dungeoncrawl game, which I am developing further and…
In Endeavor
Participants: talysman, Thunder_God.

4/19/2006 talysman: [Kanthe] How Freaky Is This?
As some of you probably know, I recently wrote up a solitaire roguelike fantasy dungeoncrawl RPG, Raiders of the Ruins of Kanthe, renamed Depths of Kanthe.  The version on the…
In First Thoughts
Participants: talysman, Paul Czege, Noon, Bryan Hansel, greyorm, Ron Edwards.

4/20/2006 talysman: [Kanthe] Watch Out for Beaked Snakes!
Callan asked in the How Freaky Is This? thread for some actual play descriptions of this solitaire roguelike dungeoncrawl game. I played two playtests, one using the original version…
In Playtesting
Participants: talysman, Noon, Dev.

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