The Doug Alone

  No The Bleak + The Pearl For a Bit 2025 { Resolutions | Changes } Formal Move Towards { Worlds → Campaigns → [Mini-]Arcs } Format Focusing on One Arc at a Time Post Once (and Early), Edit at Least Twice Trying Out "New" Game Systems Trying Out "New" Game Worlds (Re)Trying Out "New" Oracles Things to Not Sweat... Make More Art, Design More Stuff, Focus on Game Motifs, Etc Build Up a List of Graphical Resources Credits No The Bleak + The Pearl For a Bit There will be no The Bleak + The Pearl this week because I spent a lot of my gaming time going through and fixing up months' worth of glitches that were holding the Eustace & Hitomi series back . Right after I finished that (within literal minutes), I { wrote | played } what I think is the longest ever session-post on this blog : around 11k words. It took up all  of my free time on F...

tl;dr version Over the months of adapting my playstyle to the blog, some of the "Dougness" of my playing got increasingly lost. This post talks about trying to reclaim that and establishes the four baseline techniques I use to communicate my sessions to folks through this blog: Play it in my normal style and then write up a recap (the original flavor) Try to play it in-line with each session being an hour-ish spent playing and writing a blog at the same time A fiction-first style of play where the mechanics are minimized and the focus is more on presentation and development of "chapters" A style of play that embraces different modes (Gamemaster, Player, Lore, Commentary) to give the different elements each a fair shake to build up mental gaps In this post, I will look at those different elements and talk a bit why a return to #1 while retaining #4 (and some #3) is likely the best options for me.  It also has a longish example of the kind of roleplaying mistakes I li...

On Why A REBIRTH Is Needed A few months ago I had an idea: a solo game that could be played entirely on my phone or on a few index cards with some dice. The ultimate portable solo RPG. Not only portable physically but also mentally . Playable in about an hour across 2-3 sessions: perfect for playing in downtimes and lunchbreaks.  This blog exists because I wanted somewhere for me to take these notes and sum them up with additional ideas and reflections so it wasn't me having to sort through a bunch of post-it notes and Google Keep documents. Continuity could be kept low with a fairly episodic vibe where I did not have to worry much about referencing various threads or open plotlines. This was in part an anti-continuity campaign where each episode was like a 90s TV show. Worldbuilding would be going on but it could be summed on a napkin to avoid scaring off new viewers.  Over time, though, the episodes got longer and the accruing silt was getting chunkier. A lot longer. "Episo...

The adventurers have a map to lead them through the Everburning Forest. Let's break this down and start figuring out what this means.  First, some lore. The Everburning Forest is going to be a valley with a lot of geothermal activity, lava pools, and the burning smell of sulfur. At some time in the past, the pre-Barthic Ancients developed flora which could resist the constant burning heat and low oxygen and which to this day thrives in a place where even the Bleak has trouble penetrating. 350 years ago, a young Jonias Grunkheart found this forest/valley through local legends and went in with a team to build a workshop to study the Ancient technology and to find out how to channel it. Such technology was used by him to create the burning light of the Lighthouse.  Now, let's populate it.  Flipping through  Bestial Ecosystem Created by Monster Inhabitation (Courtney C. Campbell and others), I wanted to pick a couple of "faction" types that made sense in an ever burning...

When I started playing T he Bloody Hands using Tricubes Tales Solo I used the system as is  except for tweaking the basic oracle to something a bit more complicated. That worked just fine through the first four "episodes" and I still like my little "Dice of Changes" style resolution. However, I played a TriSolo style game with my partner and have been trying to introduce some more friends to the concept of how solo playing works (yes, I understand the irony) and sometimes it takes a bit more of a framework to kick off some ideas. That got me thinking about how to expand on some of the inherent design choices in TriSolo to make something that could meet folks more half-way and could be adjusted/tweaked on the fly based on the comfort level of the player.  Here is my current working model. Like all things on this blog, I'm considering it CC-0 so take it and run with it. The OG Tricube Tales Solo materials are CC-BY 3.0 and this post in no-way-shape-or-form is me...