Weekly Review August 5th to August 11th

This week has seen several developments about communication in RPGs.

Signalling

Fang Langford describes how the different modes of communication work within RPGs, and how the differences between these modes are (often informally) signalled. He also discusses some ways of making the signalling more overt in design and play. Chris Chinn looks at signalling at another level, specifically that of determining the duration of a group game commitment. He suggests the more concretely this is understood the greater willingness players will have to take risks.

Distilling Fiction

Over at Story Games is a discussion on a possible purpose for story-focused game designs of recent years. Specifically, Brad Murray suggests that these designs are a dissection of a specific genre to be reconstructed in varied ways during play. He likens this to an experimental analysis of the genres in question.

Learning the Game

Mike Mearls talks about learning RPGs, relating the difficulty in making a text both a reference and a learning tool. He suggests that RPGs could benefit by playing as you learn approaches, especially those that do not sacrifice fun.