freelance
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Reel In Your Players With Motivation and Incentive
This is a blog post about player motivation. But first, I want to talk about project management. When I was in college for computer science, I had to take a project management course. I don’t know why. I don’t remember much of it, but I do remember the unit on motivation. We talked about a…
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Adapting Narrative Design Patterns for Tabletop Adventure Writing
I’ve been thinking a lot about the shapes of stories, especially as IF and video game narrative designers have been mapping them for years. What does good narrative design look like in a tabletop adventure? Here are some qualities I look for: Unlike a video game, a TTRPG is an open system, not a closed…
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A Chrono Comparison: On Writing Story Goals
Chrono Trigger is one of the greatest video game stories ever told. This is why every few years, I try to play its sequel, Chrono Cross. I never get very far. Maybe it’s unfair to try and compare the two. They’re very different games that try to accomplish very different things. Chrono Trigger is a…
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Day 20 – Job
“It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.” For the sixth time today, Amrita’s focus spirit was cleaning the toilets. She watched as the fuzzy, glowing ball of pure concentrated magic lifted the scrubber and dutifully removed the several specks of dust that had accumulated in the last fifteen minutes. Then, satisfied…
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Day 19 – Darkness
“Then darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell.” Amber had been missing for sixteen years; she was legally dead for fifteen of them. She disappeared just before opening night of her high school’s production of Into the Woods. The show…
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Day 18 – Folly
“Let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy.” It happened overnight. One day, just seeing a capital R in bright red was cause for concern. The next, you couldn’t turn your head in Goldenrod City without catching sight of the emblem. Trendy teens stuck R stickers on every flat surface…