Ludonarrative Dissidents

The Quiet Year is a storytelling game from Avery Alder about map-making  and building a community after the apocalypse. "You define the struggles  of a community  living after the collapse of civilization, and attempt  to build  something good within their quiet year. Every decision and  every action is set against a backdrop of dwindling time and rising  concern."

Ars Magica is a "role playing game aboutsorcerers and their allies in  Mythic Europe." Play focuses around the covenant, a community of magi,  companions, and servants and guards (known as grogs). Players take up  multiple roles in the game, playing as all three types of characters  throughout a campaign.  A highly influential game that launched the  careers of many well-known designers, we focus primarily on the current  edition, fifth, but also talk about earlier ones.

Content warning: Bluebeard's Bride is a  "game about the terrible realities of women's lives." It discusses  sexual assault, body horror, torture, murder, suicide, and other  horrific topics. Our conversation about the game touch on these topics  as well. Thank you for your understanding.

Bluebeard's Bride is "an investigatory horror tabletop roleplaying  game based on the Bluebeard fairy tale." Players take on personality  aspects of the young bride as she explores Bluebeard's mansion, looking  for clues on Bluebeard's nature. No aspect fully controls the bride's  actions, as players take turns guiding her through the horrors of the  mansion. Will the bride be faithful or disloyal to her new husband? Only  the players decide through the course of this game.

Continuum is a role playing game about time travel. Published in 1999,  it boasts that its setting has a society of time travelers and a history  of the past and future of earth. It also has rules for 'time combat'.  Time travelers can try to kill each other by introducing paradoxes into  the timelines of their foes. Do the rules work? Greg, James, and I  discuss this infamous RPG.

Delta Green is a horror RPG based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Agents  of the secretive agency, Delta Green (which may or may not be an  illegal conspiracy inside the US government) investigate and neutralize  cosmic horror threats. Rules focus on the dangers and costs of facing  the unnatural, physically, mentally, and socially. Agents can perish in  an instant or watch their friends and families drift away as they spiral  deeper into the darkness.

Night's Black Agents is a Gumshoe system espionage vampire thriller RPG  by Ken Hite. It expands on the Gumshoe system so GMs can run  espionage-themed games ranging from cinematic action-packed adventures  to paranoid tales of intrigue.

Lancer is a sci-fi RPG focusing on tactical mecha combat in the distant  future. Featuring dozens of unique mechs with incredible powers and  weapons, Lancer is a must-play for groups who love d20 combat, teamwork,  and giant robots.

Outlaws of the Water Margin is a self-published RPG by Paul Mason based  on the Chinese historical epic novel of the same name. Set in 12th  century China, the player characters are heroic outlaws fighting a  corrupt government bureaucracy. Outlaws was never formally published but  it did cultivate a player base in the 80s and 90s. James was one of  these players and knows the author, so he provides some background  context for the game.

Special thanks to Christian Biklee, the backer who chose this game for us to review!

This episode is dedicated to Nathanael, Paul, Ben, and Jordan,  friends of Christian who played Outlaws of the Water Margin with him.

In each episode, we plan to focus on a  particular RPG, looking at its mechanics, setting, and everything else  to see what makes this game tick. In this preview episode, we look at  Apocalypse World, the RPG that launched a revolution in the indie RPG  scene. We try to answer the following questions:

1) What the game does.

2) How it does it.

3) How people play it.

4) Why people play it that way.

Blades in the Dark is a game about heists, a city of eternal night, and  more importantly, managing your stress at work. Greg dispenses some  words of wisdom about the future conditional tense.