Ben Robbins
Want to start some trouble? The playtest of This Means War is ready to download and play, right now. Be warned, it is very… different… from my other games. We’ve played it a bunch and had some pretty fantastic experiences, but it is still very much a summerlab experiment: We’re going to sit down...
Ben Robbins
The playtest of This Means War is chugging along, alarming civilians and crushing dreams. Dreams of the characters, that is — the players love it. After 10 games I can confidently say that this weird experiment actually works. We’ve got two wars going, ancient Baat Kazir and futuristic Novaterra,...
Ben Robbins
or, “omfg Ul-Massara offered peace!!! What the fuck is going on” Second session of Ul-Massara vs Baat Kazir, playtesting This Means War. It’s winter, the third season of our war, and we just introduced characters and started to explore their lives. We finish the season… and both sides agree to...
Ben Robbins
Another playtest of This Means War: When colonists first came to this world, they were united under a single government, working together to survive. Generation after generation slowly built the sprawling mega-city that shields them from the deadly atmosphere and makes life here possible. (Yeah we...
Ben Robbins
“Naming things is hard” -some gaming guru on a mountain top, hundreds of years ago, probably Coming up with names for things is hard, particularly when (like us) you play collaborative creative games where you make the setting together. A GM just has to pick a name they like, but if you’re a...
Ben Robbins
If you look at the games I’ve made over the years, there a few things that are true for all of them: no built-in violence no dice deciding outcomes the players control what’s true in the world Sure, you can choose to make a Microscope history that’s all about war and fighting (for example), but...
Ben Robbins
This is one of the examples included in Rules of Law to show how the game plays. But then I thought, well if this is such a good demonstration, why not share it with people who don’t have the game yet but are wondering what it’s like? So here it is. These laws, and the societal consequences, are...
Ben Robbins
Rules of Law fits very nicely on two pages. It’s a tight procedure, with not too many weird exceptions or explanations, so that works. But one thing I miss are examples. Because clear rules are great, but just as ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, an example can convey a lot of nuance about...
Ben Robbins
Our justice says who we are as a people. What do we punish? Do we enforce our laws fairly for everyone? Do we think our system is just? These are big questions about the foundations of society, so of course I made a game about it, and now Rules of Law is ready to play. It’s a short and fast...
Ben Robbins
Remember how I said summerlab meant you were going to get games sooner? I was not kidding. I’m putting the finishing touches on a new game right now. Rules of Law is a world-building game about — you guessed it — laws. Because the laws we make, and how we do or do not enforce them, say who we are...