by Xander Orenstein | Jul 15, 2019 | Opinion, Tabletop Games
Narrative-driven tabletop RPGs are awesome. Being able to tell a story with your friends is one of the best things that has come out of human civilization, full stop. Of late, there has been a trend among narrative-focused game groups to look for systems that cater specifically to narrative games. Thus, more and more systems are looking to streamline gameplay by removing mechanics to increase time spent weaving narrative. This has gone from a good idea to make gameplay more fluid to a potentially stifling aversion to number or dice-based mechanics in general. (more…)
Xander is currently spending skillpoints wildly and irresponsibly due to their complete and total lack of self control when it comes to picking up new hobbies. Someone should probably have stopped them before they picked up swords and literal witchcraft. You can find them @xanderthesane on twitter and in various scientific journals, various conventions (they are the very pretty one), and in long dead cities buried under the surface of the moon.
by Melissa Brinks | Sep 27, 2018 | Opinion, Roundtables, Tabletop Games, Video Games
We talk a lot about politics in games. We’re not of the opinion that anything can be truly apolitical; people create games, and people have beliefs and ideologies that inform what they create. This often causes friction, as sometimes a game we enjoy may rub up uncomfortably against our own beliefs, or a game may attempt itself to brand itself as apolitical when it’s clearly anything but.
But some games embrace politics, leaning hard into exploring a tricky idea, a creator’s identity, or other elements that encourage the player to think more deeply about whatever issue the game is tackling. The Sidequest crew sat down to talk about what these games are doing well, and how games that play with politics can be both interesting and fun. (more…)
Melissa Brinks is Sidequest’s editor in chief, co-creator of the Fake Geek Girls podcast, author of The Compendium of Magical Beasts, and an aspiring beekeeper. She once won an argument on the internet, and tweets at @MelissaBrinks.
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