ars ludi » new century city
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Twenty years ago today I released Zodiac Ring, my very first publication. Which means this is also the 20th anniversary of Lame Mage Productions. There's no blog post announcement to link to because this was before I even started ars ludi. Of course I had no idea what I was getting into, or that| ars ludi
Earlier this year, I got to give a talk for the folks at the Civil Service College in Singapore as part of their Infinite Games series: Infinite Games is a series of bi-monthly dialogues between game designers and public officers about serious games, spanning the spectrum of policy areas and ma| ars ludi
As I've said before (and any of the players will tell you) West Marches was dangerous by design. Danger encourages teamwork because you have to work together to survive. It also forces players to think: if they make bad decisions they get wiped out, or at least "chased into the swamp like little sis| ars ludi
"Run the simulation in your head: who moved here, what did they build, what happened to them, and then what came next?" Logic is the cornerstone of a sandbox. If things make sense -- if there's an internal consistency to what's there and where things are -- then players can make good decisions. P| ars ludi
Any role-playing game is a careful balance between agreement and disagreement. We need agreement because the game world only exists in our minds. If we can’t agree about what’s true, we’re going to contradict each other. If you think there are walls around the city and I don’t, our game will cras| ars ludi
I had never watched Bob Ross’s Joy of Painting series until that magnificent twitch run back in 2015. The thing that really stuck with me (other than the fact that Bob Ross was a saint now but had clearly been through some shit) was how much he emphasized that paintings were entirely optical illusions. It’s […]| ars ludi
I've seen some game creators say that if you don't agree with their politics or their worldview -- or frankly just hold hateful or bigoted opinions -- they do not want you to play their games. And I get it. I get wanting to punish bad people, to tell them they don't deserve to enjoy the art you m| ars ludi
You can make a game that is very easy to learn and play if you ask the players to do very little. But here’s my theory: the more a game lets you contribute — the more it asks of you — the more rewarding play can be. And I mean rewarding in the sense of […]| ars ludi
I made a new mobile PDF of the In This World rules, so you carry it around in your pocket and question assumptions and rethink the world we live in wherever you go. If you already purchased In This World from lamemage.com, you can use the same download link to get the new PDF (or email me at| ars ludi
artificial (adj) 1. made to copy something natural 2. not what it appears to be; fake The battle lines are drawn. The war between AI and humanity has begun. In fact it is well underway. AI is out there, drawing pictures, writing stories, asking people how their day was. As anyone who has followed my […]| ars ludi
I got an award for Microscope, pretty unexpectedly. For the original Microscope from way back, not the new Microscope: Chronicle, which of course is not even finished yet. I think they were originally talking about having one category for games from past years (like Microscope) but then opened up th| ars ludi
Chronicle update! Well, a very small update. There are no rule changes, just two points I wanted to clarify. I put it all on a new page at the end of the doc, so if you read the rules before, you just have to look at that one page to get caught up. What’s clarified? […]| ars ludi
This is not the post I was working on, but when you revise and rewrite and revise and rewrite as much as I do, real life has a way of getting ahead of you. So let's talk about 2025. Let's talk about politics (again). I'm a reasonably well-informed guy, and I try to keep an eye on current events a| ars ludi
As I’ve been working on Microscope: Chronicle, I’ve been revisiting all the core principles of Microscope, taking the watch apart and re-examining each gear under a (don’t say microscope)… magnifying glass to see what could be improved. And now we have these codified Ground Table principles laying out the kind of games we want to […]| ars ludi
All the hammering and pounding and forge-labor is done (for now). The first draft of the Ground Table principles has been nailed to the door. But how do you test a thing like that? How do you know you got it right? Well one test is the basic gut-check: does it *feel* right. Another is […]| ars ludi
Hello, world. It's 2025 and we all need some joy. What could be better for what ails us than using our brains and being creative together with other humans? So I give you the new Microscope: Chronicle, ready to download and play right now. Take it, gather your people, and make some fun tog| ars ludi
I'm generally loathe to give any kind of a release date unless I'm certain I will hit it, but I can say with confidence that the public playtest of Microscope Chronicle will be out before the end of the month. It's a pinky-promise. I'm just doing the usual endless tidying up. Writing examples is| ars ludi
This may sound kind of weird, but once one of my games is done and released, I don’t really think of it as something *I* made. I mean, of course I know I made it. I spent ages on it. But I also see it as an independent thing that has a life of its […]| ars ludi
Microscope books are getting a production upgrade. Say hello to the new and stylish matte covers. It might not come across in the picture but it looks verrry nice in person. And yeah, this is totally cosmetic. It’s the exact same book, with the exact same cover, just with a different printing treatment. But I […]| ars ludi
A while back I was talking with Tom Kemp, designer of Dead Minutes, about a new game he's working on. We were discussing some possible rule changes, but bumped into a very familiar question: If you made this change to the rules, would that cool thing that happened in a previous playtest still hav| ars ludi
“Our ground is level and our table is round” What do we want out of role-playing games? What do we think they should do? What do we value? Our crew has been talking about this stuff for ages, in person, in posts, and through the games we design. But I realized we never put all […]| ars ludi
It occurred to me that even though our crew has all these ideas about how we think games should be -- all these principles and conclusions from years and years of play, including eight years of Story Games Seattle -- they are not all together in one nice, neat, easy-to-read place. So we decided t| ars ludi
We’re rebel artists, painting portraits in a culture where depicting faces is forbidden. Our society think it’s just… wrong. When we want to hit back at some oppressor we graffiti a perfect picture of their face on the side of a building where everyone can see it. Punch a fascist? Paint a fascist. … But […]| ars ludi
"Tony, I'm writing an ode to your basement" Before there was Story Games Seattle, before I really knew what the hell I was doing with story games and GMless games, I played some truly pivotal sessions that really helped shaped my understanding and future thinking. And some of the games that influ| ars ludi
if you asked Ben's brain about gaming, this is what it would say| ars ludi
I’ve been working on getting the playtest release of Microscope Chronicle done. 2024 was full of distractions, but I’m mostly back on track. But I think I’m going to try something a little bit different this time. Normally I ask people to sign up to be playtesters, then I email them the rules. Only those […]| ars ludi
I've been tracking my game sessions all the way back to high school, so I can say with scientific confidence that I played more role-playing games in 2024 than any other year in my life. My previous high watermark was 2021 (hello lockdown), and before that was 2011, which was peak Story Games| ars ludi
Some writers track word count to see how much work they’re getting done. I spend as much, if not more, time erasing things I’ve already written. And then *maybe* rewriting them. Maybe.| ars ludi
Look at all those Follow quests people are making! Farms and Feasts and Prison Breaks and more! I released the Red & White system reference document so people could take whatever mechanics they liked from Follow to build their own games. But as our pool of quests keeps growing, it occurs to me th| ars ludi
When you game with Caroline you gotta expect the puns. We were coming up with the name of an orbital platform that was a jumping-off point for many interplanetary explorations. Us: How about Heaven’s Gate? Caroline: No, Helen’s Gate. The base that launched a thousand ships…| ars ludi
We’re playing the brand new Save Christmas quest for Follow: A New Fellowship. It’s the big face-off with Slitherberg, the secret Krampus wormtongue who has been whispering in the ear of Noel, daughter of Santa Claus, Empress of the South Pole. We’ve freed the prisoners from the dungeons of the ice city and burst into […]| ars ludi
What is a game? What is a role-playing game? What is a story game? Buckle up because today I am tackling the big fish: definitions. When I talk about definitions, what I’m looking for is a *useful* definition. I want something that reflects the truth of what we actually do. A definition that sheds light […]| ars ludi
Would you take away some people’s humanity in the name of saving everyone else? That’s what Dawn of the Orcs, a new GMless game kickstarting now, wants to know. I got to play Dawn of the Orcs a few weeks ago, and I am pleased to tell you that it is a very tight and […]| ars ludi
A new free quest by Jack Edward for Follow: A New Fellowship. And you might think “Oh a feast! That came out just in time for Thanksgiving!” Yes, but the theme of the Feast is much bigger than that. It’s about bringing two peoples together and trying to make peace over food… the Feast, a […]| ars ludi
“Eärendil was a mariner that tarried in Arvernien; he built a boat of timber felled in Nimbrethil to journey in” There are two stories that were big inspirations for Union. One was Dune and the other was the Silmarillion. In the game you start with an end point, a singular character who did something important, […]| ars ludi
I love it when people play my games, but I also love it when people build more material for others to play with, like new quests for Follow or seeds for Kingdom: The Trial – Do you want to find the truth or just win the case? A new quest in development for Follow: A […]| ars ludi
West Marches was a game I ran for a little over two years. It was designed to be pretty much the diametric opposite of the normal weekly game: There was no regular time: every session was scheduled by the players on the fly. There was no regular party: each game had different players drawn f| ars ludi
