Personable Thoughts

  In a confluence of events, I ran my first session of Mothership this week, after having played it most weeks for the last six months or so, coinciding with the Paul Beakley of Indie Game Reading Club posting his review of the game. I think it is a well articulated critique, echoing some points made in Dwiz' review over on Knight at the Opera (now sadly unavailable). However, as a self-professed "system-curious indie guy", I think Paul underestimates the value of a simple but effective chassis (or at least, he comes to the conclusion that it is not what he wants out of a game). The strength of the stress system is how simple it is to interact with - yes, the rules in the booklet may not be enough to fully drive play on their own, but perhaps that was never the intention? I would argue that the core rules of Mothership offer just half of the game, with the other half left open to be filled by modules or an enterprising game master: The quality of the rules should the...

  It's Mothership month , and that's as good a kick in the backside as any to finally get around to reading Cloud Empress . I ramble a bit about zines in general at the start, so if you're not interested in that and just want to get straight into some juicy imago flesh, just skip the next two paragraphs. Back in early 2023, I came across Cloud Empress  on Kickstarter , and I was quick to back it based on the strength of the art and the pitch. Later that year, impressively close to schedule, I received a little plastic bag full of zines. They ended up on my RPG shelf, squeezed between a bunch of hardbacks, until I later established a Zine Box, where they were equally, if not more hidden. I was always excited by the concepts presented in the game, but the jury is still out on zines for me. I really want to like them, because they allow for small products taking big swings, and should in theory be much more affordable than the big fancy hardbacks. However, I always hit two sna...