The Storytelling Spectrum

The storytelling spectrum and big 'S' and little 's' storytelling in role-playing games.
Ian O'Rourke
Dec 31, 2023 9 min read

A Star Wars Campaign

The idea for this post came when watching the first live stream from Star Wars Celebration which will still...
Ian O'Rourke
Apr 8, 2023 8 min read

The Conversations The Thing

Learning from some relatively recent rpg reading I've learned the quality of my rpg experience is all about the...
Ian O'Rourke
Jan 16, 2023 5 min read

Approaching Scum & Villainy

These days I like to choose games to run where the challenge is in the execution not in just...
Ian O'Rourke
Dec 11, 2022 7 min read

The Acolyte and End Stage Star Wars

I never though I'd see Star Wars as creatively bankrupt as Rise of Skywalker and then along came The...
Ian O'Rourke
Jul 19, 2024 9 min read

Dragons, College Sex and Violence

Fourth Wing, the best selling young adult novel of military college, dragon riders, action and romance.
Ian O'Rourke
Mar 4, 2024 5 min read

25th Century Trek

The brutal honesty regarding Star Trek: Picard season three is I didn’t need it to exist. I enjoyed season...
Ian O'Rourke
Apr 22, 2023 8 min read

The Last of Us

This week I finished watching HBO’s The Last of Us. I have little doubt that it’s going to be...
Ian O'Rourke
Mar 18, 2023 7 min read

Exalted: Let’s Fabula Ultima-ise

Do you know the secret about the Fantasy Avengers idea? When I considered running something last time, it was the idea...
Ian O'Rourke
Nov 10, 2024 5 min read

Exalted: One’s Fate. Forever And All Time

Welcome to the campaign diary of what’s been codenamed Fantasy Avengers. A campaign idea of superheroes in a fantasy setting...
Ian O'Rourke
Feb 10, 2024 5 min read

Exalted: Traits And The Great Curse

Welcome to the campaign diary of what’s been codenamed Fantasy Avengers. A campaign idea of superheroes in a fantasy setting...
Ian O'Rourke
Jan 11, 2024 6 min read

Exalted: A Discussion On Rules

Welcome to the campaign diary of what’s been codenamed Fantasy Avengers. A campaign idea of superheroes in a fantasy setting...
Ian O'Rourke
Dec 15, 2023 8 min read

Defending Main Character Energy?

Every generation creates terms for things that are either old or new but viewed through the lens of how life works now. We’ve had many of them around...
Ian O'Rourke
Apr 27, 2024 2 min read

All Stories

Top 3 TTRPG Campaign Influences

When it comes to the things that influence your current tabletop role-playing campaign (herein TTRPG) the list can be..long. That’s also just probably your...
Ian O'Rourke
Jul 15, 2020 7 min read

How The GM ‘Plots’

How the GM 'plots' when all the table is authoring!
Ian O'Rourke
Apr 10, 2020 13 min read

How The Table ‘Plots’

The importance of signals when all the table plots!
Ian O'Rourke
Mar 14, 2020 11 min read

Influential RPGs I’ve Run

These are the role-playing games that have influenced me the most that I've run!
Ian O'Rourke
Mar 12, 2020 6 min read

Executing A Short Campaign

Executing a short campaign isn't an exercise in imagining a long campaign hacked down to size.
Ian O'Rourke
Jan 5, 2020 11 min read

Playing A Different Gender

You can play a character of a different gender in a tabletop role-playing game if you can empathise with the story as this brings...
Ian O'Rourke
Dec 24, 2019 5 min read

The Importance of Premise

A character with a premise has a story to tell. The character exists to tell that story. The character exists with a clear and...
Ian O'Rourke
Nov 10, 2019 6 min read

Your Character Isn’t A Normal Person

It’s important to recognise that your character is not a normal person. No matter what type of game you’re playing, what political or physical...
Ian O'Rourke
Nov 9, 2019 3 min read

Rolling To Decide The Fiction

The fiction should decide what happens in the game, not being overly constrained by the rules on the page.
Ian O'Rourke
Oct 29, 2019 4 min read

Planning My Campaign

The theme of all this is not being prescriptive, late loading and in many ways treating it like quantum physics.
Ian O'Rourke
Oct 25, 2019 8 min read
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