James Cavin Writes

See Part One here! Time to break some more table tops! (and also my face...) Note: If the following diatribe here is a little confusing, it’s probably because of the probable microconcussion that I probably gave myself this morning when I walked straight into the corner of the bathroom wall as I tried to grope my way blindly to the toilet at 4:23 a.m. (I still haven't cleaned up all of the blood.) Side note: if my most noticeable facial scar comes from trying to pee, I'm going to be very put out. Anyways, on to being terrible and cursed and wretched! Last time I talked about this super janky little “Dark Souls style cursed kingdoms of the wretched and undead” minimalist RPG system that I threw together for Garbage Fountain, and I promised the 1.25* of you who actually read the post that I was going to upload rules next time, and behold, next time is here. *We lost .25 due to tariffs. So, without further ado (or cranial trauma) here’s how you ...

This is but Part One - See Part Two here! Let's break some tabletops! (By applying videogame narrative design tactics!) The theme of this garbage fountain was "Ghost," which got me thinking about all sorts of old, weird ideas that have been bubbling around in the back of my head, alongside commercial jingles from 1992 and a vague sense of unease about the approaching heat death of the universe. Anyways, under the duress of creativity, I decided to once again cheat on videogames and dabble in the forbidden waters of tabletop. (If videogames wanted faithfulness and fidelity, she wouldn't lay off half the workforce every 16 months.) Plus, the infamous Drive-thru RPG (world-renowned for both being the largest tabletop RPG storefront on the Internet and also committing unforgivable spelling crimes against the Honorable English GH) was having a weird contest, and if there's one things that I love more than ignoring the appro...

      Out of all my 2024 projects, this was one of the ones that I enjoyed the most. Just for fun, I decided to try narrative design in a new context. I took a break from video games and participated in a tabletop RPG adventure design contest – Ben Milton's (of Questing Beast , Maze Rats, and Knave fame) Knave 2e Adventure Game Jam to be exact. Despite never having made anything with the system before, I managed to finish in sixth place! (Out of 117 entries! That's a heck of a lot better than I was expecting!) Plus, you get to draw on all the unhinged influences that you can't allow into your day job! If you're looking to flex your narrative design muscles, taking a little field trip into tabletop games is a great way to practice all of your skills in a slightly alien environment with new limitations that force you to think outside of the box. It's really interesting to start thinking of narrative and quest design in terms of page count and layout and graphic desig...