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I started playing Dungeons & Dragons when I was 13 at an independent game store in Redmond, Washington. Over time, I've come to want better language for talking about the distinct characteristics of storytelling game systems—beyond what is "good" or "bad." People come to these games looking for a variety of flavors, and different qualities appeal to different people. My efforts coalesced into four distinct axes: in no particular order, these are jeopardy, regulation, continuity, and symmetry.

In 1991, there were two great nativities of note: one was White Wolf Publishing’s initial release of Vampire: The Masquerade, a game of bloodlust and underworld politics that would go on to sell millions of copies and be counted among the most popular tabletop RPGs of all time... the other was mine. I recently bought the 5th edition rulebook and dove back into the astonishingly detailed World of Darkness. VtM, for all its strengths, comes packaged in a 350 page tome. I resolved to get out the proverbial scissors and see if I couldn’t just… trim it down a bit...

Twitter promises an audience, even if it doesn’t always deliver. It’s the addictive quality with which Twitter has grown its network. This promise has attracted a diverse range of short-form wordsmiths. But things have changed. The poem cast upon the plaque outside Twitter HQ now reads: “Give me your tired takes, your poor analogies, your blue-check fascists.”