Me in 10 seconds
My name is Samuel Doebler James. I make games, play games, perform music. INTJ. 1w9.
What do I write about?
Running tabletop adventure games! I’ve had quite a bit of experience running them for youngsters. Oddly, my top posts are about death, deathlessness, and violence in games for kids. I’m known for talking about stopwatch duels, open table games, diegetic advancement, helmets, trait drafts, scene-based adventures, and open strategy games. I think there’s a better way to do advantage and that perception and knowledge rolls smell bad.
I also run a Story Games Substack and host a Story Games actual play podcast!
I consider myself part of the Story Game, Matrix Game, NSR, OSR, and FKR spaces. Whatever focuses on the world the most.
The Cauldron is the best forum for long-form discussion that sticks around more than Discord. It’s posts go directly to my RPG feed, so I’m reading what comes through often.
Check out the Index for a large categorized list of popular posts.
There are RPG bloggers that I read as well. The blogroll on the bottom-right is randomized, so just click one and see how deep that particular rabbit hole goes.
Email!
I read everything you send me. Here’s where you can reach me in long-form. Then also follow the blog via email, the last free frontier of the internet.
Check the tags on the right side of this page for whatever grabs your interest by topic. Or scroll down more to view posts by month and year. And here are my 10 most recent articles:
Disheveled December
With baby in month three and the holidays here and family in town and work ramping up, time is short. Here are a bunch of topic ideas and short thoughts, bones only. If you like anything I’ve written, you’ll find something for you in here. Onward I got the False Machine Christmas Discount and picked up the blogpost-collection “Speak, False Machine” for ~3 bucks. I adore it and flip through it on my iPad near-nightly. Pick it up. I was barely “blog conscious” during the time of most of the writings, so it was an informative and illuminating read. I…
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Design Thoughts for Mythic Denizens for Mythic Bastionland
(Somehow I missed posting this here, whoops.) Talking about the execution and intent of my new Mythic Bastionland supplement, designed to thicken the delightful and captivating tapestry of the Realm! Each of the dozen Denizens offer a unique plot-thread to be woven into the greater story of the Knights’ quest! Come with me inside my brain for my PROCESS, which mostly involves ironing over the material until I can stand it. Get Mythic Denizens for Mythic Bastionland on itch.io! If you haven’t, watch the Quinns Quest review of Mythic Bastionland for more thoughts and hilarity about this game.
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What are Matrix Games? (external)
Weak signal boost to this article from reader Dave over at University XP. If you have an interest in open-ended, problem-based scenario games that are matrix games, this is a good one to read. “What are matrix games?” post link here The introduction: There are as many ways to apply games for learning as there are types of games. And the modalities, objectives, and outcomes for different learners and program needs make applied games-based learning an even more diverse field. However, the latest, fanciest, and most high-tech solutions aren’t always necessary to achieve your needs as an instructor or the…
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Mythic Denizens: A Mythic Bastionland Supplement
A world odd and wayward characters! An unofficial supplement for the RPG sensation Mythic Bastionland featuring a dozen Denizens to thicken the delightful and captivating tapestry of the Realm! Each Denizen offers a unique plot-thread to be woven into the greater story of the Knights’ quest! Play to find out using Mythic Denizens for Mythic Bastionland! For you rule-nerds out there, listen up: this is how it works: Inspirations: Find the sale page here on itch.io! Design Aside I have over a half-dozen half-baked Denizens to add to this project. Based on the success of this supplement, I will be adding more Denizens to round out…
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An Oral History of Story Games
In this podcast, I draw a through-line from Free Kriegsspiel to Braunstein to Matrix Games to Indie Narrative Games to the OSR to the FKR to Modern Story Games. It’s a chronological account that co-insides with my transformation in encountering these different movements. Towards the end I summarize my takeaways from each overlapping “era” of play and how they contribute to the ethos of story games. I had a lot of fun with this one. 🙂 Choo choo all aboard!
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Mythic Bastionland: Character Omens (ft. Dark Souls)
This idea has been fleshed-out into a full-blown supplement. Read more here! In Mythic Bastionland, you travel the world and the myths reveal themselves with each roll of a 1, 2, or 3 on the Wilderness roll. Plot lines unfurl as the final picture is revealed. The order of omens is pre-determined as steps one through six, but the order of the six myths and how they weave and stack with each other are not. This post is about the character version of myths called character omens. Just like myth omens, the order of character omens is scripted but the…
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Mythic Bastionland: Figures on the Map
Y’all can thank Varzival for this one. They pinged me about their excitement for a post about MB from me 🙂 So I deliver. MAPS Having a map players can see is nice. Have minis on said map is every cooler. Push your knights around, see the distance from one place to the next, despair when you realize how far you have to travel to get back to civilization, it’s GREAT! But what about interacting with other pieces on the map? What if you have a small seer mini or knight token or a Magic the Gathering card of a…
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Tolkien and His Symbols – An Essay
A happy birthday month to my father! I just recently recovered a box of his Tolkien materials and discovered an essay he wrote 32 years ago. Did some quick speech-to-text reading, some edits, and a dusting of blog formatting. Enjoy! Tolkien and His Symbols April 17, 1993 by Matthew Doebler Following the release of the final book of The Lord of the Rings, on October 20, 1955, there was a flood of reviews and criticisms. With that flood came the opinions and analyses of literally hundreds of writers, all striving to say something wise about this popular trilogy. Many sought…
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Gotta get back, back to the past
When talking about the next storygame we wanted to play, my buddy threw out this moment as something that captured his imagination. Watch this to understand where my head is at: Let’s play in the world of Samurai Jack. It’s a world brimming with style, stuffed with action tropes, and overflowing with anachronism stew. This science fantasy of a samurai lost in a sci-fi land reminds me of how Electric Bastionland, by stating “everything is here”, gives so much creative space to play in by widening the genre aperture. But this is a game you couldn’t do as a traditional…
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AI is like magic…
…And that is not an inherently good quality. It’s like in Harry Potter: when Dobby the house elf dies, Harry insists on giving him a burial dug with his own hands, rightly intuiting that there is more dignity and honor in the honest sweat of working the shovel than waving his wand. His friend deserves better than the easy path. And so when we wave the wand to shortcut effort for our “creations”, we sap it of its dignity and honor. Not because the hard path is more moral, but because making and doing the best requires the best of…
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