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Voros

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I've got broad tastes in a lot of areas, films, books, music and games are no exception. So when I returned to rpgs after a long break due to school, work and life I was intrigued to find all these 'small,' experimental and often personal games that took a different approach to rpgs.

Many of them took a different approach to how the GM and the players interact, some shared the world-building responsibilty with the players than most rpgs did in the past, some shifted the role of the GM so that all the players took turns in the role of the GM. Often times called by the misnomer 'GMless' these games often actually rotate the GM role. Other still retain a GM to keep things on track.

To me, these five games are most clearly and correctly identified as Storygames and are a clear outgrowth of more traditional rpgs. They don't merely have a few narrative mechanics like FFG SW or AW but are genuinely different in approach from conventional rpgs in that they grant the players far more narrative control than usual.

Practically none of these games have any requirement that you follow a plot, or 'tell a story' in the conventional sense (1001 Nights is the exception but see below for why). The story, if there is one in the conventional sense, emerges from play. I understand that some don't like this kind of play, just as some don't enjoy the films of David Lynch or the sf novels of J.G. Ballard, but that isn't the point of this thread. I hope even those who dislike these games will come away with a better understanding of what some of these games are actually like.

So without descending into yet another pointless debate about whether these are rpgs or not, I'm fine calling these Storygames (although some of the designers still prefer to call them rpgs), here are my Top 5 picks of the best Storygames based on actual play experience, in no particular order. These are games I most enjoyed not neccessarily the most important or even influential.

Feel free to share yours. No need to go into the detail I plan on.

Follow by Ben Robbins

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Robbins is best known for his excellent world-building game Microscope, which I think is terrific but I think I like Follow even more. I've joked elsewhere that this is the GURPS of Storygames but in some ways that is actually correct as this game is designed to fit any number of genres. The defaults are a sf colony, a fantasy quest, a heist or a political rebellion but there are also options to play in a western, political campaign, as Gods, superheros, military unit, etc.

To explain this fairly simple game in its entirety would require a dedicated post but essentially the players identify a challenge/goal (eg. defeat a dragon, rob a bank), create characters, identify difficulties they could encounter, etc. Then the players take turns narrating or role-playing together, drawing the difficulties and using a pool of coloured stone/tokens to deterimine success, failure, if one of your party is lost/killed or even if the one of the players betrays or is betrayed by the rest. You can fail entirely at the challenge/goal and Robbins includes options for long-term campaign play.

Like Microscope this game is very cleanly and well laid out, with diagrams and graphics to clarify play, clearly and simply explained. There is a huge list of playtesters listed and that has really benefited the game which plays very smoothly. I liked this game so much after I bought the pdf I ordered the hardcopy. Outside of the lovely cover there is no art all in the book besides the diagrams explaining play.

Next to Microscope itself this is probably my highest recommendation even for those who dislike Storygames if you're interested in game design as I think Robbins does such a good job there's lots here to think about just in terms of presentation. If you're not interested in design I'd probably recommend Microscope as its collaborative world-building is of use for almost any game.

The Skeletons by Jason Morningstar

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Fiasco is Morningstar's most well known and probably the most successful Storygame today but I actually enjoy his narrower game The Skeletons a lot.

In this game you play a group of undead Skeletons who are left to guard a tomb that you get to design together. At first you can barely remember your former life, as the game progresses and you have to deal with invading treasure seekers, or a family seeking shelter, giant spiders, etc who wake you from your eternal sleep. There are solo and Facilitator led options as well.

This is a terrifically fun one-shot game where you get to add items and details to your skeleton character sheet to make them distinctive and your own as the game progresses. The passage of time is evoked by turning off the lights for a progressively longer and longer time as the years turn into centuries and you awake to the repeated phrase 'Arise and protect the tomb, skeletal warriors!' Ten Candles borrows this idea to even more evocative effect.

I've got to go get some work done but will return and finish the rest of my Top 5 today.
 
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1001 Nights by Meg Baker

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This game by Meg Baker is truly a Storytelling game, in that the players role-play as Courtiers in the court of a Sultan who must tell stories to please and court the favour of the Sultan. There are two levels of play, the Court Level and the Story Level. When telling a story you are the GM and can assign roles within the story to other players. Just as in Arabian Nights and other Arabic or Persian literature you can tell stories within stories if you like.

Each player begins the game with a certain number of 'gems' (dice) that can be distributed or rewarded through play. They are sometimes rolled to determine the outcome in a story and ultimately are rolled to determine your fate at the end of the game. They are distributed into Freedom, Safety or Ambition. Players can undermine another's Ambition but not Freedom or Safety. At the end of the game you may be beheaded, escape the court, succeed in advancing yourself, etc. For larger groups there are the optional roles of the Sultan or Vizier.

Only played this once with some friends from school but it worked quite well. It does require players who are comfortable inventing stories on the fly of course and some familiarity with the source inspirations would help as well. The rules are quite well explained but the game's fairly simple rules would benefit from a summary sheet. The artwork by Claudia Cangini is evocative and plentiful.

Meg Baker also designed the very cool Storygame Psi*Run and of course co-designed Apocalypse World with her husband Vincent Baker. Based on their solo games I'd have to say I prefer Meg's work.

Ten Candles by Stephen Dewey

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There's a good review and summary of this fine game here by Shut Up and Sit Down.

Horror comes naturally to Storygames, I think both due to early roots in CoC and the long tradition of ghost/scary stories around a campfire. Ten Candles is particularly effective in using darkness, the ten candles of the title as a structuring device, repeating ritual-like phrases and even cell phones to record the character's final messages. This one-shot game has a GM but the players have a lot of narrative control as well but as the subtitle suggests they won't be able to escape their doom. I played this around Halloween last year and it was a blast, effectively creepy and fun as well.
 
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1001 Nights sounds interesting.

I really enjoyed it but it definitely requires a confident group as it assumes you're all smart enough to tell a story.
 
A struggled a bit for my final choice here but decided to put some of the other games I enjoyed in the Runners-Up list at the end, either because they covered some of the same ground as the other games I picked (the excellent Final Girl being another horror game) or I haven't had a chance to play yet (Stafford's Prince Valiant).

But going by pure enjoyment and clever design I'm going with the very recent game Dead Friend: A Game of Necromancy by Lucian Kahn.

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In this two-player game one of you plays the necromancer, the other the spirit of an old friend who once summoned must figure out how to best trick and kill their former friend the necromancer. It includes a lot of use of ritual actions and phrases that I find so effective (as seen from my other picks) and is well structured, laid out and explained. The ritual actions are so effective in fact they may give some players from traditional religious backgrounds the willies.

Depeding on how you play it this could be creepy or funny, my playthrough with my wife was definitely the latter. Clearly thoroughly play-tested this game is only 13 pages but that's because nothing is wasted in the design or writing.

Runners-Up:

The Final Girl by Brett Gillan - A finely crafted card-based storygame that captures the tone and structure of a slasher film perfectly. A real gem.

Prince Valiant: A Storytelling Game by Greg Stafford - Just read the introduction from 1989 by Stafford here which is a great summary of the principles of Storygames that easily applies to the games today in case one still buys the claim that Storygames are some new, foreign idea in the RPG world. Notably Stafford includes a rotating GM option in the 'Advanced' rules.

Amber by Erick Wujick - Check out the appendix where Wujick suggests eliminating not only the GM but even the rules entirely!

Fiasco by Jason Morningstar - With the right group a very fun game with an endless supply of playsets in a variety of settings and time periods available, most for free online. The only thing holding it back to me is a slightly too fiddly dice system but perhaps I just haven't played often enough to get use to it.

The Quiet Year/Deep Forest by Avery Alder and How to Host a Dungeon by Tony Dowler - These fall into the world-building games that can crossover to a more traditional RPG crowd. A dangerous Gateway Drug to Storygames. Alder's games are based on collaborative world-building, I prefer Deep Forest (co-designed with Mark Diaz Truman of Urban Shadows and Cartel) because you get to design a dungeon/ruin from the ground up from the viewpoint of the monsters. Dowler's game is for solo play and is a great tool for GMs.
 
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We may have some issues on definitions. In terms of games where storytelling is prominent as a stated ambition and a goal, where there may be innovations designed to facilitate this, but are still essentially played with people sitting around the table, with rules being adjudicated by one (or more) referees (as per the D&D model):

Ars Magica
Prince Valiant
Vampire: The Masquerade (+ Wraith: The Oblivion, etc) - especially with Mind's Eye Theatre
Amber
Castle Falkenstein
Everway
Puppetland
Nobilis
Sorcerer
Fate
Apocalypse World

One could also make a case for antecedents, like Pendragon, Paranoia, James Bond, Toon, Ghostbusters, Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest…er..D&D and so on - which is where it gets really hard to draw lines.

In terms of games that alter the essential model provided by D&D - which emphasise storytelling or narration above tactical simulation but can still apply roleplaying of sorts:

The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen
De Profundis
My Life With Master
Dread
Fiasco
Microscope
 
I like The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchhausen (and Puppetland from the same series)
I really love De Proundis. I think it is the game (of any sort - role-playing, video, board, war or story-) that gets the closest to recreating the feel of Lovecraft's stories.

Those are the only ones I've played that I think anyone would agree are not actually RPGs, but would be accurately called "Storygames"

Beyond that it all gets murky for me.
 
Not really wedded to my definition of Storygame, just thought it would be helpful to provide my view of the term.

I like The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchhausen as well but have yet to play it. I think playing it with the optional drink in the round would be fun.

Good call on Ars Magica and Castle Falkenstein.

Not familiar with De Profundis, sounds cool, will check it out, thanks!
 
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Even though it's often held up as evidence as the decline of TSR, we had a lot of fun with Rocky and Bullwinkle when I was a teenager.
 
I'm always uncertain as to the definition of "story game" but here are a couple of thoughts on the matter.

1. Amber Diceless is awesome. The concept of doing away with randomizers was groundbreaking and the setting is one of my all-time favorites. I got to play in a couple of Erick Wujcik's sessions and they blew me away. I've run several ADRP campaigns and I still can't find a rules set that I like better for diceless play.

2. Fiasco can also be a lot of fun, but in my group some of the story topics turned mature quickly and I don't always like that stuff in my games so I guess it comes down to the people in the group and their style. When I first played Fiasco I ran out and bought everything I could find, and downloaded every freebie playset I could unearth, then I found that my group didn't really want to try it. They wanted to kill stuff instead.

So I'm not sure I have much story game experience, but I'm loving the thread so far.
 
Even though it's often held up as evidence as the decline of TSR, we had a lot of fun with Rocky and Bullwinkle when I was a teenager.

What are the mechanics of that game? Strange that Toon is viewed as a classic but this game is sneered at.
 
What are the mechanics of that game? Strange that Toon is viewed as a classic but this game is sneered at.
There's actually three different rulesets in the game, it tends towards rules lite narration heavy.

I'm going to nick this overview of the rules from a RPGGeek review as it's a really good summary. (Original review by GilvanBlight).

The rule book breaks the game down into three separate games. The Narration game, The Everyone Can Do Something Game and the Graduate Game.

The Narration game is a card game that is nearly identical to Fairy Tale by Atlas games. I actually wonder if the designer may have tried this game at one time. This is a story telling game in which the one player picks a story from the story book and read out loud the beginning of the story and the end. Each player is dealt 4 or 5 cards (depending on the number of players. Players get an option to swap out cards and then the player who read the intro continues the story by incorporating one of the cards in their hand and playing it. Once they have played a card the next player can interrupt at any time and continue the story, incorporating one of their cards and playing it. The game continues around the table with each person in turn continuing the story and playing cards trying to work the story towards the ending. Once all players are down to one card there is a final toss off to see who gets to finish off the story. The player who tosses first gets the honour and is considered to have 'won' the game. I put quotes on won as the goal is really to tell a good (well at least funny) story and it's encouraged that a player who has a good ending convince the other players to let them win the toss.

The Everyone Can Do Something Game is more like a traditional RPG. Players select a story just like the Narration game and get a hand of 5 cards. In addition each player selects a character and gets a standee for that character and grabs a spinner for their character. The player who picked the story also gets the Narrator Standee. Each character has a set of powers they can do. These are pretty much silly things based on the show. For example Bullwinkle gets Moose Muscles and Boris is The Master of Disguise. The Narrator also gets powers which let him swap out cards. The narrator acts like a Games Master and begins the story using the intro from the story book. Then she or he asks each character questions to find out what they are doing. The player asked then dictates what they want to do, this can be anything they want, a power from their standee or something based on a card in their hand. The narrator then can call for a spin if there is any doubt whether the action will succeed or fail (some powers and all card based plays are automatic). If the action is against another player they can respond with a card, power or action of their own and there is usually a spin off. The narrator then dictates the outcome based on the results of the spin. They can base the outcome on their imagination or they can use a card in their hand to determine what happens. Any time the narrator is able to play a card, the narrator standee moves to the next player and they become the narrator.

Interestingly you play The Everyone Can Do Something Game to win. Players are split up into teams based on the story being told and each team has a specific goal they have to achieve (also listed in the story book). To succeed at your goal one of the players on a team has to get the story to a point where they play their final card and win a spin on their spinner. If they pass they end the story and win the game. If they fail on the spin they must draw more cards.

The Graduate game I wouldn't actually call a game at all. It's just The Everyone Can Do Something Game with rules for making your own characters and some suggestions for making your own stories. The character generation rules are pretty lame, where you just spin on each spinner and if you win you pick one of the powers from a list. All of the powers are the ones the actual characters have. There are suggestions for making your own powers but no real hard and fast rules.

That's pretty much it. I was amused to see that the game did have a player based XP system in it. After each game (of any of the three types) the players award each other with diplomas. This is done as a group and appropriate rewards include Worst Pun, Best Story Finish, Best Characterizations etc. The group makes these up as they go with a few suggestions given in the book. These actually have an in game effect as well. When playing either mode besides the Narration game the players can 'trade in' two diplomas for a re-spin or five diplomas for an automatic success at whatever they are trying to do.

I'd put down it getting sneered at to the following factors.

1. It was Lorraine Williams era and some of the old grogs don't want to admit that anything that came out in that era was worthwhile.

2. It really was ahead of its time. I'd see it as a forerunner to the critically lauded Everway in particular.

3. It was bizarre as a choice of setting, considering the cartoon originally aired 24 years before the game was released. The only reason we got into it was my mum was a massive Rocky and Bullwinkle fans so I was famliar with the originals.
 
There's actually three different rulesets in the game, it tends towards rules lite narration heavy.

I'm going to nick this overview of the rules from a RPGGeek review as it's a really good summary. (Original review by GilvanBlight).



I'd put down it getting sneered at to the following factors.

1. It was Lorraine Williams era and some of the old grogs don't want to admit that anything that came out in that era was worthwhile.

2. It really was ahead of its time. I'd see it as a forerunner to the critically lauded Everway in particular.

3. It was bizarre as a choice of setting, considering the cartoon originally aired 24 years before the game was released. The only reason we got into it was my mum was a massive Rocky and Bullwinkle fans so I was famliar with the originals.

I think your reasoning is pretty sound. I had no idea Rocky and Bullwinkle was so old as I grew up on the reruns in the late 70s and 80s. Not sure if it was still running in the late 80s though.

I now see the game was designed by Cook and Warren Spector, sounds like it is worthy of a reassement. Similar to Dallas, which also looks like a SG precursor.
 
If I believed either A Dirty World or Apocalypse World to be a story-game, I'd put them on the top of my list, in this order:smile:. But I don't.

Which means that my list consists of Sorcerer, Free Universal RPG, Mythic, and that's about it, since most of the others are the same to me:wink:!
 
For me, the best storygames I know and played are :

- Polaris by Lehman, a game about playing a member of an elite knight order, which member vows to fight the dreaded foe of their people. This about heroism, its cost, the doom which is unavoidable since the story of your knight either by its death or betrayal of their people.

- Bliss Stage, again by Ben Lehman which the best Eva like game I know of (Eva as Neon Genesis Evangelion, a ground breaking japanese anime).
 
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For me, the best storygames I know and played are :

- Polaris by Lehman, a game about playing a member of an elite knight order, which member vows to fight the dreaded foe of their people. This about heroism, its cost, the doom which is unavoidable since the story of your knight either by its death or betrayal of their people.

- Bliss Stahe, again by Ben Lehman which the best Eva like game I know of (Eva as Neon Genesis Evangelion, a ground breaking japanese anime).

Thanks, I like Lehman's HGMO which almost made my runner-up list but I haven't played it yet and haven't checked out their other games. Adding both of these to my wishlist on OBS. Btw They seem to now go by P.H. Lee according to a recent KS but the website hasn't been updated yet.
 
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It’s funny how often Fate Core gets cited as being a Storygame, but when you throw it in the same bag as many of these titles, you realise that it barely scrapes in. Fate Accelerated perhaps slightly more, but not much.

When I think of Storygames, titles like Fiasco, Nobilis, and Chuubo’s spring to mind.
 
It’s funny how often Fate Core gets cited as being a Storygame, but when you throw it in the same bag as many of these titles, you realise that it barely scrapes in. Fate Accelerated perhaps slightly more, but not much.

When I think of Storygames, titles like Fiasco, Nobilis, and Chuubo’s spring to mind.

Well I don’t think FATE came up prominently in this thread. In others though I agree. It shows how broadly or sloppily the term is used. Mostly to just mean ‘games I don’t like.’
 
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There was a story game called Our Last Best Hope that basically takes the core arch of movies like Armageddon (A big disaster is coming, you are the only group who can stop it for various reasons, you make your way to the problem, facing smaller problems and emotional issues along the way, then you try to solve the problem, with lots and lots of character death along the way). It reads interesting to me. Also its GMless.
 
It’s funny how often Fate Core gets cited as being a Storygame, but when you throw it in the same bag as many of these titles, you realise that it barely scrapes in. Fate Accelerated perhaps slightly more, but not much.

When I think of Storygames, titles like Fiasco, Nobilis, and Chuubo’s spring to mind.
How would you classify Fate?
 
How would you classify Fate?

When I first stumbled across it, it was just another rpg, perhaps with a slightly more narrative emphasis, like Chaosium's 'HeroQuest' (perhaps even less 'narrative focused' than HQ).

Given that the term 'Storygames' has become more prominent since then, I guess it does dip a toe in those waters.

But not overly so, especially when compared to games like Nobilis, Chuubos, Fiasco, etc.

I grew up playing Fighting Fantasy, Rolemaster, RuneQuest, Ghost Busters, Star Wars, and World of Darkness- I don't find a jump to Fate Core all that big

It isn't that far a stretch from the classic World of Darkness games in many ways.

Not that I am an exclusive Fate fan. It's just a great system for me to run homebrews in

My point is that it often gets put up as a target for those who dislike Storygames, yet it isn't a solid example of a Storygame when you see it in comparision to games which clearly fall into that category.

I think Fate has it's own lexicon, which actually does it a disservice by distancing itself from experienced gamers who are used to using more conventional terms of reference.

So as part of the "If you are not with us, you are against us" mentality, it has often been associated with Storygames by those who were left numb after reading the core book.

So I think of it as a traditional rpg with a contemporary twist here and there.

Kinda falls in with Modiphius 2D20 in some ways, but with a simplier character sheet and less working parts.
 
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Narrative RPG
Yeah it wasn't all that long ago that 'Narrative RPGs' was a frequent term; it was often used with classic WoD, HeroQuest, Over The Edge, Fate, PDQ, stuff like that.

Seems that recently alot of these kind of titles got gobbled up under the 'Storygame' umbrella, which is kinda wrong because they barely scrape the definition

Probably another example of how the world is getting more polarised...
 
Yeah it wasn't all that long ago that 'Narrative RPGs' was a frequent term; it was often used with classic WoD, HeroQuest, Over The Edge, Fate, PDQ, stuff like that.

Seems that recently alot of these kind of titles got gobbled up under the 'Storygame' umbrella, which is kinda wrong because they barely scrape the definition

Probably another example of how the world is getting more polarised...

HeroQuest and OtE are obvious inspirations to many designers who have created Storygames. Something that Tweet and Laws are not shy about acknowledging. I don't think either of them care what people call their games.
 
I'd say the Forge is partially to blame for that. They coopted lots of terms and made a mess out of it.

"Narrativism" is an example. It's meaning shifted from rules light games that emphasized more time in the imaginary space and less on the dice in the 90s (Over the Edge, Everway, Risus, HeroQuest, Vampire, etc).... to games that pushed the exploration of human dilemmas through involving dice shenanigans and OOC rules in varying degrees in the 2000s (My Life with Master, Don't Rest Your Head, Dogs in the Vineyard, Apocalypse World, etc).

I mean, I appreciate all those styles equally (Edit: I lie, I love "storygames" XD) but the Forge folks surely scrambled the field with their shitty nomenclature.
 
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The story-games.com community had a venn diagram that more or less asserts that the majority of RPGs are also story games. So I'm gonna read "story games" as everything but the most strictly trad. So Fate is in in my book.

My quick "before the movie starts " list:

Masks
Fate
Scum & Villainy
City of Mist
Danger Patrol
 
I thought this sounded interesting because I love stereotypical dwarves:


On my list of to-check-out games but haven't got to it yet. The same designer made Heavy Metal Mouse.

 
This looks like a neat location-based collaborative storygame in the tradition of A Quiet Year.

An Altogether Different River - Zine Edition, via @Kickstarter
 
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Those I found to be the most influential (for me):

Shadow of Yesterday
Polaris tragedy at something something (getting old sucks)
Sorcerer (especially with the Dictionary of Mu setting)
Dogs in the Vineyard
My own storygame, Shell Shock.

Funny thing is I don't play them anymore and really don't want to. But it was a nice detour anyway.
 
I've no idea where my games fall anymore, the ones I wrote. I aimed for traditional but focused on genre emulation while staying in the character's head, so the mechanics attempt to softly give the character through the PC power to do things.
 
Those I found to be the most influential (for me):

Shadow of Yesterday
Polaris tragedy at something something (getting old sucks)
Sorcerer (especially with the Dictionary of Mu setting)
Dogs in the Vineyard
My own storygame, Shell Shock.

Funny thing is I don't play them anymore and really don't want to. But it was a nice detour anyway.

I liked Shellshock, good work!
 
Thank you! I'm always surprised to learn people actually read and played that game :smile: There is a second edition in french, more streamlined with better illustrations, that I should translate one day.

I should have been more precise concerning my top 5. They're not the best designs around for storygames of course (Lady Blackbird is a way cooler than Shadow of Yesterday imho and of course games like Fiasco and Microscope are much more refined than other games on my list) but at the time (early 2000s if I'm correct) these are the games that really blew my mind. I must add that (re)discovering Prince Valiant and Ghostbusters at the same time made me realize that great designers were already doing great things before that.

I really liked that period when people had many questions about rpgs and found that the best way to answer them was to write games. I think I learned a lot at the time, not so much about games but about my own tastes and preferences.Just to bore you with a personal anecdote after roughly five years of tinkering, and playing a lot of thse games I finally GMed a more traditional campaign for one of my group: it was a Savage World campaign in the 50 Fathoms setting and we had a blast.

It was like coming home after a long and enriching trip. I remembered that I used to play rpgs to have fun and I was happy to do that again. I think that this storygames detour made me a better GM and designer but I know where I belong now :smile:
 
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