My Dearest Sinophobes:
Your knee-jerk downvoting of anything that features any hint of Chinese content doesn’t hurt my feelings. It just makes me point an laugh, Nelson Muntz style as you demonstrate time and again just how weak American snowflake culture really is.
Hugs & Kisses, 张殿李
It’s the most influential publication on RPG designers that you never heard of. Most of the game design innovations that were made in the '70s, '80s, and '90s came from the pages of A&E in their embryonic form, and it still held quite a bit of impact in the '00s.
There is a whole lot more to a healthy democracy than “I voted”.
China doesn’t need to retaliate. Chinese cinema goers are overwhelmingly choosing domestic product over import in recent years. For 2024, for example, 80% of the Chinese box office went to Chinese productions.
The problem is he brought a deck of poker cards to a chess game.
The movies normalized The American Way™ as the default way of doing things. The billionaires then financed the people pitching The American Way™. Without the first, the second wouldn’t work.
The Chinese market is huge, yes, but increasingly turning away from Hollywood productions to homegrown ones. In 2025 for example 哪吒2 (Nézhā 2) broke scored over $2 billion at the box office, with a record-smashing $1.96 billion of that coming domestically. By way of comparison Captain America 4 only managed $14.4 million so far, a dramatic drop from 2016’s Captain America 3 returns of $180 million in 2016.
For reference, even CA3’s $180 million is an order of magnitude smaller than Nezha 2. CA4’s is two orders of magnitude smaller.
Now this is still true: China’s theatre-going audience, estimated at over half a billion people, is larger than the entire population of the USA. It’s still a hugely important market. But, for example, in 2024 the Chinese box office was estimated at ~6 billion dollars total: and 80% of that went to domestic films. The best-performing foreign film of 2024 (Dune 2) only made $48 million, ranking it about 8th. 7th was 维和防暴队 (Wéihé Fángbàoduì/Formed Police Unit) and it made over $120 million.
I’m pretty sure that the Chinese market for Hollywood films is vanishing.
剧本杀 are absolutely RPGs. They’re non-traditional, but so are most LARPs and storygames.
Champions was amazing, but it was also effectively a derivation (and improvement) of the earlier Supergame. (Yes, I know. Stupid title.) Supergame used d% and d6, not just d6, but let’s see if any of this rings a bell: (😁)
Champions’ creators have always said they were inspired by Superhero:2044 and Villains & Vigilantes and have never even mentioned Supergame, but I find that a bit sus myself:
Don’t get me wrong: Champions was the better game. Being inspired by Supergame and making a better game is emphatically not a negative. I just think it’s a bit weird that they refuse to acknowledge the influence.
And in the context of an RPG design essential reading, Supergame needs to be there to show the dramatic change in ideas that were beginning to pop up around that time.
¹ “Prime Statistics, super powers, devices, trainings, and abilities are all purchased using the same character construction points. The points are allocated according to relative effectiveness and usefulness. In other words, one power that costs 20 points is as useful in a variety of situations as any other power, ability, or device that also costs 20 points. Therefore, what is bought with these points is not the how or why of a power, but only the what.”
First I’ll double up on this one:
Amber Diceless Roleplay
Pair it with Theatrix so you can see two completely different approaches to diceless, non-stochastic games. Amber and Theatrix make a fascinating “compare and contrast” study.
To your list I’m going to add (or at points replace with):
The first game designed from the ground up as a social simulation where your character’s place in society is far more important than grubbing through dungeons, killing things, and looting their bodies. (Indeed for some characters that would negatively impact their experience and growth!) I might put it alongside Traveller to show the difference between a game having a setting and a game being the setting. Also the grandfather of later “mega-mechanics” game systems.
To my knowledge the first attempt at making a game (and a pretty CRUNCHY game at that!) that is 100% based on non-human protagonists.
First non-class-and-level game. Second game that came with a detailed, very non-European fantasy setting. Maybe put it alongside 1974 D&D to show how early people started breaking off from the D&D style.
I’d actually replace Apocalypse World with this because it is the very first game, to my knowledge, that broke completely free of even the vestigial wargames roots of RPGs, complete with traditional story structuring being part of the game mechanisms, no fixed attributes (and no numerical ones), scene-level resolution (you roll once for an entire scene, not turn by turn). It’s innovative enough that it’s of interest. It’s good enough that it’s worth studying. And it has enough mis-steps and flaws that it’s worth discussing. Pretty much any “storygame” owes a debt to this game.
Because it’s easier to throw the latest Monster of the Week at players than it is to craft NPCs and relationships such that there is compelling drama. Combat is easy. Drama is hard.
That’s really weird to me.
If I’m playing a board game (like Xiangqi/Chinese Chess) what’s cool is when I spot an opportunity and exploit it. This is playing according to the rules of the game.
If I’m playing a card game (like Fight the Landlord) what’s cool is when I assemble a good combination of cards that drains my hand with inexorable play. Or when I find just the right timing to interfere with someone else draining their cards. Again this is playing according to the rules of the game.
In sportball, presumably when the audience is going wild at a cool play by some player they’re playing according to the rules of the game. (I can’t attest yeah or nay to this because sportball isn’t my vibe.) Is this not cool? (I’ll let sportball fans answer here.)
So why would RPGs be the exception to this? Why do you have to break the rules of play to do cool things?
That’s really weird to me.
I still have no idea. “I critically succeed.” How? Why? With what?
There’s a reason why rule books are larger than half a page of A4. I genuinely have no clue how this works even with an example. Because there’s no explanation.
Your example needs to be “explain like I’m five”-grade. YOU know how this works. WE don’t.
I’m going to have to see an example of play that highlights the various subsystems here. I can’t make heads or tails of how to use this as-is.
And here you come SO FUCKING CLOSE … and still fumble the ball. Tsk. Tsk.
(Hint: Check your assumptions. And while you’re at it check the thread history.)
I’m pretty sure that any murder is a death sentence.
(Hint: check your assumptions.)
I’d read a few issues back in the day (borrowed from an ardent participant) and I’m still gob-smacked how lively and active game designers were back in the early '80s. And how well they knew each other, all because of the pages of this little APA.