A New Spin of Telling Stories in the Known Wolrd

This blog is called the Book of Dooms because we believe the arcana are the most crucial and unique part of Artesia: Adevntures in the Known World. Not that a fantasy set of tarot cards is unique, but how the tarot are integrated into the setting and system spins a central focus that completely supports the philosophy of the setting. This sort of thing speaks to me. It's my opinion that in the world of roleplaying GAMES if a theme or aspect of the setting isn't part of the rules it's just window dressing and the play group is welcome to ignore it. Mark has done a great job integrating a lot of the setting into the rules making the flavor of the setting come out in full color during play.

We will be spending much of our time talking about the Book of Dooms. We will be covering it's themes and meanings, developing an expanded deck beyond the major Arcana, exploring how players can drive story centered around their character's Arcana and even a new game that allows you to tell rich and epic stories set in the Known World.

Anyone in the NY/NJ/PA region can join us in playing Adenvtures in the Known World and Artesia Tales at several local gaming conventions (as spring mentioned) such as UberCon (1st weekend in Nov), PhilCon (3rd week of Nov) and Dreamation (last weekend in January).

Convention Sessions on the Horizon

After GenCon I took a bit of a vacation from A:AKW. However, with a pair of November conventions coming up it's time to get back to work.

I will be running a session of Artesia: Adventures in the Known World at Ubercon IX in Edison, NJ. The game is scheduled for a crazy hour: Sunday, Nov 4th at 12:00am. Someone has signed up for the game but I'll be very surprised if I get enough players to run the scenario.

I'm tempted to reschedule the game for another time during the convention, such as 9am on Saturday. The problem with that is that I'm scheduled to run The Mountain Witch at midnight on Saturday. That game has 5 out of 6 seats filled and will definitely run. Am I willing to run a game from midnight to 4am, and then run another game 5 hours later?

I will also be running a session or two at Philcon. The convention is the weekend of November 16-18, 2007 in Philadelphia, PA. A game schedule should be posted by the end of October.

With the sessions coming up quickly, I'm tidying up character sheets and backgrounds. I'd love to have the A:AKW character sheet as an editable PDF. The Excel version (downloadable from the website) is very cool and very functional, but sadly doesn't have the same visual 'oomph' as the one in the book.

I'll be running a couple of trial sessions with folk at home. Hopefully you'll see some actual play reports in a couple of weeks.


Unanswered Questions of the Known World

allow me a moment to be snarky
If there were a forum, I'd start this discussion there. But as there isn't a forum, I'll have to talk to myself in the hollow darkness of the internet.
end snarkiness.

Is there a game in the Known World that is comparable to chess? If there is, how would you imagine it would look?

I'm not out to design a new game, but rather have a story hook in my head that involves images of game pieces found in stained glass and tapestries. I think I've read one too many Arturo Perez-Reverte novels.