MeFi Projects

In the past year or so, I've added several new translations and comments on games that have mostly been left out of the history of roleplaying, story games, fantasy games, etc. Highlights include seven classical mythology games from the late Renaissance (including the mildly LARP-like "Game of Ceremonies," in which players make sacrifices to Venus and Cupid), a translation of the novel Jeux d'esprit written in 1701 by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force (who gave a complete version of the collaborative storytelling game "Le Jeu du Roman," along with other games depicted in the novel), and trying out a new format, "Kriegsspiele, Parlament, and Prince Albert: light roleplaying in German, 1796-1893" (a blog post on parlor games and live action military-themed games with roleplaying elements).
posted by Wobbuffet on Dec 27, 2023 - 4 comments

A few months ago, I posted a rough translation of the rules to a collaborative fairy tale storytelling game more than 200 years old. I've now put that onto a Neocities site with many additional translations: a total of 5 variants of the same game re-published many times between 1801 and 1867, several variants of a game the same age that involves role-playing, and several variants of even older poetry and nonsense games related to the Surrealist game "Exquisite Corpse." There are also pages and translations explaining the history of the games' penalty phase, offering advice on running demos of the storytelling game especially using motifs from the earliest "secondary world" fantasy novel, and possible round-robin storytelling from the 1600s-1700s, as well as links to many additional sources for parlor games from 1551 to 1899.
posted by Wobbuffet on Aug 5, 2022 - 3 comments

I worked up a rough translation of one of the collaborative story-telling games linked in this post: Pre-Surrealist Games. It's called "The Impromptu Tale," and there's a lot to it that modern tabletop gamers may find familiar.
posted by Wobbuffet on Mar 25, 2022 - 0 comments

You might also like... A crowd-sourced short story MetaFilter meta-collection spreadsheet! Anyone can add to it directly. Or add to it by filling out this form. Sort by publisher, author, word count, audio, buyability, and more. [more inside]
posted by aniola on Nov 2, 2020 - 3 comments

Wanderlust is a new way to tell location-based stories on smartphones from Six to Start. Instead of readers having to be in specific physical locations (like setting a Sherlock Holmes story in Baker Street, London), Wanderlust sets stories in classes of location. Act 1 might be in any cafe in the world, Act 2 in any museum, Act 3 in any bar. It's more like atmosphere-based storytelling. [more inside]
posted by adrianhon on Mar 12, 2011 - 0 comments