Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

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An Australian statistician and role-player living in Japan, interested in the theory and practice of role-playing…

Category: Double Cross 3

  • Tyranny and Structure in Role-playing

    Noisms at Monsters and Manuals has written a comparison of gaming systems with political theories, dichotomized into “top-down” games (D&D 3rd Edition) and thinkers (Marx) and “bottom-up” games (OD&D) and thinkers (Hayek). Noisms makes it clear what side he falls on (he’s a “bottom-upper,” oo-er), which he characterizes as “the right” (vs. “the wrong”), but…

  • On the importance of learning from Computer and Board Games

        Many people in the RPG world think what I’m about to say is heresy, but I actually think that board games and computer games have some interesting ideas to teach RPG makers and players, and a lot of them are based on making available new and specialized content – that is, objects and…

  • Japanese RPG Double Cross 3: Titus and Lois

    A few weeks ago I played in a Double Cross 3 session, and wrote up a few reports on it. This post constitutes the final report on that session, in which I describe my experience of the Lois and Titus rules and how they affect gameplay. Lois and Titus When you roll up a character…

  • Japanese role-playing game Double Cross 3: Kintaro “The Noble”

    This post, third in a series describing my recent experience playing the Japanese role-playing game Double Cross 3, which I have been reading and recently had the chance to play-test, describes the character I played, Kintaro. Character Concept Kintaro, aka “The Noble,” is a pure-breed Black Dog syndrome male in his mid-20s, who works for…

  • Japanese role-playing game Double Cross 3: Scenario Craft Random Modules

    In my previous post about playing this game on Sunday, I mentioned that we used a type of module called “Scenario Craft,” in which every element of the module except a vague skeleton of the plot is random. This post gives a little more detail about the scenario craft process. The book The scenario craft…

  • Play-testing the Japanese RPG Double Cross 3

    At this month’s Oita Evil Spirts Konkon convention, I got a chance to play in a session of Double Cross 3 (DX3), which is the Japanese RPG I’ve been putting up information about here. This was my first (and only?!) chance to play this game, and so even though I was sorely tempted to join…

  • Grognarding in Japanese

    Is what happened today, at my monthly convention. I turned up at 9:30 with Ms. Uma, on time, carrying a huge bag of rice balls, and thus well placed to hear the introductions to the various games that were being played today. One of the choices, by Mr. 123, was a session of old school…

  • Japanese role-playing game Double Cross: Skill resolution

    We saw in my previous post how a simple character is made in the Double Cross role-playing game. I have subsequently skipped across the more complex character generation rules straight to the bit about how the characters operate in practice, i.e. how tasks are resolved. This is basically divided into two parts, the standard skill…

  • Japanese role-playing game “Double Cross 3”: Character Creation

    I promised I would read through this game and give a full report, and by now I’ve read far enough through to make an attempt at character creation. There are two methods of character creation, Quickstart and Construction. The former is done by choosing a sample character and then developing a life-path for it; the…