I. Dear Reader I had a mid-week session of The Sword, The Crown and the Unspeakable Power cancel recently. In its place, we spun up a one shot of Stealing the Throne by Nick Bate. Stealing the Throne is a very slick, very fast playing storygame about a crew of thieves pulling off the heist of a legendary mech. It's got simple rules - there is a setup phase where you flesh out the world and the mec, a heist phase where you describe your thieves doing cool stuff, and then a getaway phase where you try to escape with the mech and any traitors in the crew reveal themselves.
I'm going to watch StartPlaying closely. While a lot of gamers seem to have a visceral aversion to paid GMing, I respect gamemasters who charge for their work. I also had a blast with one of the (free) StartPlaying one-shots stemming from SP's collaboration with Evil Hat. I see potential in SP contributing to RPG scenes beyond Dungeons & Dragons.
At the same time, I'm wary about StartPlaying going the route of venture capitalism. Let's hope they build the company sustainably, as opposed to pursuing tumorous growth and exploitation. I don't know if any GMs are currently using StartPlaying as a significant source of income, but that's an area to be careful about so that the GMs are fairly compensated.
I'm going to watch StartPlaying closely. While a lot of gamers seem to have a visceral aversion to paid GMing, I respect gamemasters who charge for their work. I also had a blast with one of the (free) StartPlaying one-shots stemming from SP's collaboration with Evil Hat. I see potential in SP contributing to RPG scenes beyond Dungeons & Dragons.
At the same time, I'm wary about StartPlaying going the route of venture capitalism. Let's hope they build the company sustainably, as opposed to pursuing tumorous growth and exploitation. I don't know if any GMs are currently using StartPlaying as a significant source of income, but that's an area to be careful about so that the GMs are fairly compensated.
Thank you for the link to the Karlman thread! Very helpful for someone hoping to Root something in Trophy someday.