oh these really are lovely! a comforting array of colors, the reds and golds and greens

Fourth, in the ruminating imagination that comes before creation. Imbibing the play comes in playing & playtesting; imbibing the text, in its accessible indexable online form, til both are internalized and then critical or novel creation can blossom. reading & rereading as a kind of parallel to play

Third, when helping others with a game, being able to extremely quickly pull up specific wordings, specific math & rule interactions, or guiding principles that can handle unclear points. Is that an intended goal of an SRD? I'm not sure, but it's come up hundreds of times in my life in practice!

- how do i use one?

First learning terms as people use them, reading and reviewing in the idle time before playing, running, or writing a game.

Second, once I know the content, being able to quickly pull up the specifics to confirm my memory is correct, and correct all the human mistakes of memory

classically and explicitly an SRD fave? BitD bladesinthedark.com/core-system

but the one I use almost every day and really appreciate is the BotC "wiki" (which is not a fan-run wiki, it's the official system rules, interactions, and wording reference): wiki.bloodontheclocktower.com/Trouble_Brew...

yeah. alone in a nonverbal mascot suit in an open air theme park where you can't speak and can't even tumble or somersault sounds like literally a nightmare. strictly dependent on other people's goodwill. i'm sure there are others with insights to that experience though too

- but if you have a single actor, and you can't give them a prop/a bit/an obvious fun interaction point, and there's nothing to corral people or channel them to a purpose, still see if there's a way to model intended interactions. asking audience members a question is a great super-simple example

- multiple actors. four actors can handle 100 audience members much better than one can 25. even just having A Handler available who isn't in the scene but knows what boundaries are is huge, because trouble is found when someone is Alone and Not in Control of the scene. see: mods in a twitch chat

big helps to yield less weird bs:
- controlled or directed environment. much easier if there is something that either the actor or audience are Doing (or meant to be doing). the absence of this is a HUGE risk factor, and "both just mozying about an open area" means someone's designed something wrong

caveat that i'm not a regular defunctland watcher and when i scrolled through this one it had a thousand flashing lights so I couldn't really get all of its points, but as someone who's done full-LARP live-character-work-as-dayjob so much of any of it is contingent on performers:audience ratio

establishing clear boundaries and definitions is how you arrive at objectively better jokes!!! the fiction must form a bedrock for the subversion otherwise we’re just saying things!!!

I can see the google sheet tab now

when the devil's at your gate /
will you turn and meet your fate /
or save it for another date /
"yeah, next tuesday would be great"

when the devil's at your gate /
will you turn and meet your fate /
or save it for another date /
"yeah, next tuesday would be great"

thoughts on ethical mobile/phone games? think there's any future for them?