A blog about dynamics of Bondage/Discipline, Dominance/Submission, and Sadism/Masochism as they appear within the tabletop roleplaying hobby. Also features o...
By Sabrina Hawthorne To begin - massive credit both to Julie Coker and Gabe for talking about this with me at length. This framework is as much theirs as it is mine - I'm just the one with the blog.* A few days ago as of this writing, Matt Colville published a video to his youtube channel essentially positing a question: how might we begin talking in concrete terms about a Play Host's style? It…
"You probably know this already: roleplaying is a conversation. You and the other players go back and forth, talking about these fictional characters in their fictional circumstances doing whatever it is that they do. Like any conversation, you take turns, but it's not like taking turns, right? Sometimes you talk over each other, interrupt, build on each others' ideas, monopolize and hold forth.…
Several days ago, Julie - the Table Host of Tiny Table - and I were bitching about how it seems as though every licensed TRPG on the market is a D&D 5E conversion - a passtime I'm sure is familiar to this blog's readership. During this conversation, I mentioned the example of this phenomenon that boils my blood the hottest: the Adventure Time RPG from 2014. If ever a work deserved an original…
I won't waste words explaining why I don't like the terms GM and Player in reference to the two sides of the screen in a traditionally structured RPG; I doubt the reasons for my distaste differ greatly from yours. I'll just get right into my proposal for an alternative, and let you be the judge. Table Host and Table Guest Honestly, my ideal term for the role of…
Hi! I'm Sabrina Hawthorne and I design TRPGs. I'm also a kinkster. As you maybe have guessed, I'm of the opinion that you can't meaningfully disambiguate those two hobbies. So I started this blog to elaborate on why exactly I think that is, and what players and designers can learn from the framework. So far, I've covered Bondage & Discipline, and I'm working on posts discussing Dominance &…