The thing about Google Slides that makes it my favorite virtual tabletop is that everyone knows how to use it. No setting up accounts, no learning a new service, you just get right to playing. It’s easy to navigate and remember where things are. And if all you’re doing is dropping in jpgs of character sheets and putting text on top of them, maybe with a few extra slides for session recaps and notes, Slides is fully functional. You’re killing it even.
Here’s a tour of how I use it.
Wanderhome
Dice Exploder Aftershow: Do Games Need Conflict?
CommentOn this week’s episode of the Dice Exploder podcast, I talked with Michael Elliot (@notwriting in most places) about Antiquarian Adventures. And while editing it, I was reflecting on our discussion on conflict in games and stories. We talked about how providing mechanical motivations for players to lean into conflict is a great thing to propel your story go forward. Failure and disaster are great because they give your story something to react to. Without conflict, story is boring, and at that point what are we even doing here?
...right? Is that true?