Rich Stokes

Rich Stokes

Rich has been gaming for over 25 years and during that time has played or run more-or-less everything.

Having spent his early years as a recruitment consultant, web designer and videogames reviewer, Rich eventually settled down and got a proper job in the IT industry. More recently, he's responsible for writing Umläut: Game of Metal and running semi-annual Pubcon events, as well as writing for Cubicle 7's Starblazer Adventures and Legends of Anglerre. He clearly spends too much time thinking about this stuff because he's writing this column.

He currently lives in Southampton with his partner, Claire and an elderly cat called Charlie.

The Roles We Play While Roleplaying – Part 4 – Author and Director Stances

0
Rich Stokes

These two Stances are fairly similar, but not terribly hard to tell apart. Both are important though! I'm going to use the word "acting" a lot, and in this context it means "taking action" rather than any kind of dramatics or thespian behaviour. Author Stance This is any action where the player is ...

The Roles We Play While Roleplaying – Part 3 – Character Stance, Actor Stance and the gap in-between

0
Rich Stokes

I'm going to cover these two together, since at first glance they can appear to be more-or-less the same thing. But the distinction between the two activities is important to understand, because they're often each driven at by players with very different goals. Much more so than the difference between ...

The Roles We Play While Roleplaying – Part 2.5 – How to be a better gamer

0
Rich Stokes

Spoiler Alert: How to be a Better Roleplayer My better half recently asked me if I had any plans to write another game, a follow-up to Umlaut if you like.  At first I said that I didn't really have any time to write another game, but it occurred ...

The Roles We Play While Roleplaying – Part 2 – Stances In Play

0
Rich Stokes

In Part 1 we defined six "stances", which can be thought of as jobs we do to generate fun while roleplaying: Actor Stance Character Stance Author Stance Director Stance Gamer Stance Audience Stance It's very misleading to think that players are dedicated to one Stance or another. Generally players will flit between Stances from ...

The Roles We Play While Roleplaying – Part 1½ – An Interlude Regarding Ownership

0
Rich Stokes

Before I plough on into the whole "application of stances" thing, it's probably important to spend a moment to cover the important topic of Ownership. Whose Game is it Anyway? An important concept in this or any discussion of RPGs is that of Ownership. In this context, it applies to which players ...

The Roles We Play While Roleplaying – Part 1 – The Basics

1
Rich Stokes

Introduction and Purpose Ah, the hobby we call Roleplaying games. RPGs. Story-telling games. Pen and paper. Call them what you want, if you're here then chances are you know what we're talking about. But that's the thing: we don't. Two groups of people can be playing a roleplaying game, sometimes with exactly ...