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Ashes of the Magi: Fallen Angel Design Retrospective

I've been designing Ashes of the Magi for about ten years.  Well, it's more accurate to say I've been designing games that ended up becoming Ashes of the Magi for ten years.  Starting here, I'm going to detail the journey of designing this game, what I lessons I learned along the way, why I made certain choices, and how the game evolved into its current incarnation.  I'll try to keep up with doing at least one a week, but that's a goal, not a promise.  So. The game started as many games do, as a reaction to the many RPGs I was playing between the late 1990s and early 2000s. Dungeons and Dragons 3rd and 4th edition, Dark Heresy, FATE, Call of Cthulhu, Riddle of Steel, Savage Worlds, World of Darkness; those are the big ones but there were countless others and one shots. I was into warhammer: fantasy battles and warmachine at the time, which informed a lot of what I liked about wargames and combat tactics.  Surely there was a way to take the best parts of the thes...
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Story Creation Engines: A perspective for table top RPG design

‘Role-Playing-Games’ can be defined as an engine composed of rules that encompasses interactions of game, experience, and story. The rules, (mechanics; that take an input and deliver an output; and directives; instructions for how and when to use them) can be further classified into two categories: Meta- ; things or references to things outside the fictional narrative. And mesa- ; things or references to things within the fiction narrative.    Meta-mechanics allow interaction with the story from outside the narrative. They are mechanics that reference things being done to the game, story, or experience by the players or an arbitrary constraint, not the characters or the fiction. For example, FATE points or 1/session limits. Meta-directives direct the actions of the players. Most commonly, they indicate which players are responsible for setting terms, or difficulties, or scenes. Meta-directives can limit meta gaming by saying things like 'players should not read any f...
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