Last night we played Epidiah Ravachol’s Invisible Empire. It was pretty great. It’s Tales of the Arabian Nights by way of Swords Without Master. The players take the role of courtiers of the Silent Emperor, telling stories of Dread and Awe, in the hopes of not boring/offending the Emperor and getting themselves killed. I would love to play it again, mostly because I think we weren’t really on our best behavior, tone-wise (I think it had already been a long week for some of us), and the restaurant was particularly noisy last night. I think in a small, quiet environment, with everyone sticking to the tone, this one would be really damn cool.
Thanks to Daniel Lewis and Russell Benner for prepping, and to Scott Owen Kristen D Gary Wilson and David LaFreniere for coming out!
Epi sold me on the Calvino connection. How hard is it to wrap your head around, compared to SwM? I had a particularly hard time seeing it all fall into place.
Epi sold me on the Calvino connection. How hard is it to wrap your head around, compared to SwM? I had a particularly hard time seeing it all fall into place.
jan w I think it’s harder than SwM because your characters are exclusively giving speeches. In SwM, you’re mostly narrating action, which I think is significantly easier.
jan w I think it’s harder than SwM because your characters are exclusively giving speeches. In SwM, you’re mostly narrating action, which I think is significantly easier.
Jason Cordova you mean harder as a player then. I was wondering about the rules themselves?
Jason Cordova you mean harder as a player then. I was wondering about the rules themselves?
I think rules-wise it’s much easier. Every time you get the dice you do the same thing – tell a story. The only thing that’s at all hard to figure out is exactly how the secrets work when you roll doubles. I thought swords without master was much harder to figure out since there are different scene types each with different rules for who can do what, etc.
I think rules-wise it’s much easier. Every time you get the dice you do the same thing – tell a story. The only thing that’s at all hard to figure out is exactly how the secrets work when you roll doubles. I thought swords without master was much harder to figure out since there are different scene types each with different rules for who can do what, etc.
Daniel Lewis jan w But, importantly, neither are that difficult, in terms of either gameplay or the rules.
Daniel Lewis jan w But, importantly, neither are that difficult, in terms of either gameplay or the rules.