Articles - Modern Mythology

‍If you found this site through the surprisingly popular long essay I wrote on what myths are and how they work, you may have noticed something on the way in.

Turning Story Patterns into RPG Systems The following article is written primarily for GMs, though most of it applies at the player side of the table too.

Stranger Things is a very silly show.

“System Does Matter,” The Forge and the Story Games Revolution (2000s-2010) Read more of the Rules in Practice series a new millenuim of ttrpgs As discussed in Part 3, by the late 1990s the tabletop RPG community was buzzing with debate about how games sh…

Alien: Earth Shows How Corporate Incentives Turn SOP Into Horror I was thinking about something the other day while watching Alien: Earth— not about the creatures, or not primarily, but about the operating system that keeps putting humans into contact with

…and what I mean by Modern Mythology When Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu hit theaters, many viewers saw it as just another vampire remake—yet the film’s real power lies in how it draws from the deep well of myth and folklore.

The Rise of the ‘Traditional’ Style (1980s–1990s) Read more of the Rules in Practice series The Origins of “Traditional” Play As tabletop RPGs gained popularity through the late 1970s and 1980s, the hobby evolved rapidly.

Origins of the ttrpg Read more of the Rules in Practice series Rulebooks and Roleplay, the Origins of TTRPGs Much of this introductory material will seem obvious to anyone who has been playing roleplaying games for years, but for the sake of making sure w…

Introduction play System, Style, and Culture in Tabletop Role-Playing TTRPGs don’t just differ in rules—they differ in how they expect those rules to be used.

An Analysis of Identity in Perfect Blue In a world where we are expected to play a variety of conflicting roles, in which our lives are all interconnected, broadcast and dissected, we invariably develop situational identities.

thoughts on Jacob’s Ladder, the bardo, horror and the mundane.

For more of this, check out our theory podcast Narrative Machines.