Hugin & Munin Journal

Stories shaped by roleplaying games must decide where their mechanics belong. Should the rules recede behind character and consequence, or should they become part of what the fictional world contains? Actual Play and LitRPG often lean towards different answers, although neither form occupies a single fixed position. An Actual Play audience may hear dice, modifiers and tactical discussion, but the characters usually experience only the results: a missed attack, a sudden injury, a failed attempt at persuasion. LitRPG frequently moves the system across the fictional boundary. Levels, achievements, classes, damage values and system messages become things the characters themselves can perceive and respond to. The difference is therefore not that one form is storytelling while the other remains a game. Both draw narrative energy from game structures. They create immersion by directing attention differently. One can encourage the audience to feel the uncertainty produced by the rules; the...

When Torment: Tides of Numenera was first announced, I was immediately drawn in. It was presented as a thematic successor to Planescape: Torment , promising philosophical storytelling, difficult choices and companions with lives and motives of their own. I backed the record-breaking Kickstarter campaign , joining 74,405 people who pledged more than $4.1 million. The scale of that enthusiasm also became part of the game’s burden. Expectations expanded with every stretch goal, while the project itself took almost four years to reach its full release in February 2017. The finished game did not contain everything imagined during that campaign. Some promised systems and companions were reduced or removed. Yet in the areas that matter most to me—story, dialogue, worldbuilding and moral consequence—it remains a remarkable role-playing game. Its most interesting achievement is not simply that choices matter. It is that every choice is made from inside someone else’s attempt to escape co...

When Darkest Dungeon reached full release in January 2016, it did more than add another entry to the long tradition of dungeon-crawling RPGs. It placed psychological pressure beside health, equipment and positioning as something the player had to manage. The important innovation was not simply the addition of a stress meter. Games had represented morale, fear and sanity before. What made Darkest Dungeon distinctive was the way stress altered a hero’s behaviour, reduced the player’s control and continued to shape the campaign after the expedition ended. The heroes are not merely combat units with a second health bar. They are people who can become unreliable, infect one another with despair and eventually cost more to repair than the player is prepared to spend. The game’s real horror lies partly in how quickly that becomes an administrative calculation. Official artwork for Darkest Dungeon , developed and published by Red Hook Studios. Used for purposes of re...

Across the Obelisk entered Steam Early Access in 2021 before receiving its full release in August 2022. Developed by Dreamsite Games and published through Paradox Arc, it has quietly become one of my favourite examples of the roguelite deck-building RPG. At first glance, it resembles another descendant of Slay the Spire : branching paths, turn-based card combat, repeated runs and gradually increasing difficulty. The important difference is not that Across the Obelisk eliminates randomness. It gives the player far more control over what happens before and around it. A four-character party, persistent perks, town upgrades and deliberate card crafting allow a strategy to be constructed rather than merely discovered among whatever rewards happen to appear. Luck still matters, but planning determines how exposed you are to it. Official artwork for Across the Obelisk , developed by Dreamsite Games and published by Paradox Interactive. Used for purposes of review an...