Unwritten Earths Symposium - Episodes Tagged with “Train Of Thought”

The Prompts & Standards Episode

Unwritten Earths Symposium — Wed, 27 May 2026 06:00:00 -0700

We come back from a brief sabbatical to consider a bundle of topics from our Scholars. We talk about prompts in truly true roleplaying games (and reclaiming them from their AI-related meaning), things in our lives we've adopted from games and that we adapt into our game design, and different interpretations of the idea of a "standard" in game design. An assumption, yes, but what about a mode of experimentation, like a Jazz Standard? This is one of our more after-hours style conversations that touches on lots of the things we're always thinking about.

Show Notes:

Jorge Luis Borges Quote (from The Garden of Forking Paths): "Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary."
Asa Donald/Backwards Tabletop
Poul Anderson, author of The Broken Sword and Three Hearts and Three Lions
The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
Jack Vance's Dying Earth

Games Mentioned:

And there's more:

The Constraints Episode

Unwritten Earths Symposium — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 03:00:00 -0800

In this episode, Eppy brings a discussion of "technological" creative constraints in game design. We talk about what this means in the context of tabletop, how constraints surface through the design, and how we handle them as designers. This builds on our recent episode about design surfaces, and is ultimately another part of a long-term conversation about, well, game design! We also do our final homework for 2025, bringing some holidays from different projects in our back catalogue to celebrate the season.

This is our last episode of the year, and we'll be taking a few weeks off over the holidays. See you in 2026, Scholars!

Show Notes:

Missile Command Box Cover
Yar’s Revenge (and many other similar cover + gameplay images)
Sorcerer: An Intense Roleplaying Game by Ron Edwards
The Shrike
Vampire: the Requiem
Trial & Terror: Supernatural Victims Unit (free download!)
Fantasy World
The City of Fire & Coin

And there's more:

The Playtesting Episode

Unwritten Earths Symposium — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 03:00:00 -0700

In this episode Eppy leads off with a hot take about playtesting, leading us to a discussion of the multiple purposes of playtests, playstorming, techniques for effective playtests, and an introduction of a new feature of the Unwritten Earths Symposium Discord: Playtest Tuesdays!

Show Notes:

Playtest Tuesdays are on the Discord - you do not need to be a Patreon member to join, and we're aiming at short bursts of targeted play for anyone who would find that helpful.
The JiffyCon Community site still exists, for posterity!

And there's more:

The Podcation Episode

Unwritten Earths Symposium — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 03:00:00 -0700

In this laid-back episode we chat about greeting cards and inspiration from non-games for game formats, follow a train of thought about using Valentine's Day exchange as a game mechanic, and check in with each other about how ideas and inspiration from previous episodes are coming together for new game projects.

Games Mentioned:

And there's more:

The Ritual Episode

Unwritten Earths Symposium — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 03:00:00 -0700

In this episode we talk about building rituals in and for play, follow a train of thought about building in "blessings" for each other into gameplay, discuss the joy of dice, and come back from sabbatical to assign game discovery homework.

Reminder: The Adventurer & Hobbyist Annual 2025 Kickstarter is live through the end of April!

Show Notes:

And there's more:

Mounts, Death and Music

Unwritten Earths Symposium — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 03:00:00 -0800

Show Notes:

Horse Armor (from Elder Scrolls, not World of Warcraft)
The box that turns itself off is also called a useless machine
Eppy tried to calculate the number of deck shuffle possibilies in The Shrike but it was too many

Games We Talked About:

The game where you play a sword is Wield by John Wick and Gillian Fraser
the d1 RPG
The Shrike

And there's more: