Storium in the Time of COVID-19
This article was going to be about adapting Storium to tabletop play. But now, because pandemic, people are cancelling their weekly game nights. Playing Storium as the designers intended has become the better option.
Storium is a play-by-post roleplaying forum with actual game mechanics. I’d been thinking about dragging Storium’s ruleset into meatspace for a while. How to do it isn’t much of an issue. The ruleset (found here) isn’t all that crunchy. There isn’t much need for a digital-to-analog “conversion guide.” You’d need to adjust some things, but the process is barely a hack.
But then someone on Twitter asked about online RPG options. Some might recommend Roll20, but real-time online gaming isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I don’t have a regular game at the moment, and probably never will again, but if I did, Storium would be my go-to digital solution.
I’ve only backed two Kickstarters ever and Storium was one of them. I liked it OK, but none of my games went very far. Then again, most Storium games don’t. There are examples of successful long-term games, but not many. I think Storium’s target audience was old-school forum gamers, but the digital card mechanics drew in a lot of pen-and-paper gamers too. I don’t think those two crowds mixed well.
