I haven't been posting at ALL about all of the OSR blogs I've been reading (because it turns out blogging stresses me the f out), but one thing I keep coming back to as really cool is economy of narrative and design.

There's a very real part of me that whenever I write down a fantasy idea, I go, "Hold on, is this as tightly prepared and worded as your average OSR content? Could this be a table? Could this connect to a specific NPC that pushes a specific adventure module?"

That combines with the narrative economy of the story game scene where I think "instead of explaining this in 4 paragraphs, can I make a mechanic that DOES it and teaches you the idea through the action?"

Increasingly as I think of ideas, I try to combine those two things: can I make something so full of narrative thickness that every result builds a meaningful object into the world AND teaches about the story I'm trying to tell.

So when I talk about new system, my story gamer brain is taking over, I need mechanics that SPECIFICALLY tell the story. But the truth is, the things that most stick in my brain could be modular. Like you could write an adventure that plays off of any PbtA Game in the world, just

assume the players know how the core stuff works and make everything else either self contained or reference things like "Roll + Strength" and an explanation that Strength may be Blood or Danger or Whatever.

Or hell, do everything with questions. Literally any game can play with questions.

So this challenges my form factor: if I want to tell A story about how I see fantasy in the tiny village where my abuela grew up, do I need a system for it or is that a module? And if Brandon Leon-Gambetta: Story Gamer puts out a module, would story gamers check it out.