Actual Play & Podcasts
Ludonarrative Dissidents
"Ludonarrative dissonance" is a term from game-design commentary, describing a moment when the game mechanics pull in one direction but the game story pulls in another, creating dissonance.
The ‘Ludonarrative Dissidents’ are three game designers, reviewers and commentators, veterans in the field of ludic narrative, who have come together to discuss the art, science and craft of RPG design by vivisecting game systems and seeing what makes them run.
Your hosts are Ross Payton, Greg Stolze and James Wallis.
Ethos
Every episode of Ludonarrative Dissidents is built around four pillars:
What does this game do?
How does it do that?
How do people play it?
Why do they play it that way?
(and how well does it succeed?)
We examine games from all angles: mechanical, ludic, narrativist, historical, cultural, structural, whether or not it’s fun, and Greg complains about its use of the future-conditional tense. We look at its influences and pedigree, its narrative engine, its world-building, its book-design, and James reveals that he dated the designer’s sister, or something like that.
In season 2 we have added episodes that look at specific aspects of RPGs, such as initiative systems, metacurrencies and diceless games.
Origins
The idea behind Ludonarrative Dissidents came from a Twitter discussion in early 2021. Someone was looking for RPG designers to work on a project, someone else suggested Greg and James, and after the two of them politely declined, a third person opined that a podcast with the two talking about games and game design would be quite a thing. Greg and James exchanged a virtual glance across the Atlantic, Greg mentioned the idea to Ross, the three of them filled a Google document with ideas, and the project was born.