Bastionland Podcast - Tabletop Roleplaying Game Design · Chris McDowall

Laurie O'Connel's Rule of Three

·49 min·3 clips

Laurie says Bluebeard's Bride can trigger strong reactions and is not for everyone.

1. Bastionland Podcast - Tabletop Roleplaying Game Design centers on Laurie O'Connell's Rule of Three and three tabletop games that shaped his design thinking. 2. Chris McDowell hosts, and Laurie O'Connell speaks as the creator of Lichcraft, To Honor and Obey, and the upcoming Deathgate. 3. The episode asks what three games influenced Laurie's design mentality, especially games that do not look much like his own work. 4. Contract Bridge is Laurie's first choice, and he links it to school Bridge club, family play, and a long history of traditional card games. 5. He explains Bridge as two teams of two, with bidding for trumps and one partner sitting out as dummy each round. 6. Laurie treats that dummy role as a social feature, comparing it to making gin and tonics, getting snacks, or leaving the table for a break. 7. He also notes that bridge etiquette books include rules about attention, embarrassment, touching cards, and silence at competitive tables. 8. Laurie's reading of Bridge rules emphasizes conventions, including weak no trump, strong no trump, and other hidden bidding signals. 9. He says Bridge feels like a game with a huge amount of unofficial language layered above a small official ruleset. 10. He connects that hidden communication to RPGs, because players learn conventions through use rather than through explicit rules alone. 11. Bluebeard's Bride by Whitney Beltran, Marisa Kelly, and Sarah Richardson is his second choice, and he describes it as a Powered by the Apocalypse game where all players share one character. 12. Laurie says the game uses different mental facets of the bride, including naive, sexual, and self-protective responses. 13. He reads the game as an exploration of abuse, contradiction, and isolation rather than a simple haunted-house story. 14. Laurie says the game's rules and wording are carefully chosen, and that the text shows a close editorial eye. 15. He also says Bluebeard's Bride is not for everyone, because some players reacted badly when he ran it. 16. Laurie treats that discomfort as part of the design, and he says the game can help players explore painful experiences with trust and grace. 17. 6e by snow is his third choice, and he describes it as a tiny, flexible, and ironic game that he first wrote a supplement for during COVID. 18. He explains that 6e changes skill names as they are used, which pushes players into meta-play and makes the table create the fun together. 19. The episode has an interview style with long, reflective answers, frequent follow-up questions, and a steady move from card-game history to darker RPG design. 20. Listeners who like indie RPG design, Bridge, and table-driven experimentation should enjoy it, while people wanting only light rules talk may skip it.

As heard by us

A design conversation where three game picks turn into a clear look at structure, feeling, and self-protection.

The episode tracks Laurie O'Connell's three game picks through structure, feeling, and the different roles a character can be pushed into. Chris McDowell keeps the conversation anchored in the rule of three, and Laurie answers in a loose, reflective way that keeps the design…

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Why you'd press play

Laurie O'Connell turns three game picks into a sharp rule-of-three tour.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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