Play Unsafe

How to Work Less, Play Harder and Add Stories to Your Game

By: Graham Walmsley

Narrated by: Colby Elliott

Length: 1 hr and 12 mins

Publisher's Summary

Often, we treat games like work. We buy shelves of thick books. We plan detailed adventures. We memorize rules. In Play Unsafe, Graham Walmsley explores what happens when you throw the serious stuff away: when you stop working, stop planning and start playing. This book explains how to make role-playing less like work and more like play; stop killing other players' ideas and build on them instead; and put stories at the heart of your game.

©2012 Graham Walmsley (P)2019 Last Word Audio

Life-changing

My perspective on RPG is completely changed. It's about how to relax, have fun, run great games, cool story tricks.
It turned my world upside down.

Just listen to it, It's great!

Great Role Playing and GMing advice!

I've past on this book a few times, mainly because of the cover. but man, I wish I hadn't. it has great advice on improv, and being a better role player around the table. Definitely a must read!

Brilliant book, must read for all GMs and players

I hesitated before buying this book, because it's short and the cover isn't well designed, but I bought it anyway. Money SO well spent!

Absolutely brilliant advice, I think it should be a must-read for anyone who plays RPG games. If my group had read it a year ago, so many mistakes would've been avoided, playing would've been so much more fun.

The fact that the book is short is a great thing - there's no fluff, the author gets straight to the point, and gives you useful practical tips right away.

If you're new to RPGs, or unfamiliar with improv, or looking for tips on how to get better at playing - get this book, it's fantastic.

Very Short and retread of things I have heard

This is a short book, about an hour and fifteen minutes without the forward and credits.
I thought it was going to be an elaboration on how to help GM tabletop RPGs with minimal work on my end. It does that, but uses a bunch of things that I have heard before. Just rephrased at points such as using the players to help describe the world or learning how to use the classic three stage story arc to help move things along. The author includes some of his anecdotal events, but doesn't really seem to elaborate on the errors and what he would do again by incorporating what he knows now or is trying to teach us. By the time it got to some new things to think about, the book was over and I had sort of tuned out the book.

Plenty to think about, but often conflicting thoughts

Plenty to think about, but often conflicting thoughts ie “don’t censor yourself” and “drop it if you perceive negative social cues “

Perhaps better as 4-6 podcasts.

The book makes allot of presumptions about fun

The books beginning is jarringly bad until explained a bit later. It makes allot of presumptions about what's fun, which is a mistake. It seems to contradict itself.

I will say it might be good for people who are having trouble roleplaying.

brief and a bit restricted

Got this book as I'm interested in learning more about games as a topic and the forms of gameplay.
its primary based on TTRPG (tabletop roleplay games) is an area I don't know much about although this book was to focus on a narrative aspect. It descent dive much into storytelling as a medium with games. Or how this could be applied to other modern game mediums which I hope would be inciteful.
it is a short book so perhaps I shouldn't have expected too much but it might be suitable if you enjoy the niche gameplay of TTRPG's and want to come up with ideas around it or improve the performance.