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Tag Archives: RPG design
Gary Gygax’s Blue Period
I can’t think of anything sillier than the claim that Gary Gygax only ever liked minimalist, house ruled OD&D. He spent decades working on different kinds of games – and some, like AD&D1 or Dangerous Journeys, were pretty goddamn complicated.…
Unnecessary Things
One recurring criticism I hear of one RPG book or another is that it isn’t “essential,” or “necessary,” for play. Back in the Value post Eliot Wilen talks about some types of content as a “luxury.”
Luxury? Compared to what?…
Posted in Tabletop RPGs: Art Without Prestige
Tagged RPG Culture, RPG design, rpg industry
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Creative Leadership 101
Back in the Suck post I called for improved creative leadership in the RPG industry and hobby. But as many of you pointed out, I never defined that well. The post was getting a little long, you see, and I…
What Tabletop RPGs Are Good At
As I’ve said many, many times, I think tabletop RPGs are particularly good at certain things, and that it’s usually a bad idea to twist the form toward things other media do better. An MMO-like tabletop game play experience is…
4e Hack: Power Points
Today featured a kickass fight in my buddy Steve’s D&D4e game. My warforged ranger, Cinnabar, is 10th level and rocking some nice power combos. But if you play 4e you can’t help but look at your sheet toward the end…
More Old School Dice Pool Shenanigans
I’m still thinking about that OD&D and Chainmail inspired dice pool system from the other day. Let me add a few rules:
Exploding Dice: I resisted it, but it looks like I’ll need it to help characters deal with long…
Posted in RPG Sketches
Tagged chainmail, od&d, old school, old school dice pool, RPG design, rpg sketches
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Gary Gygax Invents Dice Pools
Over the past week I’ve been thinking about Chainmail and OD&D, as well as the late Gary Gygax’s mention (in an old ENWorld thread) that he used an opposed hit dice rolls to resolve grappling. I’m an Old School skeptic…
Posted in RPG Sketches
Tagged chainmail, od&d, old school, old school dice pool, RPG design, rpg sketches
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Development Versus Obsession
Sometimes you just have to relax, dude.
That’s the lesson I’ve learned in this phase of developing Knights of the Hidden Sun, Chris Challice’s interstellar fantasy RPG. I got a bit obsessed with the third chapter because it covers runecraft:…
Friends Are Even Better Than That
Over at Jim Henley’s Livejournal I made an offhand comment that many games under the “indie” banner are designed to be played by people who meet at conventions, primarily know each other online or have similar remote, vaguely suspicious relationships.…
An Impractical Idea: Cyberpunk via Hard Drive
I was going through some old hard drives with an IDE/SATA to USB converter (thanks to Stew and others for advice on this) and the feel of it — seeing/hearing/feeling a chunk of weighty metal rev up thanks to the…
Posted in Electronic Games, Online Games, RPG Sketches
Tagged cyberpunk, Online RPGs, RPG design
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