It’s funny how things in your life can dovetail so nicely when you’re working on a project. I just finished rewatching Episode III of the Star Wars saga, and it really hit the nail on the head regarding perspective having everything to do with alignment. Especially near the end, where Anakin is so certain that…
Month: November 2006
When Life Interferes (or, “Damn It, I Meant To Blog Today”)
So, I’ve been a bad, bad girl about my blogging lately. I’ve not been flogged yet — not that that would motivate me one way or t’other — but damn if I don’t have a bunch of stuff to post about. However, that’s just adult life, isn’t it? It was so much easier when I…
1st Transatlantic Setting Design Challenge
This post on Story Games I find quite exciting. A month to design a game, using a previously published system? And the additional commitment of having to also be a judge. As a commenter on that page put it: “It’s the exact same situation as Game Chef or 24 hour RPG — feel free to…
Review (kinda): Zombies!!!
Tonight we didn’t play Zombi, which would make that the second week in a row. Instead, we played Zombies!!! which made a small amount of difference. Less plot, more frantic backstabbing. This is therefore going to be a little review. We played Zombies with the expansions for the Army Camp, the Mall and the University…
Differing Methods of Character Generation
Over the last few years I’ve come to appreciate different methods of character generation. I’m not especially keen on point allocation systems due to concerns that they are unrealistic because a) not everyone is equal and b) they’re prone to abuse by min-maxing. (I find the latter to be more evident in games where you…
Alternatively…
And the reason I’m a crazy-magnet may be entirely due to me being interested in shit like this. Maybe I’m a normal magnet? I’m the crazy one….
I have come to the conclusion that I am a crazy-magnet.
There must be another way.
Legendary Vapourware thread…
Not really sure whether I’m pleased or depressed…. But Qabal and The Project Sourcebook didn’t make the grade for this list on RPGnet of Legendary Vapourware even though it’s 9 pages long!. Of course, they’re too wrapped up in wondering about FRUP (which, in the tradition of the very best vapourware, is back under development.
I, for one, welcome our human-faced fish overlords…
A Fathead (genus Psychrolutes) trawled during the NORFANZ expedition at a depth between 1013 m and 1340 m, on the Norfolk Ridge, north-west of New Zealand, June 2003 (AMS I.42771-001). Photo: K. Parkinson © Australian Museum. The scientists and crew on board the RV Tangaroa affectionately called this fish ‘Mr Blobby’. Note the parasitic copepod…
Villains, Aren’t We All: Evil and the Gaming World, Part 3
It’s one thing to go head-to-head with an Evil being. And still another to play an Evil character. But what happens when you’re minding your own damn business and someone else in your troupe decides they don’t want to be Mr. Nice Guy? Now, that’s a real dilemma. Probably one of the biggest difficulties is…
Villains, Aren’t We All: Evil and the Gaming World, Part 2
Now that we’ve had a bit of introductory discussion about Evil, let’s move into the most intimate placement of Evil in a game: within the Character. An interesting comment was made regarding whether or not an Evil character knows that what s/he is doing is wrong. Are Evil characters simply misguided? The idea of “misguided”…
Film Review: The Illusionist
I really enjoyed this movie. It showed all of the overt magic and illusion which we would associate with stage magery albeit with the benefit of camera tricks to make them seem all the more unreal. Edward Norton plays the title role of ‘Eisenheim the Illusionist’, a cabinet-makers son who falls in love with a…
Villains, Aren’t We All: Evil and the Gaming World, Part 1
Comments really are the sweet spot on a blog, aren’t they? I get such great ideas from someone bouncing off a post I’ve written and before you know it, you have a chain reaction of kinetic ideas. The hardest thing is ALWAYS remembering all of the great “You know, I should write about that” topics. …
I need a concept artist
I hate the fact that I’m crap at drawing. I can describe stuff but I’m finding more and more that I want to find a concept artist. I want to have some images to post with the content I’m writing. I’m nto quite at the stage where I’ll post something onto RPGnet and I’m not…
This guy ain’t rolling his own dice in my game….
“Ladies and gentlemen, some dice stacking moves” I don’t want this to be a link blog but….go watch…it’s a flash video…
Story Games. Just Bloody Great.
Good gaming blogs are hard to find. I’m building some of the better ones into my blogroll there but one of the best I’ve found is Story Games. I love it. And that’s saying something. The key here is thatt it’s REALLY a blog pretending to be a forum or vice versa. I can’t work…
“Immersion”
I like a lot of the roleplaying blogs that are out there. They’re straight-talking affairs and whether you agree or disagree with th definition of “swine” or whether you agree that “Wrongist” behaviour is simply not-on, they’re usually varied enough to give you something to read. New to the blogroll is Malcolm Sheppard’s Shooting Dice…
Work?
Ideas At the moment we’re not taking unsolicited ideas. We’ve moved all of the current ideas to the wiki which is, I’m sure you’ll agree, a much better place for them. Rather than keep everything to ourselves, we post some of the interesting tidbits under the Game Design category. See the sidebar for quick links to…
Zombi Review
Jeff Rients writes about 5 old games he feels were overlooked. While I can agree with the ancient (James Bond, Lords of Creation) and the venerable (SpaceMaster) and perhaps even the weird (SenZar – though I always thought it was an internet joke-meme) I was shocked and surprised to see number 5 on his list…
What makes a popular game?
This thread on Story Games reports an interesting statistic. Dogs in the Vineyard has sold between a thousand and two thousand copies. The sales figures for DnD aren’t ten times that, they’re more than a HUNDRED times that, and that was for the FIRST print run. More have gone into print since then. The 23rd…