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…
Author: matt
Gamer. Writer. Dad. Serial Ex-husband. Creator of The 23rd Letter, SpaceNinjaCyberCrisis XDO, ZOMBI, Testament, Creed. Slightly megalomaniac
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…
Pickup Games
We’re not talking about games which are designed to get the GM a date with the hot new girl in the gaming club (as mabmorrigan will likely relate happily later) but rather games which can be started quickly, how to pick up a game and get started and the pitfalls of doing so. Games that…
Trust.
This isn’t about Roleplaying, Sci-Fi or Gaming in general. I’m angry. This is regard to a complaint raised against the North and West Belfast Health and Social Services Trust regarding the treatment of one of their patients, a young adult with special needs. This young man is under the total care of the Trust as…
TTN: Zombi
Tonight at TableTopNorth, I decided to eschew my plans of running 2300AD because, simply, the setup is massive and I don’t know my players very well. They seemed to want an action game so I dug out a copy of Zombi, one of my own games, and decided to force them into some hot undead…
Origins of The 23rd Letter
Syndicate… As mentioned earlier, it started out as a psionics ruleset for a sci-fi corporate espionage game called Syndicate which was masterminded by John. Syndicate was never published and indeed never went beyond a couple of dozen pages of brainstorming materials. I adapted some material from some of my earlier attempts at game backgrounds, mainly…
Roleplayers beware…
LONDON (Reuters) – Police on Thursday charged a woman on terrorism-related offences for possession of a computer hard drive loaded with operating manuals for guns, poisons, mines and munitions. To be honest, these criteria would qualify half of the roleplayers I know for internment. It was my ex-wife who said, “Guns, the more you learn,…
Crucible Design….looking back
When we started out, we thought of several names for the company. One was Aes Dana Publications and another was Apocryphal Games. We played with FarTooReal, considered LeannanSidhe and with a group vote, settled on Crucible Design. We had a list of games (and supplements) we were going to produce: Syndicate (plus ‘World Conquest’ and…
DG: 9th November
With a start, Kruse sat up and rubbed his eyes. The close confines of the safe house were weighing on his mind. He glanced over at Jimmy and instinctively reached for his pistol. He was too far gone, too unstable for this kind of work. It was just too dirty. Kruse could probably take him…
Viride: The Shoals
The Shoals are small, rocky outcrops that lie far from the Citadels and other large rocks in the deserts of Viride. Among these smaller rocks and shallow sands are small settlements. Populated by people from the Citadel as well as Sandsmen and Outcasts, they provide essential links between citadels and a place for the weary…
Books
LateGaming is a roleplaying company. We’ll leave the forums and stuff to RPGnet and TheRPGSite. Imprints We’re holding two imprints at the moment; our own LateGaming brand and also Crucible Design, which also belongs to matt but shares a bit with some old friends. LateGaming We’ve produced two PDF books, Testament and Creed and will…
WotW: Earth – Hybrid Vigour
Last time around we talked about the legacy of alien species added to the ecosystem. I happened across a cool web site called Human Descent which has some interesting if a little cartoonish hybrids. Taking a stand here, to establish the ground rules. What if the Red Weed was not a plant but an animal…
Gear Krieg love-in. Ooh yeah baby….
I really like Gear Krieg – two fisted pulp RPG. Mecha in WW2 just appeals, even more than superheroes in WW2 appeals (though psychics in WW2 appeals even more but more on that later!) So, imagine my joy when I found this: Does that not just tickle! The main page has heaps of more material…
I have no memories of this place…
Howcome Gandalf didn’t know how to operate the front door of Moria, yet knew it was a 4 day trek and then gets to a bit where he says “I have no memory of this place…” So previously to new renovations he had memory of it? Did it change? Did they add the cool automatic…
DG update…
As I may have mentioned, I’m in KinnyGraham’s DeltaGreen game. The other night, after losing one agent to the nameless horror and receiving a chewing from our DG contact, my character came to two startling revelations. There is something horrible out there. Something unworldly. Something that wants to kill us. But it’s all separate incidents….
Six Word Stories: Redux
I put a post on RPGnet to paint this as a method to generate scenario ideas. At the time of this writing, there’s 5 pages of the buggers…. This will be one to watch!!!!! I love it! [UPDATE: PaulJHolden points to the 2000AD forums where the Wired article has spread. I particularly like: Wank. What…
Only six words to say everything?
Wired writes: Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”) and is said to have called it his best work.” They then got dozens of their favourite sci-fi, fantasy and horror writers to write six word stories (and a couple of graphic artists too). The results here are…
2300AD revival
Am busting out for another game now that kinnygraham has booked Wednesday or Tuesday for a continuation of our much delayed DG campaign. To this end, paulk has nabbed his friends ivorw and jonathanl to join up. I’m intending to introduce them to the world of 2300AD. I’m not 100% sure of the system I’ll…