I’m not sure I ever need to watch another action movie again. That said – anyone interested in making a t23L movie?
Category: Game Design
Progress and updates on the game design process.
The Final Frontier. No, really.
Ian Sales writes on his blog: And sometimes those imaginations run a little too free. A lot of science fiction is set in outer space, or on worlds which orbit other stars. Or, indeed, other types of celestial objects, both natural and artificial. In these stories, much of the difficulties associated with space travel are…
Setting Riff: Oa versus Krypton
A thousand years ago, on the planet Krypton, there was a technologically advanced, cruel and nihilistic race which carved a vast stellar empire, subjugating thousands of civilisations under their regime. Only one planet managed to overthrow the grip of the empire, Oa, but their rebellion only served to free their own planet. Their thirst for…
The theft of the Book of Raziel
I’ve stolen the main text here from page 54 of the Smallville RPG but remodeled it on Qabal: Isaac’s player, James, says, “I step into the room from where I have been eavesdropping and accuse Rothschilde of stealing the Book of Raziel.” He then grabs his TRUTH die and his CIRCLE die. None of his…
OK, it’s no secret I’m just a big geek.
I got the Serenity book a few months ago from Sub City in Dublin and the Smallville book arrived today from Amazon. Both use derivatives of the Cortex system from Margaret Weiss Productions. While Serenity uses the Cortex systems in a “traditional” way, Smallville uses it in an interesting way. To perform an action, it’s…
Horror – Sids Story
I wanted to write a quick horror scenario which would fit in with pretty much any game and I figured that it couldn’t just be a magical teleporting serial killer, like Jason, Freddy or Leatherface. Inspiration for this one is “Sids Story” from the Captain Britain trade paperback. http://www.rambles.net/capbrit_88.html http://marvel.wikia.com/Captain_Britain_Vol_2_4 Summary: A local homeless man…
Here’s forty shillings on the drum, For those that volunteers do come
I’ve been on a little bit of a Napoleonics obsession recently. Part of it starts from reading the Bernard Cornwell ‘Sharpe’ novels and then following up by downloading the entire collection of TV movies from iTunes. At £14.99 for 15 episodes (each 140 minutes), it’s a bargain to me. And I’ve loaded them on computer,…
Frontier fiction: The Emotion Elective
AMARA would always marvel at the human capacity for self-deception; the ability to believe something even though the facts were plentiful for the contrary, even though nothing but faith supported the hypothesis. For some humans in the North, there was the ability to abdicate all responsibilities to an unseen mythical power. Around Kumbu, this was…
Frontier: Foreword, History of Mbaye Schools, page 23
[I am taking part in a weekly writing task with some friends. The first seed for this assignment was the opening line from Dune by Frank Herbert: “A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”] The pump would need repaired. During the wet seasons the housings had…
Once, Twice, Three Times a Detective
Dolgion Chuluunbaatar of Gamasutra writes about non-linear adventure games: As I was on vacation, I picked up my sister’s copy of Sherlock Holmes stories, and quickly I got caught up in the really really beautifully narrated and well thought-out plots. As I had my phase of obsessively playing the classic LucasArts adventure games, the very…
Games in Education
I believe that my playing of games has contributed positively to my development as an individual. Traditionally advocacy for gaming has included the development of teamwork and leadership skills, understanding of competition, resource management and also a greater appreciation of geography, politics, religion and ‘alien’ cultures. Games, especially tabletop role-playing games, have been used in…
BLOC54 – GameStorming
Equally useful for the development of tabletop game ideas, this method was used tonight to brainstorm some ideas for videogames in our local game development cluster.
8 Bit Demakes
This article describes 8 bit de-makes – remaking some of todays popular games in 8 bit and 16 bit forms. Some of them still look amazing such as Little Big Planet and Mirrors Edge. All of them are great but these two – you can see why I like them – they’d work really well…
Runnin and Jumpin genre mash
Earlier this week, we had a meeting of local iOS developers and we segued into a conversation about the development of game ideas ahead of a ‘gamestorming’ event we have planned for next week. We talked about the development of game ideas and there was a look at the Mirror’s Edge game in the context…
Review of 20 non-video games at Gamasutra
Gamasutra has an interesting set of articles on real-world game design. [Game Design Essentials returns with an extensive review of some of the most interesting non-electronic games, from traditional cultural games like Chess and Go through pen-and-paper role playing titles like Call of Cthulhu, European games like The Settlers of Catan, and much more —…
The Aliens Are Coming
Stephen Hawking talks about how we should hide from aliens: I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach. … If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome…
Asshat Paladins blog
Matt Borselli has a quick writeup of his experience with Crucible Design, and more specifically The 23rd Letter, on his blog, AssHat Paladins. I enjoyed chatting about it – getting involved in my own narcissism obviously – and it brought back a lot of memories. Part two will be out in a week or so…
SixSimple: for use with CONTROL
I do like narrative systems. Character Generation You create a character description consisting of up to 10 facts (maybe related to Quirks, Drive, Flaws) and underline 5 of them. These 5 things are your most descriptive traits which may be objects, skills, contacts, background items and can, in theory, be called into play at any…
CONTROL: How to run the game. Part 1.
Starting the Game This game has the rather traditional role of GameMaster assigned to one player, usually “C”. The player will be provided with missions in one of two ways. TOP-DOWN Requests which come from GOVERNMENT and are passed to CONTROL via “C”. These will be in the form of mission dossiers. These can be…
Frontier: Conquest Weapons
The common weapon within the Conquest Society is the ‘dumb’ slugthrower. A Chemical Propellent Projectile Weapon (extremely recognisable as a ‘gun’) uses a chemical explosion to create gases which propel a projectile at subsonic or supersonic speeds towards a target. Here are three examples of the weapons known to be employed among the Conquest Society….