In last week’s article I gave consideration to The Future of RPGs. My focus ended up being not so much on what might change about the games themselves in the future, but rather about how they are maintained and distributed to their user communities, and whether that becomes more of a two-way street. An RPG [...]
We all have games we love (Puerto Rico) and games we hate(Monopoly), but is very uncommon to have one that we both love and hate. For me Magic the Gathering is just such a game.
This side article will briefly touch on the development of the religions for the “World Development” campaign known as Argosia. This world was sketched out in my World Development articles (simply click on my name, KarasDjun, above to find the articles) but I only briefly touched on the pantheon of deities needed to make the world [...]
This is Part II of a five-part series of articles on technologies and techniques that can enable traditional role-playing on the Internet. In this installment, we’ll discuss voice and chat.
Welcome to part 3 of my GM’s Buying Guide. If you have followed my articles you know I like miniatures a lot and can probably guess that we incorporate them a lot into our games. As much as I like the 3D element I previewed last week, we have actually taken to producing [...]
The first half of this brief two-parter finds Smite gazing wistfully toward the dawn’s horizon and thinking about the future of Role-Playing Games. It concludes next week with a similar bit of musing about the future of Board Games.
While curating the d21–gaming blog, I’ve spent more time looking for other blogs and websites having to [...]
Why do we use dice? In D&D we use all kinds of dice. Even d12s. Are they really necessary? I think so, and here is why.
Last weekend and most of the beginning of this week I spent on vacation visiting a friend down in North Carolina. My purpose for visiting was non-game related, but that didn’t stop us from squeezing some gaming in here and there. The most popular activity while I was there was not D&D as I expected, [...]
This the first of a five part series on how you can play traditional role-playing games over the Internet. While some of the ideas presented here are useful for your crack-du-jour such as World of Warcraft or Neverwinter Nights, I’ll be focusing on the richer world of good old pencil and paper role-playing such as [...]
In part 2 of the GM Buying series Rhelik examines three different approaches to bringing your games to life with a 3D element!
This is a little story that illustrates, among other things, why Smite isn’t allowed near a Dungeon Master’s Guide anymore…
The last time I flirted with the idea of running a D&D campaign was three years ago. Our group’s campaign at that time was the first one we’d played under the new 3.0 rules – a [...]
MetalJim and Smite have been talking about the ranking of board games. Now for my 2 cents.
A team of ball players enter a baseball field in a park. The coach is a big baseball fan and loves the game, purchased all the gear for the team, follows all the stats, and watches it on TV whenever possible. He has honed his coaching skills to perfection, trying to have fun with his [...]
The survey I sent out some time ago to all my players in various game groups came back with three responses (out of a possible 8). I reviewed the responses before beginning the World Development articles for d21, but never revealed the answers. Here, as a bonus posting, are some of the responses (slightly edited):
1 [...]
Let’s assume that the house is on fire, and I have just enough time to save exactly ten games to use a core to rebuild my game collection. Never mind any real-world practical considerations like how many trips it would take, or how far back in the closet I would have to dig to find these items.
With War of the Dragon Queen now out Rhelik looks over the set and produces a buying guide for you Game Masters who don’t play the game or are shopping around for specific figures for your home games.
Survey the D&D players you know and ask them to name the quintessential example of an archetype fantasy game setting from books or movies. Chances are, the answer you’ll get will be J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. And sure, it’s got your wizards, your dragons, your elves, your orcs, your powerful artifacts, and your epic battles. But [...]
Recently I was listening to the “Starting Now!” podcast and they were discussing character generation processes. This made me think back on all the characters I’ve created recently to see if I could identify my own process.
So far in this series we have taken a magazine survey to get an idea of what our players wanted to see in a new campaign world, drawn up a map of the continent named “Argosia,” came up with some deity alignments based on class, and developed a bit of backstory for the history of [...]
Reiner Knizia’s Poison is not the greatest card game that you will ever play. It does, however, fit naturally into the role of “filler” game, and one of its strengths is the fact that no one will mind if you stop playing halfway through…