Last weekend Random tagged me (offline) as having drunk the 4E Kool-Aid. Ouch! As a reflexive (but recovering) cynic, the gist of his words hit me hard, and it’s taken a few days to consider my response. Here it is:

First, I really do like game systems, the mechanics and the relations thereof. While Wizards’ motives [...]

MetalJim started off what’s fast becoming the season of springtime ranting with his post about the difference between a game and a hobby, in defense of his seriousness and dedication in such manners. Since I have the power (bwah ha ha!) to write a whole new post rather than just tack on a reply to his, [...]

As of March 19th the D&D 4Editton Player’s Handbook is off to the printers. Here are my interpretations of what I’ve heard about 4E…

DMs, do you want to give your players a day of mental pain? Involve them in a contract. Extreme pain, is that what I hear you asking for? Fine – have the players write the contract! It doesn’t matter if the party is lawful, chaotic, neutral, or assorted – since those are mere character traits. [...]

I’ve been reading a lot to try to recharge my storytelling batteries and I came across something remarkable. As in remarkably bad storytelling…

Adventuring is about voyage, discovery, heroic deeds, turning the tide in a great battle, undertaking a diplomatic mission, and so on: either bearing witness to – or, even better, being a part of – the making of history.

In one of the campaigns I play in, we’ve been tooling around a relatively unknown part of the [...]

Once upon a time I subscribed to a magazine called Computer Games (it actually started with a free subscription bundled with Europa Universalis II!), and as its name implied, it was all about gaming on the PC. Content was sterling, but readership wasn’t. They stooped so low as to start filling the back pages with [...]

RPGs have taken their cues, traditionally, from literature and storytelling traditions – from myths and legends, to classic literature, to modern comics and pulp fiction, and all stops in between. Another source, if we look back to the historical origins of RPGs, is tabletop tactical mini/wargame simulations, from which RPGs evolved. Pretty well all RPGs [...]

What makes a game something more than just fun (for me at least) is the sense that something in that game applies to real life. Call it a lesson or a truism, or even sometimes just a reinforcement of a biased opinion (such as “the rich get richer”). One can even go so far as [...]

After looking at the Top 10 BGG Games last week, I’m going to wait a week before going down to the next slice: 11–20…

I’ve been working on a game design with Random that has a science-fiction theme – it’s about planetary colonization. As part of the process of finding the mindset and feeling the theme, I’ve [...]

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Shopping to all.

You know what grinds my gears? Players who don’t know what the heck they are doing. Rant mode on…

Today’s post is about Skip-bo. Sort of. Maybe it’s about the madness of crowds as it pertains to the game table. Your call.

Skip-bo, dating all the back to 1967, is more of a “family” game in the vein of Uno than it is a strategy game, the main distinction here is that it’s very “light” [...]

As role-playing gamers, we have adopted certain styles of play to accommodate the game and group interactions. By assuming the role of fictitious characters, the knowledge of the players and the knowledge of the characters must be kept separate. Characters don’t know about maguffins, foils, or foreshadowing anymore than we can predict the future. So [...]

I guess the sentiment expressed in today’s title should come as a surprise to exactly no one here: game design is hard! Like any creative art, it’s easier to criticize what someone else has done than to create something yourself. And being a consummate connoisseur may not, in fact, give credential to create. True confessions [...]

This week Random finally gives his take on 4th edition…… in someone else’s words.

In which MetalJim joins everyone else in raggin’ on the PS3…

Can you walk through a dungeon corridor without falling into a deadly cliché ?

So, it’s finally been announced. It figures they would wait until GenCon to announce the release. 4th edition will be sprung upon the masses as soon as May of 2008. Since you’ve all probably heard all about it before reading this, I’ll limit this entry to my reactions.

In a nutshell, I’m not impressed. It’s not [...]

We’ve all played the game in one form or another - and the biggest thrill in D&D is combat, of course! Yet, the real-world time involved in combat has been increasing over the years, to the point that it now takes about 3 hours to do less than a minute of actual melee!

Players used to [...]