Over the years, Hex Games has published somewhere in the vicinity of fifty game books, and I’ve been involved in the editing process of most of them at some stage. As a result, I’ve noticed that there are certain mistakes that show up over and over again, especially from first-time writers. Some of these problems…
Last week I posted a map and some basic information about the setting for the terrible fantasy novel I’m writing for National Novel Writing Month, The Quest For the Lord of the Dragonsword Throne. Since one of the characters is a wizardess, I’ve had to come up with some basic information about how magic works…
All Games Considered spent most of a recent show reviewing a whole bunch of Hex products. If you’re on the fence or want to know more about a particular QAGS book, there’s a good chance they mention it in the podcast. What follows was written for a sort of game essay contest for a blog…
Want some Hobomancer T-Shirts, Happy d20 Keychains, or other Hex swag? Good news. We’ve got a store at Zazzle now where you can order all sorts of Hex merchandise. I’ll personally be picking up some Hobomancer playing cards in the near future. If you read last week’s blog, you saw how I’d run a trashy…
Do you want to hear me talk about Hobomancer? You’re in luck, because the Game School podcast where I do just that came out a week or so ago. Also, the Hex crew will be at Archon this weekend. If you’re going and want to come to our panels or games, the schedule is on…
When we were working out how the songlines work in Hobomancer, we sort of unintentionally started playing with the idea of what you might call “the power of place.” Basically, the songlines are areas of especially strong magical energy, and that magic is fueled by the power of the stories. The railroads aren’t built along…
Whenever someone suggests that sometimes it’s ok to ignore the rules, someone else inevitably asks why you should even bother to use rules if you’re not going to slavishly follow them at all times, apparently to make sure that the discussion is safe from crows. A super-secret project that I’m currently working on required me…
Marvel might have coined (or at least popularized) the term “cinematic universe,” but it’s not a new idea. It’s the way comic book universes have worked for decades, and according to one theory nearly every TV show ever made takes place in a cinematic universe inside a snow globe. A cinematic universe is basically a…
As many of you already know, today is the official start of Shark Week (though if you’re like me you started early with the Rifftrax Live presentation of Sharknado 2 last Thursday). Facebook Twitter Reddit Tumblr Email
Since it’s con season, this week I’m going to talk about running convention games. For the most part, the tricks to running a good convention game are the same as for any other game: make sure everyone has fun, give each character a chance to shine, and give the characters a stake in what’s going…
