I usually try to avoid writing entries that are pure advertising, but this week I’m going to make an exception because (1) the thing I’m advertising is absolutely free of charge; (2) the thing I’m advertising is potentially useful even to people who don’t play QAGS; and (3) it’s been a long week and I…
Role-playing is like Vegas: What happens at the game table should stay at the game table. That’s not because gaming stories are scandalous, it’s because it’s very rare for gaming stories to be the slightest bit interesting to anyone outside of the group of people who played the game. A lot of of them boil…
Last week, I briefly mentioned how the “hack until it’s out of hit points” standard for combat in RPGs can suck every bit of the excitement and drama out of an action-oriented adventure, and that I’ve been working on ways to get around that in the new version of M-Force. This week I’m going to…
Last week, I posted an excerpt for the upcoming second edition of M-Force and mentioned that we’d been working on it for quite a while. We planned to release it much earlier this year, but it’s taken a lot longer to write than we expected. Some of the delays are the usual “real life getting…
I just got back last night from another fun but exhausting Archon weekend, so I’m going to post something I’ve already written today. As some of you know, we’ve been working on a new version of M-Force, our monster hunting game, for quite a while now. M-force takes place in the same world (which we…
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Josh just posted a list on his Bernie the Flumph blog called “Twenty Things That May or May Not Be True About Orcs.” You should go read it. It’s entertaining and educational. It’s also a concept that begs to be stolen—I mean, expanded upon to include other monsters, which is exactly what I’m going to…
Since I’ve gotten used to playing QAGS, I feel limited when I play RPGs (at least traditional ones with distinct GM and player roles) that don’t have some kind of mechanic that allows players to bend the rules and take narrative control. At this point, I think every game needs some kind of Yum Yum/Hero…
About a month ago, someone on Reddit asked for tips on using dream logic in games. He or she planned on introducing a trickster villain whose presence twisted reality into a dream-like state. I posted some suggestions and thought “that would make a good blog subject,” then promptly forgot about it. Now I’ve remembered that…
Last week, I applied Timothy Leary’s definition of a “game” to role-playing and ended with a promise to discuss other passages in his presentation “How To Change Behavior” that, despite having nothing to do with role-playing, are strangely applicable to our hobby. Here’s the first passage I was talking about: “All behavior involves games. But…
