New music videos for gamers: "Damage" by 3d6 http://t.co/uKBjkPJI and "Critical Hit" by MC Frontalot http://t.co/VdOFq26x # "Why roleplaying games are good for kids" interview with @newbiedm over on CNN Geekout: http://t.co/5AixHD6b # RT @mforbeck: Best wishes to all my pals at White Wolf/CCP: http://t.co/QovYFl9d # RT @MTVGeek: Mayfair Games molds THE SETTLERS OF CATAN […]
Archives for 2011
The Architect DM: On Character Creation
If someone asked me for a single bit of advice to improve their roleplaying games, whether as a DM or a player, I would tell them to spend as much time as they can reading the great fantasy and sci-fi books that are out there. For the first several years that I was playing RPGs I was not an avid reader and had not even heard of many of the classics, including ones that everyone should have heard of like The Lord of the Rings. At the time I thought many of my friends were insanely creative or stricken by some miraculous form of otherworldly inspiration, but as I’ve read more and more of the books out there I began to realize that most good ideas in our RPGs have been inspired by or even directly ripped from other sources. For example, in one of the first D&D games that I ever DM’d a player showed up with a character named “Muadib” and I remember thinking that it was a very unique and interesting sounding name. A year or two later I started reading Dune and groaned when I realized he’d simply lifted the name straight out of that book.
6 Years of Critical Hits: More Than Editions of D&D
This is the year that blogging suffered a bit, but for a pretty good reason: we were actually game designing. For money, even! Also, we won some awards, so that’s pretty cool. And we had more dirty search terms. You’ll see.
Pac-Dad Fever
I remember playing my very first game of Pac-Man when I was 4 years old. I felt like it lasted a long time, which was pretty weird considering I thought the ghosts were my friends and I was trying to chase them. I’m guessing preschool-me managed to find some loophole in the Pac-Man patterns of old, a premise which sounds awesome and shall thusly be adopted into my official records as being arcade-analogous to baby Hercules strangling the serpents in his crib. Beep beep boop.
Improv Pushups: The Movie
Early Monday morning, I bid farewell to one Dave Chalker (who I had been staying with for the week, and who had risen with me to get me to the airport before the coming of the dread Day Star).I came all the way to the East coast for one specific purpose: to game my face off. More specifically, DC Gameday was this weekend, and I wanted to game my face off as close to Congress as I possibly could. Somebody’s got to show those guys how to play nice together, right?
Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-10-16
RT @paulandstorm: Songs we did for the PAX Acquisitions Inc. D&D session are now for sale! http://t.co/1FUk1eG5 Buy: http://t.co/Tedc4Q9m # RT @Wizards_DnD: We're looking at changing rarity for some magic items. Let us know what you think needs to be changed: http://t.co/LRXWDGUr # RT @Wizards_DnD: Secrets of the Ninja by Dave Chalker has stopped hiding […]
Five Wishes for 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons
Even if you live in a cave on a desert island, there’s likely some neck-bearded castaway next to you predicting and complaining about a 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons. We’ve heard it for five years and we’ll hear it for five more, regardless of what new games are released. Most recently, 3rd edition veteran […]
D&D Ninjas Have Arrived
Today, my first Dragon magazine article was published: “Class Acts Assassin: Secrets of the Ninja.” This article, as part of the Kara-Tur theme of this month, brings PC ninjas back into D&D as a build of the Executioner Assassin introduced in Heroes of Shadow.
I Was a Manchild at Geek Girl Con
The inaugural Geek Girl Con ran last weekend in downtown Seattle, and I was there to check it out. The con focused on female geeks of all stripes. There were panels about gaming, comics, movies, TV, feminism, and gamer culture.
Roleplaying Resurrection
In Fiasco, there’s not really dice rolling, except for the start and middle bits, and trust me, those don’t count. It’s all decisions, decisions and storytelling, decisions and storytelling and improvisational roleplaying. Uh oh, there’s that word. Roleplaying. I’m going to have to sit at a table with other people and write a story out loud in the voice of a character that I just met, all while those other people are staring at me and judging me and hating me. This kind of thrown-in-the-deep-end roleplaying is a little daunting. No, wait, that’s not the right term. It’s gonad-shrinkingly terrifying.
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