I’m a big proponent of change in game design. If something isn’t working, don’t just patch it, teardown and rebuild. This puts me in opposition to what I will respectfully call the “Conservative Gamer” contingent, who prefer that games preserve much of their makeup from edition to edition. But, that’s not for me. I prefer to see innovation in game design.
Congratulations to Obsidian Portal and Kobold Quarterly
The winners of the 2009 Ennies for Best Website, Kobold Quarterly took the silver and Obsidian Portal took the gold. Congratulations to them both: while I would have loved to have won, they both definitely deserve it. I read Kobold Quarterly whenever I get a chance, and I used Obsidian Portal extensively for my last D&D 3.5 campaign (and planning on using it more) and it really is awesome.
Inquisition of the Week: Your Steam is Punk
This past week saw the release of the Eberron Campaign Guide. While I’ve followed Eberron since its acceptance into the D&D campaign setting contest but I have yet to run or play in any kind of Eberron campaign. Some of the resistance to playing it before has been a dislike among some of my group to steampunk. While Eberron is more nuanced than simply a steampunk setting, there’s some clear resistance to the idea.
Two Words to Convince You to Buy Kobold Quarterly #10
Gelantinous Cubes. We don’t have to tell you that Kobold Quarterly is great, or that it’s been nominated for 3 Ennies (though it’s going down in the Best Website category!), or that it includes tons of material for both 3.5 players (with a preview of Pathfinder) and 4e player. We don’t have to tell you […]
Overt vs. Covert Skill Challenges
As the maintainer of the (now massive) Skill Challenge feature, I read quite a lot about skill challenges, no matter if they’re positive, negative, or somewhere in between. I think SCs can be broken down into three main camps: overt skill challenges, covert skill challenges, and bad skill challenges.
Inq. of the Week: You Got Science in my Fantasy
We heard a lot of complaints that psionics just don’t fit with the D&D milieu. Even for a die hard fan such as myself, it can be hard to justify mental powers (that in other media are often linked to “the next stage of evolution” and other scientific/pseudo-scientific concepts) as part of the D&D world. Dark Sun was a world custom built for psionics, as all the other alternatives for fantastic powers had some issues.
Product Tie-in Video Games 101: A Lesson in Love and Paychecks
Today we’re going to be discussing one of the biggest money makers for video game studios; Product Tie-ins. They are something that we’ve been accustomed to in video games, and all can form a general consensus when we hear their name said. From E.T. to Chronicles of Riddick, video games based on movies have been around for most of your brief gaming lives. When did they start? Were they always bland and overpriced?
One Page Dungeon Winners Announced
The winners of the One Page Dungeon contest have been announced over at ChattyDM and Old Guy RPG Blog. I was honored to serve on the judging panel, and I’m glad to give a hearty congratulations to the winners. You can read Alex’s recap of why he voted the way he did on individual entries. […]
Transformers 2: Expectations?
In what is a rare occurence for my wife and I, we did not go to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen at a midnight showing last night. It’s not because of the Tuesday night issue, we went to see The Dark Knight at midnight on a Wednesday (though the day of work afterward was very tough), and it’s definitely not an issue of us not being excited about it. Honestly I can’t tell you why for sure, maybe it’s because we’re finally getting a bit more mature (or lazy).
Put the Phone Away: A call to gamers still in the dark ages of handhelds (Part 2)
Although the PSP is selling wonderfully in many other parts of the world, it has struggled in the US market since its release. It would be hard to call it a failure with the many millions of systems sold stateside, but it definitely has struggled to find an identity in this country. The UMD video discs were a complete disaster for Sony, and the third-party market hasn’t embraced the system as much as it has its rival.
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