Perhaps the most important decisions in a campaign occurs before the first die is rolled, before there even is a campaign when the would-be Dungeon Master/ Game Master/ Storyteller decides the overall thrust of his story. No, not the nitty-gritty adventure hooks, or the villains, or the individual conflicts, but an overall idea of what […]
Min Maxing in RPGs: Mutually Assured Irrelevance?
Amongst my traditional play group, Min-Maxing was an art. Ever seen a Vow of Poverty Cleric/Monk/Divine Fist? How about a Werebaboon Fighter/Warshaper/Exotic Weapon Master/Kensai Spiked Chain user? It’s good you have not. Some us were actually role-players too (but not all) and some chose not to Min-Max either because of a concept (yeah, right) or […]
Facts about 4e D&D
In order to control the rumors swirling around Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition, I have used my prodigious game design abilities and prognosticating statisticians in order to generate a full manuscript of the upcoming core books. Here, for the first time anywhere, are all the facts you need to know about the new Dungeons & […]
A Koster Conception
For those of you who know me, and read Penny Arcade regularly, you’ve no doubt been waiting for this post since last Wednesday. (The) Raph Koster wrote a guest post for Tycho, it was about a game idea Tycho had and discussed with Raph at San Diego ComicCon which is an MMO Construction game of […]
Real Time Raytracing – One Possible Future of 3D Gaming
Introduction We all love the wonderfully resplendent graphics possible on todays graphic hardware. It’s really quite amazing, the stuff we are able to squeeze out of some extremely complex arrays of silicon. But current GPUs have a dirty little secret that I am going to share with you. Current GPUs are terrible kludges, composed of […]
Touching is Good
Today Apple let loose a barrage of news, possibly most exciting of which for the masses is the new i-Pod Touchwhich is essentially an i-Phone – phone + more music. Not content to leave the day at that, the company also unveiled a new i-Pod Nano now as a squat device with a small screen […]
Who Games the Gamesmen?
I don’t find myself particularly drawn to being active in online message boards. There are plenty I read, especially when a big story happens, but overall, I don’t post much. I find myself getting my “feathers easily ruffled” when there are vocal internet dickwads, which seem to thrive in the message board environment. I find […]
Rock Options (Guitar Hero and Rock Band)
It wasn’t all that long ago that if you wanted to play a rhythm game, your option was to play Dance Dance Revolution and all the neighbor-disturbing fake-dancing silliness that it implies. There were other entries that hit mainstream- Donkey Konga and Karoke Revolution come to mind, but none of them hit hard enough to […]
How to End an Adventure
This just came up on Saturday evening, while talking to Dave about how he ended his latest D&D 3.5 adventure. Typically when you’re playing things will run long, whether or not you plan to get through your whole adventure or not, it’s still going to run long. When you’re young, this isn’t so bad and […]
The Case for Fourth Edition
Wizards of the Coast has gone and done it. They’ve announced that Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition will be released mid-year 2008. And I’m totally pumped. Marketing and digital stuff aside, looking through what the announcements are consisting of, it’s clear to me that Wizards is concerned about game design. And not just about fixing […]
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