Too Many Ideas - Archive for the ‘Gaming’ Category
Leave out the (Steampunk) Kitchen Sink
Monday, August 9th, 2010Daneofwar asked a question on Twitter in the middle of Sherlock on Sunday night… Why are fantasy ideas of settings based on the 19th century always so unoriginal? Steampunk blah blah blah goggles blah blah blah. I didn’t have time for a long answer then (too busy watching Sherlock) but I think Brian has touched […]
Why I Write Reviews
Monday, August 2nd, 2010Why do I write what I call reviews? The short answer: Because it helps me think about my own writing. The long answer: I used to write what I’ll call proper reviews, they’d appear in Valkyrie and Ragnarok. My review of 7th Sea produced at short notice got me the writing gig with Valkyrie so […]
Variations on the Difficulty Theme
Thursday, May 20th, 2010In The Danger of Difficulty Despair – With Graphs I talked about the risk of a game suffering from boring encounters if the difficulty progression was always identical. I showed, with the aid of graphs, how linear encounter difficulty combined with character improvement at the end of each adventure could create a universe which sees […]
Ragnarok 57
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010Ragnarok Issue 57 (The Magazine of the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargaming) landed through my letter box today. My article for BTRC’s SLAG! appears along with a variety of fantasy and science fiction wargaming goodness.
Fall of the Goblin Empire
Thursday, April 29th, 2010Fall of the Goblin Empire (FoGE) is my entry for the SFSFW’s fantasy wargaming competition. A game of goblins and their varigated, varied and highly unreliable flying machines. Here are a couple of the opening paragraphs that set the scene for a game of goblins going up-tiddle-ee-up coming down-tiddle-ee-down-down… Ask anyone and they will tell […]
The Danger of Difficulty Despair – With Graphs
Thursday, April 8th, 2010I was going through some very old gaming files from when I was at college and came across some notes on designing the difficulty of encounters in a tabletop role playing game. A few weeks ago I questioned if Role Playing Games Need XP and the notes reminded me that in a game with experience […]
Open the Door Updated
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010I’ve added entries for Dark Conspiracy, Twilight 2000 and Babylon 5 to the Open the Door page.
Do Role Playing Games Need XP?
Thursday, March 18th, 2010When making rules for a role playing game there is the ongoing balancing act between narrative and simulation. Both of which ultimately need to create fun. At one extreme you’ve a game like Over the Edge with very lightweight rule system and at the other end you’ve got rules heavy, simulation game like Rolemaster. Both […]
Sketch Elevation
Sunday, March 14th, 2010I’ve been writting the next adventure for the role playing game I’m occassionally running today. As well as the traditional overhead map of one of the key locations I’m considering using elevations of the streets to help players visualise their surroundings. The small sample above is a section from a trial elevation I sketched tonight. […]
Street Hawker
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010I’ve been looking for an idea for a new article to send in for the SFSFW’s Ragnarok and I think I may just have found it a mashup of Steampunk and the short lived 80’s TV show Street Hawk… This is the Honourable Jesse Macintosh, a former penny-farthing policeman, whose reputation was perilously injured whilst […]