Why is a dungeon there? Well, someone had to build it, but that's a topic for later. Why is it in your story? Why is your character going to one? It has a purpose to serve. What sort of purpose? Well, whatever reasons your character is going to one in the first place.
My first computer was an Atari 600XL. It had a keyboard, a cartridge slot, and two joysticks. Really basic joysticks - you know the ones, with the rubbery stick, and the big red button. All you could do was move, and fire. My brother Garth and I had two games: Galaxian and Ms. Pac-Man. I loved Ms. Pac-Man. I played it for hours. But I digress.
A few weeks ago I got an email inviting me to join in a beta test of a new online game. They promised to take online gaming to a new level and turn it into a form of literature. Even though I have heard arguments of this nature before, the game was free to play, I was bored and so I decided to check the game out.
I hate TSR/WOTC. To enforce my points, allow me to spearhead my (low-fat) negativeness into two fronts, two of the major sources of the much-overvalued green paper with dead presidents that corporations can't seem to get enough of: Magic: the Gathering, and Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition.
This week's noun is space, the distance between all the other nouns in your game. Having an accurate understanding of the space your game takes place in is very important if you want to keep your game realistic. It can also lead to some very interesting situations if the GM is aware of space and the silly players are not.
A term like "ecology" means specific things in gaming context. So many things in games come about on fiat. Why do trolls regenerate? Regenerating monsters are interesting foes. But being a proto-intelligent humanoid with regenerative powers is strange. How does it work? How do they work? What is their culture like? How do they go about living? These questions are unanswered.
I heard recently that Squaresoft (a big name, I know, just bear with me) was planning on making the eleventh installment of their wildly popular Final Fantasy series an exclusively online "roleplaying" game. Now I've been a loyal fan of Final Fantasy and Square in general since the advent of the Playstation, but the thought of Final Fantasy going exclusively online frightens me. A lot.
A post to the Open Gaming Listserv today from Ryan Dancey (one of the most important people in the world of d20/Open Gaming) indicated that today was the day for the long-rumored Wizards of the Coast downsizing. Among those affected was Mr. Dancey himself. What will this mean for the future of Wizards, D&D, d20, Open Gaming and RPGs en masse? Time will tell.
In which our hero laments continuous re-hashing of 'classic' ideas and sourcebook saturation in tabletop RPG systems, suggesting the industry may wish to try other business models to thrive. A rambling dissertation from someone that makes MTV's Jimmy seem old-skool.
In the best of all possible worlds, every gamer and aspiring gamer out there would have a friendly, well-established, long-standing tabletop or LARP group to call their own and attend once a week or more. For most of us down here on Earth, however, this isn't the case. Summer vacations and work conflicts can break up groups for months at a time, and cross-country moves and lifestyle changes can do so permanently.
