Tag Archives: RPG

The curse

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Many sites have reported on this, but there’s just too much good shit coming out right now:

Between Fable 2, Resistance 2, Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, Dead Space, and Little Big Planet I don’t know where to put my few gaming hours.

Sometimes it really sucks to be a working gamer. It especially sucks when you work in games and that takes away all your time for actually playing games.

The nice bit, though, is that Fallout 3 is awesome.

I’ve been comparing my play with that of a few of my friends, and it’s amazing to … Continue reading

“My first project” — The tendency towards RPGs

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My high school computer science class was taught by a man named Mr Lew, and he was a genius.

As the final project each semester, every student (and a partner) were to make a computer game. Academically speaking, the reason why this was a great idea is obvious — games contain so many aspects of computer science that you can’t really make one without showing everything you’ve learned in the class. Plus it was something everyone could get excited about.

At least it was something the nerds in the class could get excited about (this was pre-PlayStation, so computer gaming … Continue reading

It’s nice to feel creative

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So after more than a week of butting my head against design block, I finally had a good night where everything flowed well.

It’s an amazing feeling to finally feel creative after a long period of forcing it. I didn’t get out of work until about 12:45am, but I feel awesome.

I recently bought a new RPG book (Monte Cook’s D20 version of the World of Darkness, yum) and I’m reading through that and getting all kinds of ideas that I can use on my poor poor players.

It’s about fucking time. I was worried my muse had left me … Continue reading

On Resolution

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I’ve been thinking a bit about resolution mechanics over the last few days… random, I know — but that’s what kind of crazy crap comes into my head when I’m not working.

By “resolution mechanic” I’m referring to the behind-the-scenes method by which a game resolves its core gameplay mechanic.

The three I’ve been thinking about lately (there could be more, but I’ve only really been pondering the three) are twitch (resolution through a player’s skill with the interface), fortune (resolution by luck), and karma (resolution by value / stats / strategy). Examples of games based on each of the … Continue reading

I Didn’t Sign Up For This: Musings on Minigames

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Recently I’ve been mulling over the subject of variety in games. Generally speaking, more variety is probably better. After all, no matter how good your core gameplay mechanic is, eventually players are going to need a break. And given that the last thing you want is for your players to put down the controller, this means adding in extras.

The problem is that when it comes to variety it IS possible to go too far, like with certain minigames.

Don’t get me wrong, minigames are a great way to introduce variety. However, I always find it important to remember that … Continue reading