Design
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Don’t wait to create, don’t wait to learn
A prominent game designer recently said in a Dice Exploder thread, that breaking down design paradigms before you design games is self-limiting and unproductive. This was interpreted by many as “you don’t need to read or play a lot of games before you start designing games”, which is both true and not true. I thought… Continue reading
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Multitudes, not mechanics
TTRPG design consists of a bunch of different things, and the relationships and interactions between them lead to something hopefully greater than the sum of its parts. What are the things we’re concerned with when we design a TTRPG? Well, a lot of people would say “mechanics”. You might define mechanics as the rules and… Continue reading
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When is the cake baked?
Lately I’ve read a bunch of modules that feel like they weren’t fully baked. The scope story they were trying to tell was greater than their page count. I was left wishing there was more, despite and often because what was there was already pretty cool. I get the sense that the authors didn’t realise… Continue reading
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Releasing Guilders
For the last few years, I have been really intrigued by Trophy and particularly Trophy Gold, which are absolute messes of games, which don’t suit my play style at all, but that I find deeply compelling, to the point where I wrote a very long review for Wyrd Science about them. Anyway, in the intervening… Continue reading
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The Zungeon Manifesto: Demystifying Dungeon Creation
I have a really large earring collection; I have perhaps as many earrings as I have TTRPGs, and I mainly buy them from local craft markets, not jewellers. They’re all made from resin or clay, or cut from wood or acrylic, by hand or with homestyle equipment, in peoples’ basements or garages, not outsourced to… Continue reading
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The Ugg-Tecture of Language
Many years ago a game called Ugg-tect went out of print. It is my favourite game I never played, and has entered mythical status in my personal canon. In it, you are cavemen who can only provide directions for building a building by making “ugh” sounds and hitting your friends with an inflatable club. The… Continue reading
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Forsaken Easter Eggs
You know how sometimes, in a module, there’s a guard who’ll let you through if you know he likes pizza from that one place? But there’s no way to know? Or there’s a door that opens if you walk around it three times clockwise, but there’s no way to find that out? I call them… Continue reading
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Videogame! Villain! Vampire!
It’s Vampire Weekend! So I’m going to talk about what I want out of a classic vampire villain. For the purposes of this, I’m interested in the vampire that is a fun antagonist to my players. There are other types of vampires worth exploring — I’ve written one myself in Bridewell — but I’m starting… Continue reading
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The OSRacle Deck
Talking about oracle decks over on the Dice Exploder discord, and I really want a deck that’s especially for playing elfgames games and giving elfgame inspirations. So I’m thinking, what information do I want to gain from a draw when I’m playing an elfgame? This is a brainstorm post. Sam Dunnewold suggested in the chat… Continue reading
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Modifying Reaction Rolls
The prolific Dice Goblin wrote about 2-tiered reaction rolls, which, like is cool, but it was a bit clunky for me. What I like: It gives you a little more that random chance, modified by a little. What I don’t like: Confusing. But, like, could it just be a matrix, though? Our prototypical reaction roll,… Continue reading
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