Monthly Archives: August 2009
On Developing a Tabletop Game Openly
This is a tough one to explain. A few days ago, the Chatty DM tweeted about the need for a revival of Car Wars. If you\’re not familiar with it, Car Wars is a tabletop car duelling game from the 1980\’s, in which you drive a gun-laden car around a post-apocalyptic arena or road, blowing … Continue reading »
Weaselly Role-Playing
So, a while ago, I noticed a Twitter RPG design competition. You had to pitch and describe a tabletop RPG system in 140 characters or less. A fun little challenge. I\’d just been reading the Mouse Guard RPG system, where the main villains are tricky weasels, and they struck me as interesting characters. So, an … Continue reading »
DM Imagination: Lacking
(Note: I haven’t forgotten about my previous plan to post about my finances and books! I’m just having trouble collecting the data. Should have something up here in a day or two. Meanwhile….) While I was at GenCon, I went to a panel on higher-level adventure design. I noticed a disturbing trend: The DMs asking … Continue reading »
The Perfect Light RPG? Dread.
Role-playing games exist in a problematic black hole. Existing role-players play RPGs, but the hobby isn’t attracting a lot of new players (though D&D 4th Edition appears to be changing that somewhat). So how to attract new players to the hobby? Well, last Sunday, I had the chance to run a game of Dread, … Continue reading »