Role-playing
Role-Playing on Wave
What makes Google Wave work for role-playing games? I’ve been playing around with Google Wave for a few weeks now, primarily with role-playing Waves. These are Waves in which people pretend to be characters in a story. There are tons of ways to role-play; sitting around a table, over live text chat, or on a … Continue reading »
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 »
Six Months of Tabletop RPG Sales
About six months ago, I started publishing tabletop RPG PDFs under the name Brent P. Newhall\’s Musaeum of Fantastic Wonders, starting with the short adventure War in the Deep in November 2008 and continuing with the sandbox setting The City of Talon in March 2009. I publish through DriveThruRPG, which takes a percentage of each PDF sale. The PDFs themselves are unrestricted. I\’ve always been a bit frustrated at the lack of real numbers about … Continue reading »
Seven Lessons Learned from Running a Tabletop RPG with a Big Group
We can have up to 10 players at my tabletop gaming group. That’s a lot of people to manage; most groups max out at 5 or so. While I’m trying to get better at splitting the group up with another GM, I’ve had times where I’ve had to run a game wtih 10 players. A … Continue reading »
Skype
A few weeks ago, my role-playing group tried to add a virtual player. Wait. Back up. One of our regular players went off to college. Worse, she’s one of the best role-players in the group. I pined for her. For those of you unfamiliar with tabletop role-playing: A bunch of friends sit around a table. One of them lays out a situation, while the others pretend to be people in that situation, and narrate their reactions to the situation. So, … Continue reading »
What is the City of Talon?
In the real world, The City of Talon is a role-playing setting. It’s a 107-page PDF that describes a fantasy world, including physical locations within the city, well-known residents, the history of the city, etc. It can be used in pretty much any pseudo-medieval fantasy RPG, and is also a great inspiration for authors; Talon … Continue reading »
Gunwave Reborn
I really need to get to bed right now, but I just couldn’t help sharing this. I’ve just released a serious upgrade to my mecha anime-inspired tabletop RPG system, Gunwave. It’s a fast, fun, exciting game that lets you play angsty teens during an epic space war. And it’s all free. Check out the PDFs … Continue reading »