World Boxed: A story of sorts
The first five chapters of World Boxed is available to read on my website, now. World boxed charts the narrative in my head as I play World Box.
Tag: games
Diagrams for creating magic systems
One of the fun parts of world-building is creating a magic system. This is true for both novels and tabletop role-playing games. Why do we need magic system diagrams? Magic systems are often at their most interesting when it is clear what they cannot do rather than what they can …
Spotting Gameboy Pokemon fakes?
I have recently found myself looking into the booming business of fake Pokemon cartridges for Gameboy and Gameboy Color (Colour to us Brits). I had wanted a copy of red for my display of Pokemon games on my wall and could not find my copy of Pokemon Red. So I …
Power curves and game design
If you plan to create a tabletop (or computer-based) game, you need to know about curves. You need to understand the power curve and how to use it. Don’t worry. It is quite easy to do. Here, is an example of baseline damage per spell level when the dice are …
Fantasy games vs my writing
I have a vice which keeps me from writing as much as perhaps I should – my beloved Xbox and my two weekly tabletop game nights. Right now my two main addictions are Terraria, and Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms. That’s on top of my weekly Dungeons and Dragons …
Plotting a game
When I’m not writing or blogging I like play various tabletop and RPG games and sometimes – as the GM – it is my job begin plotting a game. As I said before, running a game is not so different to writing a story. And it is this idea that …
I like Fallout 76
I know Fallout 76 received poor reviews but I really like it. One of the criticisms is that there are no NPCs. Thus there are no characters presented that you can become emotionally invested in. I disagree. You arrive in the wasteland only to discover that everyone is dead. Exploring …
GMs, do you understand the difference between skill types?
Click grabbing headline aside, I really am going to talk about the difference between different skill types. I’m going to draw my examples from both S3 and Pathfinder but really these should apply universally. Skills in RPGs can be expressed along a few binary axis: passive vs active constant vs at-will critical …
Ideas for a tiny gods autofiction
Truly Tiny Gods was an idea I came up with years ago. A sort of automated story driven by code and user interactions. I never finished it and still think about creating it. I even registered a Facebook app that I never developed. Life got in the way. This is …
Plot-Lines: The storytelling card game
I’d like to introduce you to Plot-Lines, the storytelling card game. You play as a team of writers on a new television series but each of the writers has different ideas about the genre, style, and even characters that should be included. Can you overcome executive meddling, retcons, and characters …