Neitherworld Stories - Page 54 of 56 - Tabletop roleplaying games and other geekery

March 20, 2006

Too much gaming

Right now, I’m involved in a lot of gaming. It isn’t taking up quite as much of my life as it did when I was really involved with LARPing (and this is a very good thing), but it has gotten to the point where I have regularly had to put off plans to do productive things (like organize the kitchen,...

March 8, 2006

How I learned to stop bean counting and love resource management…

As a general rule, I don’t like resource management in role-playing games. There are exceptions, of course. The rule is a general one, not absolute. Ultimately, though, I would rather be paying attention to the action than obsessively counting up tokens or paying attention to how long an effect will last. Steady depletion of resources doesn’t build dramatic tension for...

March 3, 2006

Neitherworld: Path Mechanics Take I

I am going to engage in a bit of stream of consciousness here. I have some ideas rumbling around in my head about how to use the journeys of an Unborn down the DreamPaths as a locus of the game’s mechanics, and I need to have them written down somewhere. Working assumptions: All players are playing a single Unborn. Each...

February 22, 2006

Mini-Book Review: Paladin of Souls

I recently finished reading Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold. It won the 2004 Hugo for best novel. It is a sequel to the 2001 Hugo-nominated Curse of Chalion, which I haven’t read, which purportedly features a different protagonist and largely non-overlapping cast of characters, and which was not at all necessary as a prerequisite to enjoying Paladin of...

February 21, 2006

Use the cool

No, I am not talking about Fonzie again. I’ve been thinking about some of the things that I find frustrating in RPGs, and I’ve noticed some patterns. In D&D, there are a lot of cool options – feats, prestige classes, races, spells, and things like that – but in any given game, you are likely to only use a small...

February 21, 2006

oo.ogl?

I’ve been thinking more about turning D20 into a more object-oriented system, or at least a more regular system. Everything on a character sheet could be reduced to Skills and Feats: Take hit points and armor-like bonuses to armor class and replace them with a damage save mechanic. Take dexterity, size, and related bonuses to armor class and replace them...

February 21, 2006

Hephaestus Shrugged… and said, “eh.”

I finally buckled down and really made a concerted effort to figure out Ron’s ‘brain damage’ position. Realizing that Ron is a biologist helps. I don’t know that I disagree with him, but I think he put it in, perhaps, as unhelpful a way as he possibly could have. This is something I find sad. Here is my quick reinterpretation...

February 16, 2006

Neitherworld: More (Focused) Thoughts on Joint Character Ownership

I’m still not completelty sold on going down the multiple players per character route with Neitherworld. If I do, I will probably include a more conventional option as well and dual-stat everything. In any case, I’m going to explore this option a bit, because the potential fascinates me. I’ll be riffing off of my earlier post on Fixing the Lone...

February 16, 2006

Origami beholder?

If you haven’t seen this, do so. Too cool for words.

February 16, 2006

Hephaestus was uncouth

Since I’ve renewed my interest in game design of late, I’d been meaning to get back into The Forge. In part, this interest was increased by their recent ‘refocus‘ on actual play and actual design over abstract theory. Mostly, however, it was remembering how much my initial introduction to The Forge meant to me. It changed the way I thought...