storyteller Archives - Neitherworld Stories

April 22, 2008

Flaws in Game Design

I tend to be a fan of a particular game-mechanical trick that first (to my knowledge) showed up in TSR’s old Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP) game – that of spending experience points (or their equivalent) for temporary power boosts. I’ve often thought that one good way of making veteran-types characters would be to allow them to more cheaply buy higher-level...

October 15, 2007

Lessons from history

My last post got me thinking about using sites of real-life coolness as gaming inspiration. I’ve done this in the past (a few times, but I am just going to write about one today). Once upon a time, I lived in Washington, D.C. (in the Dupont Circle area, for those of you who know D.C.). I ran a large and...

January 11, 2007

Game Bloat

I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with White Wolf’s Storyteller system and its variants over the last year or so, but I find that I am still most annoyed with my original pet peeve with them – I call it skill bloat. In the Storyteller system, characters have a number of skills that range from 0 to 5 points. At character creation,...

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...

Tag: storyteller

Flaws in Game Design

Lessons from history

Game Bloat

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