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Ok, Legal Update
Yesterday I had a vote and people wanted a legal update, so here it is.click to enlarge
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The RPG Caste System is Back
The OSR really got going back when Jeff of Jeff's Gameblog decided that the old forums sucked too much and started his own blog. People found the blogs, shared common interests, things started to...
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CRPG vs Tabletop RPG Notes
1 CRPGs approach a lot of the design issues in tabletop RPGs in simplified form.2 The best CRPG criticism and discussion is way more sophisticated than tabletop RPG criticism - Because it’s easier...
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The Opposite of a Dungeon
Sometimes the best way to figure out what something isn't is the best way to figure out what it is. That is: what's essential to it.It also helps if the opposite is--or is incarnated--in something you...
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You Are Being Lied To (on Indie Press Revolution, pay rates, transparency, etc)
People are talking about RPG pay rates, finally.As you may have heard many times here, RPG pay rates are pathetically low and exploitive.-One of the exploitive companies, Indie Press Revolution, posted...
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The Demon City Scenario I Ran Last Week
So following on previous adventures, the girls' party were an actress (Stokely with Appeal: 0), a craft-services girl, and a bouncer. The only person they knew in common was a dancer.She died, of...
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Brooding, Blind, Hollow and Harsh (distant reading and games)
Distant HorizonsTed Underwood, who teaches english and information sciences did a fascinating book called Distant Horizons, where they took...
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Stakes: Three Takes
One: The JudgeSo what is the way of raising a child?At a young age, said the judge, they should be put in a pit with wild dogs. They should be set to puzzle out from their proper clues the one of three...
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Playtesting
Because time's a flat circle, gamers are asking about playtesting again.Because no-one has the ability to learn, the meta-conversation about playtesting is more interesting than the conversation. It...
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Game Writing, Writing Writing, “Lazy Writing”
1Craig Raine is a poet, but he wants none of your pearl mist and opium dreams. Here he is, in 1979, writing about an experience...
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Every Tomb, Every Tunnel, Every Inn, Every Mountain
It turns out all of the (or most of the) Baedeker Guides are online now, thanks to Emory University.If you don't know, the Baedeker Guides were ostensibly travel guides but were really a kind of...
View ArticleSacred Crackpots
Sacred Crackpots There's a kind of person who causes a lot of problems in all kinds of communities that I call the sacred crackpot.The sacred crackpot has three main characteristics:1. The sacred...
View ArticleCharacter Optimization and Easy Mode
Here's something I don't understand.Everyone's familiar with the idea of "Hard Mode" and "Easy Mode" in video games. Hard mode is for people really into developing whatever skills the game tests (or,...
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Quicky LotFP Druid
I just finished a short module and while writing I realized I reference "druid spells" all the time and there aren't any LotFP druid spells. So I made an LotFP druid.The module is an evil fairy land...
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Scale of Grimdark to Cute Fantasy Correlated With Creators' Behavior
Click to enlargeAs the graph clearly shows, at least in popular traditional fantasy: soft creators are bad, brutal ones are good. Possible theories:A) Random Noise: There's no trend and this is just...
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Staggered, Dazed and Hindered (or, What Was Mainstream Game Design?)
If I were asked to sum up the term "mainstream RPG design" up in three sentences I’d say:Blind: A combined condition. The character cannot see, so everything effectively has full visual concealment...
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Talking (Literally) to Story-Gamers--Ron Edwards, Vincent Baker, Mark Diaz...
Indie game bigwig Ron Edwards (with Jez Gordon) pretending to be a frost giant at Gen Con for me. He would later claim that this afternoon (the only time we met) was part of a highlysophisticated psyop...
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Frazetta Says There's Gonna Be A Fight
Sword & Sorcery is FrankSword and sorcery is very Conan, by which we mean to say it's very Frazetta. Unless your Conan looks like this...The Conan of heavy brow, long dark hair, aswarm with...
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Dear Daniel Fox / Zweihander Guy,
Hi,First, let's get this out of the way you can skip til after the picture of your game if you want: We're not friends, I'm not defending you, I don't like you, I think you're a monster, you supported...
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The Best Saint George
Lancing point-first from horseback is the hardest way to hit a dragon. By the Renaissance—with its humanism—St George had graduated to a sword and was taking slashing blows at it. But Bernat Martorell,...
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