Category: Roleplaying

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Roleplaying

RPG rants and where to find them

Ginger Stampley from the 20′ by 20′ Room blog points to a thread on Gaming Theory Blogs That You Should Bookmark. Skipping two links down from that, I found a somewhat diffuse but interesting post which tries to describe some of the problems of gaming. It starts with a strong bit about why “most game sessions suck”, wanders off into some d20 rant, and comes back into talking about RPGs not teaching the skills you need to roleplay. Or something. This is of a vibe with other discussions about RPGs I’ve seen lately, rallying around Ryan Dancey’s bon mot that RPGs are “20 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours”.

If theory sounds confusing, Here’s a fine explanation from GameSpy called Dungeons & Dragons Made Simple, via Uncle Bear. In reaction to the book D&D for dummies, this is D&D for morons.

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Resources Roleplaying

The Conspiracy Archive

The Conspiracy Archive has oodles of conspiracy articles, from Barry Chamish’s “Reports from Fascist Israel” to stuff on the Shaver Mysteries. Need to read this for a bit next time I bring out my loonier NPCs.

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Blather Roleplaying

Spartan Heat

My computer is a hot and slow laptop propped up on a desk with the sound system, TV and a USB Disk hooked up to it, in a sweltering enclosed balcony stuffed to the brim full of mildew-scented comics in plastic bags.

All this isn’t very conductive to spending time on it, let alone writing inspired blog entries. Or even posting the usual linkage.

I thought of a campaign idea yesterday, while watching The Bourne Supremacy. The image of Karl Urban as a Russian hitman on his day off, sitting in a bar surrounded by chicks, made me think of footballers. Virile and young and in a glamourous profession where you’re all used up by the time you hit thirty. Maybe thats why they bond so easily with models. Anyway, hitmen as footballers. And (since this is my brain drawing the analogies), Supermen as footballers.

So, the idea is a campaign called Spartans: people with superhuman strength and speed and toughness, who can fly (the classic Superman package, in other words). Mostly young (because you don’t last in that line of work), mostly male (because supermen are proportionally stronger than superwomen? Or superpowers are more common among men?), a campaign about action and power and testosterone unleashed, a campaign about dying young and with style.

Sort of like our games, before Israel brought a feminine touch to it.

Maybe I should run this to myself, like a Shiffer.

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Roleplaying

Lousy Players and Lousy GMs

Greg Stolze, who is currently promoting a tactical wargame of his design, to be released if enough people come up with the “ransom” for it, summarizes the results of two rpg.net forum threads which rated the various flaws od Lousy Players and Lousy GMs.

Well, at least I provide plenty of unchallenging sessions. And I give PCs lots of superpowers sometimes. Except I take them away. But I don’t railroad. Or prepare. And my Leadership sucks.

Strangely, although I’ve been characterized as “an asshole player”, I don’t see my flaws listed. Are they?

Categories
Roleplaying

Link dump of roleplaying stuff

Assorted roleplaying links, to clear out my bookmarks.

What is Romantic Fantasy? by John Snead – The developer of Blue Rose defines the sub-genre of his game. Interesting thoughts on a whole swath of Fantasy writing that is usually looked down upon, but which pretty much defines many of the basic assumptions of “generic” fantasy. Proves my old point that RPGs are habitual scavangers of the corpses of sub-genres, i.e, that once a sub-genre has been defined into a shape you can do as an RPG, it has hardened into a list of cliches and trademark ticks.
Which is a problem for something like Cyberpunk, which has lost all novelty from it’s eighties snarl, but not for Fantasy, which thrives on comfortable familiarity.

The Primeval Games Press website has a series of interviews with indie roleplaying game designers. Here’s one with the interesting Vincent Baker, (whose game-theory blog is worth looking at) but it’s interesting to compare it to others on the site, in particular to that with the one with Chad Underkoffler, who’s much more “traditional” in outlook.

Finally, Darkpages claims to be a roleplaying game, but so far is a set of short fanfics, trying to set the mood of a dark, occultish super-hero world, similar I think to what I tried to do with “They Fight Crime!”.

Oh heck, I’ll stick this in as a PS: a summary of a talk given by the head of Guardians of Order to a group of Amber Diceless gamers about GOO’s plans for ADRPG.