We interrupt this site’s regularly scheduled posts about weapon stat trivia and other simulationist drivel to bring you long-simmered higher-level thoughts on gaming itself. The following likely offers nothing you haven’t thought yourself or heard before, but that’s okay. For the interested, here are a few things that I’ve always found particularly interesting about RPGs. They’re a whole new type of game That’s a rarity. Think of the types of games you play at a table. Not specific games, but broad, top-level categories. There are card games, of course, in a zillion variations. Countless board games, too. To avoid getting too broad, we can consider strategy games like go and…
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A blogger’s dozen (Part VI): 13 ideas for RPG articles
Why this again? Because I still have a couple installments’ worth in this odd series of idea fodder for RPG bloggers. As in, “stuff that would make for good RPG blog posts, but which I’ve already dabbled in or am not likely to get around to dabbling in, so maybe someone else will“. As always, the ideas will be pretty old hat to many RPG bloggers. But who knows, maybe one or two will suggest an interesting article for your blog. 66. Resource list for a setting or campaign recipe Is your game system packed with books and supplements? You can help out GMs by suggesting which resources to combine…
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A blogger’s dozen (Part V): 13 ideas for RPG articles
Hi, RPG fans who write stuff for fun! Do you like to create gaming content for your blog, favorite forum, or RPG magazine (even if no longer Pyramid *sniff*)? Sure! That describes a lot of you! But do you sometimes run short of ideas for stuff to write about? Nope! That describes none of you! Well. Although RPG bloggers/writers never have an empty list of writing topics, I earlier tossed up a handful of posts on ideas for RPG articles: suggestions for GM resources, player advice, or any other fun topics that I myself have written a bit about, or that I’d like to tackle if I had the time,…
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A blogger’s dozen (Part IV): 13 ideas for RPG articles
Yikes, I forgot I have a big list of this stuff remaining in my scrap pile. Here’s installment no. 4 in a series no one asked for: ideas for gaming bloggers/authors facing a dry idea well. (As if such gaming bloggers exist.) 40. Mundane stuff with non-mundane stories Create a weapon, crown, or other mundane item, and imbue it with a back story. (A complex back story with specific persons, locations, etc. is fine if aimed at an existing game world; otherwise, more vague “fill in the blanks” description may provide a better fit for readers’ game worlds.) Example (with appropriately malleable place names): The Sword of the Alliance was…
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Books we want: How to Be a GURPS Player
The first time I suggested “There oughta be a book” was here, with a suggestion for more mini-books on Yrth cultures and societies (because, hey, I like Banestorm). Time for another suggestion! How to Be a GURPS GM by Warren “Mook” Wilson is a great book. It’s packed with invaluable advice and insights for gamemastering GURPS. Well, with the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game set to ignite (?) an explosion (??) of demand (???) for our favorite game system, perhaps it’s time to release a dedicated guide to playing GURPS. A book that would fill three roles: In short: Let’s have How to Be a GURPS Player! (Sounds like a fine new idea…
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Gaming Tips: Taking your chances on 3d6
“A 12 or less? That’s good… right?” If you come from one of those popular games that uses a twenty-sided die to whack monsters and roll other checks, and you step up to one of several games that uses three six-sided dice instead… you might feel a little lost. We deal with percentage-based probabilities every day: “30% chance of rain” and all that. So given the obvious fact that each number on that twenty-sided die has a 5% chance of occurring, it’s easy to mentally convert “Roll 19 or higher to succeed” into “10% chance of success”, or to understand “You shrug off the poison on a 12 or higher”…
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GURPS’ next big release gears up to tackle… the dungeon!?
At the end of August 2016, Steve Jackson Games (SJG) announced its next big thing: a Kickstarter campaign for the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game. No one reading this site needs to hear this news from me – in fact, you, Reader, most likely backed the game on Kickstarter and are now counting down the days (or months, anyway; the shipping date isn’t exact yet) until its maps and original Cardboard Heroes figures adorn your table. But here it is in a nutshell anyway: Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game (DFRPG) is an upcoming boxed game from SJG that bundles a complete “dungeon fantasy” roleplaying set into one box, with everything you…
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Cardboard Heroes artist hard at work on new figures for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy boxed set?
Hey, GURPSters! Eager to scry even one more crumb of information and/or rumor about the in-development, powered-by-GURPS, and eagerly-awaited Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game from Steve Jackson Games? Crumb ahoy! Here’s a tiny (and speculative) morsel from – of all places – recent The Non Prophets podcast episode 16.02. Hm? A GURPS tidbit – in a podcast focused on religion and gods and related topics? It’s not so surprising, given that the podcast is based in the home town of GURPS – and that it’s hosted by two bona fide gaming art gods. Just around 5 minutes into the episode, regular host and Art God #1 Denis Loubet reports that he’s…
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A blogger’s dozen (Part III): 13 ideas for RPG articles
Installment no. 3 from a sweeping-out of an attic full of junk – specifically, ideas of the “Hey, this would make for a good blog post or magazine article” persuasion. For your consideration, the latest batch of 13: 27. “I’ll show them all! With this Helmet of Funny Helium Voices…” Write up the sort of ridiculous cursed item so beloved of dungeon fantasy games – together with an explanation of why a wizard put so much effort and money into creating it. The curse could of course be unintentional, the result of a botched enchantment. Even then, a write-up of who the enchanter was, and what she was attempting to…
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A blogger’s dozen (Part II): 13 ideas for RPG articles
Hi again! Following up from Part I, here’s another ladling of goo from my big, mouldering pot of ideas for gaming-related articles. I go heavy on the Fantasy-oriented ideas this time; sorry, it’s the mindset my latest game play has left me in. Most can be easily sliced and diced into fare for Sci-Fi and other backgrounds. Diving in: 14. Stings ‘n’ Things GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2 offers fun general rules for harvesting valuable parts from defeated dungeon monsters. Take the idea and go a step further: write up specific salvageable bits, with prices, for common game monsters. (Don’t forget weights, too; that matters for dungeon delves.) Examples: What’s the value…
