BioWare and Green Ronin both have reputations for making great story-based games. Where BioWare has given us classic computer-driven RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, and Mass Effect, Green Ronin has created original RPGs like Mutants & Masterminds and licensed games like Song of Ice & Fire Roleplaying. Both companies know how to turn a story into a game world — and how to infuse a game world with story.

So as soon as I heard that Green Ronin and BioWare were teaming up to create a tabletop sibling for the forthcoming fantasy CRPG, Dragon Age: Origins, I pelted Green Ronin’s president and founder, Chris Pramas, with questions. Here’s what he had to tell us about the forthcoming Dragon Age pen-and-paper RPG, and what it’s like making a paper game dovetail with an electronic game.

// Read the Interview

Paul Tevis and Ryan Macklin make it hard for me to work. They keep raising the bar on game analysis and discussion, so I have to jump that harder to write or design things that I think will impress them. They keep brightening the lights, leaving me fewer shadows in which to hide.

This is especially evident in the excellent newest episode of Macklin’s already-excellent podcast, Master Plan: Episode #50, in which Macklin and Tevis discuss Tevis’s new storytelling game, A Penny For My Thoughts. In this episode, they discuss everything from Hite’s Law (roughly, a game should have rules for the things it claims to be about) to the use of the second-person voice in the book. (This is coming back into vogue — see D&D — though I was warned off it for years out of fear that some damn fool would mistake himself for a bugbear or a werewolf through the magical might of the misunderstood “you.”) They also talk a bit about something that I’ve been meaning to write about just as soon as I can actually play Agon: UI in table-top RPGs.

A Penny For My Thoughts sports a really lovely book design by Fred Hicks, which helps to convey how the game is played by linking how the book and the character sheet look to the actual play experience. Any character sheet with check boxes does this to some extent, but games like Agon and A Penny For My Thoughts do it especially well. A character sheet shouldn’t be merely a record of information — it’s an interface, changing not just as the character changes but as you, the player, make your choices. A great character sheet isn’t afraid to change frequently during play. It should be as lovely and reactive as a great HUD or UI in a video game.

Anyway, Tevis is raising the bar for me, in particular, because I’m in the try-or-quit final leg of design of my RPG, Tomorrow War, which also involves memory loss and reacquisition, like Tevis’s game. My game is profoundly different from Tevis’s, but close enough to be lost in the bright light his seems to give off. And now Tevis and Macklin are there, talking on the Internet about quality and choice and design, in what sounds like both a lesson and a dare. Do listen.

Congratulations, Atomic Overmind from Wordwill on Vimeo.

Our good friends and rivals in this year’s Origins Awards — publisher Hal Mangold and author Kenneth Hite — beat us in the Non-Fiction Book category this year.

I’ve made what I could out of the roughly five minutes of footage I shot during my day at the convention. It turns out to be a kind of congratulatory note. Enjoy.

Want some coverage of the Origins Game Fair, happening right now in Columbus, OH? Look at this great coverage of Monte Cook’s seminar on better GMing, which just happened this week at Origins. It’s excellent — wise, frank, and low on the secret tricks but high on the common sense restated for our own encouragement. Monte Cook demystifies the art of the GM in a wonderful way, and Critical Hits’ coverage gets that across wonderfully.

A friendly reminder: Jeff is there right now at the Adventure Retail/Atlas Games/Steve Jackson/Fantasy Flight Games booth, and I’ll be wandering Columbus, sans computer and sans plan, much of Saturday afternoon. If you recognize me, say hello. Otherwise, I’ll see you back here on the Internet on Sunday.

[via CriticalHits.com]

I’m flying out this evening for Columbus and Origins. Among other nefarious activities, I’ll be working the Adventure Retail booth, which represents Atlas Games, Steve Jackson Games, Fantasy Flight Games, and diverse others at the show. Find me there, if you want to chat.

Adventure Retail is also carrying Things We Think About Games. As reported earlier, it’s nominated for an Origins Award. Balloting for the award itself takes place at the convention, among attendees. If you haven’t seen our book, come check it out and then cast your ballot in a state of blissful education.