by Will Hindmarch | Feb 23, 2014 | Promotion, Work in Progress, Writing
Hi there! We’re renovating the site over the next few months, so some content might move around a bit. If you want to see what we’re blogging these days, you can see that here at blog.gameplaywright.net. A few new developments are forthcoming this year, so...
by Will Hindmarch | Nov 22, 2013 | Musing, Promotion, Video Games
This Uncharted PS4 Trailer reveals that a new installment of the hit series is coming to the new PlayStation. Good. I came this close to shelling out for a Vita just to play Uncharted: Golden Abyss. (I settled for watching the cinematics on YouTube.) Here’s the...
by Jeff Tidball | Nov 1, 2013 | Uncategorized
Daniel Solis has written a quick but extremely insightful and well-illustrated post about the relationship between package design and card design on his blog. It’s all about Iterative Visuals. Start with one baseline, change one or two things, and always only...
by Jeff Tidball | Oct 2, 2013 | Props
The argument’s made from time to time that to teach something really effectively, you have to make it interesting. Game designers sometimes make the follow-up point that games are pretty interesting. Everybody knows that gerrymandering is a nonsense process of...
by Jeff Tidball | Sep 16, 2013 | Design, Writing
At a GenCon auction ten or twelve years ago, someone suggested to me that the greatest tragedy that can befall a wargame is to be auctioned in a state where the shrinkwrap has been removed but the counters remain unpunched. Someone wanted to love this game but never...
by Will Hindmarch | Sep 9, 2013 | Conventions, Fantasy, Play, RPGs, Story
We’ve talked here before about the worst game sessions we’ve ever presided over as GM. I don’t think this one was my worst ever but it was certainly my worst in recent memory — my worst ever playing Dungeon World, for sure — and it was at a big table...
by Jeff Tidball | May 17, 2013 | Business, Publishing, The Work
On Facebook recently, my friend Miranda Horner — an accomplished game editor who works primarily on Dungeons & Dragons for Wizards of the Coast — posted this: I want my chosen industry, the tabletop gaming industry, to be so successful overall that it can afford...
by Will Hindmarch | Mar 28, 2013 | Design, Horror, Video Games, Writing
In the new Tomb Raider, Lara Croft’s journey from survivor to action star to heroine (or antiheroine, but we’ll get to that) takes her through horrors visceral and terrestrial, mundane and extraordinary. But her grim and grueling adventure isn’t...
by Will Hindmarch | Mar 25, 2013 | Board Games, card games, Fan Culture, Play, Promotion, RPGs, Websites
Geek & Sundry’s fun and fantastic series about games and gamers, TableTop, is returning for a new season of episodes as soon as April 4th. This is wonderful and welcome news. Host and producer Wil Wheaton hints at some of the games and guests to feature on...
by Will Hindmarch | Mar 21, 2013 | Design, Musing, Video Games, Writing
In a post sketching out an Indiana Jones game I’d like to play, I mentioned that I’d like to see it incorporate “conversations that count.” This isn’t an innovative idea, I know, except maybe for the implication that it fits into the kind...