by Jeff Tidball | Apr 8, 2008 | Musing, RPGs
This piece is republished from an article I wrote for Games Quarterly Magazine. The way roleplaying campaigns work is well enshrined: A group of people play a series of games to tell a continuing story. One gamemaster creates the story and runs the game, and the same...
by Jeff Tidball | Mar 28, 2008 | Books, Conventions, Musing, RPGs
I recently finished reading Scott McCloud’s Making Comics. McCloud also wrote Understanding Comics, which, if you haven’t read it, which pop culture have you been living in, exactly? Near the end of Making Comics, in his chapter about having and developing...
by Jeff Tidball | Mar 17, 2008 | Writing
Game writers, stop being lazy about “you.” I’m looking at all of you who write board game rules, card game rules, and tabletop RPG rules. What needs to stop is indiscriminate use of the word “you” as a pronoun that means “the person...
by Jeff Tidball | Feb 23, 2008 | Promotion, Story
Over at Electronic Book Review, they have a “thread” that started out being about First Person, and has now moved on to being about Second Person as well. Will made a post about their collection of fantastic essays recently. Since then, they posted...
by Jeff Tidball | Feb 7, 2008 | Musing, RPGs
Tabletop RPGs traditionally squander — utterly — the opportunity to make character creation an exciting part of a game’s actual play. Sure, in lots of RPGs the process of rolling up a character is an entertaining mini-game of its own. It has the benefit that you...
