by Jeff Tidball | Jul 28, 2010 | Business, Design, Publishing
Craig Mod has written a profoundly beautiful and informative essay, “Kickstartup,” about how—and why—he used Kickstarter to republish his book Art Space Tokyo after it had fallen out of print. If you read nothing else this week, Craig’s essay...
by Jeff Tidball | Jul 8, 2010 | Design, RPGs
Chris Sims has a post up today at Critical-Hits.com about how RPG designers and developers often use canon badly, inventing background and backstory for their games that’s pointlessly limiting, unfun, or worse. His section on how to do canon...
by Will Hindmarch | Jun 7, 2010 | Design, Horror, RPGs
Zombies control the city. Humanity holds on within a towering enclave. Precious supplies remain out in the abandoned city, waiting to be reclaimed. To get these supplies, you must go roof-to-roof, dodging zombies and staying clear of the lethal mist that clings to the...
by Jeff Tidball | Jun 3, 2010 | Design, Props, RPGs
Game designer Matt Snyder recently launched an open game design project with the goal of creating a modular tabletop RPG game system that individual game-makers can use as a blasting-off point for their own designs. Matt suggests that the goal is worthwhile for two...
by Jeff Tidball | May 17, 2010 | Design, Story
John August answered a question about screenwriting from theme last week on his blog. He dismisses a few classic ways to define theme out of hand, and from the writer’s perspective, good riddance to them. Writing a story to prove some greater truth about the...
by Will Hindmarch | May 3, 2010 | Design, RPGs
I’ll admit, I think I have a problem when I playtest games and scenarios. It’s a forest-and-trees problem — I’m always erring on the side of the immediate play experience, making play decisions that work in the moment but don’t necessarily...
