Wow. I didn’t think a post about the demographics and logistics of Vampire’s Enoch would be a big hit, but it got a lot of views, and people asked a lot of questions. So here are the answers. What About Vitreous Necromancy? Some of you pointed out that the Nagajara’s Vitreous Path of Necromancy can […]
I don’t even know why I wrote this in a forum discussion in the first place, but I spent a lot of time on it and dammit, I’m going to get some blog content out of it. So in the V20 Black Hand book, people have asked how it’s possible to support dozens of vampires […]
Canon is now a Thing. Nerds fret over it and creators hate wrestling with it, but it used to be a nonentity in mainstream media. You had continuity, but there was little pretense of a persistent world with a coherent entity. Now everybody’s trying to build big media franchise like Marvel and Star Wars. Now […]
In a secret place, Wood Ingham and I (and other folks) talk about games and things. Wood posted this as a coda to that discussion and others, about the Zizekian “trash can” of ideology and how it applies to RPGs. Please go read it, then come back. (I really hate what Zizek says about immigration […]
So last time I talked about setting mastery and how it can screw up a game. In retrospect I think I overemphasized the bad parts. At its best, it helps people becomes natives of the setting. When they’re not jerks, they help everyone else get into the spirit of things and best of all, save […]
Back when D&D 3 came out, the designers talked about “system mastery.” Knowing the system better always helped you play a more powerful, effective character, but 3e made this an explicit design goal. Some feats and spells were just plain better than others. Later on this turned out to not be such a great idea, […]
Vampire: The Masquerade? Shadowrun? Cyberpunk 2020? AD&D 2nd Edition and its worlds, like Planescape? Mind’s Eye Theatre with the grey book of box set? Rifts? Rifts, even? Deep cities? Scene-driven adventures? Networked NPCs? Secret societies? Metaplots? No apologies. No excuses. HEY NET PUNK.
No really, it’s cheap. Google search cheap. Because I searched for “mapless fantasy” to see what other people had to say about it today. Even the image contains a cheap joke! Obscure, but cheap! Anyway, I point you to Joe Abercombie’s words, which make a lot of sense to me. I don’t hate maps. I love […]
I was working on an Exalted book. I forget which. One of Geoff Grabowski’s development notes was something to the effect of, “It’s not the 80s. We don’t need a map for every damn thing.” (NOTE: May have not said “damn.”) He was right, and while he wasn’t saying maps were bad, he was talking […]
There seems to be some confusion about what freelance writers do for RPGs. I remember being told once, with the sort of confidence that someone only exudes when they’ve never asked anyone, that freelancers simply expand the contents of an outline and don’t do their own design or anything. This person is on the editorial board […]
you're always being judged 