Rules as Written
In the early days of 1st Edition D&D (AD&D), Gary Gygax made a point of saying that if you weren’t playing by the rules of the game, as they were presented in the rulebook, you weren’t really playing D&D.
RPG Design Theories
Thoughts behind tabletop roleplaying games and why we love them.
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Latest posts
Designing Dungeons Part 3
This is the third and last piece that I’m going to write about dungeons (at least for now).
Designing Dungeons Part 2
Or, Designing More Dungeons
Designing Dungeons
Since I’m in the middle of designing a big dungeon right now, I really want to talk about actual dungeons, as in, “…and dragons:” dark, damp, underground complexes filled with danger and—as the characters hope—treasure.
The Pros and Cons of Metacurrency
Last time, I wrote about metacurrencies and proposed a way of looking at them not so much as extraneous to the rules, but as a part of the rules that can be a resource to manage (spending, conserving, restoring, etc.).
Metacurrency
I’m back!
Roll the Dice and See
Today we’re going to talk about dice.
Levers and Fixes
I’m fascinated by someone in a recording studio working the mixing board.
Teaching the GM to Fish
We’ve all heard the adage, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll be fed for a lifetime.” It’s way overused and often very inappropriately applied.
Player Choice
More than anything, a key design goal of the new edition of Cypher has been to not just give players choices, but to ensure that those choices are interesting.