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We can only hope this means they plan to reprint F.A.T.A.L in braille!

captcha: subsumed

Sorry your shit does stink.

http://www.rpg.net/columns/des...

Gen Con has banned games because they didn't care for the content, didn't care for what they felt they promoted, didn't like what they portrayed.

> Do you claim that hard win/lose conditions are required for a [successful] game?

You are conflating the issue. Remove the word successful.

A game by definition has a wining / losing condition, otherwise you have a digital toy.

Will Wright considers Sim City to be a toy.

"I have no mouth and I must design"
http://www.rpg.net/oracle/essa...

No doubt they'll get 60 second vignettes on Mythbusters and Cosmos called "Why we are Right" hosted by some smug, bearded fuck behind a dungeon master screen.

Actually, that's not how it will be.

Right, the DM screen would just hide the glory of his beard. The viking hat will be enough to prove his credentials.

Sounds like there may be cases of Gamestop employees distributing the free game codes elsewhere. So not only removing items from a package, but taking what is effectively a digital copy code for the same item and giving it away, creating a new copy of the item and possibly costing a Deus Ex sale. That would be pretty serious right?

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?589922-Gamestop-removing-OnLive-vouchers-from-Deus-Ex&p=14315880#post14315880

Wow, I'd forgotten about this game. I played V&V back in 1987-ish with buddies back in junior high. We had the Marvel Super Heroes game too, for when we wanted to play "legit" super-heroes. Good times...

FYI, here's a review of it (not mine): http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9439.phtml

"Did you even look at this thing?

I agree. It's incredibly difficult to build a real life table that looks like an artist drawing of said table."

No, it's real, as you can see in the photos below, but I agree, it's very strange the website has no real photos of a $8,500 table.
http://www.wraithwerks.net/blog/GenCon%202008%20Photos/Sultan%20Gaming%20Table.jpg
http://www.purplepawn.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/sultan-gaming-table.jpg
http://www.robotviking.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/sultan01.jpg
http://www.saveordieradio.com/storage/photo-755372.jpg
http://images.forbes.com/media/blogs/images/digitaldownload/images/2008/08/15/sultan_2.jpg
http://www.robotviking.com/2009/07/08/geek-chic-the-absolute-greatest-gaming-table-ever/
My new Gaming Table: The Emissary from Geek Chic (Picture Heavy)

The author made clear that they were only considering core material and not setting-specific material. When the Eberron books come out, I doubt he would consider the Artificer either. His reasons for doing so were fair in my opinion.

Second, it's not unfair to consider them a new race. The background and flavor of the race is sufficiently different. Deva are angels who chose to incarnate as mortals and not reincarnate endlessly. Aasimar were humans with angelic ancestry. Also, Rodney Thompson from WotC R&D explicitly distanced the race from the Aasimar here.

And http://www.rpg.net/ seems to attract quite a few gamers including an entire section just for DnD folks.

http://www.penandpapergames.com/ is supposed to be a general gamer and locater site but much of the conversation is DnD related.

[John]

It's the ultimate geek exercise, and completely worth getting out of the house for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_European_martial_arts

You can get into completely authentic Western Martial Arts Practice:
http://www.aemma.org/

You can get hyper-competitive and train to duel:
http://www.novaspada.com/ (my school)
http://www.academieduello.com/

You can a ton of fun just about anywhere you live:
http://www.sca.org/

Or you can really go nuts:
http://forum.rpg.net/forumdisplay.php?f=70

Role-playing games seem to be ripe for having all the rules and settings put up in a wiki, under a truly open content license.

Here is a resource for various projects
http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Major_Projects
http://www.kirith.com/shapeshifter/Main_Page

Also, from what I have read about the net, you can not copyright rules. With that in mind, some bright fellows have put all the old school rules into a pdf and called is OSRIC.
http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/osric/

While not quite exact, the list is based on this.

People are doing this already and they are making lots and lots and lots of content. And i'm not just talking about OGL stuff, there are quite a few forums you can check out that will lead you to these games (much of it is free).

The folks at this forum are doing some really interesting stuff, much of which is nothing like D&D:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/

This forum is more D&D oriented:
http://www.rpg.net/

This forum is D&D centric:
http://www.enworld.org/

Gah! I had successfully forgotten about Cyborg Commando, but then you just had to go and remind me of it...

In fact I'd say that the Balance requires such beings, unless of course sex is inherently evil in the DnD universe.

You should check out The Book Of Erotic Fantasy, a completely genuine and official add-on module. Despite the badly photoshopped nude photos decorating the inside, and the occasional mention of things you would really rather not know (did you know that gnomes like group sex? Are you now happy with this knowledge?), it's actually quite interesting. There are a number of specialist classes inside that would actually fit in quite well to a non-dungeon-crawl RPG session. And no, they're not what you're thinking of.

...if you've played Planescape: Torment, then Fall-From-Grace's character could come straight out of this book.

Wizards of the Coast got their start by putting out a multi-system compatible game called, "The Primal Order" in 1990. Part of the system included rules for converting characters to and from its system and the system used in games by Palladium Books. Palladium Books went nuts and sued WotC over violation of their intellectual property.

After 3 years, WotC ended up settling with PB for an undisclosed sum and an agreement not to mention their games again. (This is ironic considering that most of PB's claims were rejected by the judge in the case.) You can read a summary of the events here.

In retrospect, it's not surprising that WotC came up with the Open Gaming License.

Personally, the whole thing left such a bad taste in many gamers' mouths, that we chose never to do business with Palladium again in spite of WotC asking people not to boycott them (apparently something PB had demanded as part of the settlement). Like most people, I didn't really even care about WotC at the time, I was just angry at PB.

On a side note, I happened to see the publishers of Manhunter (the only game to actually license conversion rules from PB) at a con one year, and I asked, "Well, how'd you manage that?" only to get chewed out by Kevin Siembieda's wife who was staffing the PB booth next door. Being a teenager and not informed at all about IP law, I was kind of flabbergasted and didn't know what to say.

Heh. If only I could go back in time...

He's probably driving a cab in Chicago, FYI.

Given a 16 year old web, what's the oldest continous content? Dr. Fun ceased, User Friendly "only" goes back to 1997 (a mere 9 years), I know of a monthly column that's come out each month since 1996 (RPGnet Soapbox, 10 years), but I'm out of examples.

Sites like photo.net date back to 1993 (13 years), but that's not the same as a single person chugging steadily for all 16. Anyone know of a creator who has hit their deadlines on the web for all 16 years?

This has disaster written all over it.

I'm not worried about a P&P game based on EVE Online, as WW has already done P&P based on Everquest, and though no one plays it, I think they made money on it.

And looking at the new WoD lineup, it does look like they designed the games to be more MMORPG-friendly, with emphasis on every supernatural creature being based on five "races" and five "groups" each one having a "power" stat, each one having a limited choice of roughly the same number of powers (Mage, in particular, was severely "nerfed" in the name of play balance.)

But what I'm worried about is that White Wolf has had an absolutely horrible experience in massively-multiplayer gaming. They operated an online chat called "New Bremen" and it was resoundly hated - so much so that people compared other White Wolf mushes (and WW gamers were generally seen as having really bad games to begin with) unfavorably. This was mostly due to the horrible, horrible nature of the administration which functioned on a suck-up/catch-22 model. Those who sucked-up in the "in-crowd" were promoted, everyone else could have their characters deleted for any number of un-written, illogical and arbitrary "catch-22s."

This was including particularly hellish and outright abusive treatment from the moderators there which was encouraged by their administration, a White Wolf employee.

Keep in mind that White Wolf is also DRM-heavy and treats their fanbase like crap by asserting phony IP rights.

Storyline is what disturbs. Let's get back to telling real stories.

Amen to that. Most of the posts so far , and a couple of previous slashdot stories on this topic, seem to equate "disturbing" with "gore", and offer as examples of "disturbing" games stuff like Doom, Silent Hill, System Shock 2 etc. While these games are certainly on par with horror-genre type films (I loved System Shock 2, btw), they don't capture the same context of disturbing as the example of the game Manhunt in TFA (ie. having the gamer assume the dual roles of murderer and detective).

A friend and I were having this same conversation last night, about films. A lot of people consider the Saw franchise scary, but for me, one of the most disturbing and suspenseful cinematic scenes recently was the scene in 2005's Crash where the little girl runs out to her father and apparently gets shot. I haven't seen City of God or Hotel Rwanda, which are films cited in the TFA, for the very reason that I think they would not be enjoyable viewing experiences.

The main question posed in the TFA is: If a videogame is no longer fun, we tend to stop playing. How can you make a videogame not "fun" and still compel players to go on? The hurdle that the gaming industry needs to overcome is the profit motive; games that aren't fun to play are unlikely to be purchased. The film industry, on the other hand, has had decades of avant-garde and independent films to condition audiences for challenging fare.

The parent poster here cited text adventure games as examples of the truly disturbing and challenging, and I heartily agree with that. I played Photopia, and that game left me pondering.

Games will have caught up to films when the field will have its equivalents of film directors Peter Greenaway, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Atom Egoyan. There is one guy in gaming, John Tynes, who is close. A couple of his pen-and-paper RPGs are downright nightmarish: Puppetland, and especially Powerkill. The games used to be available on Tyne's website, but don't seem to be there anymore, so here is a review.

I don't know, I wouldn't admit openly to listening to that.

From an RPG.net thread making up RPG Demotivator posters:
Gaming Humor.
(Credit goes to Opsimath on page 9. Posting AC since I copied it w/o permission.)

Please not the article is talking about "video games", and more specifically console and computer games.

This past weekend I played a very fun game of Uno at a coffeeshop with some friends. I have been known to break out a Scrabble board on occasion. Last month I even played Parthenon with some friends. I would like to get back into D&D at some point.

When I am in a bar, if they have a Galaga or Ms. Pac-Man machine, I am all over it. I wish there was a D&B nearby (or maybe not, since I would probably end up going to often and spending too much money)

That said, I cannot remember the last time I played a game on my computer. On occasion I will play a console game at a friend's house, but I do not own one. I have nothing against them, they tend to just be beyond my budget (I feel like I could afford a console OR the games, but not both). I can have as much fun playing a much less expensive board game.

Well, what type of discussion were you wanting from this subject? Something about how online PDF sales are seriously altering the RPG market? Something about the various theories about why people RP? A bunch of posts agreeing that those are good games and that everyone should play them? :)

It is rather too large and diverse of a subject for slashdot to cover well. You might want to go to a dedicated message board for rpgs. Check out the following links:

http://forum.rpg.net/
http://forums.rpgchat.com/
http://www.rpgconsortium.com/main.cfm
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/

There are many others. Go out there and search for ones you like.

http://www.findplay.anvilwerks.com/ http://www.accessdenied.net/ http://www.rpgregistry.com/ http://www.rpg.net/ http://www.indie-rpgs.com/

Enworld is probably the biggest D&D-focused forum out there. I can't vouch for its quality, though, as I'm not into D&D and don't hang out there.

*nod*

I read this article and the first thing I thought of was BADD (Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons), an organisation set up by Patricia Pulling, a mother of a son who committed suicide and who blamed his playing D&D on why he committed suicide.

Details can be found here, called the Stackpole Report.

That said, is anyone else reminded of the Day of the Dead boardgame? (link can't be checked, at work and the filters don't allow anything with "game" in it. Alt link or use Google to find it yourself)

Eagle Games is (or so I've heard) a pretty good games company as well. I'v heard good things about some of their recent products, including Blood Feud in New York an (Organized Crime) Empire Building game, which looks like everything "Gangsters: Organized Crime" could have been if it didn't have the clunky interface (especially in the real-time portions).

Hell, I'd just like to see a Civ-style (note: this means turn-based) game that has you running an organized crime family, like Blood Feud in New York. Every sort of mob-boss sim I've seen has been real time or a combination of real-time and turn-based (like "Gangsters: Organized Crime") and it didn't work too well. A turn based game would work a lot better, IMHO.

I'd rather respond to this via e-mail, because I don't want to come off like a shill, but since I can't:

I've been designing for a long time. Every game is a group of good ideas that a designer got from other games and put his own unique twist on. The difference is that I say so up-front. It's not really an amalgam, as much a bibliography of influences.

As for "new to the table," I'm not going to try and sell the game. If you want to know why it's not the suck, feel free to read this post on an RPG forum:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=160951

Or. feel free to contact me via e-mail - the e-mail's on my website - and I'll explain to you why it's pretty much the best role-playing game ever.

All received a 9 or 10 out of 10.

An online version of Ticket To Ride is available as part of a trial free month at Skotos -- they also have online versions of Fist of Dragonstones (an auction game), Queen's Necklace (a card game), and Gang of Four (a A**hole variant card game).

You can also play these online if you a supporting RPGnet member.

-- Herder of Cats

There is a good PCGamer interview with Michael Stackpole that covers a lot of it.

The Pulling Report (named after Patricia Pulling, founder of BADD -- "Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons" -- who claimed that playing D&D led her son to commit suicide.

Of course, what comment about the "evils" of D&D would be complete without a link to Dark Dungeons, one of those annoying pamphlets that conservative Christian whackos hand out on the streets.

Jay (=

Also, a more recent interview.

If you remember your times long past playing D&D fondly - heck, if you're still playing it - you really owe it to yourself to check out some independent roleplaying game producers. They're cheap, they're great, they're a break from THAC0 and saving throws and god only knows what else. A great place to start is with The Forge, which specializes in such games.

And while you're their, a shout out please for Lumpley, an old friend of mine, and the author of kill puppies for satan: an unfunny roleplaying game. (I'd link directly to his site, but I doubt it could take the slashdotting. Still, I must advise folks to look him up. And send him money.)

Of course, you don't need software to write an epistolary novel...or even an e-pistolary novel.

There was a rather fun gaming product that came out a couple years back called De Profundis , which involved roleplaying by writing letters back and forth. Sadly, it came out shortly before Hogshead went out of the gaming business, so it's not widely available anymore.

I like Paranoia, but I like it in much the same way I like HOL or Orkworld. Great read, fascinating ideas, but is it actually playable? The best summary of Paranoia's problems I've seen amounted to basically, "Paranoia feels too much like a private joke between the author of a given adventure and the gamemaster." To players things (notably death) seems a bit arbitrary. The jokes often aren't comprehensible if you don't have context that only the GM has. (The "disco" scene in Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues comes to mind).

If Paranoia is just social commentary and satire, well, that's and interesting read, but it's a basis for a game I play more than once. If it's about humor than the jokes need to be visible to everyone; I'm not going to play a game to amuse my GM. I think that the core game play of Paranoia is supposed to be about the struggle to survive in a bureaucratic nightmare, but that's not the feeling I've gotten from the games I've played. It's unfortunate, because it's such an appealing premise.

I see a lot of potential, but I've never seen it pay off in actual game play. Maybe I've just been unlucky and didn't have GMs up to the task (I've been in love with Shadowrun since the second edition, but only recently actually played in a game I enjoyed), but Paranoia seems like a fundamentally difficult game to get right. The only "famous" module I've played was YCBBB. YCBBB is is generally held to be one of the best modules for the game. What I saw wasn't terribly impressive and appeared to have a strong "private joke between the author and the GM" element. (To be fair, given that the players weren't haven't alot of fun, we stopped playing after only a few sessions.)

So, is the accusation that Paranoia is a private job between the creators and the GM fair? Is there any truth too it? Is Paranoia fundamentally an extremely difficult game to run? Are you changing anything to address these concerns (including possibly working to clarify incorrect perceptions)? What do you feel is the key attraction to playing for players?

I like Paranoia, but I like it in much the same way I like HOL or Orkworld. Great read, fascinating ideas, but is it actually playable? The best summary of Paranoia's problems I've seen amounted to basically, "Paranoia feels too much like a private joke between the author of a given adventure and the gamemaster." To players things (notably death) seems a bit arbitrary. The jokes often aren't comprehensible if you don't have context that only the GM has. (The "disco" scene in Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues comes to mind).

If Paranoia is just social commentary and satire, well, that's and interesting read, but it's a basis for a game I play more than once. If it's about humor than the jokes need to be visible to everyone; I'm not going to play a game to amuse my GM. I think that the core game play of Paranoia is supposed to be about the struggle to survive in a bureaucratic nightmare, but that's not the feeling I've gotten from the games I've played. It's unfortunate, because it's such an appealing premise.

I see a lot of potential, but I've never seen it pay off in actual game play. Maybe I've just been unlucky and didn't have GMs up to the task (I've been in love with Shadowrun since the second edition, but only recently actually played in a game I enjoyed), but Paranoia seems like a fundamentally difficult game to get right. The only "famous" module I've played was YCBBB. YCBBB is is generally held to be one of the best modules for the game. What I saw wasn't terribly impressive and appeared to have a strong "private joke between the author and the GM" element. (To be fair, given that the players weren't haven't alot of fun, we stopped playing after only a few sessions.)

So, is the accusation that Paranoia is a private job between the creators and the GM fair? Is there any truth too it? Is Paranoia fundamentally an extremely difficult game to run? Are you changing anything to address these concerns (including possibly working to clarify incorrect perceptions)? What do you feel is the key attraction to playing for players?

There you can find lots of advice on game design, manufacturing of games, distribution issues, etc.

-- Herder of Cats

I'd just like to take a moment to plug De Profundis, a truly interesting recently-published pen-and-paper game based on the Cthulhu mythos. Unlike other games that have that adjective attached to them, with De Profundis it's literal...you use pen and paper to play the game, because it's a guideline for playing by mail. Rather than spend paragraphs duplicating explanation I've already made, here's a link to my in-depth review of it. I don't think I've ever seen another RPG quite like it.

It's out of print now, but you should be able to find it in the usual places if you look.

The continually-more-immersive nature of console and computer gaming has also been taking its toll on the pencil-and-paper roleplaying game (viz D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade, etc.) market. In various threads on forums like RPGnet's or gaming newsgroups, some game fans suggest that it's a lot easier to have a fun and immersive experience looking at pixels on the screen than it is to try to run a live game amid distractions ("Where's the cheetos!") and with other players who can detract from the fun of the experience ("I cast magic missile...at the darkness!"). Where RPGs used to sell in vast numbers, now the figures have declined to where a thousand copies sold is considered a smashing success. (CCGs may be partly to blame for that, but not anywhere near entirely.)

You have to admit, computer and console games have gotten a lot more involved over the years, be they single-player simulations or shoot-em-ups or team games, and they offer a heck of a lot more depth of play than in bygone days. And as a benefit over TV, they're more interactive and thus mentally stimulating. You feel like you're doing instead of just seeing.

And in terms of sales, I've seen articles about how computer games are threatening to eclipse even the movie industry...

Anyway, I kind of think the author of that article is onto something.

There may be just a wee bit more to the story.

• Eagle Games Website
• Reviews Thereof

Here's some useful links:

• My Analysis of Settler's Gameplay
• University of Catan website
• Reviews of mostly European Games

Well, if you want a truly evil RPG, you could always read the review of FATAL.

(Warning: this review, and certainly this game, is not work-safe. Or good for your faith in humanity. The game is a pretty tough thing to overcome for a zero-censorship stance - I think I'd rather see kids reading Mein Kampf. Seriously. But the review is damn funny, of a really unpleasant game.)

If WoTC's plans are to get all these people to come back as freelancers, they're screwed. Microsoft caused a law in Washington to be enacted where dismissed employees cannot freelance for the same department for 1 year. Art department: gutted. RPG R&D: gutted.

I also read last night that WoTC's entire RPG operation may be for sale, with one interested party being Jordan Weisman. See this thread on the RPG.net message boards.

If WoTC's plans are to get all these people to come back as freelancers, they're screwed. Microsoft caused a law in Washington to be enacted where dismissed employees cannot freelance for the same department for 1 year. Art department: gutted. RPG R&D: gutted.

I also read last night that WoTC's entire RPG operation may be for sale, with one interested party being Jordan Weisman. See this thread on the RPG.net message boards.

Not a question for Anthony per se, but just a note that people who find Incarnations of Immortality interesting might also dig the Nobilis roleplaying game, which riffs on similar themes. It's been getting rave reviews, one of which can be found here.

There was once an Infocom-like game based on the Chronicles of Amber; does anyone recall it?