Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Ya gotta have consequences
Just watched Shadow of the Vampire, a movie about an obsessive visionary director making the classic silent film Nosferatu. The twist is that the director has hired an actual vampire to pretend to be an actor playing the vampire. The movie was okay, but not great. A great deal of dramatic tension in the first [...]
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Tags: game design, storytelling techniques
Manifesto in the land of Caesar
Mauro Ghibo just translated my essay “A Manifesto on Mastery” into Italian, available here. I think that’s the third or fourth language for the Manifesto. Pretty cool!
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Tags: mlwm
Happy Bard’s Day!
Today is traditionally observed as the date when William Shakespeare was born, and died. We’ll be celebrating the occasion fittingly by attending a performance of Twelfth Night at the Curio Theatre in Philadelphia. It’s a steampunk-themed interpretation, and pre-production photos are available here. What are you doing to observe Bard’s Day, or World Book and [...]
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Tags: rl, shakespeare
A blast from the past?
Mulling over events to run for Origins. Seriously considering running the classic FVLMINATA scenario “Weekend at Burnius.” Thoughts?
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Tags: fvlminata
Victorian Vampire Slayer
Thinking out loud about a Victorian age Buffy the Vampire Slayer game using the Mouse Guard rules over here.
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Tags: ap, mouse guard
Rip Van Winkle
A few days before Christmas and I’ve just started looking at indie RPG sites again. I feel like I’m waking up after a long hibernation. My eyes still sting at the light of day, but I glimpse int blurry wonderment that the world still exists outside the frigid cave where I’ve been sleeping. What have [...]
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Tags: rl
Mechaton Role-Playing
I’m scheduled to run Mechaton at Ubercon this weekend. But it’s scheduled in the role-playing room, so I felt I should do what I could to add RPG elements to the wargame. Here’s my notes-in-progress. All comments welcome, including “Cool idea,” “Lame idea,” and “Happy Birthday.”
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Tags: mechacademy, mechaton
Halloween 2009-part 1
Our town’s annual Halloween parade was canceled due to weather. So, we all got together and carved some of the 13 pumpkins that I bought. The rest will be carved tomorrow, on Halloween itself. Here’s the pics!
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Tags: holiday, rl
A dirty trick in D&D
I’ve taking over DMing duties for our Sunday D&D game. I noticed that all of the PCs, except for two, had 2 magic items apiece. So before the last session, I had those players browse the books and choose a magic item that they wanted. I said I would put it in that day’s scenario [...]
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Tags: ap, d&d
How best to exchange info?
A follow-up to yesterday’s Dreamation discussion. I just posted this to the Forge thread discussing the new Dreamation policies: Just this morning, I was thinking what games I might possibly run at the con. I thought “I like running Ganakagok, but I’m not sure I’d want to run it twice. Maybe Bill White’s in the [...]
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Tags: ige
Where has the summer gone?
It can’t be August 12 already, can it? I packed up a bunch of Serial Homicide Unit and sent them off to GenCon with Michele. I hope everyone has a great con. Last year I was happy to get away from the stress of the big GenCon trip. This year I’m missing the opportunity to [...]
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Tags: rl
Tradition!
My Pappy–my father’s father–passed away in 1998. I think about him now and then, but not too often recently. He worked at a slate quarry and lived on a few acres out in the country with two ponds (big enough to swim in) he had built himself. Last night I remembered that for many years [...]
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Tags: rl
DEXCON is nearly here!
The registrations deadline for DEXCON 12 is nearly here. See Kat’s LJ entry for all the details. Kat’s in charge of the IGE this time. I’ve worked several 55 hour weeks this month, and there’s no sign of it letting up. Back to the grindstone…
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Tags: ige
I had this dream about running a variant of D&D 4th edition. Instead of fighting monsters to gain treasure and glory. You were fighting Hollywood movie executives to get your movie made and into theaters. It was like D&D meets The Player. It had classes, and all the same powers and whatnot, just reskinned for [...]
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Tags: d&d, dreams
Moments of Judgment–AAARRRGGHH!
Vincent is drilling into the nitty-gritty of how Points of Contact work over on anyway. In his most recent post, he calls attention to the “moment of judgment” that is required when providing mechanical teeth to wholly fictional input. In most traditional games, this often applies when the GM hands out situational modifiers for tactics, [...]
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Tags: game design
It’s been a very long time since I did this. Back in the ol’ days of 2005-2006, everyone was doing posting their sales numbers in service of the community. Nowadays, only drivingblind posts sales numbers. Since I’m at the complete other end of the spectrum from Fred, I’m going to post my numbers. In order [...]
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Tags: sales
Little Game Chef — Done!
I just submitted a game for Little Game Chef. I hadn’t planned on entering, but I had a few nearly-sleepless nights this week, and a weird, geeky little game flowed out of me. It’s 110% derivative. I don’t think there’s an original bone in its tiny, 2-page body. The contest is anonymous, so I won’t [...]
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Tags: game chef, game design
