Great Article: A new recipe for the roleplaying game formula

Check this out:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/GuidoHenkel/20170207/290402/A_new_recipe_for_the_roleplaying_game_formula.php

...wow, this is literally worth days of thought and discussion around here. Some great points about CRPG design that also apply to pen-and-paper games, check out his thoughts on skill trees.

I love it when the old-school designers, either computer or pen-and-paper, pop up and share science with us.

Good stuff.

Great Article: The Deadliest Page

Check this one out:

http://jrients.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-deadliest-page.html

This one is great fun, and it reflects the tendency of old-school RPGs being more a collection of 'cool ideas' often pulled from places like the old Dragon Magazine than things actually designed to work well within the game. AD&D was like this, along with other TSR games such as Top Secret and others, where deadly parrots and laser-armed security cameras could stand guard over a megalomaniac's dungeon-like lair.

There were a lot of cool ideas in those games, random pieces of this and that thrown in, and if you played them by the 100% by the rules you would sit there and say, "WTF is going on?"

It is the curse of unintended consequences, and this sort of stuff is common in sandbox RPGs all the time, especially if you mod games like Skyrim with all sorts of random encounter mods, road patrols, story events, and bandit camps - all of a sudden you stumble out of a dungeon and there is a full-on war going on between bandits and vampires and you never knew that could happen, but you love it and go with the flow as you run for your life and spells are flying around you.

Some games are less sandbox and more story focused, such as Pathfinder's adventure paths or to a different extent, D&D 5's adventure hardcovers. I like to play both of these games as sandbox games honestly, and just use the pieces they give me by the rules and create an interconnected, compelling world out of them, warts, strange rules, and unintended consequences be damned. If mages can do this or gunslingers that, players should not be surprised to see NPCs in the world doing the same thing. If monsters are X% likely to appear, then they will appear at that rate around the players or not, and the kingdoms of the world will just have to deal.

The gods made these rules and I believe the world should abide by them, otherwise, how can you say you are truly playing the game? I know, some like to sculpt a masterful narrative and novel-like experience using the rules, and that is totally cool, but I love my sandbox games so much I tend to run them even if they trash my story and ruin a module writer's carefully crafted plot-line and scenes.

Check the article out, it is a funny one that highlights some of the strange and quirky things I love about old-school gaming.

Great Article: The Death of 'The Sleeper'

http://kotaku.com/the-surprising-and-allegedly-impossible-death-of-everqu-1785741600

Check the above out, it is a great article about the old Everquest game, and what happens when you pull the rug out from under your players - and then put it back, saying 'sorry.' Or not saying sorry, but blaming it on a software bug. Maybe there was a bug.

We will never know, but the story is a gaming legend.

Great Article: Twilight Imperium Review

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/08/twilight-imperium-a-board-game-with-meal-breaks/

I love this article, especially the content of the "meet the players" section, and around this quote:

Once upon a time, after our first few games, Jim discovered the hard way that a player’s reputation, once lost, is not easily regained. After reneging on a few treaties and making dodgy promises not to invade planets, he soon realized that no one would trust him in subsequent games and ended up as a miserable pariah, a victim of the metagame.

Do you find a player's reputation and play-style in one game extends to later games? This is a fascinating subject, how a player's psyche not only determines strategy (in all play-thoughs), but also how other players treat him in future play-throughs. There are great descriptions of player types in here, the careful, the min-maxer, the long thinker, the dynamic player, the one-true-way player, and others. It is great stuff, and worth reading the article for.

Check it out, another great article today to ponder and sink your teeth into, especially if you are into game design.

Great Article: D&D 5 vs. Pathfinder

http://lifehacker.com/tabletop-rpg-showdown-dungeons-dragons-5e-vs-pathfi-1785545326

Check this one out, a comparison between D&D 5E and Pathfinder. What I like about this article is it plays to the strengths of each system and doesn't fall into the 'system wars' mentality by picking a winner before the article is written. It is a fair comparison which highlights the strengths of each, and hits upon the great 'why should I play' points of each system.

Good stuff. Worth a read for those looking to get an overview of the differences between the systems.

Great Article: Playbook for Pathfinder

https://geekdad.com/2016/08/playbook-for-pathfinder/

Check this out, it is a great article on the new Playbook app for Pathfinder. While I like and use HeroBuilder, this looks like a great (although simplified, iPad, and core book only at the moment) app for creating Pathfinder characters and getting to that all-important record sheet moment. This one looks to be worth checking out, and the article does a great job of laying out the features. Check it out!

Great Article: D&D is Back in the Mainstream

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/stranger-breathes-fire-back-dungeons-dragons-article-1.2739642

This is a fun one to see, and it goes to say that D&D comes and goes from pop culture like that strange kid in black who plays the Lawful Evil rogue who shows up unexpectedly at a weekly game and you feel his character is totally min-maxed but you let him play anyways because it's all about as many people having fun as possible. And of course, you're a great DM and can handle the challenge of including him in a group that's already on its way to blow out the module anyways.

Toughen things up, add some extra casters to the encounters, and throw in some interesting non-combat challenges to show them min-maxing isn't always a path to victory. Balanced characters find all roads to victory passable, grasshoppers.

And like that, D&D is back, and as the article says, with 30% of the players being female. You know what this means, right? We are well on our way to pop-culture fad and phenomenon status that will burn our in 3 years when the market gets flooded by me-too games. It's all good though, and major props to Wizards for putting out a simpler version of the game that I don't always get to play, but I still appreciate the design and "keeping it simple" and "not breaking my back with books" philosophy of this release. Well done guys, and props and enjoy your success. You earned it.

Good times. Now let's bring back some of those early 80's games as well in this Renaissance and new golden age and let's make it a complete and great time to be playing pen-and-paper games again.

Great Article: The Story of Pathfinder

http://www.polygon.com/2016/8/1/12317888/the-story-of-pathfinder-dungeons-and-dragons-most-popular-offspring

This one is a bit basic, but it has some interesting historical perspective and comments from the game's designer. Pathfinder is still a cool game, and still our group's preferred edition of "the world's most popular fantasy game" rules set. Even though we wrestle at times with its complexity and size, nothing comes close in terms of options, openness, artistic style, compatibility, and mod-ability.

For the game to have been printed over seven years ago and to keep going strong is no small feat, and it happily keeps moving forward today. I am starting to believe this will keep moving forward, unchanged, for decades to come. A true universal set of fantasy roleplaying rules that stays the same from generation to generation? I sincerely hope so, and that too is no small feat. When you create something great, it lasts.

Great Article: Why it took me eight years...

The goal of this new mindset was accessibility, but the result was apathy and entitlement. If the early days in WoW are best summarized as "only the elite deserve medals" then the golden age was most certainly "everyone deserves a chance to earn a medal" — a design edict I will go to my grave vehemently defending. 

But that isn't how things ended. 

By my guild's final days, the message had morphed once more: "everyone deserves a medal." I like to think I did everything I could to keep the guild from hemorrhaging players, but the thrill of competition was gone. My own ideals now worked against me. I'd cultivated a mindset of skill mastery in a game that no longer valued elbow grease. It was no surprise, then, when players simply stopped showing up for medals.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/1/12078500/world-of-warcraft-eight-years-blizzard-raids

A great article on what happens when you take challenge out of a game. Apathy. Entitlement. Infighting. Looking down on skill and achievement.

Your best players leaving.

Great gamer players like challenge, and I feel a lot of people like to call themselves "great players" when all they want to do is spend time with something with no real challenge.

A great player loses more often than he or she wins. There is no "everybody wins" with a Michael Jordan, he had to rise above dozens of other teams, injuries, schedules, and life itself to become a "great player." Nowadays, everybody is told they are a "great player" with little more skill than "show up."

And oh yeah, pay the subscription fee every month. Trust me, you are a great player!

Just keep that credit card info current, your greatness.

The first players of World of Warcraft had that, The best drops were incredibly hard to get. Whole raids sometimes produced nothing. But yet, they tried, and they built great raiding teams, piece by piece, and skill by skill, until they earned the right to say they were the best.

A worthy read, and one worthy of reflecting upon the current state of pen-and-paper games, for sure.

Are 'easy' games, intended to attract casual players, really causing players to leave?

Article: Interview with Greg Costikyan

Not to be missed, a guy who wrote the games I grew up with:

https://juegosydados.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/interview-with-greg-costikyan/

My favorite part of the interview:

Yes. Take risks. Don’t view roleplaying as an interaction with a rules set. Imagine yourself as your character. Improvise. Do what your character would do, not what min-max analysis of the situation tells you makes sense.

Great stuff from a true legend, check out the article!