Diary of a Failed Game Designer

Art history, Things that will never happen, and One Shot games: One of the guys in our group has been floating playing the “Red Dwarf” role playing game. This will happen, we have some characters and it’s going to go down eventually. Red Dwarf the game, and more to the point the setting got me thinking. I found myself musing in my head about an absurdist RPGs. The thing about Red Dwarf the RPG is that it’s OLD, and being old it is written in an old RPG style. It’s written for the players to write a character and play that character for a while, over the course of several games even. The player gets to know the character and how he/she/bot/it/space slug interacts with the absurd Red Dwarf universe. Why is that important? You'll see by the end. Now, The things that will never happen… I have been kicking around an idea for a short one off game called “Yeah it‘s Like That!” The player first starts out describing their characters actions and the other players can the interrupt the curre

The new (or not so new) direction of RPG’s Starting over with AD&D second edition is a bit weird. The vast majority of my gaming experiance is with Second edition AD&D, it’s what I cut my teeth on. It is also what I have been trying to get as far away from as humanly possible with my own designs. Going back to it feels a bit odd. Here are some observations from our set up and our first game in what I hope is a new lengthy AD&D second ed game. 1.        My ability to describe has atrophied considerably. a.        I was trying to describe setting details last night and I found myself tripping over words and concepts. I think this is because in our newer more narrative games, the group creates setting; things do not need to be as explicitly laid out to keep people on the same page. Because of that group setting dynamic laying out the minutia of player surroundings, is something I have not done in a long time, it’s a skill that needs honing. 2.        Watching players new to se

Where did all the magic go In Aleria? Where did all the magic go in general? I was back to thinking about my long standing fantasy campaign setting quite a bit this weekend. I had copy of the Basic Dungeons and Dragons Rules cyclopedia in my hands for most of the day Saturday and it brought back some memories. I was looking at the classes, the charts, those tables, and remembering how many good games spilled off those yellowed pages back in the 90’s. For that matter how many good games flew out of the Red, and Blue boxes before that. This put my mind in that place where I think about campaigns. My old campaign in general. It started out high fantasy, with allot of magical opponents, places, and characters. When we got into second edition Ad&d we went whole hog, creating flying continents, air ships, wild character classes, and a crazy amount of fantasy sparkle dust flying around. Then came a time when everyone was running off to college, some of the major players were leaving gamin

Original Post: Neal So I've been feeling a bit introspective recently, trying to figure out why I don't like certain games.  Especially after playing Descent Monday night and realizing that I felt like I didn't enjoy the experience that much. It's one thing to say, "I don't like playing this.  It isn't fun."  But it was bothering me to not be able to pin down why I didn't like certain games.  What was it about them I didn't like?  What are things I like about the games I do like? Things I like: 1. Impact.  If I'm playing a game, I want to feel like that my presence at the table is making a difference, right up until the end of the game. 2. Socialization.  I game to socialize.  I want to sit around, bullshit and kabitz. 3.  Interesting mechanics.  I want the game to engage and excite me in some fashion.  I want to go... "Wow, that's cool." Things I don't like: 1. Length.  I'm sorry, but I don't want to be here for 4