Diary of a Failed Game Designer

Been quiet around here lately. I know ... Monday, Wednesday, Friday blog scheduled only lasted a short while. Truth be told real life has been busy as of late and I have just not had the zest for blogging that I normally do. Today I want to go on about my thoughts on mechanics, and games and how they interact. Specificity in terms of game pacing. Currently I'm participating in three online games using the roll20 game client. One is a 4 th edition D&D game run by a friend, the second is a Numenera game run by a different friend, and the third is an AD&D 2 nd edition game that I am running. I enjoy all three of the games, the ones I am playing in are both well run and I have characters I like. My 4 th level fighter “Armed Sage Oka” in the 4 th edition is starting to round out and become a useful part of the party.  Like a Truck... Benthree my “Charming Jack who fuses Steel and Flesh” just had what I felt was his breakout session in our Numenera game.  The game I am running

Amazing adventurers incredible exploits! Lets talk about it. But lets back up a bit, I'm still working on “Shards of Thimbral” but to be completely honest, unless I am playing that game, I can't really move forward any further. Schedules and some of the worst weather I have seen in the Hudson Valley In the past few years, have conspired to keep our group away from the table. In the meantime I started screwing around with a game that I quickly titled “Amazing adventurers incredible exploits!” What started out as a personal joke, got played and enjoyed. ( see this post ) Now it's over 100 pages of PDF and still growing a bit at a time. I'm thinking when it is done, if anything is ever really done, I might just give away the PDF to anyone who is interested. I'm not sure exactly how I would do that but that's where my head is at this morning. So here is a quick description of what the game is about. Your character is a baker, a guard, a candlestick maker, a wiz

So I was sitting at home the  other day , it had just snowed, it was cold and I just felt like sitting on teh couch doodling. So I grabbed some pens and a sharpie and doodled this: Scanned it as a grey scale, and  cranked up the contrast.    I'm not a great artist but I think this has everything Amazing adventurers incredible exploits! is about. Tentacles, spikes, ax's, hitting tentacles with ax's. So that's that, I think I will populate the game with doodles from my AD&D game. I already have them around and why the hell not right? Try to stay warm in the Northeast! Have a good one.

a blog about cold. The weather being what it is (going from bad to worse.) My Job has been busy this week, which has lead me to not feel like doing much after work, and a lull in my blog. In this blog I want to touch on the weather, a popular talking point here in the Hudson Valley. For the Blog though I think I want to talk about the AD&D 2ed weather. In my attic book stash there might be a copy of the Wilderness Survival Guide, but I’m not sure. I will have to go check, because time is ticking in my AD@D2nded game and the party is about two months into a very short spring / summer. I read a blog recently concerning weather, and cold, now naturally as I sit in my bed writing this I can’t find the original source.  If it was someone reading this let me know and I will add a link HERE. My current campaign is taking place north, far north, almost tundra north.   Some of the characters are from the area some are not, but they all know it’s going to start getting cold. The area is most

Last Saturday the gaming group and myself had the opportunity to play “Amazing adventurers incredible exploits!” the hundred percent random fantasy RPG that I wrote the weekend before and touched on in this post. Keep reading this gets silly We had four players the characters they created randomly went like this: Panster Tumblebelly, a halfling healer who has been left for dead once and is a good guy. He is a thief with a rolling pin and leather armor He rolled high on he thief ability chart and got to roll on the Fighter chart so he knows the warriors strike. Hoarroar Moonshadow: young elf, head butler who saw a ghost and is now confident, wears plate mail armor and aspires to be a thief. He is armed with my rolling pin and due to a miss read my the GM (me) he ended up with the Grappling skill. Hoarroar really wants to be a real thief so he played the crap out of that trying to check for traps and unlock just about every thing. Adokul Soulaxe, Dwarven Thief, former dart champion