Diary of a Failed Game Designer

Once it's done. This is not about bad kick-starters or failed kick-starters, I have never been burned on a kick-starter project. Not that I remember. Failed Kick Starters and the fear of being a failed kick starter I covered way back here on Nov 15 of 2013. Kick Starter I do love thee, conceptually. I want to back all of the  things. I want to give money to the people in my G+ groups who are making fantastic things. I want to buy work, even before it's completed.. Still I don't back much. I want to love kick starter. But I can't. The reasons are two primary weaknesses in my own character. I'm inpatient, and I am forgetful. I received a package yesterday that contained two sprues of minis from a Kick-starter I (actualy my wife for me) backed before  Christmas 2013. I can't work that way, I don't have a clue what that sprue of parts is for. Was this an add on level? an extra? why are there rules in this package for a whole different game line? What's goin

Here are 100 random thoughts on RPG's The industry of RPG's and a whole bunch of other stuff. As if anyone asked ...no-one did. I know it's excessive.. No explanations for these. They are just statements written as I thought them.  There will be a wagon load of links to things I find interesting in this post, please use them. Go to the comment section to discuss accordingly. (BONUS: Can also be used as a handy D100 "Why is Mark an A-hole" chart!) There will be no secrets after this  Alice. Tl;DR $4,402,267 this is Hasbro's 2013 year end total assets as shown in their 2013 year end statement found here   Q3 2014 report states 243 million net income for  Hasbro. Also found  here . Out of both documents Magic The Gathering is mentioned once and shown pictorially twice.  Dungeons and dragons in not mentioned at all that I could find in my quick view CTRL-F. Nerf guns, ponies, transformer movies, comics movies in general, and a working relationship with Disney invo

Embrace the Metta. Warning: This is one of THOSE posts, that kind of swirls around and  helps me get my thoughts together in front of you fine folks. I apologize if you read the whole thing and thing "Well that went nowhere" From the Oracle of knowledge known to us pathetic humans as WIKIPEDIA ! Metagaming: is any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed rule set, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Another definition refers to the game universe outside of the game itself. Meta Being a prefix that means "Above or Beyond" designating another subject that analyzes the original one but at a more abstract, higher level: As in metaphilosophy; metalinguistics. From myriams dic online. This is not the same as some kid saying  "Dude That's so Meta" Now all have the same starting place. I think that every thing in an RPG that is not "role Playing"

From Monty Python Like I Needed to type that. My series on henchmen and hirelings continues (this will all come together in a post or two.) Here is how I handle Morale in my game AAIE. NPC henchmen start with a base morale between one and  20  with oddly  enough 20 being the best. most hover between  9  poor morale and 15 excellent morale. when a morale check comes up the  gm rolls 1D20 if the roll is over the moral the Henchman has failed the check and things happen. Morale fluctuates: Any time I roll a morale roll if the  result is a pass, I add one to the  Hirelings morale improving it. If the result is a failure subtract one form the  hirelings morale, making it worse. I will also adjust the Morale of a hireling for the following reasons. Adjust Downward for bad things: Verbal abuse by the characters, generally just being  mean to the  retainers. -1 up to -4 Physical abuse hitting the retainers or what not. -1 to 6 depending on the  severity. Lack of food -2 per day (make a check e

Testing a DG die drop random dungeon generator I have been working on. Here is the resulting roughly drawn map and random room rolls. Use it if you like. The room descriptions which follow the map were rolled randomly to give a jump stat to the GM's imagination.  Naturally more fleshing out would be needed before the  temple would be usable, but there are some nice game seeds in the random results. All told it took me about  20 minutes Throughout the  temple the  stone walls have been intricately carved to look like thatched wood. The room has thick moldering carpets hanging from the  walls. An evil looking altar dominates the center of this room. A musty wind constantly  blows through this room. You can faintly hear music  is seems to be coming form the  walls. Contains an altar to the  Slug lord. This room is  filled with  dozens of already hatched eggs and eg sacks. The body of a recently slain warrior can be found here. This room has one natural stone pillar in it's center

"Henchman 21" Via Venture Brothers. Through the  years I have come to enjoy what I set up less, and the crazy random things that happen  within the frame work of what I have set up more. I wrote AAIE with that random strangene spirit in mind, and as a continuation of that I decided to give more thought to random henchmen in general. Enjoy. Consider this open chart play-testing: This can also be used in conjunction with this Post  to generate more interesting results. To use this chart: Roll 3D10, all at once in front of you. Reference the die that land furthest to the left first, for the top row of the chart giving a general sex of the Hench (male / female). Use the D10 that landed in the  middle to referance  down the left side for a pre-hench profession out of Column 1.(usually its Peasant Farmer) Look at the left most D10  for rows and the second D10 for columns and cross reference to the center of the chart for a descriptor. (some negative some positive) Do the same as ab

IN my last post you might have notice I included a video-Log-Pod-Cast thingy of myself and some players running through some very random character generation. The process and the video got me thinking about Characters and our connections to them. There are very few things in Role playing games that will effect the style and general tenor of play more than how connected to their character each player is. If a player does not give a shit about their character, they will make bad decisions and look for trouble in a way no one ever really would. I look at it as the characters in the RPG became allot like the you avatar in a Grand Theft Auto game. Naturally you'll yoke a guy out of his car and shoot him, because the  consequences are nil and you honestly don't care about the avatar you're controlling. If the cops come and  shoot you, you re-spawn, poof, new avatar lets go do it again. Having disposable characters gives a player with the desire to do so an open invitation to trol

I have pretty pristine copies of AD&D second edition considering  their age and amount of use. The day I bought them I made cardboard book sleeves for them and to this day they rest in those sleeves. Sure the  PHB has a few bent corners and a bit of  yellow here and there, and perhaps the  Monster manual was dropped a few times, but all in all I have seen worse on store shelves. I treated them better than I treated my  poor old Basic rules cyclopedia, and the hardcovers have held up better than the red or blue boxes, my  First edition book mostly all lost to vulgarities of time, moving, and used bookstores . Those second edition books are my Favorite game books. AD&D second edition might be my favorite game, though I'm not  altogether sure about that, I know it's on my short list. So it's strange to see them go back in the attic and into the plastic bin labeled "game stuff" Before any one reads this and thinks it's a plea to bring back second edition,