I just added yet another blog to my growing collection of personal blogs. I have been toying with the rules for a German old school roleplaying system that I want to publish via Lulu.com at some point in Spring (as soon as I am done). In order to provide a focussed coverage of that topic I have added my Hexer & Helden blog. Enjoy!
W-JAX 2009 starts for me today… since the past couple of weeks have been extremely busy (how could it be otherwise 
this is a good time to catch up with the state of affairs and update the blog once more. Here we go…
I just got sidetracked for a short moment by this awesome presentation of a digital gaming table. After my Ph.D. thesis and my honeymoon that’s something to look more closely into… I’m absolutely awed…
For my latest RPG design I already have decided to use a level based system as explained in another post. I also love skill-based systems because of the variety they IMHO add to characters. One issue I find myself toying with again and again is how (and if) to reward skill checks with experience points.
I love dice… have been loving them since I started roleplaying. I love different sizes and shapes and I love the thrill of excitement that random die rolls bring with them. While I’m also enchanted by diceless systems, none have ever worked for me because the lack of randomness makes me feel like once more reading a story… it’s no longer a game. And I want to game. So dice it must be. But dice mechanics and choices shape a game more than any other aspect I can think of - for many reasons. Here is the dice system I will be using for my latest RPG design outlined in my recent blog post.
Tommi Brander asked in a response to my last RPG design post what the goals of my latest RPG design project where. A very reasonable and important question. And it occurred to me that I never really had thought about my goals above and beyond an instinctive and very intuitive level. So I would like to take the opportunity to elaborate a bit more about this - it seems somewhat important…
I am playing roleplaying games since about 1983 or 1984 (I started with the german red box version of D&D). Thus I was very early on introduced to the notion of level-based character advancement systems. Later on I also tried quite a few different paradigms, from point-based systems like GURPS, HERO and Mutants & Masterminds in more recent times to more storytelling like approaches like FUDGE, Storyteller or Castle Falkenstein. When designing my own rule systems I also tried all these approaches and at different points in my life preferred different styles. Nonetheless I keep coming back to a certain style and finally seem to have settled on my “perfect” style.
Since I just talked to some colleagues about this I would like to recommend the following trilogy to anyone in fantasy literature. It’s not for children, it’s different and it’s… brutal. But the characters in the trilogy are some of the most unlikely and different characters I have seen in a long time. And the author, Joe Abercombie, really has a talent for very swtring characterization and the language skills to suit that talent.
Read more
Yesterday I received the Tunnels & Trolls (T&T) 7.5 edition box I ordered from Flying Buffalo Inc. (FBI). This review will summarize my impressions based on a first partial reading and some experiments with character generation and the included solo adventure.
In summary there are quite a lot of things I love about this edition, a few things that might be improved (8th edition please) and some product decisions I find discussable. Content-wise T&T 7.5 is a great old school game that includes all the benefits of more recent indie games as far as simple mechanics, freeform rules and easy customization go. Definitely a good game to get newbies into role-playing and as great for old timers who do no longer have the time to read through rules manuals with hundreds of pages before they can start a game.
Here come the details…
…is one game I definitely would love to see. But not at any price…
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