Under the Hood – Outsiders Looking In
Outsiders Looking In
By The Warden
I have a confession to make, dear readers. Not that it’s a secret or anything, but the time has come to share a vital detail relevant to this column. For the past year-and-a-half, long before I started working on this column, I’ve been designing my own RPG with completely original mechanics. If anything, it’s been my inspiration for this column and has been...
Under the Hood – Odds of Excitement
Odds of Excitement
By The Warden
From the film "A Beautiful Mind" and an example of a mind trapped in calculations.
There’s an interesting trend found on nearly every fan site: whenever a new dice mechanic is announced, people break it down into a mathematical calculation. From there, debates lead into whose calculations are correct until an overall consensus is agreed upon. (It’s also...
Under the Hood – Bounded Accuracy
Bounded Accuracy
By The Warden
At this very moment a week ago, I was playtesting D&D Next and thoroughly enjoying it. As we made a hasty retreat from the legion of kobolds whose lair we rudely invaded (after realizing they had nothing to do with the caravan attacks our characters were hired to investigate and avenge), I loved the sheer fact we were running from kobolds. It was perhaps one of...
Under the Hood – Fun With Failure
Fun With Failure
By The Warden
A certain coyote never let failure stop him. Why should you?
There’s an inevitability in every RPG we play, though we never want to talk about it. Failure. For every possibility of success, there’s a chance of failure and while our goal is to succeed on our actions and dice rolls, we have to accept there are still odds we’ll roll poorly and end the turn on a low...
Under the Hood – Emulation
Emulation
By The Warden
Before I begin, I should warn you: there is nothing about D&D Next on today’s post. There was supposed to be, it was part of my plan to include it in today’s topic, but I’m easily frustrated at incomplete links, encircling sign-ups, and repeated error messages. If I want to hit my deadline for the week, I’ll have to do without.
OK, deep breath, Warden. Focus on...
Under the Hood – Presentation: A Matter of Tone
Presentation: A Matter of Tone
By The Warden
Designing a roleplaying game is difficult work involving numerous key decisions aside from mechanics, theme, scope, content, and more. There is a very important factor generally hidden between the lines yet keenly aware to many players and Gamemasters alike. It’s an issue brought up in an earlier editorial posted by Morrus on EN World last week. I highly...
Under the Hood – Dice Pool Party
Dice Pool Party
By The Warden
Everyone loves a pool party. It’s a chance for everyone to get out and mingle with everyone at the same time, catch up with old friends, and make new ones. Therefore, this cheesy analogy concludes that everyone must love a dice pool party because it’s a chance for all the dice to be rolled and mingle with all the other dice, right?
Doesn’t seem so. Dice pools are...
Under the Hood – Mechanics be Damned!
Mechanics be Damned!
By The Warden
Oh, my poor, embattled edition warriors. What a crazy week this has been for you. So many shots fired off in so many directions with accusations, defensive stances, and postings of angry neutrality in light of so many announcements regarding the brand that is Dungeons & Dragons (and for the proverbial rock dwellers, you should know that Monte Cook has left Wizards...
Under the Hood – Replacing the Engine
Replacing the Engine
By The Warden
Popularity is the goal and curse of society, some say. Those who have revel in it; those without yearn to gain. It seems the need to fit into a crowd works with roleplaying games too.
Last week, Redbrick LLC released two new PDFs linked to the nearly 20-year old Earthdawn RPG: one incorporating the Pathfinder rules and another with the Savage Worlds rules. At first,...
Under the Hood – House Rules
House Rules
By The Warden
Last week, I wrote about how initiative in many RPGs was broken in how it related to group dynamics. As I wrote the piece, I felt empowered as if I was on a roll with something, but that feeling went away by the time it was posted a week ago today. Like getting really drunk, what felt great at the time lead to a nasty hangover.
Not so much what I wrote, but how unresolved...
Under the Hood – Co-operation?
Co-operation?
By The Warden
Roleplaying games are a group experience, there’s no question. While there are versions allowing players to go solo (in fact, right after this, I’m working on a review for Open Design’s Party of One adventure), RPGs are primarily designed for two or more people to share the game and work together to achieve a goal. It’s what makes RPGs stand out against board games,...
Under the Hood – Opposite Mechanics
Opposite Mechanics
By The Warden
It’s April Fool’s Day today. Makes sense to start off with a ruse, hope you’re going to fall for it, then move on to the real topic of the day. I’ve thought about it, but something tells me you wouldn’t believe anything I have to say for the sheer reason that it is the Prankster’s holiday. So instead I’m going to say something you’ll probably think...
Under the Hood – A Bad Marriage
A Bad Marriage
By The Warden
As fans of RPGs, we yearn to soak up as much as we can on the trade of design and publication in the hopes we too can one day produce our own addition to the market. Of course, in our dreams, our RPG is the one to change the world and be taught in high schools across the developed world. When experienced designers, artists, and publishers use their blogs to share the...
Under the Hood – License to Game
License to Game
By The Warden
We live in an exciting and terrifying time, depending on where you stand in the entertainment business. For the consumer, it’s incredibly exciting as innovation and an ever-growing open market allow companies, both large and small, to provide new forms of entertainment through different mediums. For the producer, be it a studio, publisher, or what have you, it’s...
Under the Hood – Rules Love a Gamemaster
Rules Love a Gamemaster
By The Warden
Today is GM’s Day, a dedication to the tireless slaving every person who runs a one-shot or campaign puts into our games while the rest of us carry on with our lives, waiting for the next game to take place so that we can screw with their delicate plans. As I review the events of the past week and consider which issue, update, or post warrants today’s latest...
Under the Hood – Independent and Proud
Independent and Proud
By The Warden
When I first sat down to craft this week’s edition of Under The Hood, the likely topic was the recently released Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Game… until I realized it was a little too likely. When I set out to write this column for RPC, my mission was to delve into the forgotten corners of the RPG industry and poke around at the mechanics and how they all come...
Under the Hood – The Butterfly Gender Effect
The Butterfly Gender Effect
By The Warden
Whoops! That’s the reaction I had when I found out about the little faux paus Wizards of the Coast made recently with one of their D&D Next polls when they included the option for the next game to include level limits based on race and stat restrictions according to gender. I never saw the poll when it first came out; my discovery came from the reaction...
Under the Hood – The Need for Attention
The Need for Attention
By The Warden
I’ve never been one for trends. To me, the latest website or service means another username and password for yet something else I might not use. When I received a link to Pinterest, I checked it out and moved on as I’ve never been one to share photos, let alone take them. (Being in front of a camera is not exactly my most comforting moment, even when I had...
Under the Hood – Picture Book Roleplaying
Picture Book Roleplaying
By The Warden
Slipping under the radar has been perhaps one of the most anticipated and equally undervalued release of the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Game from Margaret Weis Productions. Considering the healthy combination of superheroes, roleplaying, and Marvel Comics, I was expecting a huge gasp of anticipation (or at least bigger than what I’ve seen thus far) but there...
Under the Hood – Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3
Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3
By The Warden
Developing games is not a simple task, though it may seem so at first. As someone who’s been working on just one game alone for over a year, I can testify to this like a choir at church. What starts as a core mechanic shifts into a complex system put to the test when you present it to your table and the prized players with dice and cards in hand. It’s much...
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