Recent content by lewpuls

Picture courtesy of Pixabay. A Change of Space When I write a Worlds of Design column about worldbuilding I usually think in terms of fantasy rather than science fiction. Today I have a sci-fi topic, how “space navies” are likely to work. In this discussion I assume a sci-fi setting is the...

Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Humans are generally positioned as the baseline to which other species are compared, no doubt because humans are playing the game. Dungeons & Dragons famously centered humans as the “main” species lest the game turn into less fantasy medieval and more abstract...

Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Crowns in Crisis As you GM more and more adventures, it may become harder to find an unusual reason for player characters to go adventuring. There’s a lot of potential in "succession dramas" for adventure hooks, even if the adventurers are not amongst the possible...

The answer is likely predicated on if you came to Tolkien before you came to FRPGs. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. I read the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) when I was in my late teens, about seven years before original Dungeons & Dragons was released. (The Hobbit came later for me.) This is long...

Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Simplify, Don’t Add When I'm referencing "simple games" I'm specifically discussing games that are simple, but have some depth to them. I prefer to design simple games - games that are fundamentally simple in rules, though not in strategies. That said, simple...

Now that we’ve established the basics of simplifying a game, let’s work through how to make a game simple. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. The Simplification Checklist Simplicity in games consists of several tenets, which we’ll discuss in order. Remove trivial decisions: Trivial doesn’t mean...

Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Does anyone stick with a game anymore? As games have proliferated and entertainment options have become more numerous, it’s increasingly hard to get an audience to truly dedicate their time and effort to the game. This is important, because games rely on people...

Mercenary units were common in the pre-gunpowder era, and we hear their stories in some modern science fiction. Wouldn’t they show up in RPGs? Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Meet Your Merc Mercenary companies usually originated with troops from a specific region, but recruiting was typically a...

The longer the campaign, the more likely PCs become military strategists. Here’s the basics. Picture by RGodforest - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, File:Fire and movement.svg - Wikimedia Commons Welcome to the Big Leagues As an RPG campaign gets longer and longer, characters tend to become important...

Are there too many magic items in your campaign? Picture courtesy of Pixabay. “…and a +5 Sword” The nature of fantasy adventure gaming, as set out by the original Dungeons & Dragons, is that the collection of treasure meant acquiring magic items. In earlier versions of D&D, magic items were...

This isn’t exactly an idle discussion, as I’m currently writing an RPG design book, likely but not certainly to be published (next year) by the same company that published my Game Design book in 2012. (Why not certain? Size of market, among other things.) Their number one market is libraries, so...

Default setting. Not default game methods. Two very different things. "Baseline Assumptions of Fantasy RPGs" https://www.enworld.org/threads/worlds-of-design-baseline-assumptions-of-fantasy-rpgs.676258/ Contrast with science fiction: "Is there a default sci-fi setting"...

Nitpick: there were many fantasy games (though not RPGs) before D&D, and many, many fantasy stories, that took the default. Don't think D&D was the "beginning of everything", it was not.

My title was What would you expect in a Role-playing Game Design book?" You're right, the changed title is misleading. I do not control the title (or anything else, actually, editors do edit). The subtitle is clear. And if you actually read the article, isn't the intent clear despite the...

After the first paragraph (removed), this appears to be a discussion of what to put in a role-playing game. But the discussion is what to put in a book about designing role-playing games, which is quite a different thing. I agree that ToC, index, headers are important. An author does not...