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There techniques that apply to tabletop roleplaying encounter however they are not the same as techniques one use to make a interesting boardgame, or wargame scenario. Encounters are a situation occurring in a place at a particular time That likely but not always have one or more NPCs...

While interesting if you want to make the next Settlers of Catan, Munchkin, or Magic the Gathering, it not helpful with RPGs. The trick with RPG adventures is not loops, atoms, or any particular game mechanics. It imagining an interesting situation. Then making up the locales and personae...

My opinion is that it is the Internet that saved tabletop roleplaying. Video streaming as you mentioned, Virtual Tabletops, PDF/Print on Demand, and Social Media/Forums. This combination makes it far easier for people to find a community, support, and players for their favorite RPGs even ones...

Or perhaps what character the player wants to play is not as important as he thinks it is for that setting or genre. I had a player play a lunatic, in the comedic sense, barbarian character. He was put off by how the players and NPCs of my campaign treated him as ... a lunatic. It wasn't a...

The point of RPGs in my view are to play a character interacting with a setting in an imagined setting with the actions adjudicated by a human referee. The rules should reflect how the setting works. Now different settings can be variations of a given genre or sub-genre (like Swords & Sorcery...

The problem is that most people then and now tend to treat RPGs more as a game where the rules are hard and fast. So what is not in the rules is forbidden. Now obviously this contradicts the central premise of RPGs where the point is to be a character interacting with an imagined setting. So...

OD&D has thieves, just steal something and you are a thief. It may seem like sarcasm but think about it, OD&D character before Greyhawk were stealing, stealthing, picking pockets, and and opening locks, just like they were climbing, jumping, bending bars, etc. However rather than have a class...

In general you put a paragraph some where that explains in plain English what is open content and what is not. In practice there are two extremes. The first is to just say the entire document except for the art and certain trademarks are open content. The second is to say something like this...

I think this application will get crushed by Virtual Tabletop which already has a following, dozens of modules for RPGs and boardgames, a 3D virtual environment, and works quite smoothly. http://store.steampowered.com/app/286160/ Oh and it has the killer feature.... You can toss the table if...

Yes but.. there are some general traits, not many but they are there. The first is that the core is about playing, promoting, and playing classic editions of D&D. Yes other games are part of the OSR and yes there is a larger old school renaissance going on that encompasses RPGs made before 1990...

Sorry but that doesn't wash. The fact they decided on a brand strategy is not perninant to the design they chose for a new addition. If it was that insignificant then they were fools in investing any R&D dollars and and just used 3.5 which they already owned and do the new adventures using that...

Aside from the fact Mearls said that the OSR was an influence (among other things), there actually a very good reason, to differentiate D&D 5e from Pathfinder. Wizards could have made 5e a 3.75 and try to go head to head with Paizo. But they decided they needed to do something different and one...

Unlike other RPGs the doesn't need a single company to be a mid-tier publisher however like Joseph Block pointed out we do indeed have several mid-tier companies as part of the OSR. The default for RPGs is to kit-bash so it enough that we have a bunch of publishers targeting a family of...

I appreciate your response but right here in this paragraph shows that you are missing the point of the Old School Primer. Now understand I am not saying you should like it any better as it does have a snarky attitude towards modern gaming. The point you are missing it not meant to be a...

I feel that being influential and getting new material made are two different outcomes. The former is a kin to a random dice roll either it happens or doesn't and you really can't "make" it happen as it is ultimately a question of taste which is fickle. The best you can do is to make sure what...

Celebrim Circa 1980 Hex and Counter were in the midst of a boom as big a tabletop roleplaying as you correctly pointed out it collapsed since. In my opinion it got hit harder than tabletop roleplaying by the changes in the market and technology. However today it is far from dead. Again thanks...

"The OSR wasn't about "rapid, constant improvement in the quality of rules" but rather what rules they could remove to mimic the feel of earlier editions. The OSR ended up looking more backward than forward." So if you are playing chess, publishing chess, and promoting chess you are looking...

Perhaps they deliberately don't consider the needs of Organized Play in published adventures. In general the constraints of organized play make for poor products for traditional campaigns. Organized play should have their own line of support designed and oriented to the needs, and constraints...

I am wondering if this in some type of "shared" setting. I.E. a) you have a on-line character. b) you obtain a list of available adventures c) you go on the adventure with friends or random group of players d) the adventure rewards stay with your on-line character. In this case it sounds...