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I think you misunderstand. Almost all of my standalone games are models of some (possibly fictional) situation, whereas a great many modern board games (such as many Euros) are abstract (model of nothing) even if a story is tacked on. Modeling is essential. But if you only have story, you don't...

My title was "Spelljammer's Game Design", but the question as title is better for eliciting comments. I have drafted another piece to explain the major changes I made in my game (not enough room for more in 600 words). Many of these comments talk about story elements/setting, few about...

I enjoyed playing Spelljammer in conjunction with the 1e D&D rules back in the day - I'm a naval guy at heart. For those who don't remember, it's FRPG in outer space, with different physics and magical spaceships that often resemble creatures such as sharks or wasps, for 7th-13th level. (There...

I recently talked with a gamer who's often full of unusual, and sometimes impractical, ideas. He asked me about the difficulties of running a medieval-style low-magic D&D campaign. Lord of the Rings had to come up in the conversation, because it's the most well-known low magic fantasy setting in...

My wife and I recently began watching the HBO series Game of Thrones (based on George R. R. Martin's books) from the start. I had read the books, neither of us had seen any of the series. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" series (to give it its proper name) is very different from Tolkien's...

Interesting analysis, and the obvious answer is “It Depends”. Virtually all of us early D&Ders were wargamers. So of course it focused more on combat than anything else. I have always used a grid for maneuver and spatial relationships, which are the heart of warfare. But wargames are a Baby...

Video game designers use two terms worth understanding for all game designers and adventure designers, "atoms" and "loops". Some time ago I talked about Loops, this time it's about Atoms. Why do we care about Atoms? Adventure design is a subset of game design, and I'd expect most of the GM's...

"In his Philosophical Investigations,[4] Wittgenstein demonstrated that the elements of games, such as play, rules, and competition, all fail to adequately define what games are. Wittgenstein concluded that people apply the term game to a range of disparate human activities that bear to one...

DRF - I write to educate/illuminate/enlighten, not necessarily to generate a discussion. Sometimes discussion happens, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes because English is easily misunderstood, and I am not perfect. Hussar, someone could write a book about puzzles vs games. I've written...

Most people know the expression "can't see the forest for the trees," that is, you get lost in details and fail to see the big picture. In game (and level/adventure) design it's usually the big picture that counts, for players. Yet many designers, even experienced designers, sometimes get bogged...

According to former AH employees, among them Don Greenwood, at a get-together at WBC a few years ago, Hasbro asked to buy Diplomacy, and was told they'd have to buy the entire company. Rex Martin, formerly of the General magazine IIRC, wrote a doctoral dissertation showing that wargames are a...

When someone says a game is "fun," you probably don’t really know what they mean, and maybe they don’t, either. Until you recognize that what's fun for you isn't necessarily fun for every game player, you cannot be a good GM. It’s obvious that what’s fun to a serious Chess player is not the...

Back when Dungeons & Dragons was new, the designers and most of the players were wargamers. Typical adventures involved threats to the player character's lives and possessions - their money and magic items. As the hobby has grown, more of the participants are not wargamers, and many campaigns...

In puzzles such as chess (and any other so-called "game" that is two player and perfect information), you can assume your opponent is a perfect player, and play accordingly. If the opponent is not perfect, you'll gain. This is maximizing your minimum gain, which is the basis of the...

Yes, there are many ways to introduce uncertainty in games. I've had a Stratego-like game published, and a block game on preorder at Worthington Publishing, for example. I didn't say you cannot introduce uncertainty into commercial games, I said that many hard-core gamers want to feel that...

As pointed out by DerekSTheRed, there's nothing inherent in magic that doesn't allow mass production. It's just not the norm, because we want and expect magic in stories and games to be Mysterious, not mundane. Eltab: Yes, war (as opposed to many wargames) is dominated by uncertainty: "War...

If you run a big RPG campaign, with a lot happening other than the adventures of the characters, often there will be a war on. I had to create a list of fundamental patterns of warfare for an online class I'm teaching, and thought the list might benefit GMs. One side is destined to win the...

This bottom-up method, as opposed to the more common top-down, certainly raises some interesting questions. At the other extreme is Jeffro's method of setting, that you only need to know about six things to get the game going.

Given that I treat D&D as a game, not a story (I have a story in the game, the game doesn't have a story it imposes on me), there is rarely a conflict between my character's motivations and traits and the game. My character is me, though it may be a me that's different from the real-world me...

Role-playing has existed for a century, if not longer. Some role-playing exercises (for education or business) are games with active human opposition, others are puzzles. You play a "role" even in Monopoly, and in many other board games, especially wargames ("you are the commander" said Avalon...