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Video game designers use two terms worth understanding for all game and adventure designers, "atoms" and "loops". This time I'll talk about loops. "In Halo 1, there was maybe 30 seconds of fun that happened over and over and over and over again. And so, if you can get 30 seconds of fun, you...

Monopoly: People rarely actually remember *Monopoly* fondly, they remember doing something together with their family (often at holidays) when they were kids, where Monopoly happened to be what they were doing. It's the active togetherness, not the game, that counts. I have often discussed this...

"Lifestyle games," games that are hobbies in themselves for players who rarely play anything else, are almost always great games: Diplomacy, Bridge, Chess, Magic: the Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons. But not all great games become lifestyle games. What makes a game "great"? Not good, not a...

Shidaku, there's a big difference between "harder" and "let's kill some people" in old D&D. I never used nor played in those "meat-grinder" modules. I don't believe in human sacrifice. The problem isn't whether combat is nasty or nice, it's more practical: if the players lose at anything like...

There are two different extremes in arranging fights. One is like war and the other is like a sporting event. Sporting events are supposed to be fair contests between roughly equal forces. On the other hand, war is the epitome of unfair competition. Jeffro Johnson introduced me to this...

I was reading about the level cap increasing from 60 to 70 in an online game, with many new possibilities/abilities. "How do people keep track of so many abilities at such high levels?" I thought. Then I realized yet another reason why I prefer simple games: "A designer knows he has achieved...

If you're going to design games, or GM RPGs, it helps to understand a little bit about what makes games enjoyable. Game publishers often say in their guidelines for designers "game must be fun," but I've always found this to be useless because fun means different things to different people...

Cloning In video games, cloning (making mirror copies) is a serious problem, and has led to lawsuits. I don't think we have much of it in tabletop games, though there are cases of parallel development that leave two games much alike.

Some people have identified an attitude nowadays called "the cult of the new". Something is necessarily better because it's new, in this view. New is often equated with "innovative", rightly or wrongly (I think wrongly). Certainly, makers of general-market retail products seem to think "new"...

Why is pure innovation regarded as important in games and adventures, even as it turns out that it hardly ever happens? People like to be surprised when they play games, and some of the most famous game designers such as Shigeru Miyamoto (Mario, Zelda, etc.) look for ways to surprise players. A...

Thanks This is a good substitute for reading the books, gives some idea of the context in connection with all stories Thanks for the reference.

An RPG GM has many of the same tasks or duties as a game designer. Even though what I’m saying today can be taken as game design advice, it also applies to the GM as he/she creates an adventure, even as they prepare to run an adventure created by someone else. "A hero ventures forth from the...

Thank you for the interesting comments. Evidently I have failed to communicate (I think I cut out part of a sentence to lower the word count), which would be a cardinal sin for a tactical group. We selected spells collectively rather than simply assume a cleric was a healer, for example. (Yes, I...

The blessing for FLGS is that they sell physical products, not "digital" (electronic) products such as video games. Digital tends to race to zero pricing, for a variety of reasons. For example, most mobile video games are free-to-play. Perhaps a reason for the less-than-desirable atmosphere one...

Thanks for the sometimes-waggish comments. "Planning" doesn't mean you have to have just one plan; you can have a Plan B, C, and so on as backups, and still be a planner. About the "neurotic sort of 'planner' who is only happy when planning", S'mon, that may be a reflection of one of the...

I submitted them for White Dwarf. Ian asked if they could be used for the FF instead. I agreed. I don't recall them appearing in WD at any point. Lew Pulsipher

Perhaps I should explicitly state the obvious: my articles here are descriptive, not prescriptive. I can't care how you run or play your game (unless I'm playing!). prosfilaes, I just reread the Lensman series. Yes, it's apocalyptic, yet so much of it is individual adventures, quite a...

As a recent addition to Gainesville, FL, I can name several game cons in Florida, but none have much in the way of RPGs. I don't play games at conventions, I go to talk with people, but GenCon has become a chore. (Anyway, I call it a story convention, not a game convention, because such a large...

It's easy for fans of any activity to make fun of any such discussion, because it's practically impossible to "prove" such things. Consider how many people refused to accept the plethora of proofs that smoking was bad for you. They said it hadn't been proved. Some still do. And that's about...

It's a common reaction of younger people to claim that any suggestion that changes in life have occurred in ways that "don't sound good" is simply an old person reacting to/hating on the young. I've even encountered people who believe there are no generational differences, despite all the...