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Is frequently rolling lots of dice good design for an RPG? Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Board vs. Role-Playing Games In my opinion, the less dice the better. Keeping the game’s mechanics simple is good for everyone, players and GM and observers. My design motto is “a designer knows he has...

Game designers: You don't need bucketsful of dice in your RPG rules! Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Please Note: I'm not against dice themselves. I’m not saying that using dice is bad in game design. It depends on what you want to achieve. If you want a game rather than a puzzle, some kind of...

For some yes, for others, no. Bit those far into fiction often don't have to worry about tactics, because they have "plot armor".

What is a game designer’s objective? Yes, to design a game (determine how it works, and specify the rules), but what is that game supposed to actually DO for the players? Picture courtesy of Pixabay. The Basics of Game Design Paraphrased from my book Game Design (McFarland 2012): That’s my...

In fantasy RPGs where cooperation is critical and death is a real threat, these tactics might save your character’s life. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. This advice is for games where there is a real chance that a character might die or be seriously injured. That’s true in some versions of...

If you’ve played tabletop RPGs long enough, you’ve probably been in an adventure where your party got lost. Yet it’s much less likely to happen nowadays. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. If you’ve played tabletop RPGs long enough, you’ve probably been in an adventure where your party got lost, or...

As a board game designer, I like to design games that cause people to come up with their own objectives, even though the game has a set of victory conditions. But RPGs (or at least, something with an avatar) are best at this.

We previously covered why training systems were abandoned in D&D. Here's what replaced it. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Congratulations on Advancing, Pay Up! I’ve always thought one of the worst mistakes in AD&D (not repeated in later editions) was the requirement that when you reach enough...

In AD&D, there was a training requirement to advancement that didn’t reflect how people actually learn. In this column I’ll talk about how the real world works in this context. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. To Train or Not to Train? One of the more notable abandoned rules in RPGs is the...

There are several Golden Rules, really. These are my three for role-playing games. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. The topic today isn’t the one people are familiar with from religion and philosophy: treat people as well as you yourself want to be treated. That Golden Rule is present in some...

Years ago I devised a framework that can be applied to “all” games, to help aspiring designers of board and card games. Let’s see how it applies to RPGs. Article courtesy of Pixabay. Years ago I devised a framework that can be applied to “all” games, to help aspiring designers of board and...

For those who prefer "realistic" numbers in RPGs: Inflated numbers of combatants for battles litter history books, derived from wildly inaccurate contemporary histories. We can do much better in figuring out actual numbers. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Some GMs don't care about practical...

As a big fan of the old Spelljammer, I really wanted to like the new 5e version. But it doesn’t fix some of the problems of the old version. What Sets Spelljammer Apart Beth Rimmels wrote a thorough review of the new Spelljammer product ($44.93 including tax, free shipping, from Amazon; list...

Adaptations of any fiction from one medium to another tend to suffer from unnecessary changes, including tabletop role-playing games. Unfortunately, what’s necessary and unnecessary is often a matter of opinion. Picture courtesy of Unsplash The Curious Case of Artemis Fowl When the Artemis...

Like sports fans, RPGers want consistency of GMs rulings. This is both in the “meta” mode, what characters do aside from adventures, and adventures mode. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Call It Consistently! Watching the NBA finals a few years ago, I often heard the plea of players and...

A few years ago for an online course about strategic wargame design I devised a list of about a dozen dichotomies between warfare and games. The paradox of wargames is that warfare and games are polar opposites! After writing some 150 “Worlds of Design” columns I decided to do the same for RPGs...

Moderns are accustomed to cheap and readily available maps that show distance as well as road connectivity. That kind of map is rarely going to exist in a low technology/Medieval setting. Two views of the same geospatial relationships (part of the Britannia game map) Distance vs. Time Our...

Last time I talked about the nature of armies. Let’s discuss particular types of armies and how they might interact. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Last time I talked about the nature of armies, now I'm going to discuss particular types of armies. and how they might interact: The Noble's...

If you’re building a full-scale world for your campaign, that will likely involve armies. Let’s discuss what happens in the real world so that you can avoid straining the disbelief of your players. There are lots of different kinds of armies. This column and next, I'm going to talk about some...

Most RPG settings have some form of godhood. Yet there are some age-old questions that come into play as you create religions. By Unknown author - Os Deuses Egípcios – IMAGICK, CC BY-SA 4.0, File:Deuses Egipcios.png - Wikimedia Commons Gods and “hokey religions” (to quote Han Solo in Star...