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By Thistle, on September 2nd, 2010
‘The Troll Test’ is a scenario or ‘dungeon’ design challenge, which asks GMs, level designers and design gamers to come up with an adventure under certain restrictions. The basic idea is to take away the capacity to use monsters’ skills to provide variety and novelty. This forces the designer to find alternative approaches [...]
By Thistle, on August 27th, 2010
A full range of RPG gameplay options can include stealth, investigation, mystery, construction, characterisation, planning, intrigue and all manner of on-going challenges, missions and quests. These options, (and the list is far from exhaustive), open up opportunities for a wide variety of open-ended tabletop roleplaying and design gaming. At the same time, sooner [...]
By Thistle, on July 23rd, 2010
After collecting a bit of information from and about Kingdom of Adventure, we’re confident we’ve a few suggestions that can help to grow the business without jeopardising the existing customer base. They’re offered informally and presented as ‘zero cost’ options, so it’s up to the owner, or any other FLGS owner, to make [...]
By Thistle, on July 20th, 2010
An interesting email arrived from Favourite Local Game Store (FLGS) Kingdom of Adventure, which is based in the Scottish town of Kirkcaldy. The store’s owner runs a successful ‘comics, RPGs and wargames’ model that’s ideally suited to delivering a loyal customer base.
A quick look at the website, (and related [...]
By Thistle, on June 23rd, 2010
The recent “Tabletop RPGs: Where Did All The Girls Go?” post drew a few remarks over at RPG forum EN World. We’d been invited to comment on ways to encourage more girls to take part in tabletop RPGs. However, our opinion, (which suggested publishers, communities and players might want to review how they [...]
By Thistle, on May 13th, 2010
Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are shared social games that use digital media and social networking to involve players in collaborative plot development and problem solving.
The designers aka Puppetmasters behind ‘modern ARGs’ typically use Internet and handheld technologies, amongst others, to shape, seed and elaborate a task-focused social narrative set in the [...]
By Thistle, on April 22nd, 2010
The BBC report on further evidence that Brain Training software is of very limited value is here. This may sound like bad news for encouraging the use of games in homes, schools and libraries. It is to some extent, because the headlines may be remembered and held up as evidence against any use [...]
By Thistle, on April 1st, 2010
A few more sites which can help with preparing tabletop RPG settings and scenarios have turned up recently.
Prism
Prism is a Mozilla development project which, “lets users split Web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop.” That doesn’t seem to have much to do with putting together [...]
By Thistle, on March 22nd, 2010
Recent postings at tabletop RPG forums ENWorld and RPG.net have talked about how to make better commercially published RPG scenarios and modules. Most of the replies on the topic have either discussed cosmetic changes to existing AD&D module formats or offered general requests for greater emphasis on roleplaying over combat.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, [...]
By Thistle, on February 25th, 2010
The Settlers of Catan boardgame is an excellent example of a tabletop game that allows players to use a deceptively straightforward rule set to enjoy a great variety of gameplay. Players may start the game with relatively few resources but those who think ahead, and adapt to changing circumstances, soon create plenty of [...]
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