One of my favorite items from a past tabletop game was the Ring of the Darkhidden. The ring made my character invisible in total darkness. It sounds silly, especially given that lighting a match cancels out the ability, but since the character specialized in fighting skulking-see-in-the-dark monsters, it was actually really useful. I remember ( Read more... )

I have taken some strange lessons away from RPG campaigns. An update of a previous post.

Visions: Diamonds aren’t a girl’s best friend; silver bullets are.

Innocence Proves Nothing: Alien artifacts remain a fun way to lose an arm.

Return to Melanoc: Politicians remain less trustworthy than liches.

Life in the Donut: If at first you don’t ( Read more... )

Random larp mechanic rules I found in a random text file on my computer. Since it was last year, I don't remember why I wrote them down. Some of them are variations of things I've heard in panels, but the rest I think I came up with.
( Random )

To Be Continued, the campaign larp I worked on, ended last weekend with three final days: a plot-light prom, final session, and wrap party. It was the first larp I ever GMed or wrote, and I think I underestimated how much work it was going to be. I wrote more than 190 thousand words for it, and two of the GMs, darkoni42 and staystrong62805, wrote more than I did.

( More babbling on TBC... )

I was woken up early this morning by the town of Waltham calling to tell us to stay in our homes until the bombing suspect is apprehended. The Fitchburg line is shut down until further notice. Apparently a lot happened during the night ( Read more... )

The protagonists of the last three things you read/watched/played are the members of your zombie apocalypse team. How screwed are you?

1. Miles Vorkosigan (Komarr)

Miles has a great deal of military experience and is a genius. If he could bring plasma arcs and needle grenades, I don't see any problem. Unarmed and alone, I still think he is a match ( Read more... )

I have taken some strange lessons away from RPG campaigns:

In the West: Shooting an ally in the leg to prevent her from doing something stupid is not a sound plan.

Welcome to Infinity: When providing the means to procure illegal hooch for an ally, make sure he signs a waiver.

Artifacts and Kalids: Changing your species to hook up is highly immoral and ( Read more... )

Playing a naive and honest Minbari this campaign has reminded me that I play a lot of liars. They aren't all bad people, but lies and secrets are a major part of who they are. Certain genres seem to almost require this. World of Darkness requires monsters to pretend to be people to avoid mobs with torches and pitchforks and assault rifles. Infinite ( Read more... )

From an old talk on game design, Raph Koster mentioned that Robert Cialdini identified six strong persuasive characteristics in humans:

1. We like people who give us gifts.
2. We hate changing our minds
3. We imitate those like us.
4. We are suckers for those we like
5. We trust apparent authority.
6. We overvalue rare things.

In The Gift of ( Read more... )

That is a fun site that analyzes which author you write like ( Read more... )