Mmm… Portal. For those who have lived in a Siberian cave for the past decade, Portal is a game—a series of puzzles, really—that employ a first-person shooter engine but replace the usual bullet-shooting gun with a gun that shoots magical teleportation gates: shoot a blue gate onto a sufficiently large, flat surface, shoot an orange […]
Hardly time for a proper entry today, but that’s okay: the thing most worth sharing today is a scheme to get software pirates to turn themselves in. I’m not technically savvy enough to explore the implications, but I’m human enough for the news to curl my toes with delight. And damned if the pirates who […]
Hardly time for a proper entry today, but that’s okay: the thing most worth sharing today is a scheme to get software pirates to turn themselves in. I’m not technically savvy enough to explore the implications, but I’m human enough for the news to curl my toes with delight. And damned if the pirates who […]
Decisions, decisions. I still intend to explore FATE as a system for a short campaign wedged into an hiatus from our current one. Like many people, my first exposure to FATE was through Spirit of the Century; I didn’t like all of it, but there was a lot of good, red meat for players interested […]
Decisions, decisions. I still intend to explore FATE as a system for a short campaign wedged into an hiatus from our current one. Like many people, my first exposure to FATE was through Spirit of the Century; I didn’t like all of it, but there was a lot of good, red meat for players interested […]
We host a monthly Game Day: anywhere from four to ten friends get together and play board games. And tomorrow’s the day. We have a few new games to try, but I don’t know whether I have the heart. There’s a certain trade-off between rich strategic and/or tactical play on the one hand, and accessibility […]
Okay, okay, they got me. Sort of. As an April Fool’s Day joke, jayisgames.com, a website devoted to freeware and shareware web games, offered a review of the new turn-based strategy game Tic Tac Toe. Even small children recognize tic tac toe as far too ancient and far too simple to waste time on, except […]
Fishing for new RPG fodder, some designers have gone too far afield. Parsley Games are self-contained scenarios designed to mimic old-school text adventures like Zork. The players attempt to win the scenario with simple verb-object commands like “get lamp†and “go east†and “eat profiterole.†One poor player is stuck with the role of “parser;†[…]
Looking at the world through someone else’s eyes can teach surprising lessons. Even when the someone else is fictional. Even when it’s your own RPG character. Let’s see if I can get through this briefly. Our current campaign is another variation on the “secret magical war†so successfully pioneered by White Wolf. Everybody who’s anybody […]
We host a monthly Game Day: anywhere from four to ten friends get together and play board games. And tomorrow’s the day. We have a few new games to try, but I don’t know whether I have the heart. There’s a certain trade-off between rich strategic and/or tactical play on the one hand, and accessibility […]