Taking a Hit

This is another case of me throwing out some random thoughts on game design. Again, this time my thoughts are focused on rules mechanics in RPGs. Specifically, I’m thinking about hit points and weapon damage. Basically, my thought was this: What if your hit points actually told you how many times you could get hit?

GenCon 2012: Afterward

August 16-19 was the weekend of GenCon, the biggest non-video gaming convention in the nation. I wasn't able to be there, but I followed a lot of the news and new releases online through bloggers, podcasts, etc. The day before the convention I posted about what I was looking forward to. Now that I've had time to digest a lot of videos and blog posts on the GenCon, I'd like to share what I was excited to see and hear about.

[Building Character: Gamma World] Tajoezoa

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been posting these Building Character articles for the Gamma World roleplaying game. Today I’m posting my third and final article in the series. Creating player characters for Gamma World is very different from most RPGs, because a lot of the character traits are generated randomly. Therefore, these articles focus on how I took the randomly generated traits and tried to imagine a cohesive interpretation of what sort of character this might be. The game’s publisher, Wizards of the Coast, has a very handy online tool for quickly generating the random elements of a character. You can see it here. I used that to generate this characters’ traits.

Growing Out, Not Up

OK, so this article is basically me thinking out loud (or, out written, or whatever). From time to time my brain begins mauling over some random idea for a rules mechanic in a game. I don’t have a specific game I want to use this mechanic in, I just look at how a lot of games do something, and I start thinking about how I might do it differently if I were designing a game. These ideas may end up in some future game if I really like them. For that reason, I’m very interested in getting other people’s feedback on these. This isn’t just an opportunity for me to ramble or rant about the latest rules idea that wandered through my head; it’s also a chance to get feedback from you and to further refine the idea.

[Building Character: Gamma World] Voxva

This is my second in a short series of Building Character articles based on the Gamma Worldroleplaying game. You can read the first one here. Creating player characters for Gamma World is very different from most RPGs, because a lot of the character traits are generated randomly. Therefore, these articles focus on how I took the randomly generated traits and tried to imagine a cohesive interpretation of what sort of character this might be. The game’s publisher, Wizards of the Coast, has a very handy online tool for quickly generating the random elements of a character. You can see it here. I used that to generate this characters' traits.