Whether it’s Lankhmar or Camorr, San Angeles or Mega-City One, even Ankh-Morpork, the city has long been a favorite setting for genre fiction. It’s a comfortable bridge between our own urban lives and the sometimes alien worlds of fantasy and science fiction: sure, everybody carries fencing swords, have ears of various magnitudes of pointiness, ( Read more... )

I sat down with Mitch Morris and Mike Bonet, of the Ninjas Vs Pirates podcast. We talked about the Smallville RPG, primarily from a design standpoint. We got down to the nitty-gritty on how and why the game was designed the way it was, and chatted a bit about my other design work, as well. It’s a smartly-edited, action-packed forty minutes of ( Read more... )

Over on his blog, Rob Donoghue was saying, tangentially:
When a player buys a power or skill at a high level (like a fighting skill), he is communicating one of two contradictory messages. The first is “I am really interested in this thing, and I want to really get pushed hard within it” and the second is “I want to be good enough at this that I ( Read more... )