I haven’t DMed in a while, but I still get on creative kicks and make stuff for the settings I have saved, adding ever more things to their Google Docs folders as the months tick by, because I’m an obsessive simulationist. When I have an idea for a faction or for a type of magic, I fire up the online SRDs and start…

They said last year that the event has probably plateaued, and they aren’t going to make a big deal if a year goes by where they don’t break their record, since “slightly less than last year” is still quite a lot of donations gathered. It makes sense to be focused on all the positive vibes they send out into the…

It still makes me smile that this game had the audacity to switch genres midway through the series. “I know you’ve been driving for the entire series up to this point, but the very first upgrade you get is the ability to run faster than any car! Surprise, it’s a superhero game now!”

I agree on how the smaller size of Arkham Asylum worked to its benefit. The linear nature of it meant that it had the best story of the whole series. It kept up its momentum the whole time, and really drew me in to the “one bad night in the life of Batman” plot.

I do love how the guild designs, for the most part, codified trends that already existed, and gave them their own identity. In 2005, one of my most cherished memories was when I figured out, “Hey, the Pestilence will never go away, because my Death Speakers have protection from it! These wretched souls have the sacred…

This is only the third week since I caught the Magic bug again and felt the desire to start writing about it, so it’s not much of a marathon read, but sure: Part One and Part Two.

Last time, I talked about a set that used Magic: the Gathering’s five-color structure as the basis for its storytelling and identity. This week I’d like to look at another set that did a similar thing, to much greater success.

The first thing that comes to mind was finding a secret room in Duke Nukem 3D with the corpse of the space marine from Doom. They redrew the sprite (based off a specific frame of the character’s death animation), and Duke’s quip of “That’s one doomed space marine,” doesn’t violate any copyrights either, but it was…

By “resentment over railroading,” I meant that I had just spitballed two story sections that were disguised as gameplay. The intent there is to make the players sweat, to provide a build and release of tension, but if it comes across as clearly artificial, there’s a risk the players will feel powerless and without…

The world going darkside for a few moments is a fantastic idea. It happens right after a dungeon’s been finished, meaning it’s the inciting incident for the next chapter of this story, it fulfills the rule of “show, don’t tell,” since the players witness this for themselves (in gameplay terms) instead of merely being…

Ah, right you are. I had never heard of that spinoff game. Neat.

That funhouse idea seems resonant: Trickery manifested by having the structure filled with painful traps, and a mocking villain’s spiteful laugh echoing throughout every time you stumble into one.

I’ve never played any other game in the series than Seiken Densetsu 3, but perhaps I should since that game is a masterpiece. Thank heavens for that emulated fan translation. Without it, non-japanese people like me would never have had the opportunity to play it.

As cultists of this dead shadow god, are the bosses - empowered by all these different graces - using twisted versions of them as a power source? Like, did the Light dungeon manifest its “tainted by Shadow”-ness by being in eternal twilight, or greyscale? The themes of these dungeons seem intriguing, but you’ve…

I had an experience similarly to Chum Joely: for a time, I would frequently drink myself into a stupor while playing Heroes of the Storm. While, objectively, it probably dulled my reflexes and impaired my ability to play, I remember at the time feeling this zen state, where repetition had ingrained into my mind the…

The Deadlands tabletop RPG uses die rolls to resolve actions, like most games of this type do, but it also uses a deck of cards (including jokers) as a randomizer. It’s used to determine turn order, for example. I’ve never played as a spellcaster, but I’ve been told that casting uses a mechanic of “Draw X cards, and…

Brutal Legend is such a bittersweet game. I’m in love with every aspect of it except the gameplay. I love the art design, the writing, the soundtrack, but playing it was always kind of a chore I willingly undertook in order to see what new places and things there would be to experience.

A specific, developing narrative? Well, as Vyolynce mentioned, there has indeed been long-form storytelling in the game (the Weatherlight saga, the adventures of the Gatewatch), but my post is specifically about how the game’s release schedule forces it to start over and tell a new story every year.

Ah, the irony of the most elite forces of a world running into an achilles’ heel that they didn’t even know they had. Like Naya learning what a Terminate is, or Esper learning what a Shatter or a Naturalize is. Such pathos.

One of the keys to the longevity of Magic: The Gathering is that it can tell so many stories. The fundamentals of the fantasy battle the card game depicts may stay the same, but the context of the conflict - who is fighting, where, over what - is different every time. One year the players are depicted as agents of the…