No this isn’t a Sex in the City review!
Running on the heels of what kind of gamer are you - are you a solo gamer? We had some mail last week asking about LQ for solo play. Truth is, we have thought about it. The problem is it is very difficult to find a happy medium. LQ is designed to be a dynamic system where anything can happen and the system can give you the CoS (chance of success). With solo play, you either write for what you think is every contingency, or you dumb it down to three choices. So you either waste boat loads of time writing or you ruin the original intent of the game. OK, so I’m being WAY overly dramatic.
Truth is - I think that in today’s gaming world, there may be a nitch for solo play, even though we would be competing strongly against the high graphics computer games. Any feed back? As always, we’ll react to what we think our customers want!
Friday, June 25, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
What kind of gamer are you?
We run into a lot of different kinds of gamers. Some love the types of things we talk about: cultures, cuisine, trade goods. Others have no idea why anyone would care what happened outside of an actual battle. Let’s give you a little insight into the Board Enterprises way of looking at RPGs: We think they are role-playing games! We think that when you make a decision you shouldn’t rely on your overly mathematical sense of the rules, but in what makes sense for your character. Honestly, we’re not into doing voices and acting out everything that happens, though we know people who go for that kind of thing.
By the way - here’s how you know you’re role-playing and not acting like yourself: Imagine you’re walking into a biker bar where everyone is wearing red bandannas, and you put a blue bandanna around your head. Can you imagine doing that? If you can, you’re likely dead, so I guess you’re not reading this. OK - Different. You and your friends have entered an old abandoned house on a dare. They all say, “You go first”, and you do, without thinking, without trying to convince someone else to, you just go. Your characters do this kind of stuff all the time. No sane person does this. That’s how you know that the actions you choose for your characters are different than the actions you choose for yourself, thus, you are role-playing.
So - Why does this matter? Going back to the famous discussion I had with a magazine editor - I submitted an article in which I described the use of magical healing outside of combat - how would it affect the culture and the urban environment? There was also a thing in there about the use of age altering (youth) magic and other magic used simply for the purposes of beauty. The article even had stats on the modern health care and beauty industries. The editor was convinced that this was some sort of April Fools article. No one could possibly care what happened with magical healing outside of combat he insisted. Well, those of us who role-play - we care. The magazine didn’t last a year, but we’re still here. Maybe that proves something.
By the way - here’s how you know you’re role-playing and not acting like yourself: Imagine you’re walking into a biker bar where everyone is wearing red bandannas, and you put a blue bandanna around your head. Can you imagine doing that? If you can, you’re likely dead, so I guess you’re not reading this. OK - Different. You and your friends have entered an old abandoned house on a dare. They all say, “You go first”, and you do, without thinking, without trying to convince someone else to, you just go. Your characters do this kind of stuff all the time. No sane person does this. That’s how you know that the actions you choose for your characters are different than the actions you choose for yourself, thus, you are role-playing.
So - Why does this matter? Going back to the famous discussion I had with a magazine editor - I submitted an article in which I described the use of magical healing outside of combat - how would it affect the culture and the urban environment? There was also a thing in there about the use of age altering (youth) magic and other magic used simply for the purposes of beauty. The article even had stats on the modern health care and beauty industries. The editor was convinced that this was some sort of April Fools article. No one could possibly care what happened with magical healing outside of combat he insisted. Well, those of us who role-play - we care. The magazine didn’t last a year, but we’re still here. Maybe that proves something.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Hundreds of 100s
At risk of appearing obsessed with numbers: (OK - I am, especially when they represent cash) Expect the Baker’s Dozen supplements to be interspersed among some 100s. Likely first up is 100 Towns. Now we’ve seen supplements that are quite literally 100 names of communities, and they take up one page. That’s not what these are. These are going to be 100 _____s with brief descriptions. Right now the 100 towns book is over twenty pages long, but admittedly, the chart format leaves a lot of white on the page.
Anyway - We asked you what you would want a Baker’s Dozen of, so - Anything you’d like to see 100 of? Towns is definitely first, but we’re eyeing daggers and swords to come soon, likely still this year. Our goal is to put out things you want to see, so we’re more than willing to listen.
As an update, here is legitimately what I think you will see available for sale this year. For us, this is a huge list:
100 Towns, Baker’s Dozen Tribes, Book of Wishes (Yep - first draft of formatting is completed), 100 Daggers (or Swords)
Possibles: The core of City of Rhum (kind of the base on which you can hang the other supplements), Coins of the Road - the follow up to Grain Into Gold that will supply trade goods (more later), d1000 - Mercenary’s Greed (a huge random chart for determining loot carried by the bad guys, including ways to alter it so even d1000 will never get stale), and Urban Developments - a method for creating communities that works exactly the way Grain Into Gold created economies.
On Coins of the Road - This thing has been started and restarted about seven times. The issue keeps being that it is too {expletive deleted} huge. We’ve had to pull out all the discussion on gemstones and make Facets. We’ve had to pull out all the discussions of brand name goods (that relate directly to Fletnern). We’ve had to pull out all the magical items. We’ve had to pull out 90% of the write-ups on the merchant houses and cartels (again mostly Fletnern related). We’ve pulled out the travel time information that was also specific to Fletnern. End result - It’s coming. It will specifically be about “standard” trade goods, with few references to Fletnern and very few rule comments.
We seldom talk only about our products, so tune in next week for something more in line with the flavor of this blog!
Anyway - We asked you what you would want a Baker’s Dozen of, so - Anything you’d like to see 100 of? Towns is definitely first, but we’re eyeing daggers and swords to come soon, likely still this year. Our goal is to put out things you want to see, so we’re more than willing to listen.
As an update, here is legitimately what I think you will see available for sale this year. For us, this is a huge list:
100 Towns, Baker’s Dozen Tribes, Book of Wishes (Yep - first draft of formatting is completed), 100 Daggers (or Swords)
Possibles: The core of City of Rhum (kind of the base on which you can hang the other supplements), Coins of the Road - the follow up to Grain Into Gold that will supply trade goods (more later), d1000 - Mercenary’s Greed (a huge random chart for determining loot carried by the bad guys, including ways to alter it so even d1000 will never get stale), and Urban Developments - a method for creating communities that works exactly the way Grain Into Gold created economies.
On Coins of the Road - This thing has been started and restarted about seven times. The issue keeps being that it is too {expletive deleted} huge. We’ve had to pull out all the discussion on gemstones and make Facets. We’ve had to pull out all the discussions of brand name goods (that relate directly to Fletnern). We’ve had to pull out all the magical items. We’ve had to pull out 90% of the write-ups on the merchant houses and cartels (again mostly Fletnern related). We’ve pulled out the travel time information that was also specific to Fletnern. End result - It’s coming. It will specifically be about “standard” trade goods, with few references to Fletnern and very few rule comments.
We seldom talk only about our products, so tune in next week for something more in line with the flavor of this blog!
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