Previous Topics

11/11/2001 Matt Gwinn: Training the GM
I played a hodgepodge Palladium game yesterday with an inexperienced GM and I'd like some input. Let me start by giving you a run down on how the game played.…
In Actual Play
Participants: Matt Gwinn, Bankuei, Ben Morgan, Le Joueur, Ron Edwards, Mike Holmes.

11/11/2001 erithromycin: Rewarding Players
Experience points. Do players deserve them? Is it better to reward someone for a successful negotiation with a reputation as a rainmaker or an enhancement to his mechanical character? …
In RPG Theory
Participants: erithromycin, Ron Edwards, hardcoremoose, Marco, Bankuei, Jack Spencer Jr, Mike Holmes, Jared A. Sorensen.

11/9/2001 Damocles: levelling down
A while ago, I was trying to come up with an original approach to rpgs by looking at the standard things you find in most rpgs and... fiddling with them,…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Damocles, Jared A. Sorensen, Zak Arntson, JSDiamond, Ron Edwards, Laurel, Matt Gwinn, Mithras, Matt.

11/9/2001 Jared A. Sorensen: H
In my desire to tie myself for the shortest game title... H http://www.memento-mori.com/games/h.html Incredibly not-done and rife with internal inconsistancies and such, but I think it's neat. Inspired by the…
In Memento-Mori Theatricks
Participants: Jared A. Sorensen, Ron Edwards, sdemory, Damocles, Bailywolf.

11/9/2001 Zak Arntson: Superpets - Preliminary Game Design
[A HREF="http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?itemid=14709655"]Superpets[/A] It's in the LiveJournal phase, which is somewhere between Idea & Initial Notes and Harlekin-Maus Freebie. So now is the best time to provide input. It's a simple…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Zak Arntson.

11/9/2001 jburneko: Metaplot and Story Creation
The planets must be aligned funky or something. Today seems to be an idea day for me. Anyway, down in the Immersion & Co-Authoring thread Ron reasserted his claim that…
In RPG Theory
Participants: jburneko, Jared A. Sorensen, Ron Edwards, Zak Arntson, Gordon C. Landis, Blake Hutchins, John Wick, Ian O'Rourke, contracycle, Mytholder, Mike Holmes, Paul Czege, Matt, Ben Morgan, Laurel, joshua neff, Nathan.

11/9/2001 Ron Edwards: The future-story outcome of Little Fears
Hello, As I described in my review, our play of Little Fears added a future-history device. After we made up the characters, Dav (the GM) wrote future histories for them…
In Key 20 Publishing
Participants: Ron Edwards, Mike Holmes, Paul Czege, Fabrice G., Uratoh, hardcoremoose, joshua neff, Dav, Demonspahn.

11/9/2001 Matt Snyder: Graphic design
Hoping that I'm not breaking any Forge forum ettiquette here, but I'm offering up my services as a graphic designer for you game designers out there. For a sample of…
In Connections
Participants: Matt Snyder, S.Lonergan.

11/9/2001 Damocles: Imitating other media
It's pretty much a commonplace that new media start out by imitating other media and then start to develop into new and unique directions. Roleplaying games are strange in that…
In RPG Theory
Participants: Damocles, Mike Holmes, Laurel, Ron Edwards, Epoch, unodiablo.

11/9/2001 jburneko: Incharacter Play vs. co-Author
I have a feeling here that I'm going to open up a huge can of worms. You have been warned. In Ron's new review of Little Fears he talks about…
In RPG Theory
Participants: jburneko, Jared A. Sorensen, lumpley, Ron Edwards, Marco.

11/8/2001 Nathan: CD Publishing
Ron & All, Has CD publishing been successful for anyone? I remember one company that promised to do several RPGs per different CDs, with supplemental material and programs included on…
In Publishing
Participants: Nathan, Ron Edwards, unodiablo, JSDiamond, Jack Spencer Jr, Laurel, kwill, Matt Gwinn, Paul Czege.

11/8/2001 jburneko: Role-Playing Object Demons
My players seem to have really gotten into Object demons. I have at least two so far. One is a pair of glasses that allow it's master to see into…
In Adept Press
Participants: jburneko, Ron Edwards, Tor Erickson, Mike Holmes, greyorm.

11/8/2001 Jared A. Sorensen: Sorcerer concept
That doesn't involve getting bumped on the head or having a master who's *waves hands* over there somewhere or dead. I'm not sure how it would work, but what if…
In Adept Press
Participants: Jared A. Sorensen, Ron Edwards.

11/8/2001 Uratoh: Idea for long-running plot device (comical, semi-useful)
I was wondering if this idea would be good or bad... having one of the characters (either the one with lowest spirit or the 'haunted' trait) get their shadow possessed…
In Key 20 Publishing
Participants: Uratoh.

11/8/2001 Julian Kelsey: Variation, derivation, innovation
Some of my game design is based on reaction against or extensions to other games, sometimes uniquely developed ideas that I've belated realised are well developed in other games. Although…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Julian Kelsey, Mike Holmes, Ron Edwards.

11/7/2001 Ron Edwards: Art-Deco Melodrama - the Final Chapter
Hello, For those of you coming in late, this is the fourth and last of a series of threads here on the Sorcerer forum. The first one is called "To…
In Adept Press
Participants: Ron Edwards, Tor Erickson, jburneko, Ian O'Rourke, contracycle, joshua neff, random.

11/7/2001 Zak Arntson: Call for Probability Formulas
Okay, this was spurred by numerous questions (a few on here, tons on rpg.net) about dice probabilities. Is there some way we can just collect a bunch of formulas and…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Zak Arntson, Don Lag, Mike Holmes, kwill.

11/7/2001 John Wick: A superhero RPG
This is rough stuff. I wrote it at 3 AM last night. I may have had a fever. Anyway, it is what it is. Interested in seeing what you guys…
In RPG Theory
Participants: John Wick, kwill, Mike Holmes, Tim Gray.

11/7/2001 unodiablo: Mike Holmes - question @ success %
Hi Mike, I'm working on changing the game mechanics to Dead Meat... And I know this is your forte'. Can you tell me what the success chance is if you…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: unodiablo, Epoch, Le Joueur, Mike Holmes.

11/7/2001 Laurel: $1000 bucks, a system, a vision
Building off the million dollar scenario, let's say you've just been given $1000 to publish a game. You have a system that needs polishing, but you are getting there and…
In Publishing
Participants: Laurel, unodiablo, Jason L Blair, Paul Czege, Nathan, Ron Edwards, Matt, JSDiamond, James V. West.

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Subsequent Topics

11/12/2001 Jack Spencer Jr: Forums and thread organization.
It seems to me that there's a problem with the forums and the threads. The way the software works, we're supposed to keep the same conversation in the same thread.…
In Site Discussion
Participants: Jack Spencer Jr, Ron Edwards.

11/12/2001 John Wick: C/L/S: A Bit of Good-Hearted Satire
I have a theory. I call it "The Sitting Theory." As far as I can see, everything you can sit on falls into one of three categories: Chairs, Loveseats and…
In GNS Model Discussion
Participants: John Wick, Marco, Mike Holmes, jburneko, Ron Edwards, Jared A. Sorensen, Gordon C. Landis, Jack Spencer Jr, Blake Hutchins, 333Chronzon, Mytholder, unodiablo, Laurel, Le Joueur.

11/12/2001 Nathan: New & Improved...
Mystic Ages Online is new and improved -- now with a nice MySQL database underneath everything to ease the automation -- Tell me what you think! http://www.mysticages.com Thanks, Nathan
In Mystic Ages Online
Participants: Nathan, Mike Holmes, unodiablo, Paul Czege, ravensron, Ian O'Rourke.

11/12/2001 Matt Snyder: "Universal group" systems
I have long loathed systems billed as "universal." There are a number of reasons, not the least of which I admit is ignorance about their actual usefulness in play. By…
In RPG Theory
Participants: Matt Snyder, Mike Holmes, Ron Edwards, Ben Morgan, Marco, Laurel.

11/13/2001 Jeffrey Straszheim: Just whose pool is it?
In my theorizing about The Pool I've come to consider the dice pool as a player resource rather than a character resource, meaning that a large pool represents a greater…
In Random Order Creations
Participants: Jeffrey Straszheim, Mike Holmes, James V. West, Bankuei.

11/13/2001 Jared A. Sorensen: Chairs, redux
In GNS, there's a funny lil' post about CLS - (Chair/Loveseat/Sofa) that yuk-meister Wick wrote up. What's funny is that John and I sat in on a discussion by Sim-Everything…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Jared A. Sorensen, joshua neff, Gordon C. Landis, Mytholder.

11/13/2001 Zak Arntson: Fungeon - GMless Dungeon Crawling (Preliminary Design)
Okay, over at livejournal, I've put up a sneaky peek at Fungeon. http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?itemid=15027185 Simple currency, Room by Room play, resolution builds in a fun way of narrating events. In a…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Zak Arntson, Jared A. Sorensen, Mike Holmes, Nathan.

11/13/2001 jburneko: An Experiment In The Ordinary
There's an idea I've been mulling over for a while now. It's something that's been brought up before on various game sites but never really addressed in an interesting way.…
In RPG Theory
Participants: jburneko, Mike Holmes, Ron Edwards, Epoch, Laurel, Jared A. Sorensen, joshua neff, hardcoremoose, Marco, Ben Morgan, Bankuei, mahoux, Le Joueur.

11/14/2001 Ron Edwards: An interesting review
Hey, One of role-playing's "men of letters," Andrew Rilstone, has posted a review of Little Fears here. Its points bear some discussion. I'm not quite as interested in psychologizing…
In Key 20 Publishing
Participants: Ron Edwards, jburneko, GreatWolf, Mike Holmes, Dav, Bankuei, contracycle, Jason L Blair.

11/14/2001 Epoch: Amber Times Seven
Ron requested that I post a little something on the experience of going to Ambercon. I think it's an interesting topic, so I'm going to -- although, given our disparate…
In Actual Play
Participants: Epoch, Mike Holmes, Ron Edwards, DaR, xiombarg.

11/15/2001 Jared A. Sorensen: New Jack Dungeon
I was gonna just post this in my journal b ut I thought, hey, what the hell. I was taking a shower and thinking about RPG's. For some weird reason,…
In Memento-Mori Theatricks
Participants: Jared A. Sorensen, ravensron, Bankuei, Ben Morgan, Tim Denee, Bret.

11/15/2001 Tor Erickson: Souther Fried Sorcerer, part 1
Hello All, On Saturday I met with my three players and an observer to play our first session of Sorcerer. This was a particularly exciting moment because we were finally…
In Actual Play
Participants: Tor Erickson, Ron Edwards, Paul Czege.

11/15/2001 Tor Erickson: Southern Fried Sorcerer, part 2
(this is part 2 of a two part post about a Sorcerer game) ACTUAL PLAY 1: Scene-framing, railroading, and director and author stance Throughout the game I exercised hardcore scene-cutting…
In Actual Play
Participants: Tor Erickson, joshua neff, kwill, Mike Holmes, Ron Edwards, furashgf.

11/15/2001 Jack Spencer Jr: Dungeon Cards (working title)
After the talk of a GMless dungeon crawl game both here & elsewhere, and not to be outdone by Zak, I finally got some insight into a dungeon card game…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Jack Spencer Jr, Mike Holmes.

11/15/2001 Nathan: Difference Between Complete & Incomplete Mechanics
Howdy out there, As I continue working and clarifying the Wild for the last time (seriously), I realize that the rule system is very, very simple. Character Creation is no…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Nathan, Mike Holmes, Ron Edwards, kwill.

11/15/2001 Nathan: Quarter Page Ad
I think indie-rpgs needs either a nice fat publish quality banner or a quarter page ad that we can include in our PDFs. Obviously, the value of this site may…
In Site Discussion
Participants: Nathan, Ron Edwards.

11/15/2001 Laurel: Best of Threads?
Ron was giving Nathan some good thread examples in a post and it got me thinking... one of the most useful things for newcomers and even oldcomers with limited memory…
In Site Discussion
Participants: Laurel, Bankuei, kwill, Ron Edwards, greyorm.

11/15/2001 unodiablo: Two Page Action Movie RPG - Playtime!
After playing Two Page Action Movie RPG (2PAM from here on out) three times in two weeks, I thought I'd take the time to do a post about it. I've…
In Actual Play
Participants: unodiablo, mahoux, Paul Czege, Ron Edwards, Bankuei.

11/15/2001 jburneko: Railroading With Dice, A Core Mechanic
So, I'm looking over the RPG that I'm working on and while the actual document is not done I think I'd like some feedback on the idea behind the core…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: jburneko, Jared A. Sorensen, Tim C Koppang, Ron Edwards, Mike Holmes, contracycle, unodiablo, Paul Czege, Bankuei, mahoux, greyorm.

11/16/2001 Don Lag: Refining the Highest-Die roll mechanic
When I began thinking of a funky new way to create probability distributions for my game, it didn't take long to stumble upon the idea in which you roll a…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: Don Lag, Jared A. Sorensen, lumpley, Paul Czege, kwill, Ron Edwards, Matt.

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