Fear the Boot, the tabletop RPG podcast, has been nominated at the Gen Con EN World RPG Awards. If you remember, these are the guys who interviewed me back in May. I’ve since become friends with the hosts and I really enjoy the show, so I’m really cheering for them. If you’re so inclined, please stop on over and give them a vote. If you’ve never heard the show before, now would be a good time to check it out.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “DM of the Rings CXXV:
Faux Pas”
Someone else has discovered the joy of lampooning Lord of the Rings. In this thread, the author explores a possible ending scene to the story. It’s a pretty good use of screencaps.
Think Geek always has great shirts, but Wil Wheaton points to one which is particularly funny.
Which reminds me:
In talking about shows and movies which are ripe for the DM of the Rings treatment, I think the richest target out there is Star Trek: TNG. It has all the ingredients that make DMotR work:
I don’t know how good it would be as a source for roleplaying jokes. I’m betting there’s a Trek RPG out there somewhere, but if there is it isn’t nearly as popular as D20 Star Wars. I think using it to parody sci-fi in general would work much better.
Picture Picard as a touchy-feely pacifist politically correct diplomat, Riker as an intergalactic manwhore, and Wesley as a sarcastic potty-mouth teen. The jokes pretty much write themselves. You could do ten pages with just those three characters. It’s a goldmine.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “DM of the Rings CXXIV:
Medic!”
I’m a big fan of Stardock. I loved Galactic Civilizations. I loved the sequel even more. Even aside from the quality of the games, I like how they do their thing: Their games have no anti-piracy hassle. They continue to update and enhance the core game for free for many months after release. I’m not taking about the usual bug-fixery, I’m talking about making the game deeper and more robust based on feedback from the user base.
Now I find out they have a new game in the works: Sins of a Solar Empire. I visited the page, read the synopsis, and thought Hey – Homeworld clone. That’s nice. I guess. But a closer look reveals this to be more than a remix of an earlier hit. It looks like they’re trying to take the Masters of Orion / Galactic Civilizations gameplay and… make it realtime? Really? You can do that? How does that work, exactly?
I guess we’ll find out. The game is in beta now. I’ll be watching this one.
Why make millions on your video game when you could be making HUNDREDS on frivolous copyright claims?
There are two major schools of thought about how you should write software. Here's what they are and why people argue about it.
I was trying to make fun of how Silent Hill had lost its way but I ended up making fun of fighting games. Whatever.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2017.
No, game prices don't "need" to go up. That's not how supply and demand works. Instead, the publishers need to be smarter about where they spend their money.
From the company that brought us Fallout 76 comes a storefront / Steam competitor. It's a work of perfect awfulness. This is a monument to un-usability and anti-features.
His problem isn't that he's dumb, the problem is that he bends the world he inhabits.
What is "Domino Worldbuilding" and how did it help to make Mass Effect one of the most interesting settings in modern RPGs?
This is a massive step down in story, gameplay, and art design when compared to the 2014 soft reboot. Yet critics rated this one much higher. What's going on here?
An ongoing series where I work on making a 2D action game from scratch.
T w e n t y S i d e d
