What Sets Off Your “Just One More Turn / Level / Match” Reflex?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 17, 2013

I’ve decided it’s not the same for everybody. Maybe it doesn’t exist for some people. But for the rest of us (maybe just those of us with low willpower – like the ones who keep buying games from the Steam Sale even though we have more games than we could play in a year of […]

Filed Under: Design, Geek Life, Strategy Games - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights: Dungeon Design Principles, Part 1

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 15, 2013

During the development of Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, I evolved a set of informal philosophies or guidelines towards making adventuring areas (which I’ll just call “dungeons”, though some were outdoors). For the sequel, I actually wrote many of these guidelines down. At the risk of revealing a developing “secret formula” (hah!), but in […]

Filed Under: Design, Frayed Knights - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

The Same, Only Different: Where and How Much Innovation in Video Game Design?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 2, 2013

I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons for a long time. The newest incarnation isn’t officially “Dungeons & Dragons” (it’s Pathfinder), but it’s close enough.  I’ve played lots of tabletop adventures, and plenty of computer games based on the system. And then even more computer games that are loosely and unofficially based on  they system. I […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 23 Comments to Read

How to Not Screw Up a Superhero Movie

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 19, 2013

I saw Man of Steel the other night. I was really looking forward to it, but the final product was… well, it wasn’t bad. We’ve all seen plenty of bad. This was good, but could have been great. I wouldn’t call myself a huge comic-book fan when I was growing up. For a while I […]

Filed Under: Design, Movies - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Dungeons & Logistics

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 28, 2013

The first adventure game I ever completed writing was called “Dungeons of Doom.” It was pretty terrible, I’ll admit, but I was only thirteen or fourteen, and I was really proud of it (until my next completed adventure game).  Really, in retrospect, it was all kinds of horrible for all kinds of reasons. Among its […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 19 Comments to Read

A matter of scale

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 21, 2013

I’m in France this week. Actually, I’m in France as I type this, dog-tired. While the trip was long and arduous, it is kind of amazing how small the world has become.  In one ten-hour flight, I’m a third of the world away. It’s a butt-busting trip (particularly when flying coach), but relative to the […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

The Once and Future First-Person Shooters

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 15, 2013

A week ago, veteran game producer Warren Spector (Epic Mickey, Deus Ex, Thief: The Dark Project, System Shock, Ultima Underworld, Wing Commander, Ultima 6, Ultima 7, and others…) ruffled a few feathers when he publicly griped about the first-person (FPS) shooter “genre” – citing Bethesda’s Wolfenstein: New World Order announcement video: He later issued an […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

A Knock At The Door

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 6, 2013

“The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…” This is the shortest complete story I know, written by Fredrick Brown, although he later elaborated upon it in his short story, “Knock,” but his point was that those two sentences formed a complete story. And he was […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

Being Pathetic and Loving It

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 24, 2013

I recently re-played Baldur’s Gate via Overhaul Games’ updated “Enhanced Edition,” which I personally felt did a pretty decent job of enhancing the game (and fixing some of its flaws, especially on modern machines). After so many years living in more modern systems, it was kinda fun taking the wayback machine to the 2nd edition […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

Deep Exploration: 32 Ideas for making exploration more interesting in CRPGs

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 27, 2013

In computer RPGs, there are a number of gameplay “loops” or cycles that all interact with each other. A nice blend of cycles keeps the game varied and interesting. You’ve got the combat cycles – nice, repeating elements that (hopefully!) stay varied enough between different enemies and growing player character power and varying resources that […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Concerning Garriott, Game Designers, and Corporate Overlords

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 21, 2013

Richard Garriott de Cayeaux offered a couple of controversial “zingers” (as he himself described them) in a recent interview with PC Gamer. The quote that caused the fuss was, “But other than a few exceptions, like Chris Roberts, I’ve met virtually no one in our industry who I think is close to as good a […]

Filed Under: Biz, Design, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 22 Comments to Read

RPGs: Is Old-School the New School?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 18, 2013

As I’ve said before, the term “old-school RPG” is becoming decreasingly useful. Not that I dislike it – it still brings a smile when I see it in the descriptor of an RPG. The assumption is that people are being inspired by the right games – whatever games those are. But it meant they are […]

Filed Under: Design, Indie Evangelism, Retro - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

This is how the world ends: A bunch of post-apocalyptic game setting variants

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 22, 2013

I’m a fan of “post-apocalyptic” settings in fiction and computer games, though I realize it’s as hard a term to define as “role-playing games” (or “indie games”, for that matter). Over the years, we’ve had tons of video games taking place in a post-apocalyptic setting. And, happy me, we’ve got several new games coming soon […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

An Inconvenient Combat

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 14, 2013

The game was “Western Hero,” many years ago. It was a dice-and-paper RPG based on the Hero game system, the same one that fueled the Champions superhero RPG. The designers had taken pains to make Western Hero not very superheroic – following the style of movies and books about the American “Wild West” of the […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

The High-Level Game: More Than Just Bigger and Badder

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 11, 2013

Many years ago, when the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons was still current and even kinda new, Necromancer Games created a revision of a Gary Gygax module called “Necropolis” (or, officially, “Gary Gygax’s Necropolis”). This was a massive revision and expansion to an original module created for his “Dangerous Journeys” game system, following his […]

Filed Under: Design, Dice & Paper - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Brewster’s Millions (of Gold Pieces)

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 25, 2013

When I was a teenager, I read a book called “Brewster’s Millions” (which was, around the same time, made into a movie featuring Richard Pryor, which I’ve never seen).  The book was written just over a hundred years ago, when a million U.S. dollars was worth a heck of a lot more than they are […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 23 Comments to Read



« previous top next »