Rolling A New One…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 1, 2012

With another (short) campaign completed, I stepped out from behind the Game Master’s screen Saturday night and joined the rest of the group creating a character for a new campaign. I really do enjoy this. I always have. I remember creating heroes and villains for Champions in geometry class while Mr. Droneburg lectured on using […]

Filed Under: Design, Dice & Paper - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Lore

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 28, 2012

How many of you actually pay attention to the optional “lore” in an RPG? Reading / listening to exposition about the background, paying attention to the little details about the setting and backstory? I’m kind of middle-of-the-road. Frankly, too many game worlds have some pretty boring lore. Many tomes end up going into the “TL,DR” […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

Is Old-School is Back In Session?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 18, 2012

Maybe it’s just because it’s the object of my focus, but it feels like “old-school” RPGs are back in favor … at least a little bit… everywhere but at the big publishers. Game journalists are talking about it. Kickstarters for games like Wasteland 2, Dead State, and now the huge response to Obsidian’s Project Eternity […]

Filed Under: Biz, Design, Retro - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Audacious Game Features

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 10, 2012

Last month’s article, “Going Big When You Are Small,” was inspired by the discussion about the ability for Might & Magic 4 & 5 to “merge” on the player’s hard drive to create a total game that was larger than the sum of its parts. Apparently, I needed to write what I did, because I […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

Procedural Content: When it sucks, when it doesn’t

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 27, 2012

I’ve been a fan of procedural content since I first played Telengard back in 1982 or so. The Telengard dungeon boasted a size that was pretty much unattainable by conventional methods. There were a total of two million rooms in the game. Even if you managed to compress the entire room information down into a […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Going Big When You Are Small

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 22, 2012

I’ve had a few discussions with friends over the last couple of weeks about RPG design, revisiting past ideas, etc.  Those inspired yesterday’s post. And today’s post. But what really drove something home was this RPG Codex interview with gaming legend Jon Van Caneghem, creator of the Might & Magic series and founder of New […]

Filed Under: Design, Indie Evangelism, Retro - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Why Are CRPGs So Combat-Heavy?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 15, 2012

Why don’t we have more RPGs that emphasize non-combat activities? Why wasn’t Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines able to keep up its efforts for non-combat solutions to problems, particularly in the latter part of the game? Do players tend to min-max their characters for fighting because the CRPGs emphasize it, or is it the other way […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

RPG Design: Boss Battles and the Positive Feedback Problem

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 14, 2012

In my article last week about Frayed Knights‘ problem with boss battles, I neglected to mention one other factor that worked against my poor bosses which is peculiar to the RPG genre: One of my guiding principles of the overall game design is that the game should be fully playable and of reasonable difficulty for […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

To Grind or Not To Grind?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 8, 2012

Rowan Kaiser talks about “grinding” – an ill-defined term that generally references facing repetitive, meaningless combat encounters. ‘Grinding’ and it’s Relationship to the RPG Genre Grinding is generally a negative term, and I agree in that I dislike games where grinding is a significant source of gameplay. I remember all too well my frustration back […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Want Players to Finish the Game? Let Them Quit!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 3, 2012

There are a lot of important features to an RPG that make the experience really stand out for me. But these days, with my “grown up” schedule, the two most important features for any video game (not just RPG, but I’m focusing on RPGs here) are the following: 1. Make it easy for me to […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Should You Have To Earn the Fun?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 30, 2012

It’s pretty classic game design, because it works: As you play, you unlock abilities, which adds to the fun. In a tower defense game, maybe you get new towers to experiment with. Or in an RTS – of which Tower Defense is a subgenre – you unlock new units and buildings as you progress. In […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Advancing the Role of Role-Playing – An Example Project

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 13, 2012

My big rant yesterday about improving the “role-playing” experience in computer & console RPGs seemed to strike a nerve, based on comments received on the blog, in twitter, and in emails. The gist of it was probably summed up by Justin Keverne on Twitter: “The designer in me looks at that and nods, the programmer […]

Filed Under: Design, Programming - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Advancing the Role of Role-Playing

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 12, 2012

Many years ago, I read a book entitled “Shared Fantasy,” a sociologist’s exploration of the RPG subculture – back when the hobby was new and not so much computerized. As a member of said subculture, I was a little defensive when I started reading it, but soon found that author Gary Alan Fine was pretty […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

On Wandering Monsters and Unplanned Encounters – Revisited

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 2, 2012

A few years ago, I wrote in the defense of “wandering monsters” and semi-random encounters in RPGs. My opinion hasn’t changed too much, though I do have a bit more hindsight experience today (both as a player and game developer). While we often refer to them as “random encounters” (or, in the old days of […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Are RPGs Too Long?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 28, 2012

I feel a little heretical asking this question, in an age when $60 mainstream games have been cut down to 12 hours (or less) of gameplay (“But we make up for it in multiplayer!”). In discussing turn-based versus action-based RPGs with a friend and fellow Frayed Knights developer Xenovore (much more of a fan of […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 26 Comments to Read

How to Tell a Story – Pixar Style

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 11, 2012

Just one o’ those links I feel compelled to share. Here are 22 “Rules” of storytelling according to Pixar – which hasn’t made a movie I haven’t liked yet (or that hasn’t made bajillions of dollars).  Via Pixar employee Emma Coats, here’s the little nuggets of wisdom she’s picked up from the studio: The 22 […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 5 Comments to Read



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