Character Skill vs. Player Skill

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 30, 2011

  I’m going to get a little basic right now, since not everybody who reads this blog is a computer role-playing game expert. But mainly because I’ve been putting in 12+ hour days for the day job the last two weeks, and then working on the game instead of sleeping, so “basic” is about all […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Stupid Female Armor…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 29, 2011

College Humor tells it like it is… Definitely watch to the very end. “Oooo! Right in the shiny part!”

Filed Under: General - Comments: 18 Comments to Read

Preserving Video Games – and the Right Way to Handle Abandonware?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

An interesting article about the problem of preserving old video games: Grassroots Game Preservation Through Abandonware The focus is (duh!) on abandonware sites. That’s a gray area with me, though it’s not gray with respect to U.S. copyright laws.  Still, it’s largely tolerated by the industry, so long as the sites will take down games […]

Filed Under: Biz, Retro - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Video Games: Protected Expression

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 28, 2011

For those who follow video game news (and if you don’t, I don’t blame you) here in the United States, there was one piece of news that overwhelmed the rest on Monday: The Supreme Court finally weighed in, declaring in a 7:2 decision that California’s anti-video-game law was unconstitutional. In this decision, they declared that […]

Filed Under: Politics - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

My Kobayashi Maru Moment

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 27, 2011

“I need all the power you can give me to the engines.” “What about shields?” “Shields are dead. If we don’t get power to the engines, so will we.” That’s how that dialog plays out in my mind. I don’t think I was quite that clever most of the time when I was the captain […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

Ultima 9 – How It Might Have Been

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 26, 2011

Yet more historical Ultima development goodies are now avaialable at Ultima Aiera: The original documents for the “Bob White” plot for Ultima IX: Ascension.  This has been rumored and discussed for over a decade. Now you can find the … well, not the original plot for Ultima IX, but a plot that might have been. […]

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

Jon Blow on Indie Game Programming

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 24, 2011

Apparently I’m appealing to programmers this week, talking about source control and rapid indie game programming. My apologies to the coders out there, but sometimes we code-monkeys  need to yap. Today, Jonathan “Braid” Blow talks about how to program indie games. He’s talking to a bunch of computer science students, and what he says might […]

Filed Under: General - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Rolling Your Own

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 23, 2011

Making your own character(s): For some, this is essential to the RPG experience. For others – like me – it’s no big deal. For some, it’s daunting and a reason to avoid playing RPGs altogether. I remember tournaments back in the glory days of tabletop Dungeons & Dragons where players were assigned pre-generated characters.  Or […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 21 Comments to Read

Troll Doll Source Control

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 22, 2011

For those unfamiliar with it, source control is – at its most basic level – a system for archiving and managing updates to the source code for software. It’s particularly useful when you have multiple people working on the software, and you’d like to make sure that they don’t accidentally and irrevocably step on each […]

Filed Under: Biz, Production - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Indie RPG News Round-Up, June 2011

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 21, 2011

A little grab-bag of news of indie RPGs from all over. Due to time and exhaustion constraints, I’m keeping this quick… But hey! Videos! Magical Diary Hanako’s long-awaited game that sounds like it combines Cute Knight with a story-based high school / dating sim with a heavy dose of interesting magic (it’s a school for […]

Filed Under: News - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

That Old-School Feelin’: Contest Winners

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 20, 2011

Last week’s contest concluded at midnight Saturday on the forums. The three winners were determined by random dice roll: DGM, Maklak, and McTeddy! All three get a copy of Viridian Games’ Inaria. PM me with your name / email you want the game sent to. If you already have it and want to gift it […]

Filed Under: General - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Why Dungeons?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 17, 2011

“Dungeons” – underground or otherwise deeply confined environments – are a staple of fantasy CRPGs. Of course, the dungeons we explore in fantasy RPGs bear little resemblance to real-world dungeons, but we’ve managed to broaden the term quite a bit. But why do we keep going back? We’ve been exploring dungeons for something like forty […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 15 Comments to Read

Shocker! Retail Game Sales Decrease, Digital Game Sales Increase!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 16, 2011

Who woulda thunk, huh? So almost a quarter of game sales are now through digital distribution. When that number exceeds 50%… well, you are already seeing interesting things happen, you will just see more of it. I suspect that for PC games, that number is even higher. Rock Paper Shotgun opines, “You might still be […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 13 Comments to Read

Contest Time – Swappin’ Stories About Old-School CRPGs

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 15, 2011

To celebrate the whole going-beta thing, and the fact that the Rampant Games forums are back in business, I figured I’d run a little contest or three with indie games as the prize. It’s a simple one, though it does require forum membership. Yes, this is my devlish plan to get people talking on the […]

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Frayed Knights TSoSD: FULL-ON BETA, BABY!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 14, 2011

It’s time for a long-overdue update on Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon: We. Are. Beta. Yes, that’s a new title screen. The previous one is somewhat more appropriate for game #2, so that’s where it’s going. Now how about a really good question: What the heck does “Beta” mean? First of all, it’s a […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 37 Comments to Read

Action RPG? Big Whoop.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

Craig Stern of Sinister Design (Telepath RPG) has now weighed in on the interview that pissed off so many of us with Matt Findley of InXile Entertainment. Craig Stern: “So You Created an Action RPG. Stop Congratulating Yourself.” I’ve said my piece, but I’ll just add my agreement to what Craig’s saying here. Look – […]

Filed Under: Biz, Design - Comments: 6 Comments to Read



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