A More Vile Form of Copying

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 31, 2012

There’s a form of copying that’s far more pernicious than piracy. They say the key to creativity is hiding your sources. It’s mostly true. Even as Chris Crawford argued nearly 25 years ago, creativity and originality is a spectrum with one idealized end that lies only in theory. But the other extreme is all too […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

A Sirius Game

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 30, 2012

I wanted to do this last week, but with crunch-mode in full swing and some other high-stress demands on my time, I’m lucky to not have had to put the blog on hiatus. Anyway, for now, I wanted to point out a little action / adventure game “with RPG elements” released by a friend of […]

Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: Read the First Comment

The Magic Game-Making Box

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 28, 2012

Okay, there’s a quote I love but I forget who said it – someone at Bioware I think. I thought I’d try to harness the power of the Internet to get the exact quote and who said it. Basically, the quote goes something like this: If you were to build gamers a magical box that, […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Why Indies Rock – Example #488

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 27, 2012

The Day Job has gone into full-on crunch mode, making the blogging thing difficult.  I apologize. I’m gonna do my best, but it’s going to be rough going for another couple of weeks. So today I’m just going to pass along a link provided by Craig Stern, of Sinister Design (Telepath RPG) and IndieRPGs.com. He […]

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 15 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights Takes Home the RPGWatch Indie Game of the Year Award!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 26, 2012

That loud “WOOT!” you just heard emanating from the Wasatch Mountains a little while ago? That was me. Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon just won the Editor’s Choice Award at RPGWatch for Indie Game of the Year. Read all about it here: RPGWatch Game of the Year Awards 2011 – Best Indie RPG I’ll […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 15 Comments to Read

What Would You Update?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 25, 2012

In the spirit of the the TWO X-Com “re-envisionings” and the hope and horror that the reports on these games have inspired, I thought I’d push a little experiment today and see what the expert gamers of this site would do in a similar situation. Let’s say you had the option to pick a classic […]

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 38 Comments to Read

Some More Classic D&D Trivia

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 24, 2012

Inspired this time by one of CRPG Addicts’ recent (and hopefully not last) posts about 1970s era CRPGs, I hunted down a few links about the really, really old-school dice-and-paper games.  I’ve written once about Original D&D Trivia, as seeing how the game has evolved and changed over the years is fascinating to me. How […]

Filed Under: General - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

The CRPG Addict Hiatus – And Why Vintage RPGs Matter

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 23, 2012

Awww…. Bummer! Hopefully it’ll be a short (or at least non-permanent) hiatus. I enjoyed many an old-school CRPG vicariously through his reports. I probably enjoyed them a good deal more through his articles than if I’d played them myself, in the case of many, many not-so-great games.  Even if this project is abandoned forever, it’s […]

Filed Under: General - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Keeping an RPG Series Fresh

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 20, 2012

One summer day I was running a Call of Cthulhu adventure for some friends who were old hands at the game.  They’d played it a lot more than I had, but hadn’t played the module I was running.  They had new characters, as it was a one-off-game. And… well, we all noticed it right away. […]

Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Mining Super Metroid for Design Lessons

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 19, 2012

I never really played much Super Metroid. I didn’t own the correct hardware.  While at the time – before I got a job making games for consoles – I disdained consoles for PC games, but mainly I think it was because I didn’t have the money. But Hugo Bille writes a fascinating article entitled, The Invisible […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Stop Piracy, But Protect Liberty

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 18, 2012

Okay, so today’s a big black-out day for Wikipedia and Google and stuff.  I’m not going to be doing anything like that. As you’ve probably heard, there are a couple of bills in the U.S. Congress that are supposedly out there to protect the rights of copyright holders, like me, against rampant piracy on the […]

Filed Under: Politics - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Lousy Choices and Linear Dungeons

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 17, 2012

A year or so ago this illustration of FPS level design “evolution” over the last twenty years made the rounds, and struck a little bit of a nerve.  Yes, many folks agreed – particularly the old-school gamers who remember gaming from the last century – it’s gotten awfully simplistic. But the maps don’t tell the […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 18 Comments to Read

RPGs, IGF, RTFM, KISS, and How Those Acronyms Can Be Used To Make a Better Game

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 16, 2012

I decided to enter the 2012 Independent Games Festival (IGF) in spite of my general feeling that the chance of Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon becoming a finalist was pretty small (over 560 entries this year!). It’s not that the game is unworthy – not at all.  While I’m obviously biased as the creator, […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

The Indie Plunge, or, “WOAH! The Water Is Cold!”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 13, 2012

I feel a little guilty about this, as I’m directly referenced as an example in Matt Barton’s latest development diary expressing his frustration, disappointment, and lowered expectations as he pushed for making a 3D RPG. He’s done some amazing stuff over the last few months, going from nothing to three(?) released games, including one commercial […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Ten Tips for Becoming an Indie Game Developer

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 12, 2012

Post-Mortems on indie games always seem more interesting to me than post-mortems on big-studio games. It may be because they are just less conventional overall, or that the post-mortems I read of mainstream games usually conform to the Game Developer Magazine “5 things that went right / 5 things that went wrong” formula. I dunno. […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Last Chance to Vote on Your Favorite RPGs of 2011

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

The RPG Watch poll for the PC RPG of the Year closes in a few hours. Go Vote! If you happen to be voting for Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon for the “indie RPG of the year,” category, I’d strongly encourage you to go vote right now! Don’t wait! If you don’t think you […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights, Mainstream Games - Comments: Comments are off for this article



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