More MM2 Interviews

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 27, 2015

You can probably detect a pattern here this week. 🙂 Here’s an interview with MK Wiseman about her story, The Silver Scams. She was also in the first Mechanized Masterpieces anthology, with a “sequel” to Phantom of the Opera. And one with D. Lee Jorner, author of “Payoff for Air Pirate Pete”, on J. Aurel […]

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Steampunk and Mechanized Masterpieces

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 26, 2015

I was both a little early and late to the whole Steampunk concept. I was a fan of “Cyberpunk” back in the late 80s and early 90s (yes, I’m that old), and so I really enjoyed books by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson. When I found out they were collaborating on a non-cyberpunk (or, as […]

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In Defense of Big Media…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 25, 2015

Yes, I take my potshots at AAA. I’ve been there. Kinda. And I’ve seen where it’s been going. But my ripping on the games coming out of the big publishers are due to their origin – designed (or at least constraints imposed on design) by committees and suits for minimum risk and maximum Return-on-Investment, with […]

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Mechanized Masterpieces 2 – Interview With Jay Barnson

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 24, 2015

Okay, as part of the whole “blog tour,” this time I get to be the one interviewed Here’s the interview with me over at A Virtual Hobby Store and Coffee House. An excerpt: 5. What are your top 3 favorite books? If I were to limit myself to fiction, I’d say… Neuromancer by William Gibson, […]

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Mechanized Masterpieces 2 Interview: Megan Oliphant (Winged Hope)

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 23, 2015

Mechanized Masterpieces 2: An American Anthology is an upcoming anthology of steampunk short stories coming out on the last day of February – this Saturday! I’m so excited for you all to see it. I’ll be focusing a bit on it all week. We’re starting the week out with a bang, though – an interview […]

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RPG Design: The Dungeon as Simulation

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 20, 2015

I kinda missed the earliest days of “0e” Dungeons & Dragons (meaning the original, pre-1st edition game) and similar role-playing games. By the time I got into D&D, 1st edition was The Thing, but it – and the community, such as it was back then – still contained vestiges of that old style of play […]

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Lessons learned from 22 years of making indie RPGs

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 19, 2015

Jeff Vogel is something of a personal hero of mine. Nope, I’ve never met him (just know a lot of people who have), though we’ve exchanged a couple of emails and forum posts over the years. I can’t even say I’m a giant fan of his games, although they are quite good. But the guy […]

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Frayed Knights: improvement by constraint. Or: bypassing the hat and going straight to the rabbit

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 18, 2015

It’s funny. Right before Salt Lake Comic Con last fall, I was pretty sure that I’d settled on “it” for the UI for Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath. And to be fair, as far as keeping things simple enough for strangers to pick up and play the game, I did okay. Not great, […]

Filed Under: Design, Frayed Knights - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

RPG Development: What Inspires Me

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 17, 2015

Making indie games is, simply put, awesome. So is making RPGs. Making indie RPGs – man, if only it paid well, it’d be one of the greatest gigs on the planet. As it is, it’s an awesome hobby. But it’s also very hard – at least the way I do it. Maybe I’m just bad […]

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What’s Old is New Again: “Pay Once and Play”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 16, 2015

Remember how I keep harping on the cyclical nature of the industry, and how gimmicks and trends may rise and fall, but basic principles stay the same? Yeah, well, this: Gamasutra: Apple Launches “Pay Once & Play” promotions for games that aren’t F2P Is actually paying for a game and then playing it without it […]

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How to say “You’re Fired!” at a game company

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 13, 2015

Kotaku has an article entitled, “The Pizza Party Where Everyone Got Fired.” It contains horror stories about working in the video games biz. Or, more properly, about losing work in the video games biz. Read the story. It’s amusing in a stomach-turning kind of way. For me, it was right after a Valentine’s Day pot […]

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Old-School RPG Design – Navigating and Exploring

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 12, 2015

So I was going to do some research. Just… you know, research. I’m always trying to capture the feel of “old-school” gaming in Frayed Knights, and so I thought I’d go back and check out Might & Magic Book 1 – The Secret of the Inner Sanctum.  So I got hooked on it once, but on […]

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Answering the Important Questions… Apache vs. Dragon

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 11, 2015

You know, we didn’t have documentaries like this when I was a kid. Instead, we had to research the material ourselves, the hard way, and turn it into an RPG or a wargame. Then we’d discover that the ol’ M-230 chain gun needs a critical hit to damage Smaug in a vital area, like his […]

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Coming Soon: Mechanized Masterpieces 2

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 10, 2015

“I’m dying already, Mr. Chase. I don’t know that I will survive another sleep in that machine, or another week outside of it. I should be long dead already.” “But why accelerate it?” Miriam pleaded. “Because I’m done surviving. I need to live again, if only for a few hours. I need to be strong, […]

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AAA to Indie – is the flow of talent going only one way?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 9, 2015

Many years ago, I wrote an article for the Escapist called, “Going Rogue,” which was about mainstream – often AAA developers – leaving their big-studio jobs for indie development. A few months ago, Jeffrey Grubb wrote “Why Triple-A Developers Are Going Indie (and Why Indies Aren’t Going Triple-A.” I’ve definitely been noticing the trend lately. […]

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Minecraft Didn’t Sell Itself

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 6, 2015

It’s popular (in indie circles) to say that Notch did everything wrong with Minecraft, yet it still managed to become the biggest indie success story of all time. The game was confusing to players until they’d checked out some kind of out-of-game tutorial (or had someone sitting next to them explaining it to them). It […]

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