Jeff Tidball pointed me to this post on Peter Hentges’s LiveJournal earlier today. Peter did some great work on the Ars Magica and On the Edge games back in the day, although he’s not been professionally involved in the games industry for a while. More recently, he’s worked in IT, helping out with web design and business analysis. To sum …
Lone-Lands in LOTRO Up
Will Hindmarch‘s latest article about The Lord of the Rings Online (which I edited) is now up on the official website. “Hero’s Guide to the Lone-lands” covers a vast swathe of land that includes the notorious Weathertop, at which Strider saved Frodo from the Ringwraiths. Go check it out, if only to see the gorgeous screentography.
Upcoming Cons
The summer convention season is rolling at me like a steam train, and my plans for it are starting to fall into place. Here’s where you can expect to see me: Gary Con (March 7): This is the first annual convention in memory of Gary Gygax, and I’ll be there in the afternoon with my son Marty. This will be …
More Storytellers Unplugged
My latest essay “Pretty Gigs All in a Row” is now up at Storytellers Unplugged. It’s all about how to handle having too much work fall into your lap at once–after you’re done doing your Snoopy dance, of course. I hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think.
Who Quits a Day Job?
Sandy Antunes has an excellent column up on RPG.net today, in which he reveals the results of an informal survey of RPG designers and developers. The question he put to them was: “What is your day job?” The results are not particularly scientific, which Sandy (whose day jobs include astrophysicist and stay-at-home dad) freely admits, but they’re fun. I didn’t …
Back to Lothlórien
Turbine recently posted an article on The Lord of the Rings Online that I edited: “Hero’s Guide to Lothlórien.” The inimitable Will Hindmarch did an excellent job with the heavy lifting of actually writing the piece and taking all the screenshots. If you like MMOs or The Lord of the Rings in any form, be sure to check it out.
Game Balance Is Overrated
I recently wrote this bit on a private mailing list. Jeff Tidball saw it and asked me to repost it over at Gameplaywright.net in the discussion about Things We Think About Games, the game-ruminations book he and Will Hindmarch put together. Which I did. And so I thought I’d post it here as well. I’m interested to hear what you …
Scrye Folds
ICv2.com reports that Scyre, the last remaining magazine devoted to collectible games, is ending its run in April. By my count, Scrye was also the last adventure game magazine of any stripe left in wide circulation, joining Dragon, Dungeon, InQuest, Games Quarterly, and several others in the periodicals graveyard. I used to love reading gaming magazines, but with the rise …
Forbidden Mail
A couple weeks ago, I received my first e-mail from a concerned parent about More Forbidden Knowledge. Honestly, with a title like that, I’d have figured on more outrage in my inbox by now, but I’m happy to be wrong on that point. The woman had some real, if misguided, concerns, and I did my best to answer them. You …
Superhero Wishes at Bookgasm
Fellow IAMTW member and comic-book legend Paul Kupperberg recently asked a bunch of us to tell him which superhero we’d like to write a novel about and what kind of story we would tell. Oh, and did we have any horror stories about such books to tell? You can see my answer–along with those of Richard Lee Byers, Greg Cox, …