No bullshit. No exaggeration. No kidding. EDIT: It has since been pointed out to me that this link has been taken entirely out of context. I was suckered. Go intarweb.
(in the key of Randy Newman minor) If I had cancer, I’d be losing weight and my hairIf I lost an arm, it’d be easy to seeIf I had jitters like Marty McFlyI wouldn’t need to explain whyBut I can’tI can’tGod knows I’ve triedBut you know what they say about trying There’s a thing in…
When I was in high school, the biggest open secret was the sociology teacher’s quizzes. His quizzes were always multiple choice and everybody knew that if you answered “D” on his quizzes, you’d get a C. He designed them that way. All you had to do was answer “D” on each and every question and…
Hey, you rolled a 20! You get a crit! Well, not really. It isn’t rare enough that a crit only happens 5% of the time. We’re going to make you roll again to make sure you got a crit. And while you’re at it, get a copy of the dictionary, open it up to “anti-climax,”…
Game design is about choice. Giving the players multiple choices, each of which seems the Best Choice. Take Feats for example. There are some Feats that you’ll never take. Just never. You look at them in comparison with other Feats and the choice is obvious. Alternately, in the Bungie game HALO, the Master Chief (that’s…
Why do fight scenes take four hours of real time with hundreds of rolls, endless accounting, and an overly anal obsession with detail… while seducing the barmaid is just one single roll? Obviously, such rules were written by virgins. But seriously… I said at the beginning of this whole thing that HotB was designed to…
I do not have the time to post the entire entry–it is over 8,000 words and won’t fit here–but I will let you know that “Saints and Secrets” will be replacing the entire Advantages section of the book. Essentially, it breaks down like this. Advantages like “Large” and “Left-Handed” and other such mundane things are…
I’ll be doing something entirely different with Advantages. I’m not exactly sure what it is just yet, but I’ll let you know next week. Saints and Secrets later today.
(Mechanics tonight. For now, you get the idea.) The ven do not die of old age. Instead, their bodies slow, their blood cools, and their skin begins emitting a strange substance called altrua. Altrua is not unlike spider’s webs. Over the years, they fall into a state they call “solace.” Eventually, the entire body goes…
My temp agency sent me to the Santa Monica MTV offices today for a job I am completely unqualified to do. That’s okay; they were too busy to train me today, so I sat in front of a computer screen and read the Amazing and Brilliant Dictionary of Mu. (Trust me when I say this.…