Gaming Outpost Discussions » Tag: Game Ideas Unlimited

Gaming Outpost Discussions » Tag: Game Ideas Unlimited - Recent Topics http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/tags/game-ideas-unlimited Gaming Outpost Discussions » Tag: Game Ideas Unlimited - Recent Topics en-US Sat, 11 Feb 2012 10:33:14 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 <![CDATA[Search]]> q http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/search.php M. J. Young on "Game Ideas Unlimited: Screen Wrap" http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/game-ideas-unlimited-screen-wrap#post-4691 Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:05:58 +0000 M. J. Young 4691@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ I've been recalling to attention, one per week, the Game Ideas Unlimited series which ran here weekly for four years beginning in June, 2001, and even though you can now purchase the first six months of the series <a href="http://www.cafepress.com/gameideasunltd">in printed form</a> I'm going to continue highlighting one article per week. This week we reach the fifth in the series, <a href="http://gamingoutpost.com/article/screen_wrap/">Screen Wrap</a>. This article features not one but two distinct references to Dr. Who, one to an early video game, one Multiverser reference, and several tried and proven methods of confusing your players by bouncing their characters around the map in a completely structured and logical manner that will seem to them totally random until they crack the puzzle. Players in my games should be aware that I use these techniques, when they are appropriate, so it might be worthwhile to bone up on them, as they say. As always, I look forward to comments on the article here in the forum. --M. J. Young M. J. Young on "Game Ideas Unlimited Volume 1 Available" http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/game-ideas-unlimited-volume-1-available#post-4628 Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:42:31 +0000 M. J. Young 4628@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ I'm announcing the release of Game Ideas Unlimited Volume 1. It is officially available from our new dedicated <a href="http://www.cafepress.com/gameideasunltd">Cafe Press storefront</a> for $18.95. I hope to have copies at UberCon X, which will at least save you shipping and handling (and let you see before you buy), but for those who won't be there or don't want to wait or don't want to have to choose between this great book and something else at the convention or don't want to risk them not being there, they're ready now. I have not yet seen them, but am expecting some to be shipped to me (and hoping to have them in hand in time). I'm a terrible salesman, really, so I'm not going to say more about it. --M. J. Young M. J. Young on "Game Ideas Unlimited: My North Wall" http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/game-ideas-unlimited-my-north-wall#post-4613 Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:14:09 +0000 M. J. Young 4613@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ I remember writing this one, <a href="http://gamingoutpost.com/article/my_north_wall/">Game Ideas Unlimited: My North Wall</a>. I remember sitting at this desk, staring at that wall, examining each item as I moved from east to west across it. It helps, perhaps, that the wall has not changed that much. The painting is still there. So is the cabinet, and the television. Those are probably the big objects. Nearly all the little ones are gone, including the speaker for the PA system, which found use with 7dB and might again with Collision. The interesting aspect of the article was the exploration of how to get world and adventure ideas from very common objects. The painting is missing from the article. You might have to buy the book to see it. I remember posting to ask Aaron whether it (and the sketch from an upcoming article) were still preserved on the server somewhere that I could restore them, but have not gotten an answer to that yet, so he's probably overlooked it with everything else he has to do. Too bad--looking for the leprechaun was one of the really fun things people liked about this one. However, perhaps we'll get that fixed soon enough. As always, feel free to comment here on what you read there. --M. J. Young M. J. Young on "Game Ideas Unlimited: Transmats" http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/game-ideas-unlimited-transmats#post-4470 Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:56:41 +0000 M. J. Young 4470@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ As long as I'm posting this, I'm going to give a bit of history of the series. It was late in late in 2000, maybe the first weeks of 2001, when I got a message--one of the few worthwhile things that ever reached me through an instant messaging system. (I've since shut them all down, since most of what I get is Spam, and I have several telephones.) There was a fellow known to me, and many others, as Graveyard Greg. He had been involved here, publishing interviews with such luminaries as Robin Laws, Greg Stolze, and somehow listed among them, me. For reasons I have never known, he was no longer working here, but someone had contacted him and given him a budget to create a new gaming web site. He thought that I would be a good writer for such a site, and wanted to know if I would be interested in doing a weekly column at maybe 1500 words a week, for which he would pay me from this budget. I said yes; I offered him the title, Game Ideas Unlimited, and he loved it.  I wrote three columns and e-mailed them to him to show where I was going to take it, and we were all agreed that this was going to happen--and then the person who hired him pulled the plug, announcing that they weren't going to do the web site after all. This is not that unusual. I was promised payment for an article once, Re-educating the Power Gamer, but the site that bought and published it never paid for it, and eventually went under. There are a few sites that make money at this, but it's not an easy thing to do, and even the big ones have been on the edge of bankruptcy more than once. So I had these three articles, a few sketched ideas, and the concept of a series, and nowhere to take it. Then Gaming Outpost announced that it was going to attempt something different, a new subscriber-based model in which there would be special content for those who paid a small monthly fee. They were going to hire five industry professionals to write columns, one for each day of the week. I fired off a note, saying I had this series looking for a home, and would they want it. There was some discussion--they had envisioned thousand word columns, and I had framed it at fifteen hundred, but they liked what they saw and gave me my number. The three articles they saw by way of introduction were the <a href="http://gamingoutpost.com/article/giu_introduction/">Introduction</a> I mentioned two weeks back, <a href="http://gamingoutpost.com/article/an_amusing_dungeon/">An Amusing Dungeon</a> which I presented last week, and this one: <a href="http://gamingoutpost.com/article/transmats/">Game Ideas </a>Unlimited: Transmats. It is a discussion of many of the things I think are inherently suggested by the existence and understanding of matter transmission technology. Some of my forum players are dealing with matter transmission technology in their worlds. This might get them thinking in new directions. In any case, I look forward to your thoughts on it here. --M. J. Young M. J. Young on "Game Ideas Unlimited: An Amusing Dungeon" http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/game-ideas-ltemgtunltemgtlimited-an-amusing-dungeon#post-4416 Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:33:30 +0000 M. J. Young 4416@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ I was going to post this on Friday, but if you've seen my <a href="http://gamingoutpost.com/blog/a-few-hours-here-or-therea-few-hours-here-or-there/">Blogless Lepolt entry for today</a> you know what happened to that plan. As I mentioned a week ago, there are many articles in the archives here--near a thousand, according to the automatic article counter, but I'm not certain how many of those are articles as opposed to mislabled reviews, blog posts, or interviews (which don't have a category of their own, so they'll remain articles). I'm only giving you a tour of the two hundred I wrote as part of the Game Ideas Unlimited series. Let me invite you to read <a href="http://gamingoutpost.com/article/an_amusing_dungeon/">Game Ideas Unlimited: An Amusing Dungeon</a>. I don't want to say too much about it, as the first time it ran the promotional blurb gave away one of the kickers. Let's just say that it's about juxtaposing one relatively common setting against another, and making the dissimilar fit in surprising ways. I look forward to thoughts, responses, reactions, and ideas. --M. J. Young M. J. Young on "Article Updating" http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/article-updating#post-4274 Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:23:44 +0000 M. J. Young 4274@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ This is mostly for Aaron and Eric, but David might also be interested, and I'm not excluding the possibility that others might as well. I have gone through all the titles of articles from the earliest still on the site through the end of December 2002. Aaron, is there any way that I can create author accounts? I could probably track down Seth and get him to create one, but Gareth-Michael Skarka is probably not talking to me, and Gary Gygax is not talking to anyone anymore (O.K., my dark humor probably isn't appreciated), and it would be better for the authors and for the site to show those articles with the authors' names attached. Also, is there any way I can delete author accounts? We've got a lot of writers in the stable whose first name is Viagra, who probably don't have any articles or posts on record, and it would be nice to clean out the dead wood. I was uncertain about two articles. You might remember that back mumble-mumble years ago Ian O'Rourke and I did some "Point/Counterpoint" articles, where we each tackled the same issue in a side-by-side format. In a sense, they are not mine; in a sense they are. I put them under my user name, partly because I don't think Ian has a user name (and if he does, I really don't remember what it was), but I don't particularly want to claim full credit for his work. Since I couldn't create an account, I couldn't make a joint user name one for those articles. Eric, I think I got all of yours, but you should probably browse through all the article indices up through the end of December 2002 and make sure I didn't miss any. Particularly before the World a Week column began, you wrote a few things that weren't easy to spot as yours. David, I saw a couple of things I thought might be yours in those months, but I wasn't sure either whether they were or whether you had a user account, so I didn't pursue it. If anyone else has articles posted that are not showing under their user name, let me know. As an aside, I also cleaned up the links in the quarterly articles of the Game Ideas Unlimited series for those years. For those who don't remember the weekly series, every thirteenth article summarized the previous twelve and linked back to them, but the links went bad when the site was updated. Those should work now. --M. J. Young