Looking for something in the text? Search the full archive.
923 pieces · Titles A–Z
Game Ideas Un limited: Fish Pond
Some thoughts on human interactions and social perceptions are offered in the context of better understanding character relationships and decisions.
Game Ideas Un limited: Flag Captures
Our exploration of scenario design draws on a popular action game to show some of the important features of one approach to The Quest as an adventure model.
Game Ideas Un limited: Flying Cars
The consideration of one futuristic technology presents thoughts on the inherent problems in designing a future setting.
Game Ideas Un limited: Fog
Would the game be more interesting, at least sometimes, if the players had less clear an idea of what was really happening?
Game Ideas Un limited: Foliage
A piece of the background may be drawn vividly into the foreground and become the basis for adventure.
Game Ideas Un limited: Food
Here are a few thoughts about what characters eat and how to create those unusual foods that give aliens and elves an alien or fantastic feeling.
Game Ideas Un limited: Foreshadowed
Ideas are considered related to giving the impression that something is going to happen before it does, whether or not you know what it will be.
Game Ideas Un limited: Fortuitous
The information I needed for an article dropped into my lap. How often does that happen? How often should it?
Game Ideas Un limited: Freedom
The intermittent examination of alignment looks at another badly misunderstood aspect, and discovers again that there is something here near and dear.
Game Ideas Un limited: Funny
When people are laughing during the game, is that a good thing, or not? Like most things, it depends.
Game Ideas Un limited: Futures
We deal with change--both in our lives and in our game worlds.
Game Ideas Un limited: Gamer Movies
For a lighter topic, the series looks at a few movies which the author thinks provide great game ideas and insights, and briefly what he finds in each.
Game Ideas Un limited: Ghosts
A couple of modern ghost stories give us a different flavor for supernatural events in play.
Game Ideas Un limited: Graffiti
Sometimes the handwriting on the wall isn't so important as all that, and sometimes maybe it's just important to have it there.
Game Ideas Un limited: Happy
Coming back to the question of why we roleplay, this article turns to the particular question of whether we would pretend to be someone else if we were happy with who we really are.
Game Ideas Un limited: Haunting
Here's an idea for a game scenario you might find useful--a few thoughts on a haunted house.
Game Ideas Un limited: Home
A few musings on going home, and what that means, provide this week's thoughts about games.
Game Ideas Un limited: Hordes
Practical methods of creating armies for use in play make the dream of a great, grand, and glorious battle a bit more attainable.
Game Ideas Un limited: Hospitality
In some worlds and some cultures, the traveler can expect others to provide a safe place to stay. Does that happen in our game worlds, and what impact does that have?
Game Ideas Un limited: Idiomatic
Misunderstandings arising from the nuances in how we use language are the subject this week, with a few real-world examples and some ideas of how to involve such cultural and linguistic confusions in play.
Game Ideas Un limited: Impressions
Realistically, the people our characters meet are going to judge them by what they see at that first meeting, and after that everything will be filtered through those first impressions.
Game Ideas Un limited: Invention
Consideration is given to the child of necessity.
Game Ideas Un limited: Invulnerable
Sometimes the most powerful characters are the more interesting for their hidden weakness.
Game Ideas Un limited: Kahanamoku
The nuances of cultural values are considered through the recognition of a postage stamp.
Game Ideas Un limited: Language
The series suggests ways in which language sometimes limits our ability to communicate.
Game Ideas Un limited: Laser Sharks
When is over the top not too much?
Game Ideas Un limited: Legacy
Everyone wants to leave his mark on the world after he's left it behind. There are many ways to do this. Which of these motivate your player characters?
Game Ideas Un limited: Levels
Logic is the subject, considering how to look deeper into a problem to unravel the answers.
Game Ideas Un limited: Math
Sometimes we create our own limitations; when that happens, we need to recognize them to get beyond them.
Game Ideas Un limited: McGuffin
In designing quest-style adventures, one of the critical questions to be addressed is for what we are questing. More to the point, why do we want this?
