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940 pieces · Titles A–Z
Game Ideas Un limited: Professional
How did your character get to be so good at what he does?
Game Ideas Un limited: Prophecy
It can be interesting to try to tell the future of the characters in the game, but it requires a bit of care. Here are a few tricks that may help.
Game Ideas Un limited: Props
Why do some gamers use props even in tabletop role play? Certainly it helps set the mood--but does it do more?
Game Ideas Un limited: Pyramids
It's all about building something big.
Game Ideas Un limited: Relocated
Things change. Don't get locked into your maps.
Game Ideas Un limited: Reports
In our quarterly report, looking back at the last dozen articles, we consider the value of in-game in-character reports.
Game Ideas Un limited: Reset
As our free quarterly review glances back at the past twelve articles, we consider the virtues of erasing events and starting the game over, and the virtues of saving the changes for the next game.
Game Ideas Un limited: Resources
Your antagonists have to be able to plan to some degree, but also to improvise, and you have to remember that they aren't unlimited in what they can do even when you as the referee are.
Game Ideas Un limited: Rewards
We go back to mechanics, this time considering how rewards systems encourage and discourage different kinds of play.
Game Ideas Un limited: Rivalry
Being allies and being adversaries can often be complex relationships. We can admire those we oppose, and we can be very competitive with our friends. Can we explore this with our characters?
Game Ideas Un limited: Romanian
The series looks at the notion of unimportant skills.
Game Ideas Un limited: Scavenger Hunts
One more variant on the quest concept for adventure design is considered, in which the players have to find several objects without knowledge of where to look.
Game Ideas Un limited: Selfish
The examination of alignment continues with some surprising revelations about the one you thought you knew.
Game Ideas Un limited: Shares
The process of dividing up the stuff at the end of an adventure, whatever the game or genre, has many different approaches. You may not have considered some of these.
Game Ideas Un limited: Silence
A modern legal right is examined, and consideration given to what our game worlds would be like without it--and how they might be different even with it.
Game Ideas Un limited: Snubbed
Sometimes the people who didn't matter to us come back to haunt us.
Game Ideas Un limited: Societies
Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, or is it the other way around? The answer to that question tells you a lot about your character's values.
Game Ideas Un limited: Songs
What do you write first, the words or the music? A composer and game designer suggests that this question has lessons for game design as well.
Game Ideas Un limited: Sounds Like
Verbal tricks which the players will probably record incorrectly can work effectively as misdirection.
Game Ideas Un limited: Sparkles
An eerie setting provides some food for thought.
Game Ideas Un limited: Spelunking
Returning to the question of adventure design, the series provides notes on a more fundamentally explorative model.
Game Ideas Un limited: Spin
What's wrong with a phrase like Human Resources , and why is it like Internal Revenue --and how can such nuances of meaning be put to good use in world design?
Game Ideas Un limited: Stained Glass
Inspiration is found from a familiar object again--and again, and again.
Game Ideas Un limited: Stalling
What do you do when you don't know what to do next? If you're a Multiverser referee, you kill all the characters and start over in another world--and maybe there's something useful in that if you're playing some other…
Game Ideas Un limited: Stars
The awe of the heavens doesn't often touch our modern thought; perhaps if we can see it from the perspective of our ancestors, we can better understand how it should impact our characters.
Game Ideas Un limited: Stumble
Some players won't run games because they're afraid of making mistakes. Here's some advice on how to handle that part of it, in the hope that more players will run more games, and those of us who are usually behind the…
Game Ideas Un limited: Survival
Another basic approach to adventure design considers the realities of human survival, and how to turn this into an in-game challenge.
Game Ideas Un limited: Togetherness
There is an aspect to our perception of games cast into relief by those times we play alone.
Game Ideas Un limited: Togetherness
There is an aspect of our perception of games cast into relief by those times we play alone.
Game Ideas Un limited: Token
Small victories and insignificant rewards might be the stuff that keeps the game going.