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923 pieces · Titles A–Z
Game Ideas Un limited: Characterization
A simple referee's trick for making games run smoothly: how to give recognizable traits to your NPC's.
Game Ideas Un limited: CharGen
A preliminary consideration of character generation systems gives some ideas on freeform character creation.
Game Ideas Un limited: Child's Play
When children play pretend games, what really are the rules? The article offers a perhaps disturbing possible answer, hoping to find a better one.
Game Ideas Un limited: Civil Planning
How do you design roads and towns? What makes them interesting? What makes them feel real? Here are some observations on the realities of the subject.
Game Ideas Un limited: Clones
Every referee has a library of available non-player characters at his fingertips, if he realizes it.
Game Ideas Un limited: Cold
There are more dangers in the world than those which threaten with obvious violence. Sometimes the subtle threat is the one that kills.
Game Ideas Un limited: Comparisons
What makes a good sandwich? It's only partly subjective. The same goes for a good weapon.
Game Ideas Un limited: Conflicts
The miniseries on alignment wraps up with some summary and a look at the corners not as the clear statements of position they are usually taken to be, but as the true places of tension between competing values.
Game Ideas Un limited: Contingencies
The importance of Plan B is presented, along with some thoughts about its value.
Game Ideas Un limited: Continuity
How do you make a collection of disjointed adventures feel like an ongoing saga? Partly through a retrospective of the columns of the last quarter, some techniques are suggested.
Game Ideas Un limited: Control
The author looks at what makes us afraid and how we overcome it, with a view to how to instil fear in players during the game.
Game Ideas Un limited: Copying Ravel
An anecdote in the lives of two composers may help us come to understand how we become better game referees.
Game Ideas Un limited: Credibility
In a theory-intensive article, we consider exactly what it is we're really doing when we role play that is different from most other activities, and how we do it.
Game Ideas Un limited: Culture
People are different, and yet the same. Sometimes the things that make us different distinguish us as part of some other group, and that can play against us.
Game Ideas Un limited: Cumulative
When we play and when we design games, we tend to look at the odds for this roll; but there's another aspect to consider in the way those odds build up over time.
Game Ideas Un limited: Darkness
The lack of light conceals problems within problems; this article considers a few solutions to a problem that is often overlooked.
Game Ideas Un limited: Dedication
Returning to the discussion of alignment, we consider the impact of so-called side alignments.
Game Ideas Un limited: Designs
How do you help someone else with his world designs without trying to impose your view of how worlds work?
Game Ideas Un limited: Disabilities
What a character cannot do so easily will be the basis for what he does to compensate, and this in turn can enrich the game.
Game Ideas Un limited: Discrimination
Not about racism or sexism, but a consideration of the cognitive processes of finding similarities and differences between objects and ideas, this article also serves as the quarterly review of all that has been covered…
Game Ideas Un limited: Diversification
The ninth quarter of the ongoing series ends with a look at the variety covered over the past three months, and the advice that variety, if not the spice of life, is at least an excellent way to keep the creative juices…
Game Ideas Un limited: Dreams
The thirteenth quarter of the series wraps up with a look at the connection between dreams and memories, in addition to providing a free look back at the previous dozen articles.
Game Ideas Un limited: du Jour
From soup to nuts, randomness is sometimes a matter of perspective.
Game Ideas Un limited: Dungeons
The wandering monster is revisited, with thoughts on how to make it work based on concepts of open and closed settings.
Game Ideas Un limited: Encounters
Wandering the dungeons or the cities, what--or who--are you really likely to meet?
Game Ideas Un limited: Entertainment
Has there been a real shift in what makes a game popular?
Game Ideas Un limited: Escape
In another adventure design approach, the series considers how to give chase, such that the excitement of play comes from trying to outrun the danger.
Game Ideas Un limited: Exercise
Here's a workout for the sort of mental muscle used in running role playing games.
Game Ideas Un limited: Expanding
Here is one way to generate ideas for worlds and scenarios that has worked in a lot of different contexts.
Game Ideas Un limited: File Cards
A few practical uses for a readily available playing aid are presented.