Category: Games
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PhilCon 2016, Featuring ME!
This weekend I'll be attending the venerable PhilCon science fiction convention, at the Crowne Plaza hotel in scenic Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Here's my schedule of events: Friday, November 18, 8:00 p.m., Plaza III: Utopias That Make Us Cringe — I'll be moderating a panel on utopian societies in science fiction that don't actually seem very…
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Game Mechanics (Part 2): Why They Don’t Matter
In my last post on the subject, I wrote about how important it is for game mechanics to replicate the reality of whatever the game is about. And then I left on a cliffhanger by saying that isn't actually true. It's not true because games depend on the players. A game is not a novel or…
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Game Mechanics (Part 1): Why They Matter
When I'm not writing science fiction I write roleplaying games, and I've also designed a couple of card games. As a result, I think about game rules more than most people. Most games have simple, highly artificial mechanics. You have to assemble a certain set of cards, or eliminate your opponent's pieces by moving your…
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Nostalgie du Geek: Opening the Traveller Box
My roleplaying game life began with Dungeons & Dragons, because that was the only roleplaying game there was back in the summer of 1977. But that changed very quickly. That same year, Game Designers' Workshop published the first science fiction roleplaying game: Traveller. I got my copy of Traveller some time in 1978, possibly at…
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Sandbox or Quest? Yes.
The style of a game campaign mirrors the fictional genres it is based on. The original Dungeons & Dragons was inspired by two strands of fantasy. The first was the fantasy adventures of Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Fritz Leiber — tales of roguish wanderers more or less stumbling across situations…
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Congratulations Dragon Award Winners!
For several years now I've been telling everyone who'll listen that the major awards for science fiction and fantasy were in danger of becoming too obscure. The Nebulas are selected by the membership of SFWA, but don't get much publicity because (sadly) the organization isn't well-known outside the fraternity of SF professionals. The Hugo Award…
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The Joy of Research
My name is Jim, and I'm addicted to doing research. There. I've said it and I'm not sorry, either. When I'm cured of this addiction just put me in the ground because I'm done. How bad is my research addiction? Let me tell you my shame. For a while I played an online game called…
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Nostalgie du Geek: My First Dungeons and Dragons Game
I've been playing roleplaying games for 39 years now. A friend showed me his copy of the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set in the summer 1977 and I was hooked right away. I believe I got my first set for my birthday that Fall. Given that it saw the publication of D&D and the global…
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MidAmeriCon II, Day 1!
You may wonder why I refer to Thursday, August 18th as Day 1 of the convention, when there were several events on Wednesday the 17th. To answer that I must refer you to Southwest Airlines, which decided to cancel my Wednesday morning flight so that I didn't arrive in Kansas City until Thursday. So for…
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Weird War I Breaks Out
If trench warfare, gas clouds, influenza, and revolutionary chaos aren't bad enough, imagine the Great War with zombies! Or malevolent sentient rats! Or sinister sorcery manipulating both sides! Yes, it's Weird War I, the supernatural theater of operations for World War I adventures. And it's now available as a PDF from Pinnacle Entertainment (the print…
The Cambias Digression 