One of the highlights of the boardgame conference in February was that the local game publisher Jussi Autio invited us to check out his game store. Tuonela has this sweet run-down business locale within walking distance of downtown Oulu; it’s small and grunge, including the stock of boardgames, which veers towards the eccentric, local and […]
The Tuonela line of card games Read More »
This is going to rpg be theory stuff, just so you know. A thing I’ve noticed lately specifically at Story Games, but also on other gaming fora, is the increased acceptance and advocation of narration authority sharing between players in a roleplaying game. It’s a nice technique, but I also find that it is being
The pitfalls of narrative technique in rpg play Read More »
I’ve been busy, obviously – editing and laying out a genealogy of my paternal family line, mostly, but also some other stuff, such as participating in an interesting boardgame conference in Oulu this last weekend. Some notes follow – this might interest any and all Finnish game design and development people out there.
The boardgame conference in Oulu Read More »
I thought that I was done with my browser game reviews, but I’ve been continuing to play, and I’ve encountered an interesting phenomenon – browser shareware. These games operate at a rather high level of ambition, and are in fact available as stand-alone applications for pay. The browser version of the game is just a
Recommending Browser Shareware Read More »
Related to the reading I’ve been doing, here are some notes on a Solar System implementation for Gloranthan gaming. I’m mostly going by the 2nd edition Heroquest book here, particularly its tripartite cosmology and emphasis on the social role of heroes. The idea is to give some mechanical backbone to the whole idea of three
Glorantha in Solar System Read More »
I’ll continue on the matter of Heroquest a bit more, I still have a bit to say. This one’s about the metaphysics of Glorantha in Heroquest. In fact, it’s a sort of an extended question I’m going to ask of my Gloranthan sage friend at some point – writing this post should help me verbalize
2nd edition Heroquest Metaphysics Read More »
I’ve been re-reading the second and third editions of Heroquest lately. I’m sort of a little bit of a fan for Greg Stafford’s things, so this is mostly me warming up for the new Sartar book which I’m going to get whenever somebody brings it to me from the coastal trade towns. I have historically
Thoughts on 2nd and 3rd edition Heroquest Read More »
I thought that I was finished with my series of browser game reviews, but perhaps I’ll do one more yet. “Skill games” are the genre that to me seems like the linchpin of the popularity of browser games in general. They are the perfect casual games, and always have been, long before browser games existed
Recommending casual games Read More »
My series of browser game reviews continues with another title Markku linked for me. Small Worlds, according to its title screen, is apparently some sort of casual game contest competitor. This is easy to believe, as the game is certainly pretty casual. It is also exactly the sort of minimalistic, concerned design that I’d make
Recommending Game Poetry Read More »
My series of browser game reviews continues, this time with the seminal genre of browser games. Tower Defense games are perhaps more than any other single genre characteristic of browser games – so much so that many of the games reviewed so far in this series of mine actually had clear tower defense logic in
Recommending Tower Defense Games Read More »