Archive for the ‘Opinion’ Category

Living Hard: Disabled in RPGs

I get asked every now and then how I’m doing, same as everyone else, but there’s a difference since I am officially disabled. I’ve always resisted talking about my physical condition and medical problems in any depth here are Campaign Mastery, though I relented a little in Dice & Life: pt 2. But recently I […]

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I Hear Music – Four Sonic Monsters (1/2)

It’s been quite a while since I sat down at the keyboard to write one of these articles without a clear idea in mind of what the subject matter would be – usually from weeks in advance of publication date. When a deadline is looming, that experience can be extremely stressful and unwelcome, but when […]

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Economics In RPGs 8: The Digital Age Ch 5

This entry is part 15 of 16 in the series Economics In RPGs

Now Updated! – Scroll to the bottom of the page (past the table of contents) for the additional content if you’ve already read the main article. I usually write the bulk of these articles on Monday and publish them at Midnight that night or just a little after. The Monday juts past has all sorts […]

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Economics In RPGs 8: The Digital Age Ch 4

This entry is part 14 of 16 in the series Economics In RPGs

As usual, I’m going to get right down to business. While I’ll try to have this post function as a standalone, You’ll get a lot more out of it if you have already read Chapter 8.1, Chapter 8.2, and Chapter 8.3 before continuing. The Digital Age, Fifth Period 2010s-2020: The decade of fallout The most […]

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Economics In RPGs 8: The Digital Age Ch 3

This entry is part 13 of 16 in the series Economics In RPGs

Lots still to get through, so as usual I’m going to dive right in. While I’ll try to have this make sense in a standalone mode, it would be preferable for you to have read Chapter 8.1 and last week’s Chapter 8.2 before continuing. The Digital Age, Fourth Period 00s-2010s Most of the decade that […]

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Economics In RPGs 8: The Digital Age Ch 2

This entry is part 12 of 16 in the series Economics In RPGs

As usual in this series, I’ve decided to just push on from where we left off, without the preambles and without a synopsis. You should read Chapter 8.1 before starting this continuation of the article to get the most out of it. But you can dive right in if you want to – at your […]

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Inherent, Relative, and Personal Modifiers

For the first time since I started it, when I went to draft the penultimate(?) parts of the Economics in RPGs series today, I found myself unsure of how best to structure the post. While I have total confidence that, given enough time, I would have found a satisfactory sequence to bring out the key […]

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Economics In RPGs 6c: Pre-Digital Tech Age Ch 3

This entry is part 9 of 16 in the series Economics In RPGs

I’ve clearly decided to push on and get this trilogy of posts out of the way before interrupting the series for another break. As usual, because this is a direct continuation of what’s already been posted, I’m going to skip the usual preamble, so make sure that you have read Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 […]

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Economics In RPGs 5b: Electric Age Ch. 2

This entry is part 6 of 16 in the series Economics In RPGs

Because this is literally the second half of the article I posted last week, I’ll forego all the usual introductory bits and pieces and dive straight in from where I left off. Industrial Economics III: War & Depression Many of the economic influences that defined the era came together in the First World War, and […]

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Economics In RPGs 4: The Age Of Steam

This entry is part 4 of 16 in the series Economics In RPGs

Welcome & General Introduction With each passing entry in this series, we get to ground that is more familiar to all of us – either part of, or directly related to, our everyday lives, or part of the collective zeitgeist concerning the forces that influence those lives. This makes analysis easier (I know more of […]

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Game License Meltdown: The OGL 1.1 Debacle

This is not the article that I intended to post today (that’s still somewhere in the pipeline). Real-world events have overtaken my planning and this post is in response to those events. Some of the language may be provocative or even incendiary; I make no apologies for that – this is a subject that has […]

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Chances Are: Lessons in Probability

I hadn’t intended to publish another math-heavy article so soon, but when the muse strikes you have to follow it… To be a top-class GM, you need to have an almost instinctive understanding of probability. Such understanding rarely comes naturally; you have to work at it, exploring different ways of looking at odds and outcomes. […]

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