RPG Linkdump

Scion tomorrow, sentimentality today.

So today is Sherri's birthday. Fooling her into marrying me still stands as the best decision I ever made. She's the person whose company I enjoy most. When I was at the Press and had to travel for work, I'd be excited for the first day about going somewhere new. By the second day, I'd be missing her. By the third day, I'd be deeply heartsick. I'm not one for too much public sentiment, but I truly love her. Plus she's a gamer, which I consider a bonus on top of everything I enjoy about her. She's hard to buy for, as she's usually pretty happy with what she has. The only thing she really wants is for me to tell her more stories.

*****

A bit of linkdump as well today if you managed to get through my gushing there. As an adjunct to the campaign postmortem's I've found a few articles that cover some of the same ground.

Soren Johnson’s Game Design Journal has an interesting column looking at Sid Meier's rules for game design. I think some of those apply generally to narrative creation and rpgs.

As you may know White Wolf has done some of its lines in a limited format-- only a certain number of books to be published in non-core lines. I said before I think that's a good idea. They've restarted their downloadable pdf magazine (now called Epitaph) and the first issue has a two-page postmortem on the development of the Changeling line. The next book they put out will likely be the last. You can find the magazine for free download here.

Finally there's an interesting article looking at The World Ends With You, an action jrpg for the Nintendo DS. I tried it, but found it a little to reflex intensive for my taste. Still I loved the ethos and design-- SquareEnix always does a nice job with that. Some of the design team posted a brief overview of what went right and what went wrong with the development of the game.

I like being able to go back and look at the evolution of these kinds of interactive ideas and the decisions which went into the final design.