For those who may be interested, please feel free to comment on any of these old posts. All comments go straight to my email, so I will see them.
I'll start collecting the list of Top 10 Posts that people have proposed and create a poll out of them for the weekend.
Here is a list of 10 posts that I created in July, 2008:
Values. Trade Prices. My first belated attempt to explain the same pricing system that I would repeatedly explain over and over, as I searched for the words to do so. My inability to convey this concept through text nagged at me for years. Believe me, if you sit next to me at my computer, it is really easy to understand.
Haulage. Trade Prices, Transport. Same thing as above. Just as I would do this on my wiki, ultimately very slowly and with many pictures, I tried to explain my method for calculating the price of things based on a sound economic principal, rather than on km/mileage between markets.
Commodities List Part I. Trade Commodities. A list of goods and services corresponding to my trade system at the time I started my blog. At that time, my system did not include Holland, Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, North Africa, India or a variety of other parts of the world. Covers minerals and ores, foodstuffs, textiles and woodworking.
No Pics Please, We're Mathematicians. RPG Trends. Some pithy remarks on the apparent importance of artistic expression that was very central to the gaming community at the time. Some points about my personal inclinations towards math and D&D.
Commodities List Part II. Trade Commodities, Trade & Production, Worldbuilding Theory. A continuation of the first post, covering alchemy, building materials, metalwork, crops, market gardening, livestock and fish. Includes a list of largely unreadable tables that account for all the references in my world at that time. I was new to blogging, so that was a waste of time. Some notes on how I designate some parts of my world as occupied by non-humans.
Sources Table. Trade & Production. Broken link to my sources table, which is now only available through Patreon ($10 donation, button on the side bar). [Hm, delete the post or leave it as a record of where I once was?]
Prices. Equipment Table, Goods Manufacturing, Trade Prices. Again, an early attempt to discuss how the value of commodities and transport are translated into the specific price of a specific good. This is better done on my present-day wiki. Includes content, however, on the progression of iron ore to pig iron, wrought iron and ironmongery, distinguishing one from another. Gives equipment list for ironmongery products.
Player Wrongs. Legitimacy in DMing, Ranting, RPG Trends. Discussion of "player rights," DM responsibility and anti-politicization of the game. I am actually talking about Legitimacy Theory, but I would not stumble into a direct connection between RPGs and that until 2014.
Answers. Trade Prices, Worldbuilding Theory. Arbitrary numbers in developing a trade system, rehash of the earlier haulage and values posts.
Commitment. Personal Memoir, Player Participation. How lack of commitment leads to the dissolution of game play, social pressures to participate in events other than D&D, lack of respect the game has in the outside world and the failure of players to respect the game enough to sacrifice in order to play it.
Reading these posts each week is a terribly sobering experience, one that I can't say I'm enjoying. I know that others have written to say they were enjoying these posts at the time, now that I read them I wish I had known more, or been more willing to make a better effort all around. I suppose it really only matters what I do today.
Showing posts with label Old Posts Index. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Old Posts Index. Show all posts
Friday, April 7, 2017
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Old Posts 11-20
As a reminder, interest has already waned on the "Challenge to Find the Top 10 Posts." No one has to put up more than one favorite, after all. Moreover, I'm not sure yet that there are 10 posts that have been seconded.
Here is a list of the next 10 posts I created on this blog:
Play. Advanced Gameplay, Fun, Game Prep, Rule-Making. Discussion of how children play games versus how adults play games; rule-making and why it matters, increase detail in rule-making as games advance in complexity. Conflated importance of frivolity and "fun" in the role-playing community.
Charisma. Ability Stats, Character Generation, Charisma. Method for determining background skills, relationships, childhood events and character flaws through the use of a d20 roll compared to the player's stats. This post focused on charisma-related generation results. Charisma as a dump stat.
Intelligence. Ability Stats, Character Generation, Intelligence. Difficulties in playing intelligence in games, importance of randomness in game design, defining "character." Intelligence-related results for character generation. Discussion of severe character flaws.
Wisdom. Ability Stats, Character Generation, Wisdom. Family background's irrelevance in common role-playing. Wisdom-related results for character generation.
Constitution. Ability Stats, Character Generation, Constitution. Balance in gaming, definition of winning, character flaws. Constitution-related results for character generation.
Strength & Dexterity. Ability Stats, Character Generation, Dexterity, Strength. Strength and dexterity related results for character generation.
There Has to Be More. Campaign Structure, Manor Estate, Personal Memoir, Trade Commodities. Influence of Almanacs on my youth and my developing interest in statistics and geography. The importance of developing a campaign structure as a cohesive whole, difficulties associated with answering player queries regarding land, costs, commodity production and estate management.
What Price? Manor Estate, Trade Commodities, Treasure. Comparisons of purchase prices in the official game universe vs. gold accumulation from treasure. Importance of Scarcity, reducing the party's buying power, many examples regarding prices that are too low to present a challenge [notably feeding horses].
Wide, Wide World. Trade Commodities, Trade & Production. Reasons for designing a trade system, implementation of a Colliers Encyclopedia for research, accumulation of trade references and commodity forms, plotting 17th century production vs. modern statistical date [using the U.N. Industrial Statistics Yearbook.
Random Good. Campaign Structure, Game Prep. Philosophy of minimal game prep, improvising a game on the spot. Relationship of randomness (the unexpected) and improvisation in moment-to-moment play.
Frankly, I think the Random Good post is fairly garbage. I was definitely off on a tangent that day; I'm not sure what the hell point I was trying to make. The rest is fairly okay. The introduction of the background generator tables, way before I systematized it into an excel generator, comes astoundingly early in this blog. And naturally I was going to start talking about trade as soon as I had gotten my feet wet.
Here is a list of the next 10 posts I created on this blog:
Play. Advanced Gameplay, Fun, Game Prep, Rule-Making. Discussion of how children play games versus how adults play games; rule-making and why it matters, increase detail in rule-making as games advance in complexity. Conflated importance of frivolity and "fun" in the role-playing community.
Charisma. Ability Stats, Character Generation, Charisma. Method for determining background skills, relationships, childhood events and character flaws through the use of a d20 roll compared to the player's stats. This post focused on charisma-related generation results. Charisma as a dump stat.
Intelligence. Ability Stats, Character Generation, Intelligence. Difficulties in playing intelligence in games, importance of randomness in game design, defining "character." Intelligence-related results for character generation. Discussion of severe character flaws.
Wisdom. Ability Stats, Character Generation, Wisdom. Family background's irrelevance in common role-playing. Wisdom-related results for character generation.
Constitution. Ability Stats, Character Generation, Constitution. Balance in gaming, definition of winning, character flaws. Constitution-related results for character generation.
Strength & Dexterity. Ability Stats, Character Generation, Dexterity, Strength. Strength and dexterity related results for character generation.
There Has to Be More. Campaign Structure, Manor Estate, Personal Memoir, Trade Commodities. Influence of Almanacs on my youth and my developing interest in statistics and geography. The importance of developing a campaign structure as a cohesive whole, difficulties associated with answering player queries regarding land, costs, commodity production and estate management.
What Price? Manor Estate, Trade Commodities, Treasure. Comparisons of purchase prices in the official game universe vs. gold accumulation from treasure. Importance of Scarcity, reducing the party's buying power, many examples regarding prices that are too low to present a challenge [notably feeding horses].
Wide, Wide World. Trade Commodities, Trade & Production. Reasons for designing a trade system, implementation of a Colliers Encyclopedia for research, accumulation of trade references and commodity forms, plotting 17th century production vs. modern statistical date [using the U.N. Industrial Statistics Yearbook.
Random Good. Campaign Structure, Game Prep. Philosophy of minimal game prep, improvising a game on the spot. Relationship of randomness (the unexpected) and improvisation in moment-to-moment play.
Frankly, I think the Random Good post is fairly garbage. I was definitely off on a tangent that day; I'm not sure what the hell point I was trying to make. The rest is fairly okay. The introduction of the background generator tables, way before I systematized it into an excel generator, comes astoundingly early in this blog. And naturally I was going to start talking about trade as soon as I had gotten my feet wet.
Thursday, March 23, 2017
Old Posts 1-10
Here are a list of the first 10 posts I created on this blog:
The Tao. Personal Memoir. An account of how I was introduced to D&D my very first time, my offline campaign in 2008 and my reasons for starting a blog.
To Make a World. First Worlds I Created, Personal Memoir, Worldbuilding Theory. Describing my transition to being a DM, the first world I created based on the Gorean novels, my second world fully self-designed and why it didn't work, my present world and reasons for its design.
How It Got Infected. Corporate Marketing, D&D's Development, Official Game, Personal Memoir. First experiences with modules in 1979, TSR's agenda, witnessing the manner in which people moved towards the game, early conventions in the 1980s, my feelings of disenchantment and moving towards isolation as a DM.
Rats in a Maze. Agency in RPGs, Humor, Personal Memoir. My first DM and his style, the employment of dungeon doors as evil entities, discussing the freedom of players to live a life vicariously through role-playing games.
Seizing the Day. Adventure Building, Agency in RPGs. A theoretical description of how an alternate-form of adventure might be created, not based on the traditional style (the mustard adventure). A few words on objectivism as a DM.
So What If They Win? Adventure Building, Agency in RPGs, Bad DMing. Good vs. Bad playing, appreciating the player, the player's primary value in a campaign, DMs prepared to circumvent the rules in order to preserve a preconception of how their games should unfold. [I have moved slightly from the opinions expressed].
Dead Thinking. Agency in RPGs, Alignment, Corporate Marketing, Official Game, Personal Memoir, Unearthed Arcana. Disappointment in the Unearthed Arcana's release, attempts to subvert player agency with alignment, the bad paladin trope, character codes, end result of point-buy systems.
Give Abilities Their Due. 4th Edition, Game Mechanics. The release of 4e, negative first impressions, increased emphasis on the die roll, fantasy world demographics, the rational difference between having an clear and unquestioned skill and the silliness of making rolls to determined success.
Enough Junk. Community Feedback, Ranting. My emotional response to the apparent present state of the RPG game culture, viscerally expressed, upon beginning to discover how fractured that culture had become, and how the same lazy cliches were still prominent. Exactly the sort of post I am trying never to write again. [I am strongly tempted to delete the post]
Secondary Skills. Character Generation, Father's Table, Pre-Sage Abilities. A discussion of the secondary skills approach used in the original DMG and the approach I had used at that time, which I described as the "father's table." This is still part of the background character generator I would develop later (with more results that this post gives), but now sage abilities exist as a complement to the moderate skills/bonuses a player gains from their parent's profession.
Believe it or no, this is about all I can stand. I can see the benefits of highlighting most of this, but it is a boring post to write. Maybe I'll try one a week. That will get through my entire present lexicon in . . . around five years.
The Tao. Personal Memoir. An account of how I was introduced to D&D my very first time, my offline campaign in 2008 and my reasons for starting a blog.
To Make a World. First Worlds I Created, Personal Memoir, Worldbuilding Theory. Describing my transition to being a DM, the first world I created based on the Gorean novels, my second world fully self-designed and why it didn't work, my present world and reasons for its design.
How It Got Infected. Corporate Marketing, D&D's Development, Official Game, Personal Memoir. First experiences with modules in 1979, TSR's agenda, witnessing the manner in which people moved towards the game, early conventions in the 1980s, my feelings of disenchantment and moving towards isolation as a DM.
Rats in a Maze. Agency in RPGs, Humor, Personal Memoir. My first DM and his style, the employment of dungeon doors as evil entities, discussing the freedom of players to live a life vicariously through role-playing games.
Seizing the Day. Adventure Building, Agency in RPGs. A theoretical description of how an alternate-form of adventure might be created, not based on the traditional style (the mustard adventure). A few words on objectivism as a DM.
So What If They Win? Adventure Building, Agency in RPGs, Bad DMing. Good vs. Bad playing, appreciating the player, the player's primary value in a campaign, DMs prepared to circumvent the rules in order to preserve a preconception of how their games should unfold. [I have moved slightly from the opinions expressed].
Dead Thinking. Agency in RPGs, Alignment, Corporate Marketing, Official Game, Personal Memoir, Unearthed Arcana. Disappointment in the Unearthed Arcana's release, attempts to subvert player agency with alignment, the bad paladin trope, character codes, end result of point-buy systems.
Give Abilities Their Due. 4th Edition, Game Mechanics. The release of 4e, negative first impressions, increased emphasis on the die roll, fantasy world demographics, the rational difference between having an clear and unquestioned skill and the silliness of making rolls to determined success.
Enough Junk. Community Feedback, Ranting. My emotional response to the apparent present state of the RPG game culture, viscerally expressed, upon beginning to discover how fractured that culture had become, and how the same lazy cliches were still prominent. Exactly the sort of post I am trying never to write again. [I am strongly tempted to delete the post]
Secondary Skills. Character Generation, Father's Table, Pre-Sage Abilities. A discussion of the secondary skills approach used in the original DMG and the approach I had used at that time, which I described as the "father's table." This is still part of the background character generator I would develop later (with more results that this post gives), but now sage abilities exist as a complement to the moderate skills/bonuses a player gains from their parent's profession.
Believe it or no, this is about all I can stand. I can see the benefits of highlighting most of this, but it is a boring post to write. Maybe I'll try one a week. That will get through my entire present lexicon in . . . around five years.
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