Emerald City Gamefest » philosophy

Game Design: LARP Design: The basics

kedamono — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:36:47 +0000

Amber Eagar has written an article on her LARP web site, Mortalis Games, and she details out some of the basics to LARP game design in her column “LARP Design: The basics” and she makes the following points:

Designing the rules for a LARP is different that designing rules for a table-top game.
Don’t plagiarize, but borrow ideas from other games and tweak them to fit your system.
Feedback is important.
Playtest, playtest, playtest and BLIND playtest.
Don’t be afraid to rewrite or redesign parts.

Hopefully this will be the first of several articles on LARP design from Amber.

New Column: Why We Game by Richard Tucholka

kedamono — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:43:32 +0000

My good friend, Richard Tucholka, wrote a guest column about why people play RPGs and other games: Why We Game. I first met Richard Tucholka about 20 years ago at an Order of Liebowitz game night at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. There I really learned the craft of being a GM under his tutelage.

And there was being part of the crew of the ISCO Santa Barbara, exploring the different worlds of the Time Bagel, (Which later became the basis for Fringeworthy.) and being exposed to women gamers. At that time, at the Sunday night game at the Order of Liebowitz, the male to female ratio was about 3 males to 1 female, unheard of at that time (1977).

So read his words of wisdom, and hopefully come away a little bit wiser.

New Column for the ECGF: About Game Design

kedamono — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:32:10 +0000

Announcing a new column on the Emerald City Gamefest Web site: About Game Design. This column is not a guide to game design, but more along the lines of the philosophy of game design, with some “how-to-do-its” and not a little bit of practical advice for would-be game designers or even more experienced ones.

The author, John Reiher, has been in the gaming industry since the 70′s, working primarily with Tri Tac Games, Outpost Games, and other game companies. Along with other writers, he’ll expound on the philosophy and sometimes the theory of game design, with an eye to helping out the novice designer to avoid the pitfalls that most game designers encounter.