Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

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An Australian statistician and role-player living in Japan, interested in the theory and practice of role-playing…

Category: RPG Systems

  • Were AD&D demi-human level limits irrelevant for game balance?

    I’m pretty confident that demi-human level limits, at least in AD&D 1st edition and onwards, never worked effectively to balance demi-human powers because the experience point system was rigged to ensure that multi-classing as a demi-human was massively unbalanced. I am writing this theory out by memory, and I’m aware that it has been done…

  • Attacks of opportunity and weapon reach

    When I first returned to D&D through the 3.5 edition rules, I was quite impressed by the idea of attacks of opportunity, though as a game mechanic they add a lot of work and could perhaps be simplified without difficulty. I particularly liked their use to discourage spell-casting and missile weapon use in melee combat,…

  • Fantasy role-playing, the ultimate expression of post-modernism

    I’m fairly confident that Noisms, Sir Grognard, and in fact any the people on my blogroll except (maybe) Wax Banks would be quick to describe themselves as “not really much of a post-modernist,” and probably even be quite quick to tell me exactly what they think of the idea. But if we go and check,…

  • The use of Tolkien to defend fascism

    Today I discovered an interesting interview with one Stephen Shapiro, University of Warwick, which was conducted in 2003 by the German Tolkien fanclub (at least I assume that’s what it is). At that time it would appear he had been working on a research theme similar to that which I’ve gathered here and here, about…

  • A note on opinions of story-based gaming

    I posted this initially as a comment over at Zak’s blog, but thought I’d put it here too. There is a common view, I think, amongst role-players of all stripes, that later and newer editions of role-playing games encourage more “story-based” gaming than older ones, or that people who prefer to play later edition games…

  • Grindin’ for Gygax

    I am a regular reader of and occasional commenter at the left-wing political/academic blog Crooked Timber, though I don’t usually link my blog to them (the American political blogsophere is a bit scary). Recently, however, I discovered this post on the new Dante’s Inferno computer game, where anonymous commenter noen makes this great claim: The…

  • Have beard will argue

    This post at Grognardia reminds me of why I am uncomfortable with the “old-school movement” and its pronouncements on all things nerdy. Putting aside the strange fascination with naff artwork and Dr. Who style special effects, the weird, almost religious obsession with pronouncements by one strange, pedantic, over-opinionated game writer (i.e. Gary Gygax) is almost…

  • Game diversity, object-oriented programming and consistent mechanics: Are they related?

    This is a topic which has bothered me consistently since I first played Neverwinter Nights, and I was reminded of it today when reading the debate about unified game mechanics at Jeff’s Gameblog. I have been a fan of the development of unified game mechanics for many reasons for quite a while (that is what…

  • Cyberpunk role-playing and nihilism

    I’ve played a few sci-fi and cyberpunk campaigns in my time, and DM’d some too, and I certainly enjoyed them, but I think there are some aspects of sci-fi as a genre – and Cyberpunk particularly – that encourage[1] a kind of criminal nihilistic campaigning which I don’t generally find enjoyable[2], particularly when I’m DMing.…

  • Current playing: Exalted

    I started playing in an Exalted game yesterday. Until yesterday I didn’t really know much about Exalted or the World of Darkness games, which are apparently related to it, and I had heard rumours that it is a little too complex to be played sensibly. However, I like the basic idea for the world, which…