Interested in trying to design an RPG in 10 days, with a number of constraints set by participants? This is a small, supportive group. Should be fun. Not so much a contest as a collaborative effort to push each other to excel.

http://summer2008rpgchallenge.ning.com/

I played an interesting indie tabletop RPG last week--Spirit of the Century. I'm not plugging it, but it had an intriguing twist--no skill increases. You could change what your character was good at over the course of the game, but you could only do so by becoming bad at something else. That's right, a beginning character had exactly as much power as someone who's played 40,000 encounters.

Here's what I think is cool about that, and why we should try to make more RPGs with that feature:

1. First-time players can hang with long-time players in the same party, fight the same battles, have the same adventures... there's no skill discrepancy between a beginner and a veteran.