Girls playing RPGs are traditionally rare. I've been seeing more of them as the RPG community is maturing but as 50% of the population, they're under represented. I've recently stumbled on some information that hopefully explains why. I don't have a complete picture yet but it's a significant piece. I want to explain, first off, I think that we need to understand why girls are different and then we may be able to make Role Playing more appealing them.

I have a few women in my gaming group. One has been an enigma to me. Sometimes she says she had a great time often when I'm not expecting it, other times she's totally disinterested. I know there are some things that completely shut down her interest. Usually it's when I get really technical, the thing is, she's smart and is pretty technical herself so I thought it would be right up her alley. But that's just one example of how she's tripped me up.

It is inevitable, I suppose.

When I think of old school games, the first thing that jumps to my mind isn't Dungeons and Dragons. It's not. I tend to think of games like Star Wars (The D6 Version) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Dreampark (I still think that game is under appreciated). So, when people started to talk about OSR sections for conventions, I really get my hopes up. "I might see a game that I've not played/thought about in years!".

Gawd, I don't blame people for wanting to play older version of D&D, but can we broaden what kinds of games fall under it's banner? Would it be so bad to include the Open D6 movement under the OSR banner? I know I have just the bare line notes scratched up for a Space Viking game that I could run as a D6 thing at conventions. (I was really, really disappointed in how Too Human did Norse). Knowing my luck, I'd never get people signed up, though.

I wrote this essay some time ago after examining why my game sessions continually ended up in a hack n' slash, when I wanted an adventure. I would define an adventure as a story line that required the players to think of solutions instead of brute forcing their way through obstacles.

This text is intended to prevent a common pitfall in settings that are intended to be adventure but turn into a combat setting or “hack n’ slash” games.

The simple reason for this is that “adventure” carries the idea of some form of danger. Of all the forms of danger that can be introduced in an RPG the simplest to imagine is other characters. In other words, other people are often the easiest danger to imagine, introduce and there are often robust rules for how to handle human interactions provided by the game.

Going through some old CD archives the other day, and I found an honest to goodness Zen RPG. This has been of some contention here in the lab, people proposing RPGs based on Zen or old School (Chuang Tsu style) Taoist philosophy, so I thought I'd share it with you. It's called Unitstat, and the website that used to have it for download is currently defunct, but may achieve a positive reincarnation for the good karma it accrued hosting this ingenious little game.

I'll explain the rules. Get all your friend's dice and put them together. Pick a pile of dice such that if every die showed it's maximum result, the sum would be 60. If you're going to have a GM, he gets to pick enough dice to add up to 60 for each player.

I'm a big fan of games that tie character effectiveness directly to the player's narrative flourish, games like Wu Shu or my Play it Cool. They allow GMs to scale villains in the middle of an encounter. While the fight is exciting, everyone can mention cool, exciting details to make their moves more effective. When the fight starts to drag, the GM can describe the villain's actions in boring, uninspired ways, so the PCs can quickly trounce him. Mook rules are built into it, since mooks don't have much style and are this quickly dispatched.

Ridiculously overbearing posting rules, administrators' manipulation of my threads, the inability to edit my posts, and whiny nerds who love to criticize but can't handle it themselves makes for a terrible experience.

I wish this site was more active because it's the most user-friendly format I've seen so far.

Can anyone else provide alternative sites where I can share my ideas without furfags and teh interweb police?

Fucking Microsoft Works for Windows 7. I was working on a table of contents for the Nevercast manual, but the program resists my every attempt to do something as simple as a branching numbering scheme. Here's what the previous version let me do:

I. Mechanics
((indented)) A) Combat Mechanics
((indented 2x)) 1. Close-Quarters Combat

Here's what Microsoft Works keeps insisting that I do instead:

I. Mechanics
II. Combat Mechanics
III. Close-Quarters Combat

Clearly, Bill Gates knows better. Let's all email him and tell him how much of an asshole he is for dashing the dream

So I've fiddled around with three of the however many possible origin stories there are (I think some are practically the same, whilst others differ wildly)I've got a good grasp of what Dragon Age: Origins is like. A little dissapointing.

It might of been all the hype, good reviews and I expected a little more from the 'Spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate' but the game is filled with lots of little things that seriously bug me.

1) Camera: You can move around using Right click on location or WASD (+ Q and E) the right click method is far too slow for exploring (perfect for tactical desicions, but running around not so good) but the WASD set up is horribly twitchy, you can't turn the camera just 10 degrees, no you have choices of around 45, 90 or 180. Also without any quest compass (there are markers, but you have to find them before they show up) it makes getting to where you need to go quite difficult.

Is it me, or we are not as entutiastic as we were 20 years ago?

In the hey day of RPGs we coulnd't get enough of it. We had conventions on a regular basis, our own adventures writen and played, our own magazine that was supported by local businesses which would advertise... It was awesome.

Now?... well, now is not the same.

I started the main mailing list in the town where I live about 6 years ago. It has worked really well, we have over 90 members. That list has worked really well to make sure we have quite a few active groups playing lots of games and at a good range of ages.

So far so good...

so anyway last night I was in town and I got some renewed motivation for working on my game. the one I mentioned in my last post which got cut off because I used that symbol for greater than. Well the idea is that you use your hand, the three stats are written on the backs of your pointer, middle and ring finger, it doesn't matter which finger you write each stat on and it might be a good idea for each character to choose a different finger to write each stat.
the game works like rock, paper, scissors with strength beating skill, skill beating magic and magic beating strength. the number for the stat determines how successful what ever the player was doing. character info and equipment is written on the back of the players hand.