I don't usually do well with diceless. I like my dice but the concept of going without is intriguing. The problem with diceless is that without a randomizer things tend to be predictable or they're some kind of a bid system which doesn't really intrigue me. I recognize that they probably work just fine, it just doesn't tickle my fancy.

This is mostly just a concept, it's not ready to be used but it's a start. I propose a diceless system where each character has skills and each skill has a number of methods that confer either bonuses or tricks. A skill like swordplay would have a method of "Power Blow" and a trick like "Disarm". There would have to be more, I'm just giving a flavor for what might be possible.

I'm a big fan of BRP because of the granularity of the numbers and there's no need for the GM to come up with difficulty numbers every time a character wants to roll (is this a moderate difficulty or a hard difficulty). I'm sure that's not a big issue for most but it suits what I want in a system. But also the roll doesn't take any addition to test for success, only a comparison, which makes rolling quick and easy.

There are two problems with BRP. One is that contested rolls are pass/fail and not very interesting. I've come up with my own modification to BRP that makes contested rolls work. (I break up rolls into degrees of success)

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 occurred to me that a gunfight requires far more skill than just the ability to accurately fire a gun. We're used to the contest in a fight occurring when the character pulls the trigger. The contest comes down to "Did the character hit accurately?". This is not very fun for the defender so most games (including mine) allow the other character to dodge, which is pretty unrealistic as has been pointed out.

So how do you fix that? First understanding the problem is important. The problem arises because "Combat" as defined in RPG started out with sword fights, where it is realistic to dodge or parry. When someone decided to introduce guns, we all just used the same test. Combat is combat this kind can just happen at a distance instead of right in front of the enemy. The problem is that there is no defense mechanism like dodge or parry that applies to a gunfight so it simply becomes an issue of who gets initiative and who has adequate aim. On a pragmatic level that's actually accurate. As a game it's not very fun.

I just posted this as a comment on www.realityrefracted.com on a post about player vs. environment. It was something I came up with recently but I think it has broad range of applications. One of the things that make player vs environment not fun is that GMs (myself included) only think in terms of hit points. We need to start thinking in terms of energy reserves for player vs. environment. Some games have this, others don't. A simple way of implementing energy being expended is by giving modifiers to characters rolls so that it gets harder and harder to do what they need to do.

I recently came up with a mechanic for climbing that surprised me how simple it could be and make it really fun. I used to be an avid rock climber and one of the things GMs get wrong is that they think if you miss a roll you fall. That's not how it works. If you miss a climbing roll you can't find a handhold or you tire yourself out. So the three elements in climbing are path, energy and time. If you have all the time in the world to climb it is much easier. If you have to climb because the sun is setting and the only safe place to camp is on top of that rock then it becomes harder.

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.

Concept - A miniatures game where all the miniatures are hand made by the players.

Rundown - Miniatures take a lot of time to make but a lot of people like working on them. Our idea was to take that and make a game where the miniatures weren't huge money sinks (cause we're poor) and weren't defined by a single company. The difficulty in making your own army seemed a bit daunting to us so the game Starfleet Battles came to mind. Players would only need a small number of models to make an interesting strategy game.

The core concept that we have not been able to nail down is that we want some kind of in play reward for well designed models. Some kind of bonus for the hard work that a model maker put into the game. The difficulty is how to objectively judge another player's models. In most cases you'd have only two or three playing at any given time so your opponents would have to judge your models and the better they judge your models the more at a disadvantage they would be. A rules lawyer would view this as an opportunity to weaken his opponent.