Roleplaywrights

A roleplaying game design community Do you want to talk about designing tabletop roleplaying games? Looking for a safe, supportive environment to hone your game writing skills? We're looking for additional members! Join us on Google Plus!

[infinitemachinegames]

The independent roleplaying game scene is fantastically accessible, relative to other forms of game publishing. One of the challenges for a new game publisher is in determining an initial budget for their projects. I’m here to help you with some advice on how to allocate your scare resources.

Genesis of Legend drops some figures about the expenses of publishing roleplaying games. Very interesting, incredibly helpful. As a note, I use The GIMP a lot and find it excellent, though there is a learning curve if you’re used to PS. I use Inkscape occasionally, and find it decent, though Illustrator is more user-friendly. And I’ve used Scribus in the past, and found it a bleeding mess.

[roleplaywrights]

“...Red & Pleasant Land proves a totally different and third model is also viable in 2015: -Ignore what the audience wants -Put all your effort into that one thing -Work hard for a few months -Keep your team small -Put out a thing that is exactly and only the thing you are inspired to work on”

[chaoseed]

“One of my goals for Game Chef this year is to have over a hundred participants who are first-time designers. Of those, I sincerely hope that many are women, that many are people of color, and that many are not from the US.“ –Josh Jordan

[roleplaywrights]

Game Chef 2015 has officially begun, with this year’s Theme and Ingredients posted!

This year's theme is: A Different Audience This year's ingredients are: Abandon, Dragonfly, Stillness, Dream Head over to http://game-chef.com to learn more! You have until midnight Hawaii Time on the 21st to submit your game for this year's competition.

Anyone else participating this year?

[roleplaywrights]

Over at the Roleplaywrights Google Plus community, we’re posting our goals for April!

Want to join in our RPG design support group? Head over and click on “Ask to Join.”

[roleplaywrights]

Indie+ Panel: Is Hacking Game Design?

Tabletop RPGs are filled with iterations, creations, revolutions and evolutions. What is a hack? When is it a new thing? Who are these elusive Game Designers? Join a star-studded panel of gamers and makers who will chat about their points-of-view! Panelists for this event are Sarah Richardson, Nathan Paoletta, Eloy Lasanta and Brian Engard!

[spikedrewthis]

Hey, all. This is a comic I started on 24 Hour Comic Day, but I only managed to complete 12 pages on that day. That makes it a technical failure, but I decided it was worth finishing regardless of that.

[unpossiblelabs-deactivated20180]

Thinking about creating your own character sheets for an existing game or for your own game? Read this article.

Jason Morningstar’s outstanding Visual Design as Metaphor: The Evolution of a Character Sheet in Analog Game Studies lays out just how much time and attention he put into designing the character sheets for his new Night Witches game.

[roleplaywrights]

Designing and Freelancing Panels on Contessa

There are a couple cool design-related panels coming up on Contessa next week! They'll be taking questions before and during the panels, so head over and check them out. Contessa: Freelancing in the RPG Industry - https://plus.google.com/events/cauqeu1v6unl485go5sf1ajqboc Contessa: How I Designed It - https://plus.google.com/events/co6h2ohoorac1ot7fijl7d6tvk8

[roleplaywrights]

A massive challenge for any ruleset is that it has to simultaneously wrestle with being a tutorial and a reference at the same time. It's definitely a daunting challenge, but I've observed that there's a bit of a divergence between the tabletop boardgaming hobby and the roleplaying game hobby. While roleplaying games have remained a bit of a niche, boardgaming has achieved much wider popularity, which means that boardgames have had to make themselves much more user-friendly. Some RPGs have managed to present their rules in a more easily-digestible format (D&D's latest edition succeeds in some of the following rules I lay out), but others remain rather opaque. So, how do you stop your book from feeling unwieldy, brain-burning, and hostile to newcomers? Read on!

[roleplaywrights]

RPG designer Emily Care Boss shares five things she learned while creating her first game, Breaking the Ice.

1. Design angry 2. Go out on a limb 3. Your game will surprise you 4. Repeated play teaches you the full capacity of the game 5. People like to open their heart

Check out the article to read more!

[roleplaywrights]

[roleplaywrights]

Here is a slideshow in pdf about designing live action roleplaying games, So You Want to Write a LARP: LARP Theory 101 by Jeff Diewald. This is used part of LARP writing workshops. (H/t to Graham Walmsey on G+)

[roleplaywrights]

Check out LARP Out of Character for a video of the session from the New England LARP Conference!

[roleplaywrights]

Here is a slideshow in pdf about designing live action roleplaying games, So You Want to Write a LARP: LARP Theory 101 by Jeff Diewald. This is used part of LARP writing workshops. (H/t to Graham Walmsey on G+)

[roleplaywrights]

John Harper's latest work - originally about thieves and scoundrels in a dark fantasy city, though stretch goals include other forms of clandestine groups, like revolutionaries or commandos. This one's gonna be big, folks!

[roleplaywrights]

This is me talking about imposter syndrome and "being a designer". If you wrote down some notes on how to play a game, and I could theoretically read those and play, then you are a game designer. If you put it online where people can read it, or photocopied those and handed any of them to a stranger, you are a published game designer. If someone makes you a little red ribbon that says "Your game rocks", then you are an award-winning game designer. If one group other than your own tries your game one time, and has a good time because of what you made, you are good at design. Everything else that matters is scale, and good community. Everything that doesn't is the illusion of stability, and bullshit gatekeeping. I am absolutely sincere about everything in this post, but not even a little serious.  Because the "Game designer" identity is a toy; so are the games.  And toys are for playing with.

Levi Kornelsen on his Google+ steam

[inspirationfeed]

Think, plan, execute http://ift.tt/1wHRYKd

[gamedesigngraphically]

All it needs is theme, mechanic, experience across the top and it’d be perfect.