Monthly Archives: May 2008

Frontier: opening the book

I find myself thinking a lot about Frontier these days. (It’s probably because I have some self-imposed deadlines for ‘Illusion’ and ‘6’.) Over the last couple of years I’ve harvested some twenty names from the freelancer forums of RPG.net as … Continue reading

Posted in Art, Frontier, Layout, Printing | 2 Comments

COPS – Japan Stylee

Eamon, a technologist in the area of Cybernetics I know[1], posted this: “If you peruse Japanese foreign-resident forums you’ll read a depressing amount of stories about foreigners being told to sign kanji-laden papers ‘so you can go’, only to find … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, LateGaming | Leave a comment

Tonight…

…I’d like to be recording a podcast. But that’s, like, a heap of work.

Posted in Commentary | 3 Comments

M&M2e: hero or zero?

Mutants and Masterminds gets a lot of airplay on the internet forums: any time someone asks about superhero games, a raft of people come out of the woodwork to impose it upon you. I bought M&M 1st Edition a few … Continue reading

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Transhumanism

In 1966, Transhuman was defined by F. M. Esfandiary (later, FM-2030) as: included physical and mental augmentations including prostheses, reconstructive surgery, intensive use of telecommunications, a cosmopolitan outlook and a globetrotting lifestyle, androgyny, mediated reproduction (such as in vitro fertilisation), … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Frontier | 4 Comments

Current games in development

As mentioned a few posts ago, here is a list of the games that have gone through our idea filter and dropped down into the Book Development stage. If you’re a regular reader, the chances are none of these are … Continue reading

Posted in Game Design | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

War of the Worlds: Earth concept art

Which do people like more? (See the comments for more info)

Posted in Commentary, WotW: Earth | 6 Comments

D&D 4th Edition – A lazy blog post

I decided to just post verbatim an IM conversation between the two of us about D&D 4th Edition. I make no apologies for my laziness.

Posted in Commentary, Industry | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Lucky Ringo

Greg Stolze writes on his web page: What I learned … is that the best creative partnerships are the ones where each of you thinks the other guy is doing 70% of the work, and you’re the lucky Ringo along … Continue reading

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The 23rd Letter: in film?

Back in late 2006, I got a bit of a shock. Maybe you do as I do but I like to beachcomb through Google and see what people are saying about the things I have written. I pick up a … Continue reading

Posted in 23rd Letter, Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

How we design a role-playing game

I thought I’d share a bit about how our game design process works and (in a subsequent post) what we’re currently working on. This is not necessarily the best way to design a game, and we’re always looking at ways … Continue reading

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Game Developers and Publishers

I’ve just taken over editing of the Game Developers and Publishers area on dmoz. If you are in this arena and want your site listed there, please submit it through the site suggestion link on that page and I should … Continue reading

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Paper, PoD, PDF

All of the books we’ve published (whether as Crucible Design or LateGaming) have been less than 100 pages. In general, this has felt big enough for the game that was being written, and every time we start out with a … Continue reading

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Game book layout: the four parts

In trying to layout some of our recent game projects, I’ve noticed some common components in every book, which has led me to the conclusion that every game book really consists of four parts: Character Generation/Creation (Chargen) Game Rules Setting … Continue reading

Posted in Game Design, Layout | 5 Comments

UFO files from The National Archives

Lots of PDFs, a video and an MP3. The files contain a wide range of UFO-related documents covering the years 1978–2002. So if you want to find out more about lights in the sky over Waterloo Bridge, near misses by … Continue reading

Posted in Cool | 1 Comment

Vader escapes custodial sentence

You couldn’t make thisup. “The judge was on the verge of sending the Dark Lord to prison for the maximum possible term but abruptly changed his mind when Vader lifted his hand and waved it from side to side, while … Continue reading

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BRP

Let it be known that I hate BRP. (because I fumbled a dodge twice tonight and put myself out of action both times.) Really made me feel like a great and powerful warrior when natural rolls of 00 and 99 … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary | 3 Comments

Saur: introduction

Half a decade ago, when Crucible was still about, we tasked ourselves with a job to create games settings in one week and bring them back to the fold. The catch was, the group decided what sort of game you … Continue reading

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The WhiteChapel Project – early history

The Project in Whitechapel was formed in September 1941 as a subsection of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The SOE was directed to encourage espionage behind enemy lines and build the core of a resistance cell in the event of … Continue reading

Posted in 23rd Letter | Leave a comment

RPGnet whiners strike again

I loathe it when the RPGnet whiner crew crawl out of the woodwork and accuse people of being passive aggressive with the threat of bringing down the mods. You can’t even express an opinion without being asked to tone your … Continue reading

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