This is Faith in Play #33: Psionics, for August 2020. About eighteen years ago, in July 2002, I published Faith and Gaming: Mind Powers, and thought I had said everything that needed to be said on the subject of psionic powers in fiction and games. It was republished fourteen years later on our refurbished reformatted … [Read more…]
Despite the viral impact of COVID-19 Gen Con is holding a virtual convention online, and once again the Christian Gamers Guild will be holding a Sunday morning non-denominational Christian worship service from 9 to 10 A.M. EDT. The event is ZED20189103, and is free via Zoom for the first five hundred participants. Hope to see … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #32: Doing Something, for July 2020. Although this is actually about a gaming referee technique, I’m starting with an example from a book, my novel Verse Three, Chapter One, freely accessible on the web. It also begins with magic items, but moves beyond that to objects in other settings and genres. As … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #32: Zealots, for July 2020. Some years back in one of my games an important local military official was murdered, and under the authority of their cavalier the party took over investigating the crime. They had out-of-character reason to believe that a certain local cleric and his two acolytes were … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #31: Screen Wrap, for June 2020. This was originally published on June 29, 2001, at Gaming Outpost, as Game Ideas Unlimited: Screen Wrap. I usually call it “recursive occlusion”; but that’s because that’s what Peter Davison’s Doctor called it in Castrovalva, and now that I get around to thinking about what that … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #31: Magic Roads, for June 2020. Some years back I was playing in a game in which the city was ruled by chaotic gods who objected to anything being orderly or sensible. This was particularly noticeable in connection with the roads: it was impossible to make a map. I secretly … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #30: Story-based Mapping, for May 2020. I have mentioned before that I belong to a role playing game mapping group on Facebook. Every day people post beautiful world maps similar to the ones pictured here and ask for feedback. I am not a cartographer; I am not an artist. When aspiring young … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #30: Conflict, for May 2020. A few years back my band Collision left its equipment set up in a church in which we had been practicing. The drummer had gotten our logo made as a drum head cover, so there was this picture of the earth crashing into a giant … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #29: Political Correction, for April 2020. The phrase has been around long enough that I cannot imagine anyone in the English-speaking world does not know what “politically correct” means. In the short form it means never saying anything that might offend any member of any minority group, whether or not such a … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #29: Victims, for April 2020. One of the early superhero role playing games gave us the concept of the “DNPC”, the “Dependent Non-Player Character”, the person who is in the story because the hero needs to save someone. Superman has Lois Lane (pictured) and Jimmy Olsen; Spiderman has Mary Jane … [Read more…]