It is Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas. It is the one holiday universally celebrated by Christians everywhere who celebrate holidays. Although we all celebrate Easter, we have different ways of determining the date so we don’t all celebrate it at the same time. We might count that peculiar, because the date is almost arbitrary and certainly … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #25: Transmats, for December 2019. This article has been republished from Gaming Outpost’s Game Ideas Unlimited series from June, 2001, only slightly edited for republication here, originally entitled Game Ideas Unlimited: Transmats. Matter transmitters bug me. In short, I find them incredible in the most basic meaning of that word: I don’t … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #25: Impact, for December 2019. Back in maybe 1981 when I first started explaining on contemporary Christian radio station WNNN-FM that Dungeons & Dragons™ was not some evil cult activity but a very Christian game, I was as a lone voice crying in the wilderness. In 1997 when I first … [Read more…]
A wonderful thing about fantasy role-playing games is that they unfold mainly in the minds of the players. They are games of wonder and imagination. Players that keep this concept firmly in mind realize that they can play almost anywhere. Over the years, I’ve played AD&D (my game of choice) in basements, in dining rooms, … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #24: An Amusing Dungeon, for November 2019. On June 1, 2001, Gaming Outpost began publishing Game Ideas Unlimited with an introduction to the author and the series plan. The following week this article appeared, only slightly edited for republication here, under the title Game Ideas Unlimited: An Amusing Dungeon. Some years … [Read more…]
Yahoo recently announced that the Groups service that the CGG has relied upon for years to manage our main email discussion list is being scaled back. Archives, photos, databases, polls, etc will be deleted come December. Since we do, in fact, use most of those features, we decided to move over to Groups.io, which not … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #24: The Christian Veneer, for November 2019. My attention was called to a crowdfunding effort for a Christian-themed game. This was long enough ago that I expect, or at least hope, that nothing I say will impact the success of that funding effort, because it really looks like it might … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #23: Nonrandom Thought, for October 2019. A long time back in Faith and Gaming: Mechanics we talked about Fortune, one of three methods of resolving outcomes in our games: the use of dice, cards, and other randomizers to create unpredictable random outcomes. We discussed then the question of how Christian faith relates … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #23: Kralc’s Law, for October 2019. I don’t want to say that Arthur C. Clarke is famous for this; he is, after all, author of the book behind one of the most iconic of near-term science fiction space travel movies (have I limited that enough?), 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, he … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #22: Snow Day, for September 2019. As I write this, it’s snowing; snow is sticking to the ground, and we’re probably going to be snowed in. At least, the boys are hoping there will be no school tomorrow. That makes no sense to most of you as you read this. By the … [Read more…]