Thursday Review: Apocalyptia

I’m getting back into doing the occasional review; these will be rarer than they used to be, because I am no longer a featured reviewer on DriveThruRPG, but when I get around to getting a new game I will try to write a review of it.

Apocalyptia caught my eye as a free and open source tabletop game over at DriveThruRPG. Since it has a post-apocalyptic theme and I’ve been on a post-apocalyptic kick recently, I gave it a good look and it is fairly interesting, although it’s not necessarily a stand-out title.

Continue reading “Thursday Review: Apocalyptia”

Street Rats Alpha 1.1

Street Rats Alpha 1.1 has arrived. It’s been a frantic week, but we’ve been able to do some things, including setting up a nice new forum which should make us a little more open to people and have our own little corner of the web, but mostly revolving around a pretty nice changelog (if I may say so myself). A lot of the things that really cheesed me off about the state that I released Alpha 1.0 in have been fixed (note that I try to release something every December 24th, which is why it was released as it was.

Continue reading “Street Rats Alpha 1.1”

Street Rats: Alpha 1.0 Released!

Good morning/afternoon/evening, everyone! I am pleased to announce and officially publish the alpha version of Street Rats, a cyberpunk roleplaying game that I’ve been working on for the past few months.

The year is 2098. As humanity prepares to move into the 22nd century, it must come to terms with the horrors and splendors of the 21st century. Nuclear war, the creation of digital sentient “life”, international identification databases, and the rise of corporations and secret societies behind the scenes have shaped the tide of world events.

Street Rats uses a core mechanic with a d20 and margins of success and failure, combining rapid single-die play with a hybrid class-based and point-buy system and quick lifepath character creation: you can get ready to play in a matter of minutes!

Download links after the break.

Continue reading “Street Rats: Alpha 1.0 Released!”

Game Design: The False Dichotomy of Narrativism versus Simulationism

One of the underlying trends of modern game design (at least since I last reacquainted myself with the buzzwords) has been narrativism versus simulationism. Typically, these games have certain associations with them; narrativist games have a weak point of often falling into mechanical vacuums where characters never develop across sessions or where they fail to be distinct from each other, and simulationist games fall into a pitfall by becoming too heavily dependent on their own systems to allow flexibility and freedom, especially with regards to tabletop roleplaying. However, video games often offer a great example of a way in which all the traditional tabletop game design ideas have broken down over the years and ways to reinvigorate them.

Continue reading “Game Design: The False Dichotomy of Narrativism versus Simulationism”

Loreshapers 2015 Competition Results Posted!

Let me take a moment to apologize for dropping off the radar for so long. I have now officially graduated, and the whirlwind of chaos that has been the past year has subsided. In this moment, I am pleased to announce the results for the Loreshapers 2015 competition, as well as leave a subtle hint about something significant coming up in the next couple weeks.

Without further ado, the full text of the announcement can be found below, or over at Loreshapers.

Continue reading “Loreshapers 2015 Competition Results Posted!”