Breathing Life in Characters Part 1: Politics and Society

One of the things that makes or breaks any story are the characters involved in it, but creating great characters goes beyond individual personalities and delves into the experiences and social contexts of the world that they live in. In short, your characters should be opinionated.

Creating a living world is necessary for characters to be truly vibrant, and one of the best ways to do that is to look at current events and issues that characters are likely to engage themselves with. It is important to remember that in places where there is total agreement there is also little interest to be found: everyone agrees that the invasion of orcs is going to be problematic for the stability and sovereignty of the kingdom in the long run.

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Review: Starfinder

Alright, boys and girls, I’m back for some more punishment. For those who are new to me, I’ve been working on my own games for a while so I’ve been taking a back-seat on reviews, both because I don’t typically have time, and because that’s a heck of a conflict of interest (so take this with a grain of salt), but I’ve finally gotten my assorted appendages on a copy of Starfinder and I figured I’d write a review, since I was really excited for Starfinder and it was really something that covers a lot of my interests.

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Monetizing Free

One of the trends in the gaming industry has been the shift toward having content be available to a wider player-base, then narrowing down the playing field with premium content for high-value users. Sometimes (semi-perjoratively/affectionately, depending on the writer) called “whales”, high-value users are the super fans of any particular game, studio, or publisher. As I work to bring Loreshaper Games into being, I’m trying to figure out ways to monetize free content in the tabletop roleplaying industry.

Before I begin, let me quickly define free for my purposes:

  • Players can join a game with all the core ruleset and at least 90% of core setting content without paying a dime.
  • Free players get an appreciably similar experience in terms of portability and mobility (e.g. being able to download rules as opposed to having them available through an exclusively online portal), except for physical goodies.
  • Derivatives can be made, including for-profit derivatives and rights-reserved content, albeit with perpetual attribution.

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Things I Learned from Being a GM & a Designer

I’ve been a GM and game designer for years now, and one thing that’s always struck me about the process is how much skills overlap there is in the process, and how many nuggets of wisdom carry over from one to the other. I’ve been thinking about some key points now that I’m working on two projects that should see the light of day relatively soon.

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