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Project T

Momentum or Kinetic Energy: Which One Pierces a T Rex's Chain Mail on a Glancing Blow?

Posted Wed, 2011-01-26 02:14 by tbone
Dino Wars

Here's a collection of online bric-a-brac with connections to this site's gaming material:

Dinosaurs and their tails

Having written about both dinosaur design and tail design, I can't help but comment on the Smithsonian blog's report that dinosaurs may have had thicker, beefier tails than often depicted. Sounds fine to me, at least until we get that cloning process working to verify things! 

What does that mean for critter design? Read more...

Game design musing: Pricing breadth in skills

Posted Mon, 2009-08-24 16:35 by tbone
Warning

If fluency in a foreign tongue costs your character 5 points, how much should fluency in ten languages cost?

In the midst of recent email correspondence about ESCARGO, I've dredged up a game design topic long of interest to me: a decreasing cost scale for multiple instances of traits.

Wait – is there some reason why ten 5-point languages should cost the PC less than 50 points? And isn't ESCARGO all about increasing the cost for more stuff? Let me explain: Read more...

T Bone's Games Diner TAKEOUT MENU #005

Posted Wed, 2008-03-19 15:26 by tbone

THE TAKEOUT MENU: Flyaway Missives from T Bone's Games Diner
#005, March 20 2008

== POSTED TO MAIN SITE MARCH 31 2008== Read more...

THE TAKEOUT MENU #002

Posted Fri, 2006-12-29 22:22 by tbone

THE TAKEOUT MENU: Flyaway Missives from T Bone's Games Diner
#002, December 29 2006

 

Hello again, kind readers and collaborators. This issue, slipping in just before the new year: site news, and the previously-promised oddball request. (It's a request for melee weapon data; and if you say "what's so oddball about that?", then you must be a gamer.)

 

===SITE NEWS===

The new site appearance looks best on Firefox. If you're on IE (bless your patient soul), and you see a tan horizontal line running between the black and green areas at the top of the page, and you'd like to take a crack at the CSS to eliminate that line, please let me know. Read more...

Game design musing: It's About Time (Part III)

Posted Wed, 2006-12-20 11:09 by tbone
Combat!

Part 3 of 3. If you thought the articles were geeky before, be warned: it gets worse here. Read more...

T Bone's Rules of Dilettante Game Design, Part I

Posted Sun, 2006-04-16 00:00 by tbone

(See also Part II.)

Friendly site visitor KC sends some all-too-kind words about Games Diner content, and asks an interesting question – that's hard to answer, too, as the good questions always are.

"In your opinion, what aspects of a roleplaying system require special attention in order to avoid major conflicts?" Read more...

An FAQ: your own original RPG?

Posted Fri, 2003-05-23 00:00 by tbone

A common question: "With so much stuff on your site, have you considered making your own RPG?"

The simple answer is contained on pages like these:

http://www.rpg.net/directory/diy.html
http://www.darkshire.org/~jhkim/rpg/freerpgs/fulllist.html

There are hundreds of home-made RPGs out there! I wonder how many ever get read, let alone played...

Any RPG I "invented" would look like... well, GURPS with some changes. I think GURPS makes a great RPG base, and lends itself to tweaks pretty well too... I'm happy to stick with that!

But just for the fun of it: if I were to think up a spanking-new set of mechanics for a game, without legacy ties to GURPS, features might include: Read more...

Build a site!

Make your own gaming home online!

THE TAKEOUT MENU

For collaborators, contributors, or the curious. Notice of site updates; project announcements; calls for playtesting; etc.

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