tagged w/ RPG Elements
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Thanks to our previous encounter with Mr. Diesel, which you can watch right here ( http://video.ugo.com/vplayer.aspx?articleID=13104 ), we score a critical hit on Vin Diesel when we ask him some deep cut Dungeons and Dragons questions. Me thinks the frothy mead hath clouded his judgment.Thanks to our previous encounter with Mr. Diesel, which you can watch right here (... more
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Disappointed by Skyline? Tantalized by Castle’s X-Files-y episode this week? Want an alien conspiracy with some meat on its bones (or exoskeleton, as the case may be)? Here are six of the greatest real-life alien conspiracy theories.Disappointed by Skyline? Tantalized by Castle’s X-Files-y episode this week?... more
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BK Myth
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ctv
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1 year ago
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from - EN World: D&D / RPG News & Reviews
by Mouseferatu 5th November 2010
-It'd be absolutely ludicrous for me--or anyone--to talk about "what people want" from RPGs as if there was any universal answer. Heck, click on any random thread in the forums, and you'll see pretty quick that the differences of opinion are legion.
What you can find, if you're engaged in the hobby, are certain patterns. Things that a lot of people would love to see in their own games. It may not even be a majority, but it's a sufficiently significant subset that the major games would do well to at least try to satisfy that particular desire.
The problem is that RPGs, by their very nature, often prove ill-suited to, or even completely incapable of, providing the desired experience.
(Most of what follows probably isn't news to many of you, but I'm hoping that by laying it out as a specific phenomenon, it might spur some discussion. Or at least provide an interesting read.)
What got me thinking of this recently is Rhukma, my character in the Savage Worlds of Solomon Kane campaign I'm currently involved in. He's one of two spellcasters in the group. He's also a foreign, exotic, mysterious type. (The campaign is set in Eastern Europe. Most of the PCs are European. Rhukma is Indian.)
In a fantasy novel, such as the Robert Howard pulps on which the whole game is based, Rhukma's magics would be creepy, enigmatic, and (above all) ill-defined. When he calls on the names of the various Hindu gods, raises his elephant-head talisman high, and commands the roots to lash out and grab his enemies or the beasts to obey his commands, it would be a bizarre, frightening thing.
And we do our best to play it that way, at least so far as it doesn't derail the game, or offer my character more than my share of the spotlight. But let's be honest. It doesn't actually feel that way. We all know that Rhukma has access to four specific spells from the book, and exactly how they work, and what their limits are.
In almost any ongoing discussion of magic in D&D, you'll eventually come across someone lamenting the fact that magic in the game feels so mundane, so commonplace. The spells have no mystery to them. They're so specifically defined that there's little creativity in their use. People being able to buy or create magic items takes the wonder out of them. The fact that a specific quantity of magic item bonuses is built into the system renders them nothing but modifiers. There's no magic in the magic.
I don't necessarily disagree. Obviously, not everyone shares that feeling, but for those that do, it can be a real downer when it comes to playing certain types of campaigns or characters.
It's also almost entire unavoidable, as the first of the RPG paradoxes. Boil it down to the core, and it's very basic: Something's only mysterious and exotic so long as it's unknown.
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http://www.enworld.org/forum/columns/296507-rpg-paradox.html
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http://xe0.xanga.com/6b4c04e747231171273561/w130004964.jpgfrom - EN World: D&D / RPG News & Reviews
by Mouseferatu 5th November 2010... more
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Update: Please submit your story ideas to the "Ripped from the Headlines" challenge.
Many of you have pitched ideas involving historical figures from the likes of Michael Jackson to Richard Feynman, while others have pitched plot lines surrounding historic events such as the JFK assassination or the dropping of the atomic bomb in World War 2. We like this direction and want to take it one step further by seeing if we can translate current events “ripped from the headlines” into fictional tales.
Update: Please submit your story ideas to the "Ripped from the Headlines"... more
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albieh
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1 year ago
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This Saturday, November 6th, the Allegra LaViola gallery will be hosting a panel discussion featuring the artists Ryan Browning, Chris Hagerty, Timothy Hutchings, Sean McCarthy, and Casey Jex Smith, plus a video contribution from Zak Smith. The topic for discussion is “Dungeons & Dragons in Contemporary Art”, as per this blurb:
Art and games are both forms of ritualized human creativity. When Marcel Duchamp gave up the former to pursue the latter, he famously said ”I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” The interface between art and games is especially provocative for many artists whose imaginations were shaped by the 1974 publication of Dungeons & Dragons, which founded a uniquely free-form and collaborative genre of role-playing games. This panel brings together contemporary artists who play within the realm of role playing games. Using these games as more than a vehicle for nostalgic posturing, these artists critically engage RPGs as tools for creative intervention, criticism, and shared experience.
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http://muleabides.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/dungeons-dragons-in-contemporary-art/This Saturday, November 6th, the Allegra LaViola gallery will be hosting a panel... more
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