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Tag Archives: Traveller
How the Dungeon Powered the Success of D&D and the First Role-Playing Games
When home computers seemed like rare gadgets, a killer app was a program so compelling that people purchased the computer just to run the application. VisiCalc became the Apple II’s killer app, and then Lotus 1-2-3 drove customers to the … Continue reading →
Ability Checks—From the Worst Mechanic in Role-Playing Game History to a Foundation Of D&D
Dungeons & Dragons makes ability checks a key part of play, but these checks took years to enter the game. How did ability checks advance from house rule, to optional rule, to a foundation of fifth-edition D&D? Before D&D added … Continue reading →
Why Dungeons & Dragons (and Role Playing) Took Years to Leave the Dungeon
The Dungeons & Dragons game’s original 1974 version offered two types of adventure: dungeons and wilderness. In such site-based adventures, players’ decisions about where to go set the course of the adventure. These adventures revolve around on a map with a … Continue reading →
From the brown books to next, D&D tries for elegance
An elegant role-playing game gains maximum play value out of a concise set of simple rules. Elegant rules… apply broadly so fewer rules can cover whatever happens in the game. play quickly with minimal math and little need to reference … Continue reading →
How the dungeon crawl’s advantages propelled Dungeons & Dragons to success
You know about computers and the killer app—a program so compelling that people purchased the computer just to run the application. VisiCalc was the Apple II’s killer app; Lotus 1-2-3 drove customers to the IBM PC. Dungeons & Dragons came … Continue reading →
Posted in Role-playing game history
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Tagged Blackmoor, Castle Keep, Dave Arneson, Dave Megarry, Dungeon board game, Dungeon crawls, Traveller
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4 Comments
How leaving the dungeon left a big void in role-playing games
Nowadays, designers of role-playing focus their game’s design around an answer to a central question: “What will characters in the game do?” Modern RPGs focus on some core activity and optimizing the system so players have as much fun as … Continue reading →
