Aedelbert Smart was - despite his last name - not a very clever magician. His thick beard hid a weak chin and his unrelenting confidence hid a weak but cunning intellect. Through trickery and deceit, Aedelbert stole a tower - and the credit for building the tower - from another wizard, the sorceress Malika. Unfortunately... Continue Reading →
TTRPGs and Usability
A table-top role-playing game is probably one of the least usable gaming artifacts that I know of, with the possible exception of that thing PlayStation did with movement, or maybe the Kinect for non-English speakers who were women with an accent. I’m being a bit snarky. I feel I have deserved it. To give you... Continue Reading →
The Unplayability of (some) TTRPGs
Some background before I dive into this specific opinion. I have reviewed games and more specifically TTRPGs since 2005 in the Swedish gaming magazine Fenix. To date I have written around 600 reviews, and more than half of those are of role-playing games. I’m telling you this so that you won’t think that this opinion... Continue Reading →
RPGs, TTRPGs, What’s in a Name?
There’s one development that I kind of resent, and that’s the fact that what we used to call RPGs have now morphed into TTRPGs. I understand that this is a development that comes from the fact that the digital version of role-playing games is now the standard version, and that table-top role playing games have... Continue Reading →
Can you speak cultish?
This is a short primer for DM:s who want to create a cult quickly. Maybe it sounds fake to use language as a shortcut to creating a cult, and also to convey that it is a cult in TTRPGs. However, language is more important than you think. Language is how some people distinguish themselves as... Continue Reading →
I’m playing D&D
I started playing role-playing games of the table-top variety in the mid eighties. Since I'm from Sweden, Europe and not North America, I didn't play Dungeons & Dragons. I played a Swedish version of Basic Role-playing called "Drakar och Demoner". Dragons and Demons. I also played Chock which is a translation of the game Chill... Continue Reading →