"This is a cross between Minesweeper and an RPG. You gain levels by killing weak monsters and win when you defeat them all. It's a bit different than Minesweeper in that the number you reveal when you click on a square is the total of the levels of the monsters in adjacent squares." Uh-oh.

"The One Page Dungeon Contest is level design contest for creating a scripted RPG adventure that fits on one 8.5x11 page. All information, the map, story, encounters and more have to fit in one page. Sort of writing a haiku, short and sweet.

The dungeons are RPG-system neutral and vary greatly in style. Several are classic hack-and-slash dungeon-crawls, while others involve mysteries, horror, solitaire play and lots more." Sounds great.

"One succeeds because it leverages the player's motivated, explorative, self-driven experience; the other fails because it relies on a hackneyed, disjointed "epic" plotting (told in 3 separate plot-lines via cutscenes) with incongruous settings and 2-dimensional characters. One succeeds because its formal systems directly feed the player's connection to the world and characters; the other fails because its formal systems bear no discernible relationship to the stories the game wants to tell." This is strong stuff from Michael; I am increasingly fed up of the focus on (poorly-told) stories in games.

Jamie Fristrom on collaborative-storytelling-RPGs. Lots of good links and thoughts here - especially the line about White Wolf's "disenfranchising" of the player by calling the GM (of all people) a "storyteller".

"A Bitter Aftertaste is a jeepform roleplaying game for four players that premiered at Ropecon, the Finnish national roleplaying games convention, in 2007. It is about two lovers who have just had the best sex of their lives, sitting on a balcony overlooking their city, and talking." Two players are the physical characters; the other two are their internal monologues and thoughts. Sounds wonderful - a combination of roleplaying and improv. An RPG designed for an audience.

Really interesting interview on game localisation and translation, with lots of examples; from Euldamos, an academic journal on games.

"In short, [MSG] defies many of the characteristics we normally ascribe to a tabletop RPG -- in the context of a very cynical, and very cool, cyberpunky future where even the minimal constraints on corporate action that currently apply are removed, and any residual ethical norms for businessmen are considered the domain of chumps. Excellent, in a word." Ordered, based upon Greg's writeup and also the fantastic downloadable version of the ruleset. Now, to find some players.

"...the players are there for their character, not for your story. Your story is just the path for their characters, the medium through which they can play their persona. Once the GM realizes this, they should then realize that respecting the player and the character is paramount to their story. And it’s a surprisingly easy skill to master, because it really is as simple as recognizing what the players and characters want, what they came to do and then give it to them."

BioWare now have a blog. It looks like it's going to be full of good stuff about games and, especially, writing for them. Can't wait.

"Bandai will soon be releasing two new hybrid pedometer games to keep you entertained while racking up the miles as you go about your life. ... [The] idea is to set personal goals of exercise and achieve them in a fun way."

"So why am I mentioning this now? Because Alternity has just started. This is a new Harry Potter game, and it starts from the beginning -- September 1, Harry's first day at school. Only not as in The Philosopher's Stone. In this scenario, Voldemort, er, won." Fanfic-cum-alt-universe-RPGs in the Potterverse being run solely on Livejournal. Amazing.

"I think, in these fleshed out circumstances, an RPG could be the most remarkable place for getting to grips with matters like abortion and euthanasia. I think _because_ they’re the sorts of subjects it’s completely pointless to talk about in the pub, because it inevitably descends into people entrenching themselves in their currently held position and then hurling stones at the other side, that the RPG would be a space in which the emphasis of thought and consideration would be squarely on you." John Walker on the problem with BioWare's attitude to morality, and some potential solutions.

"Why did Weight Watchers work so well? For a really fascinating reason: because it isn't a normal diet. It's something more. Something fun. It's an RPG." Of course. Fantastic deconstruction from Clive Thompson.

"The Tombs of Asciiroth is a free, open source game you can play right now in your browser. It has arcade, puzzle and exploration-style game play in an extensive world of font-based abstraction. If it looks a little old school, it's only because I've been trying to make this game since 1980. But other things kept getting in the way. Hope you have some fun with it."

"[Titanic] was one of the worst experiences of my former life. Since I stepped into the shadows of the Hell House, things had been pretty easy. Then I found Chrono Trigger." Not the SNES RPG; no, a Chinese-knock-off NES version. Full of horrific brokenness, Derrick plays through it for us. It feels like pulling teeth.

"Titanic 1912, the RPG, made me cry blood, pluck my arm hairs, contemplate suicide and mumble incoherently in my cubicle as I held the fast-forward key." Chinese NES RPG based on Titanic. Great writeup; awful game.

"More commercial games should try ideas and concepts this crazy. Games like this probably serve a niche market, which is why they don't get made, but they feel like what gaming is truly all about. Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden is the game that The Joker would make if he were a game developer."

Lovely article on the localisation work for Etrian Odyssey on the DS. Tight memory restrictions leads to translators having to be smart; Atlus' team appear to be that.

19th century Mormon Lawmen policing Utah. An RPG that picked up a lot of interest at Gamecamp - seen it several times before, but it's obviously worth a link.

"The Actor shall throw two ten-sided dice & add thirty-nine to obtain the Persona's amount of Rage. He shall throw two ten-sided dice & add thirty-nine to obtain the Persona's amount of Despair." And so it goes on. Frankly, hilarious.

"It wasn’t the concept of roleplay in D&D that birthed the genre, it was the way the rules encapsulated the core ideas behind it" Wonderful post from James (following the death of Gary Gygax) on the significance of D&D for gaming as we know it.

Awesome - players decided to take d20 (D&D) entirely metaphorically, and use it to play out 60s social archetypes. To quote further down the thread: "you've made D&D... narrativist". Great stuff.