The Dragon's Talon

This week, I think I will not have a writing exercise up .  As an apology, I offer you an older story; this is actually a prologue of sorts to a D&D campaign that was originally started in second edition and later played for a time in fourth edition.  I confess that it is fantasy, my default ‘go to’ genre, but I hope it serves as an example of my style which is not so formal as A Prince of Shadows, nor trying to be self-contained when it clearly is not.

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This is a response to a blog post on Gamasutra by a man named Steve Mallory, a designer I know through the ‘net who makes some good points about narrative design; read the original post here…

True authorial control… Now there is a scary phrase to use in front of your producer…

True authorial control is taking your player and asking them what they want to do today, rather than telling them what they are allowed to do.  Is that wise? (continue reading…)

Recently, I was lucky enough to win a Google Wave invitation through a contest aimed at getting Dungeon Masters running D&D 4e games over Google Wave, pitching a game called ‘The Breath of Heroes’.  The idea is not a new one, I had already seen an article on Gameplaywright called Playing on a Wave about using Google Wave for games using the Gumshoe system, but I always find that I can get my head around things more easily by getting hands-on with them; I suspect it is a result of my engineering degree.

One of my other ideas about the Wave system was that games companies end up with a fair number of living ‘bible’ documents (story bibles, art bibles, game bibles, style guides, the GDD)  and the collaborative real-time nature of Google Wave, together with the playback option, might make it easier for teams to work concurrently on these documents without endlessly stepping on each other’s toes.  After the acclimatisation phase, which would probably be about as damaging to productivity as the day Microsoft added solitaire to Windows, I wondered if it might usher in a new era of interactive working.

Well, I have been experimenting for a few days and I have to say that I am optimistic, but still unsure of the whole thing.  I have been toying with it in short bursts, having injured myself during the week, but I can see some potential there.  In the coming weeks, I hope to gain more insight and report on my successes and failures.  Until then, back on the painkillers.

For those of you on Wave, I am available at elaquine@googlewave.com and open to any advice or tips you may have.

Join me next time for Part 2

Last week, we continued learning about archaic speech. It was another very patronising lesson, but you just keep coming back…

This week, we will learn a little about insults, so let’s put a nice safe break in. Only continue reading if you are sure that you want to…

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Last week, we started learning about archaic speech. It was a very patronising lesson, but you seem to have come back…

Today, we will learn about oaths and curses. We will touch on religion, some slightly vulgar words and imagery that might border on violence involving sexual acts and anatomical impossibilities.

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So you want to try some archaic speech in your roleplaying, be it MMOs or tabletop games? I will try to offer some help over the course of this series of articles which might help.

First of all, ask yourself if it is really a good idea. If you are playing a barbarian, you only really need to yell ‘Krom!’ a few times. On the other hand, done well with a character who justifies it, it can be a great idea. Think of Shakespeare; Romeo spoke in couplets, Hamlet too, but they had style and class. Dogberry, in contrast, was not the ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ type.

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