(by 5 people)
Paper Pencil & Dice Role Playing Games (aka tabletop RPGs ) date back to 1974 with the publication of Dungeons & Dragons, designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Dungeons & Dragons, in turn, owes its genesis to fantasy miniatures gaming. Since then hundreds of PPD RPGs have been published, first in print and later via electronic means, primarily on the web. In fact, the hobby is embracing the PDF format, allowing more indie & small press games to be published, games that wouldn't have been feasible to produce in the early days of the "industry".
RPGs remain a popular hobby, though Computer RPGs, on gaming consoles, and MMORPGs on the PC have supplanted it in the marketplace. Games which, it should be noted, are direct descendants of MUDs, which in turn are derived from early tabletop RPGs, primarily D&D.
Despite the advent of CRPGs, however tabletop RPGs remain a vital, if niche, hobby. This is due to the fact that the format is unique in the rewards and entertainment it offers its players. Rewards and entertainment which go far beyond the monster killing, l00ting, level grinding, and canned linear plot-lines of CRPGs. The last 5 years have seen a major emphasis on defining what those rewards are, understanding how RPG's are played, and designing RPGs that best provide the unique entertainment that is at the heart of tabletop RPGs. This lens is your guide to taking part in this "design renaissance".
RPG Theory & Design Blogs RSS Feeds
RPG Blogosphere Metasites
- Arthaus Roleplaying
- Jukka Koskelin's Squidoo lens on Immersionist/Nordic Arthouse Larping/RP
- Designer Games
- Emily Care Boss' Lens featuring the design journals of designer's actively developing RPG's on their blogs.
- RPG Theory Review
- Mendel Schmiedekamp's RPG Theory Review, collecting & summarizing RPG theory articles of interest from the Blogosphere.
Rob Muadib's Wild Musings Blog
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byJohn Kim's RPG LiveJournal
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byMalcom Shepard's Shooting Dice
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byJoshua BishopRoby's Ludanta Retero
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byNathan P's Hamster Prophecy
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byElliot Willen's Gaming LJ
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byVictor Gijsbers' The Gaming Philospher
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byAttack's of Opportunity
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byIan's Burton-Oakes Games for the Mind
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byMark Woodhouse's Tigerbunny Design Bureau
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byBrennan Taylor's Why Is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byTroy Costisick's Socratic Design
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byChris Lehrich's (RPG Theory) Journal
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byJay Loomis' Shining Dodecahedron
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byKuma's Elswhere is Where you Always Are
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byMo's Sin Aesthetics
recently moved
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byEmily & Meg's Fair Game
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byRich Warren's Overstuffed DIce Bag
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byPPD RPG Guides, History & Theory Books
The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible 2nd Edition
Good general overview with detailed publishing history to 1999
Amazon Price: (as of 10/07/2008)
Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role Playing Games
General overview of RPG's & detailed history
Amazon Price: $26.10 (as of 10/07/2008)
Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds
Social Aspects of RPG's
Amazon Price: $22.50 (as of 10/07/2008)
The Fantasy Role-Playing Game: A New Performing Art
RPG as art
Amazon Price: $25.60 (as of 10/07/2008)
More Theory Blogs & Design Journals
- Matt Wilson's The Dog Blog
- Theory & Design Journal, defunct?
- Matt Snyder's Heads or Tales
- Design Journal, Actual Play, commentary, publishing notes
- Fang Langford's LJ
- Design Journal for his Scattershot RPG, see also
http://fishorsofa.blogspot.com and http://scattershotunseen.blogspot.com/ for related material - Vasco Brown's Imagined Spaces
- Design Journal, Theory & commentary
- Eric Provost's Technocrat13
- Design Journal, Theory, Commentary
- Emily Care Boss' Crow Tracks
- Design Journal, Publishing notes, Commentary
- Rebecca Borgstrom's Merin Catalog
- Design Journal, Theory, Commentary
- Ed & Joe's Esoteric Murmurs
- Gaming, Actual Play, Theory, Commentary
- Johnathon Walton's 1001
- Design Journal, Theory, Commentary
- Andy Kitowski's The Old Sake Guy Gamer
- Design Journal, Commentary
- Shreyas Sampat's Raven Swallows The Sun
- Design Journal, Commentary, Fiction & Setting excerpts, Some Theory.
- Fred Wolke's LJ
- To feature insightful discusion from the #indierpgs channel on irc.magicstar.net
- Welcome to Frank's World
- Frank Fliz's RPG Design & Theory Blog
- Vincent Baker's Anyway
- RPG Theory for Macho Nar Yangers, and an occasional useful bit for other designers.
Books on Game Design
Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals
General Game Design Concepts
Amazon Price: $43.20 (as of 10/07/2008)
Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design (New Riders Games)
Game Design concepts and theory
Amazon Price: $40.94 (as of 10/07/2008)
Character Development and Storytelling for Games (Game Development Series)
Character Development and storytelling for games, computer game focused
Amazon Price: $26.39 (as of 10/07/2008)
Theory of Fun for Game Design
General focus on games as fun, what makes a game entertaining
Amazon Price: (as of 10/07/2008)
Tabletop RPG Design Forums
- The Forge
- Premiere Design community, check out Indie Design Forum, be sure to read the stickies, lurk and read a while. Check out articles too.
- RPG.net's Art of Game Design Forum
- Forum dedicated to Game Design at RPG.net. mechanics, setting, concept discussion mostly
- rpg-create list at Google Groups
- This email list, established in 1998, focuses on mechanics implementation, setting & subsystem design, and detailed dice odd calculation via list-member Torben Mogensen's Dice program.
- RPG Writer's club list at Google Groups
- general design & mechanics discussion
- Story Games for Everybody - All Discussions
- Story Games, RPGs with a story or "narrativist" focus.
PPD RPG Theory & Design Resources
- John H. Kim's RPG Theory page
- Numerous articles & links on RPG Theory & various RPG models, narrative structure, plotting & genre, character design, samples of play & related topics
- John Kim's RPG Design Page
- Several Articles on dice mechanics, character creation systems, combat & wounding systems, and related links.
- Vincent Baker's Roleplaying Theory - Hardcore page
- Contains Numerous articles concerning roleplaying theory and design considerations. lots of good reading.
- John Kirk's Design Patterns of Successful Role-Playing Games PDF
- A detailed work by John Kirk, designer of the Legendary Quest RPG, available at http://www.legendaryquest.com, on design patterns of RPG's, nitty gritty mechanics abstraction & design as engineering.
