So I've continued my weird fascination with American McGee's Grimm . It should be awesome and, well, it's not. They've just come out with a new episode . This week's episode was the first after... The game has the sense of humor of a nine-year-old, but has curses, casual references to a church as a "glory hole," and comically large-breasted vampire wives. Maybe I should stop playing these games.

PlayNC: "NCsoft and TransGaming Announce City of Heroes for the Mac" http://www.plaync.com/us/news/2008/10/ncsoft_and_tran.html SEATTLE and TORONTO, Ontario, October 30, 2008—NCsoft®, the world's...information It’s that easy! From those who enter we’ll be selecting participants. The closed beta of the Macintosh version is starting very soon and we’re looking forward to your participation

Though it's been available for a little while in 'prerelease' format, yesterday the Cortex Role Playing Game PDF was updated to the full version. Anyone who bought the prerelease PDF gets this one for...a free update to those with the PDF---but otherwise the game is looking amazingly solid. I can't wait to play something with it! ....and publish my own sourcebook, too :-) Blessed be, ~Nathan

I had a discussion with some FiranMUX players about reward systems in gaming. There's also a Story Games thread brilliantly titled " The reward cycle - who else doesn't give a shit? " that addresses...what everyone else does. Think about the function of each mechanic. Maybe it belongs; maybe it doesn't. The only way to know will be to consider its purpose in the overall design and to playtest it.

Hey, everyone. Let's talk about complex systems. Modern strategy games are deeply economic in nature. Simpler games, like Tic-Tac-Toe, lend themselves to naive optimization, which is why a game between...system, whatever I try will need to be tested extensively, to make sure that I don't break something else in the process of solving this particular balance problem. Did I mention that I love my job

Some people (either who couldn't make ICC or who aren't in the Camarilla) wanted to see what I came up with for my LARP theory presentation. A PDF of the release version of the presentation is now available for download from the Camarilla site: Killing Sacred Cows

So I went to the IGDA NYC Chapter's First Annual(?) Pecha Kucha night. Pecha Kucha is a format for giving quick presentations; each presenter is allowed 20 slides, which stay up for exactly 20 seconds...more than 100 characters and the barrier to entry for new people was set fairly high. Still, lots of people had fun and learned a lot about game making. ... Why do I have this feeling of déja vu ..

Since I've been mostly Repost McRepostypants recently, here's some Random Access Content. I've been creatively blocked for awhile. This has led me to decide to re-do The Artist's Way program, starting... raw electronic form for Xenolithik , a new RPG that I wrote with Fred on the way to GenCon, and was able to briefly test (chargen, at least) there. . . . Um, that's all I can remember at the mo

I'm really pleased with how this turned out. Some of you may know (CN, Shaede) how long I've been aching to put together a forum-integrated PvP system. Here it is, in living color. Check out a sample battle...games right now in order to boost his stats. The system works. There are only nine attacks right now, but I'm in the process of putting together several more, working, creating, building, expanding..

Well first thing first- It does in fact have a name and yes I will tell you it. Its called Longshot and it ties up a lot of my short shorts/comics. I can't/wont go into the plot for the game, but what...4 ways: Cheryl (first), Work, Longshot and last: gaming. One last thing about Longshot- It will answer that question... What the hell was going on in Malice- you know what really was it all about