Ready Player One is the first-person narrative of Wade, a geek, a predictably disaffected young man who spends most of his life under the pseudonym Parzival. (Rest assured, no spoilers will be given away here.) Who is Parzival? He’s an avatar inside the virtual meta-MMO named OASIS. Wade named his character for the Grail knight …
D&D4E: The Exceptional Flaw
An opinion on how designers botched the latest edition of Dungeon & Dragons. That’s what I promised. The last post focused on external factors that played into its decline as a paper game: technology and convenience. I won’t wax poetic with social commentary on shorter attention spans, less free time, and the problems with kids’ …
A Long Goodbye for D&D
Dungeons & Dragons is dead! Long live Dungeons & Dragons! With each decade, this cry heralded an updated edition of D&D. Three times I’ve witnessed the cycle resound and echo loudly to merit the game’s continuation. Sometimes even expansion. So it is with regret that I’ve noted the latest edition isn’t faring well. Financially or …
Limited Resources and PowerUp Design
The world is running out of oil. Clean water. Topsoil. Ozone. These represent serious resource problems about which I know … little. Do your research, and then shop or vote appropriately. On the other hand, a certain problem of digital limited resources has consumed much of my time of late. First, let me refine my topic. I’m …