User Blog:
What the Pros are Doing: Dec 18, 09

 Perhaps not surprisingly, after the release of Dragon Age in tabletop form earlier this month, people are talking about it.* Green Ronin has shaken off many of our modern gaming conventions and gone back to what I would call an Old School feel. Despite that, there’s still a lot of innovation and that combination of old and new has impressed a lot of developers and writers. (And incase you HATE randomly generated stats, here’s Chris Pramas to tell you why you need to chill out a bit and just play the game.)

Talking in terms of new ideas in gaming versus older ideas, Malcolm Sheppard does a interesting analysis of the history of game development in terms of what we think we can’t do in a game. Limitations are as valuable an aspect of design as assets, and this is a neat look at just that idea.

Back to Dragon Age specifically, Justin Ancilli took some time on his blog to talk about the video game. He suggests that solid interaction with a non-player character or creature in a game is a far more valuable means to get information about that person or thing then just getting a block of text describing it. I’m sure you can see how that would apply to your non-digital game, no one wants to read your NPC write up, they just want to play with the NPC.

From video game, back to the table, Rob Donoghue takes some time to review Dragon Age and discuss the charms of random stats and other DIY aspects of the game. (He also gives you some great professional cooking history about Betty Crocker I had NO idea about. Man, adding the eggs, that’s awesome!) Meanwhile, Jeff Tidball at gameplaywright chimes in on his look at Dragon Age, the old school approach as well as the wisdom of his four year old son.