Category Analysis

Animal Crossing and the Wonder of an Aimless Gaming Experience

June 25, 2020 · by · in Analysis, Fantasy, Gaming · Leave a comment

Earlier this year, near the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown, Nintendo released Animal Crossing: New Horizons and it got me thinking about how wonderful gaming can be when you’re not necessarily focused on a specific goal. After all, if we’re escaping into a fantasy world then maybe in addition to the monster slaying and the […]

Why Performance Matters: A Consumer’s Take on the SAG-AFTRA Video Game Strike

November 10, 2016 · by · in Analysis, Games, Gaming, Industry, Video Games · 1 Comment

If you follow the game industry then you’re probably at least passingly familiar with the SAG-AFTRA video game strike that’s going on.  If you’re not, though, I’ll do my best to summarize it:  SAG-AFTRA, a union of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, is the union that represents […]

The Significance of Tracer’s Booty

March 29, 2016 · by · in Analysis, Games, Gaming, Uncategorized, Video Games · Leave a comment

I haven’t been terribly active lately, but sometimes I see a thing that just feels like it’s worth a comment.  Today, that issue is Tracer from Blizzard’s new first person shooter Overwatch, and her booty.  Now, I have been at most passively following Overwatch.  I’m not huge on FPS’s but I do really like the […]

The Significance of Final Fantasy VII

April 12, 2015 · by · in Analysis, Final Fantasy, RPGs, Video Games · 1 Comment

Depending on who you ask, Final Fantasy VII was either the most amazing video game of all time and oh my god if they could just please make a remake only they should let you revive Aeris this time OR it was mediocre at best and totally inferior to an untold number of RPGs on […]

Talkin’ ‘bout Dragons Part 2

April 4, 2015 · by · in Analysis, Dragons, Pathinder, Talkin' 'bout Monsters · Leave a comment

Last time on Talkin’ ‘bout Dragons we discussed a lot of the issues that come with trying to use dragons in your RPG adventures.  Today I’m going to talk about ways to mitigate those issues and run really effective and fun encounters focused on dragons.  In the interest of being able to be specific and […]

Big Fights Make for Long Nights: The Boss Fight

March 31, 2015 · by · in Analysis, Big Fights, RPGs, Traditional Game · Leave a comment

Note: The cover image of this article was found at the wikimedia commons, which lists the artist. I could not find any more information on the artist to more effectively source him. Last time we did this I talked about marching armies and giant battles but now I’m going to talk about a different kind […]

The Five RPG Player Archetypes

March 22, 2015 · by · in Analysis, RPGs, Traditional Gaming · Leave a comment

Last week I talked about the five types of game masters and how they behave.  I’m always writing from a game master perspective because that’s the role I seem to always find myself in, but it was nice to think about things from a player perspective for a while.  I realized that I kind of […]

Maddening Mechanics 1: D20 Leadership

February 3, 2015 · by · in Analysis, Discussion, Games, Role Playing, Traditional Gaming · Leave a comment

Maddening Mechanics will hopefully be another semi-regular series that I put out (similar to Gaming Habits), where I talk about specific game mechanics in RPGs or card or board games that are bad by virtue of either being too powerful, too weak, or just not interacting well with the rest of the system. So today, […]

Gaming Habits: Weaknesses and Dump Stats in RPGs.

February 1, 2015 · by · in Analysis, Discussion, Games, Gaming · 1 Comment

“Gaming Habits” will hopefully be a semi-regular series that I do from now on that talks about common habits and behaviors that I’ve seen show up in games over the years. Hopefully it will be really fun. Today we’re talking about the tendency of players to give their characters what should be crippling weaknesses, but […]

Big Fights Make for Long Nights 2: That Fateful Battle

January 20, 2015 · by · in Analysis, Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, Pathfinder, RPGs, Traditional Gaming · Leave a comment

So in my last entry I promised to tell everyone about a lengthy battle scene that a friend of mine ran recently. I was an observer, as I had recently dropped from the game due to a combination of an extremely busy schedule and already feeling like there were too many people at the table. […]

← Older posts