Shadows of the Apt

Thieves later, films now.
Or: not film. This is just something that I've started noticing, and it's hard to ignore. There's a lot of fuss at the moment about computer games eating into the profits of the film industry — just the same fuss, as MovieBob has pointed out in his Studio System set of articles, as there […]

The Eye of the Beholder fond mockathon I did a while back started the memories flowing regarding computer RPGs (of the single rather than the MMO (1) variety) that I've had fun with. Now Fantasycon's gone and the Reading and London signings are still coming up, here are a few that I recall having some real fun with back […]

I've been meaning to pen a thing about online RPGs, to go with my long-ago posts on paper and live ones. There's a ton of this sort of stuff about, of course — Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate. However, first off:
Eye of the Beholder
Possibly nobody else even remembers this. It was a TSR Forgotten Realms thing way ahead […]

Firstly, there's a new story up, Counterspies by Adam Gauntlett, which you can find here.
Secondly, some of you may be aware of a dalliance entitled World of Warcraft (1). Well now, one feature of this global pastime is something called the armory, wherein you can look up all manner of things. And search the player database by […]

So…
I'm standing in a block of perhaps twenty men and women forming a compact fist at the centre of the battle-line. Around us, our fellow countrymen make the numbers up to a couple of hundred, arrayed behind and to either side of us with an order that few of our allies can match. The front rank are shieldmen […]

“There is a ten-foot by ten-foot room here. There is an orc. He is guarding a chest.”
 
For better or for worse, role-playing games.
 
There are very few things (2) that a man could admit to doing that would throw more of a pall of geekishness about him. I say “a man” because the quintessential image of a role-playing gamer is male, although […]