Design of roleplaying games

King of Posters
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Are there some good good books or in-depth articles on the web about the design and history of roleplaying games? Both computer and paper ones. Excluding wikipedia ofc.

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tulpas got a zine

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What, really?

link plz?

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I don’t have a zine but I should probably make one.

Christ, I have enough content from just rambling about this subject at length

Regarding design, that’s kind of tricky becaues there’s not a shared philosophy for how tabletalk rpgs are designed. I think rpg.net has an old column that at least covers the math behind dice probabilities adequately.

JE Sawyer, who is not exactly the greatest CRPG designer, is at least fairly open about the design process on his blog, and some of the concepts he proposes are valuable.

If you’re interested in traditional rpg dungeon design, this article from the Alexandrian is very good, though much of the rest of his site is not useful or wrongheaded.

Regarding history, though, you are in luck.




https://www.amazon.com/Designers-Dragons-00s-Shannon-Appelcline/dp/1613170874/ref=pd_sim_14_3?ie=UTF8&dpID=51ljwCf5UfL&dpSrc=sims&preST=AC_UL320_SR214%2C320&psc=1&refRID=QA1RTJWGMDFDX8MAQ2PN
https://www.amazon.com/Playing-at-World-Jon-Peterson/dp/0615642047/ref=pd_sim_14_5?ie=UTF8&dpID=51gtoijTTsL&dpSrc=sims&preST=AC_UL320_SR224%2C320&psc=1&refRID=QA1RTJWGMDFDX8MAQ2PN

EDIT: if you don’t care about physical copies, you can buy the Designers and Dragons series here for half the price. NB, there’s a big sale on that website going on right now so if you click through on each book you will notice that each pdf is only 7.50 USD

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Here’s a post I made on this very forum that explores some of my own views on RPG design.

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Think GG means jjsimpso’s Antiquated Game Player?

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If you take a look at Antiquated Game Player, be sure to check out Volume I. The dungeon crawler article might be interesting to you. AGP certainly isn’t comprehensive or methodical in its approach, but it is focused on the history and design of both computer and pen and paper games.

I highly recommend Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World(linked above) for a history of D&D and The Digital Antiquarian for a thorough history of computer role playing and adventure games.