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What Are Role Playing Games?
This is the first in what I hope will turn into a regular column here at Functional Nerds. I’m going to be talking about role playing games (RPGs). Before I delve too deeply into the nuance and history...
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History of Role Playing Games
A Little Pre-History Crafting tales is at the root of role playing, and humanity has been telling stories since we could grunt out polysyllabic words. More recently, tabletop strategy games, or...
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The Current State of Role Playing Games
I’ve talked a bit about the foundational history of role playing games. I think it’s time to talk a bit about how things stand these days. Release of the OGL The watershed moment for modern role...
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The Role of the Game Master
First off, let me say that I tend to use the term “Game Master,” or GM, when referring to the person sitting behind the screen. There are other names, and they include Dungeon Master, Loremaster,...
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R.I.P. Jack Vance
News broke today that Jack Vance passed away a few days ago. Jack was a hugely influential fantasy and science fiction author with a career that spanned six decades. His works range from the highly...
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The Role of the Player
As I said in my last post, the Game Master is the most pivotal person at the table, but the collection of players looking to the GM for fun are more potent than the man (or woman) running the world....
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Character Backgrounds
I’m going to take a moment (or twelve) to talk about character backgrounds. Some (most?) folks view a character as a set of numbers, a list of abilities, and a collection of equipment that combine to...
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Gaming Styles
This month, I want to delve a bit into different styles of games. There are tons of different ways of playing a game, and in many cases it’s a mix ‘n’ match of different styles all merging into a...
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Story Types
There are as many plots in role playing as there are in genre fiction. They all boil down to “man in conflict,” but there are many different flavors of “man” and an equally high number of flavors of...
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