Rampant Coyote: Manual Labor

Rampant Coyote, or Jay Barnson if you prefer, exactly like all famous <s>vaporware</s> <a href="http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php">Indie devs</a> clearly shows that he understood the significance of constantly writing about RPG Design.
This always reminds me of that chess-anecdote, where two players were watching some grandmasters playing and were constantly babbling about what moves would have been much better and how such a position is handled properly and so on. And then somebody said: They were talking a wonderful chess. If they'd only play it.

<a href="http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=382">Here are his latest thoughts:</a>

<p style="margin-left:50px;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;border-top-color:#ffffff;padding:5px;border-right-color:#bbbbbb;border-left-color:#ffffff;border-bottom-color:#bbbbbb;">A fourth issue is one I only notice in retrospect – and that is really how I want to play a game. It’s a little weird. And maybe its just me. But with RPGs and some other games, I like to be immersed. It’s not just about powering up the console or the web browser for a quick endorphin hit caused by matching pretty colors or inflicting virtual destruction to my environment. I want a little virtual world. I want more to the story. I’m the kind of guy who committed speeds, ranges, and damage levels of various missiles in Wing Commander to memory. I’d hunt down additional information – little bits of story that I might have missed – about the characters in Persona 3. I think I was more entertained by the community talking about various dungeons in EverQuest – and what hints they gleaned of the intended history by the designers – than by the game itself. Back before we had the web, the game manuals helped provide a little bit of extra “world” that I could experience when I couldn’t actually play the game. It was a way to find out more about my game than what actually appeared on the screen. More importantly, I think, was that they implanted the suggestion of much more going on than what I could experience on the screen, inviting my imagination to participate. After all, I’m sure the game designer(s) had a LOT more going on in their heads that they wanted to share. This helped form the connection and make the game bigger than its puny technological limitations.
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I would have loved to pick your name in the person-combobox, Jay, while creating this newsposts, but it seems you're not important enough to appear in Codex-comboboxes. Sorry.
Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.rpgwatch.com/#14885">RPGWatch</A>

 

Yeah, I'm working on a whole new tag system to replace that to make things easier. It'll allow more "on the go" adding of people to the db without having to do it through the back-end.

 

But once you released Frayed Knights everything will change. Make combat like KotC. Or Helherron.