Dungeon! Board Game


Book Description

First released in 1975 and revised throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the Dungeon! boardgame lets you explore a multi-level dungeon in search of treasure guarded by terrible monsters. The deeper into the dungeon you go, the deadlier the monsters and the greater the treasure. The player who returns to the beginning chamber with the most treasure wins!




Gurps Banestorm


Book Description

Welcome to the land of Yrth, a magical realm of incredibly varied races and monsters - including people snatched from our Earth and other worlds by the cataclysmic Banestorm! Whole villages were transported - from such diverse locales as medieval England, France, Germany, and the Far East. Now humans struggle with dwarves, elves, and each other. The Crusades aren't ancient history here - they're current events! Characters can journey from the windswept plains of the Nomad Lands - where fierce Nordic warriors seek a valiant death to earn a seat in Valhalla - to Megalos, the ancient empire where magic and political intrigue go hand in hand. Or trek south to the Muslim lands of al-Wazif and al-Haz to explore the forbidden city of Geb'al-Din. This book updates the original Yrth of GURPS Third Edition Fantasy and Fantasy Adventures. It provides GMs with a complete world background - history, religion, culture, politics, races, and a detailed map - everything needed to start a GURPS campaign. Phil Masters (Discworld and Hellboy RPGs) and Jonathan Woodward (Hellboy and GURPS Ogre) have added new peoples, places, and plots, as well as lots more on magic and mysticism, all of which conforms to GURPS Fantasy and GURPS Magic. So prepare to make your own mark on Yrth. Plunder elven ruins while evading the desert natives. Play a peasant-born hero . . . an orcish pirate . . . a Muslim double agent commanded to infiltrate the Hospitallers. Yrth awaits the legend of you!




How to Be a Gurps GM


Book Description

The Student's Guide to Ultimate Power GURPS! A game with infinite possibilities. Even those familiar with this award-winning system may not feel they've mastered the fundamentals . . . and those just starting with this game may feel lost amid the possibilities. You want help. You could use a guide. You need How to Be a GURPS GM. For the player, this supplement offers insight into how to create the perfect character to fit your vision, plus three examples of character creation and two new fantasy templates. The chapter dedicated to customizing combat and using various options can be particularly helpful for new and veteran players in making aggressive altercations even more exciting. For the Game Master, the supplement discusses everything needed to run a campaign: how to prepare the game setting, assist the players with the creation of their heroes, create challenging and engaging encounters, and design and run the first adventure. The included overview of the Fourth Edition line, plus recommended resource lists for eight popular genres, can help the GM decide which supplements will be most helpful to craft a new campaign. This supplement also provides canonical insight from Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch, who draws on decades of experience answering questions and providing clarifications as the GURPS Line Editor. Throughout, it follows a group of example players new to GURPS, from when their GM first opens the Basic Set through the starting session of their inaugural adventure. How to Be a GURPS GM is an invaluable aid for getting started with GURPS, bridging the previously perilous step between reading the Basic Set and participating in your first game. Half of power is knowing how to use it. With How to Be a GURPS GM, you'll be on your way to unleashing the full potential of GURPS like never before!




Practical Game Design


Book Description

Design accessible and creative games across genres, platforms, and development realities Key Features Implement the skills and techniques required to work in a professional studio Ace the core principles and processes of level design, world building, and storytelling Design interactive characters that animate the gaming world Book Description If you are looking for an up-to-date and highly applicable guide to game design, then you have come to the right place! Immerse yourself in the fundamentals of game design with this book, written by two highly experienced industry professionals to share their profound insights as well as give valuable advice on creating games across genres and development platforms. Practical Game Design covers the basics of game design one piece at a time. Starting with learning how to conceptualize a game idea and present it to the development team, you will gradually move on to devising a design plan for the whole project and adapting solutions from other games. You will also discover how to produce original game mechanics without relying on existing reference material, and test and eliminate anticipated design risks. You will then design elements that compose the playtime of a game, followed by making game mechanics, content, and interface accessible to all players. You will also find out how to simultaneously ensure that the gameplay mechanics and content are working as intended. As the book reaches its final chapters, you will learn to wrap up a game ahead of its release date, work through the different challenges of designing free-to-play games, and understand how to significantly improve their quality through iteration, polishing and playtesting. What you will learn Define the scope and structure of a game project Conceptualize a game idea and present it to others Design gameplay systems and communicate them clearly and thoroughly Build and validate engaging game mechanics Design successful business models and prepare your games for live operations Master the principles behind level design, worldbuilding and storytelling Improve the quality of a game by playtesting and polishing it Who this book is for Whether you are a student eager to design a game or a junior game designer looking for your first role as a professional, this book will help you with the fundamentals of game design. By focusing on best practices and a pragmatic approach, Practical Game Design provides insights into the arts and crafts from two senior game designers that will interest more seasoned professionals in the game industry.




Fate


Book Description

Grab your plasma rifles, spell components, and jetpacks! Name your game; Fate Core is the foundation that can make it happen. Fate Core is a flexible system that can support whatever worlds you dream up. Have you always wanted to play a post-apocalyptic spaghetti western with tentacle monsters? Swords and sorcery in space? Wish there was a game based on your favorite series of books, film, or television, but it never happened? Fate Core is your answer. Fate Core is a tabletop roleplaying game about proactive, capable people who lead dramatic lives. The type of drama they experience is up to you. But wherever they go, you can expect a fun storytelling experience full of twists...of fate. GAME INFORMATION Number of players: 3-6 Age of players: 12+ Length: 2-8 hours Type of Game: Roleplaying Game Languages Available: English Suggested Retail: $25.00 Game Designers: Leonard Balsera, Brian Engard, Jeremy Keller, Ryan Macklin, Mike Olson




One-Week Dungeons


Book Description

"An entertaining, race-against-time narrative." —Kobo review "A fast-paced look into seven-day roguelikes, something so niche most people wouldn't have heard about, but the book is well written and shows how important it is to get your thoughts down so you can sort out your ideas." —Goodreads review Eleven game designers. Eight grand ideas. Seven days to will them into reality. Every year, programmers around the world compete in the 7-day roguelike challenge, or 7DRL, a weeklong game jam where participants endeavor to design and program a roguelike role-playing game. Their obstacles: day jobs, family responsibilities, sleep deprivation, and visionary concepts too big for 168 hours to contain. Told over a series of daily journal logs, One-Week Dungeons: Diaries of a Seven-Day Roguelike Challenge chronicles the journeys of eleven 7DRL participants as they race to build their dream games before the clock expires. David L. Craddock writes fiction, nonfiction, and grocery lists. He is the author of over a dozen nonfiction books about video game development and culture, including the bestselling Stay Awhile and Listen series and Arcade Perfect: How Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat, and Other Coin-Op Classics Invaded the Living Room, and fiction for young adults, including The Dumpster Club and Heritage: Book One of the Gairden Chronicles. Find him online @davidlcraddock on Twitter.




Four Against Darkness


Book Description

Four Against Darkness is a solitaire dungeon-delving game that may also be played cooperatively. No miniatures are needed. All you need is this book, a pencil, two dice, and grid paper. Choose four characters from a list of classic types (warrior, wizard, rogue, halfling, dwarf, barbarian, cleric, elf), equip them, and venture into dungeons created by dice rolls and your own choices. You will fight monsters, manage resources, grab treasure, dodge traps, find clues, and even accept quests from the monsters themselves. Your characters will level up, becoming more powerful with each game... IF THEY SURVIVE.




The Skeletons


Book Description

The Skeletons is meditative structured freeform game for 1-6 players. You'll need a few hours a private space. The Skeletons flips the script on the classic dungeon crawl-- here you play not the intruders, but the guardians, cursed to spend all of eternity defending a tomb. As time passes, both the tomb and its guardians will change. Ferocious battles are fought and won, and the skeletons slowly remember who and what they once were. Melancholy, introspective and spanning epochs, The Skeletons is unlike anything you've ever played.




Immersive Battle Atlas


Book Description

Dungeon maps for TTRPGs




The Brand New Catastrophe


Book Description

“A very funny [memoir] about the frailties of the flesh, the absurdities of modern medicine, and how to stay sane amid it all” (Dave Eggers). Raucous family memoir meets medical adventure in this “winning literary debut” that explores the public and private theaters of illness (The New York Times Book Review). After a pituitary tumor bursts in Mike Scalise’s brain (diagnosed, by of all people a physician named Dr. Sunshine), it leaves him with a hole in head, and the hormone disorder acromegaly at age twenty-four. He also faces the exasperating challenge of navigating a new, alien world of illness maintenance among family, friends, and spouse. However, it’s his mother, who has a chronic heart condition and a flair for drama, who becomes a complicated model as she competes with her son for the status of “best sick person.” “Captur[ing] all the fright of a medical calamity and the humor and grace necessary to survive it (Kirkus Reviews), “Mike Scalise’s startling and slyly hilarious memoir is a heartfelt reminder of how astonishing, how terrifying, how absurd it is to be a body. An essential book for those who’ve lived through catastrophe, or only imagined it” (Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine).