Rules – GeekOut UK

DMing 101 – Choosing Your Rules

I use the term DM or Dungeon Master to describe those running role-plays because my preferred set of rules is Dungeons & Dragons, but I’ve dabbled in many a game system, discussed others at length, and even made some efforts into making my own. With the explosion of diversity in rules spanning genres, creating worlds or plunging players into worlds they’ve always wanted to explore, but so often you’ll find there’s something missing, or that your chosen campaign doesn’t match up with the rules at hand.

You can alter, add to or even create rules if you’re feeling really brave, but there’s a market out there worth researching, and it’s a fun experience. Continue reading “DMing 101 – Choosing Your Rules”

Shotgun Rules

Have you ever tried to write your own tabletop roleplaying system, or perhaps a board game? If you have plenty of patience it’s fairly easy to put something together that works, although “fun” takes a hell of a lot more effort to achieve. A basic rule set is actually surprisingly easy to throw together, but that must then be followed by testing said rules until you hate them to make sure that they absolutely work, and while you might say “the simpler the better” sometimes the simple rules are the easiest to get drastically wrong, and you end up patching over the open crack with specific rules.

At least that has been my experience of game design, others may differ. There’s one particular example I want to pick on here, and it’s one you may have already guessed if you read the title, and didn’t just dive in without looking. Continue reading “Shotgun Rules”

GeekOut Podcast #2 – GET A GRIP OF YOURSELF, MAN!

In this weeks’ GeekOut Podcast, we discuss rules within games and genres. As is seemingly becoming the norm for us, we managed to go so far off subject, we ended up in the realms of achievements and more.

We’re hoping to keep the podcasts to a consistent biweekly basis from here on in, so the next episode of the GeekOut Podcast should hopefully be on Sunday 11th October! If we can manage more, we’ll do more too! We’re also going to move our audio away from Soundcloud, as we cannot afford the hosting plans. We’re likely going to create some spiffy graphics and upload all of our audio to YouTube, but if you have any better ideas for hosting podcasts, please let us know!

Podcasts aren’t all we’re doing now. Did you know that Timlah has finally gone ahead and recorded his first ever Lets Play episode? He’s playing the Dungeon Crawling classic, Stonekeep, a classic game that both of the GeekOut guys are hugely fond of. It’ll go live on Wednesday along with a post, so keep your eyes peeled for that and let him know how good (or bad) he is!

Over to you: What genres do you know that have strict rules and what genres could you not play if they didn’t adhere to their rules? Hey, do you want to get involved with the GeekOut Podcast and just chat nonsense with Joel and Timlah? Let us know in the comments below, over on Facebook and Twitter, or shoot us an email.

DMing 101

In DMing 101 I’ll be giving generalized advice on how to run a tabletop roleplaying game. The articles will not presume any knowledge, except being able to read. And maybe knowing what dice are. And paper. And a computer. Maybe some other stuff. I’ll also presume that you can remember that DM means Dungeon Master. Some people call it a Game Master or GM, but I don’t. Suck it up. There are a few quick start guides on how to DM out there, but DMing 101 will offer a fairly easy set of tips that a novice can follow to make his/her games something truly memorable. Continue reading “DMing 101”