Undesign

Vince & Travis sit down to discuss how you get a new character into an ongoing game. Whether a new player at the table or someone making a new character after an untimely death, bringing someone in mid-stream can be real tricky. How do you best introduce them? How do you make sure they gel with the group? How do you prevent them from being the eternal outsider? All of this and less will be answered within.

Join Vince & Travis as they discuss how Bad Luck in games can ruin the time for both players and GMs. We play diced based games and sometimes the dice turn against you. How can you as the GM mitigate or even use this bad luck? How can you as a player utilize bad luck for your own story. All of this and less will be answered within.

Join Vince & Travis as they discuss everything related to Priority in character generation. These systems were used by things like mechwarrior and shadowrun. They make you force rank your character creation items for things like ability scores, skills and so on. What are the advantages and disadvantages to these systems? Why would you want them in your game? All of this and less will be discussed within.

Vince and Travis sit down to discuss that most elusive of beasts, rarer than the unicorn, the regular weekly game. How do you keep your players on track and arriving at your game every week? Do you have to be a harsh task master? What if you just can’t keep all the players showing up? All of this and less will be answered within.

Vince and Travis get crunchy! They sit down to discuss upper limits games - the impossible things and tasks that define the change your characters and players can have on the world. Why are these so important in games design? How do they help define the feel of a world? Why should you think about about them as a GM as well and when you should break them? All of this and less will be answered within.

Vince & Travis sit down and discuss their favorite 2nd Edition D&D books. It’s time to drip in the waters of nostalgia and discuss how 2nd edition D&D gave us so many books by printing themselves out of business. What were the books they loved? Why are there so many books? What can we use of them today? All of this and less will be answered within.

Travis and Vince are back and they are discussing the mine field of romantic couples at the gaming table. What risks happen when a couple sits down at the table? How do you navigate these choppy waters? Is it ever a good idea? All of this and less will be answered within.

This week Vince & Travis are breaking down one of their crunchiest subjects ever - sub-systems in design vs. unified mechanics. Some games rely on bespoke individual systems to resolve everything, different systems to build a thing, attack a thing, do a thing, other games use a singular unified system to do everything. Which is better? Is there a better? Why is better? All of this and less will be answered within.

Join Vince & Travis for another episode of Undesign. This week they are talking about what happens when a game company advances timelines and kills characters in their games. When the world moves on, does it leave gamers behind? Should timelines move and big changes happen? What makes a good change and what makes a bad change? Tune in and find out.

Vince and Travis are back and discussing the differences between fantasy and sci-fi. This time, they are talking through the idea that fantasy is just more restricted sci-fi. Sci-Fi seems like it can be anything, but fantasy is often decried as “not fantasy” if it steps outside the line of medieval Europe. So is fantasy just boring played out sci-fi or is there more to this story? Tune in and find out!