DominicHamon.com

Life is like a grapefruit

Telling stories

If there’s a single sentence that can act as a simple summary for what role-playing games are, it is surely “telling a story from the characters’ points of view”. Any modern table-top role-playing game has this at its core; that the players, with the game-master, are developing a world and a story together as they […]

Posted on 2009/07/15 by dominic in game development | Tagged Computer games, game development, MMO, role-playing | 1 Comment

In medias res

A while ago there was an episode of the DnD podcast from Wizards of the Coast that had a tip for DMs to start every session with the players rolling initiative. This usually indicates that combat, or at least some action sequence, is about to play out and initiative determines the order that the characters […]

Posted on 2009/05/05 by dominic in game development | Tagged dnd, MMO, MUD, Player | 3 Comments

The written word

Through all fantasy games, single- and multi-player, virtual or table-top, runs a common thread: The writing. It has been argued many times, and reasonably successfully, that the history of fantasy gaming was born of the ground-breaking work of Tolkien, however it is more correct to say that he was the great populariser of a genre […]

Posted on 2009/03/16 by dominic in the written word | Tagged dnd, MMO, MUD, Writing | 2 Comments

Player vs Character

The separation between player and character is at the core of the role-playing experience which is what separates DnD, MUDs and MMOs from other multiplayer games. By definition, when you’re playing a role it’s assumed that the role is not that of “person playing a role-playing game”. Aside from the physical and sociological differences between […]

Posted on 2009/03/10 by dominic in at the table, character development | Tagged Character, D&D, MMO, MUD, Player, role-playing | Leave a comment

MUDs, MMOs, and me, oh my!

Two pieces of news have inspired this today. News the first is that the humble text-based MUD is 30 years old. The second is the news of a new MMO from a company that I have a vested interest in seeing succeed, and based on an IP that I have a certain fondness for. Most […]

Posted on 2008/10/22 by dominic in personal | Tagged discworld, dnd, MMO, MUD, role-playing, RPG | Leave a comment