Rule 0 will return on Tuesday.

Oh, how I loathe them. Which is why today’s XKCD warms my heart.

It appears that the most provoking articles are the ones where I’m wrong or at least wildly off base in some regard.

In an experiment to see how strong this effect really is, I have only one thought for you today: Although Settlers of Catan is a great game for many reasons, the absolute best thing about it is the really slick ranged combat mechanic.

Discuss.

This is pretty neat. I don’t know if I would go so far as to use it for exploring dungeons, but it would be cool for tactical RPG encounters. It could also be used to project various board games. For instance, you could write a script to randomly generate a Catan board, complete with number chits, and project that on the table, and be ready to go in seconds. But possibly the biggest advantage is that you could prototype a board game without ever having to touch cardboard! This isn’t a big deal for the first iteration, but when you start making changes…
(From Kill The Wizard First)

Oops! Saturday’s article was supposed to be published today to keep up with the Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday schedule, but I somehow I forgot how to read a calendar.

In other news, while browsing at Target, I saw Qwitch and MyWord. These games are designed by Maureen Hiron (Abridged and other games) and Reiner Knizia, respectively, and they’re credited on the packaging. I would like to hope this is a sign of hobby gaming gaining wider popularity!

I was having a discussion about Reiner Knizia the other day and, upon reflection, I think of him as the Isaac Asimov of board gaming. I hope he would not object to such a comparison! By it I mean:

• Both are vastly prolific, each producing output at a startling pace.
• The love of creation is readily apparent in both.
• Both have produced masterpieces (among them: Foundation and I, Robot; Tigris & Euphrates and Taj Majal) that are widely regarded and will be remembered as enduring classics.
• Both might be criticized for publishing material that isn’t necessarily first-rate; material that might not be picked up if it came from a lesser-known author.

As someone who would like to be one of these lesser-known authors, this at first seems unfair! On the other hand, I understand the phenomenon of having all these ideas running around in one’s head. If you can write it down, that helps. If people want to buy it… so much the better! To say that it’s being phoned in for a paycheck would be an injustice. The ideas are there! The only difference is that the ideas that you or I might put on a shelf thinking “this will take too much effort to make truly exceptional” can be released as “this can be made good and worthwhile quickly enough, while I wait for my next truly magical idea to come along.”

R0 has recently been deluged by spam comments. I have just switched to the following moderation system:

• You must have a previously approved comment or your comment will be sent to moderation.
• Any comment with more than one link is sent to moderation.

Hopefully this will let people link to their personal websites without incident but keep us from getting spammed. And if your post doesn’t show up, don’t fear, I will get to it as soon as possible, and in the future you should have no worries as long as you keep the same handle.

I’m really impressed at the quality of the articles available at the now-mothballed Games Journal. I take solace only in the fact that it took about 12 skilled writers (and some game industry professionals) five years to get that body of work together. But what a collection it is!

Rule 0 is now #1 on a Google search for Rule 0. I’m so proud… hey, I gotta start somewhere.

The redoubtable J. Vogel likes RPGs in much the same way I like board games. He’s started a new and interesting blog which features, among other things, one of the greatest name/URL pairs I’ve seen: Kill the Wizard First.