One I would say was Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel because it showed how to use really deep historical research and the benefits of realism that it can give to a story. The other was its use of third person limited present tense to really give the feeling of historical events happening and the choices therefore being made on the fly, then with the better vision of looking backwards.
That tight limited perspective held mostly to Cromwell I found to be a masterclass of getting in the mind of a character without the special pleading and unreliableness of narrator that can often come with first person.
But what about others, what books helped you, and might help others, and how?
I am brainstorming a Space Adventure RPG. I am not really taken with currently available systems, and I don't think I am alone having seen that others also seem unsatisfied with them.
For me, this game would be sort of like an updated version of a pretty traditional RPG but trying to be more elegant and having actually learned something from 50 years of RPG games coming out. But again, this is very much at the brainstorming point.
Please Look, Consider, Comment, and Add!What are you looking for in a game like this? As you look at the following does this seem like a game you'd be interested in? What other elements would you bring in? Is there any elements that would be off put
We all have things we hate, but what do you love and want from a GM in the design of the position within a game?
Many games have a GM or DM role. Many people write about what it takes to be a good GM in different systems. How well different systems support that position. This isn't a question of "what is a GM?"
It is more a question of what do you think the position should be in your wildest dreams?
As a player what do you want out of your GM? What would make you take up that role? What powers do you want that person to have?
Do you want them to be a conductor? Do you want them to be more of a person bringing the story collaboration together? Do you want them creating the world or do
So often in RPGs are an interesting set of spells. The systems might be very well defined as what they can do, but the thing is I am sort of sick of basic mana/spell point systems.
I was looking back over Fantasy writer Brian Sanderson's Second law of Magic, where he writes about how the limitations of a magic system in a fantasy story should be more interesting than the powers they provide. This, to me seems the exact opposite of most RPGs where you might have a magical fuel tank, but that is about it.
So systems with limitations would be ones that limit what the magic can do. If you
(More info if you want it, but the above does cover it.)
So, the setting for my story is a secondary (entirely separate from ours, no portals) world that has no magic.
It still is very much like our world taking much from our world and is technologically sort of early 19th century. It has horses and trains and coffee... The way I look at is something like Trollop's fictional English county Barchester, Hope's fictional European county of Ruritania, or Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. Except instead of being part of our world it is a separate world, just very much like ours. I have thought if I could place it in our world, but because of the complex political and large scale (lets say Napol
Disney and Kahn Academy have put together a series of lessons done by their imagineers. (These are the people who design and build Disney Theme Parks and Resorts).
It is Imagineering in a Box. It has three main lessons Worldbuilding (definitely applies, especially when applying your world to other projects like writing or games or theme parks!), Designing Attractions, and Character Design.
It is aimed primarily at Middle and High School students but I think it is at least thought provoking for more. For instance when they are discussing the land of Pandora in Animal Kingdom and using real world