Learn more about game design as we explore "cursed" impossible-to-solve design problems! A veteran game designer walks you through what to look out for and how to deal with these troublesome curses.
Description:
Game designers from video games, tabletop games, and card games wrestle with impossible-to-solve problems all the time, but if you know what to look out for, you can avoid and even defeat the problems that plague your games!
Do beholders have buttholes? Are mind flayers sexy or scary? Is "Mike's Hard Lemonade" a spell? We have a big d20 of questions you never dared to ask. Roll the big die and get ready to laugh!
Description:
Our panel of people from across the D&D ecosystem grapples with absolutely unhinged questions in this mini game show. We cant promise these answers will make your campaign better or more thoughtful, but you will leave with an armful of useless and probably wrong facts.
Build more immersive TTRPG worlds by answering hilarious questions about fantasy's most famous monsters. Do owlbears lay eggs? Are dragons actually lobsters?
Description:
This panel of naturalists and game designers examine the monsters in fantasy RPGs through the lenses of zoology, anatomy, and ecology. Discover the hilarious and ridiculous ways animals survive, especially with wizards wandering about. Tell new stories guided by the razor's edge of survival in every forest, ocean, and desert. Reduce your prep time as you discover the internal logic of your favorite fantasy worlds. It's gonna be wild.
Discover some of history's most epic quests to inspire your next TTRPG, like a zombie plague of flesh-eating fungus or the Ice Age giants that saved a shipwrecked Russian crew.
Description:
Build better games through history! These stranger-than-fiction, real-world adventures would be right at home in your next TTRPG. Gain inspiration and compelling structures for your next dungeon run, hex crawl, or monster hunt. Featuring Book of Extinction, a bestiary of extinct animals resurrected for 5th Edition.
Discover goofy "lost" monsters from D&D's shadowy past, witness the explosion of biodiversity in monster manuals, and learn the forces that drive all creatures - even monsters - to extinction.
Description:
Panelists at the intersection of natural history and game design take you on a guided tour of taxonomy, conservation science, and some of the weirdest moments in D&D's history of publishing monsters! With equal parts fantasy lore and real-world history, this panel explores the surprising ways in which monsters of fantasy games reflect beasts of the real world, including the changing ways we categorize them (goblins are fey now?), how they proliferate into new species (what is a Sphinx of Wonder anyway?), and how your favorite D&D monsters (yes, even the owlbears) could go extinct.
Monsters In Games: How To Design A Monster That Matters
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Make the most of monsters in your games. Drawing on fairy tales, history, cartoons, and academic scholarship from all over the world, panelists show you how to design a satisfying, meaningful monster.
Description:
From the first goomba you stomp or goblin you slay, to the final boss or BBEG, games can rely heavily on their antagonists to motivate their mechanics and tell their story. So how do you ensure your monster is ready to make an impact on your game and your players? This world-spanning conversation unearths the nature of monstrosity, how we utilize it in games, and what it tells us about otherness, community, fear, and the places we call home.
The Terror Toolkit: Running Horror RPGs at Your Table
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Veteran game designers give you the tools to bring horror to life at your tabletop. Learn the ins-and-outs of a good scare and how to make the game satisfying and safe at your table.
Description:
Whats the right mix of gore, horror, and terror? How do you get players invested in the game? And how do you make rolling dice a spectacularly scary experience? All these answers and more as you open the Terror Toolkit!