Category: Musings (Page 1 of 8)

QuestWorlds Rules Summary

October 12, 2022 / Stan Shinn

I’ve been intrigued by the upcoming QuestWorlds RPG. It will be the third major edition of the rules when it comes out (previously it was Hero Wars and then HeroQuest (not to be confused with the miniatures game of the same name).

It is sort of like Fate or Cortex, a narrative game, but is faster and more streamlined than other similar games.

I’ve created a QuestWorlds rules summary which you can download here or on our downloads page.

You can download the rules-only text for free from Itch.io or get the very latest version from GitHub.

Stan Shinn on the Amon Sûl Podcast

April 26, 2022 / Stan Shinn

I recently had the pleasure of being a guest co-host on the Amon Sûl podcast where I discussed gaming and Tolkien and fielded some questions from listeners about violence in RPG games. Richard Rohlin and I also read and discussed Chapter 13 of The Silmarillion, “The Return of the Noldor.”

Dicehaven is 8 Years Old!

March 29, 2022 / Stan Shinn

On this day (March 30th, 2014), eight years ago I published the very first Dicehaven.com post! 355 posts later, we are still going strong. We get over 1,000 visitors to the site each month, so thanks to all of you that keep coming back and keeping up with our RPG musings and other content.

Old-School RPG Store Shelves Informed Game Design

October 31, 2021 / Stan Shinn

Who remembers racks and shelves like this back in the day? I miss those days, with lots of 30-50 page products. Last 20+ years we’ve optimized for library-style shelves where you need the 250 page book for the spine to stand out, which has changed how we design games. I miss the simpler days. 🙂

Book Rack Picture from Chris Oz Fulton on Facebook

Historical Roleplaying Games

September 16, 2020 / Stan Shinn

I noticed an interesting home-brew game called Traveller: 1700 which appeared in Freelance Traveller (Traveller: 1700 link is at the bottom of this page). The notion of using Traveller rules to roleplay in colonial times got me to thinking about what historical eras I’d be interested to play in, so I pinged my game club gamers to see what historical eras most interested them. Here were their responses. I also jotted down some game systems that might work to play in those eras.