Game Designer and Father of Lovecraftian gaming. CEO of Petersen Games. Also Doom, Age of Empires, etc. Subscribe for exclusive game insights & history!
Joined October 2012
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Dumb uses of fire in D&D
Number One: using oil flasks as molotov cocktails is idiotic. Glass bottles were super-expensive. Oil would be kept in leather pouches or possibly clay pots, and no one's carrying clay pots into battle.
Also the oil you had would be tallow, lard, or olive oil. Not gasoline. Whale oil in Scandinavia. Possibly hemp in Asia. An olive oil fire isn't a rating conflagration.
If you need to fry a bad guy, cast your damn fireball
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Number Four: candles weren't common among the poor. You see, candles take time and effort to make. You have to buy them from the chandler. It's MUCH easier to just use a simple oil lamp - these would basically look like Aladdin's lamp.
The reason you light a candle in someone's memory at church is because it's literally a sacrifice. Not just something you do at the drop of a hat. Which is also why you wouldn't normally see a lot of candles burning at once, except at a church or if a lord is showing off his wealth with that fancy chandelier.
You guys have more examples than these I'm sure. Fire arrows, Greek fire, fire starting. Let me know.
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For those who say, βItβs just fantasy.β I spent 11 years at Ensemble studios giving historical verisimilitude to games and proving that players liked it.
Iβm fine with the fantasy parts. I just think itβs more fun if the history parts seem authentic.
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It also takes a while to start a fire. You need a tinderbox, plus either flint & steel, a fire drill, or hot coals. No matches or lighters. I imagine a cantrip to instantly produce a flame from a fingertip would be one of the most popular spells. But also scary, because a person with that cantrip could set fire to a haystack or a barn.
In other news, my patreon today released a new D&D magic item - the Skelemirror. Which is pretty much what it sounds like.
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I admit, Iβm pretty racist against Deep Ones and their spawn too.
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Some folks have asked what it's like when I run a game.
Well, I run a lot of games. So I thought you might like seeing me run a game with my granddaughter and her friends. They really got into it.
One girl's investigator read a creepy old book and it drove her partly insane. So from then on her character acted jittery and half-insane. She is a great roleplayer. At least at running neurotic twitchy loons. They are all new to roleplaying too so it was really fun to introduce them.
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The adventure was called "The Haunted Sleepover". After all, they're just a bunch of teen girls so no need to go over the top with horror and gore. There was a ghost in the attic and a haunted ouija board (which I printed out and you can see on the tabletop). That sort of thing. Oh - the ghost was actually one of Nyarlathotep's Million Favored Ones. IYKYK.
They really liked trying to use the ouija board. I was the "ghost" spelling out answers.
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Sandy Petersen πͺ retweeted
Goodnight.
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I read a story in which the author, whose hero was Texas, mentioned someone taking a "slice" of Frito pie, and thus exposed himself as a poseur.
In a different story, by a different author, the hero went to Waffle House and bought a Belgian waffle - making it clear he had never in fact visited a Waffle House.
In the Walking Dead, they go from Florida to South Carolina and can't find a single firearm in any house. "Huh" I thought. "The screenwriters are from Los Angeles."
What examples can you give of a writer unintentionally giving away his lack of knowledge?
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For those who haven't visited the South here is Frito Pie and a Waffle House waffle.
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And this duel actually emulates the Celtic and Islamic wizard duels from lore. Always shape-shifting contests.
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Sandy Petersen πͺ retweeted
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Why games are the most stimulating entertainment.
In his last years, Roger Ebert famously claimed that games were not art. He was referring to computer games, but I assume it applies to all. Here are the three reasons he gave:
1) He had never played a game.
2) You can win a game.
3) Art must consist of a single visionary. This last seems pretty odd for a film reviewer, since movies are famously a collective project.
Penny Arcade skewered Ebert with the remark: "If a hundred artists create art for two years, how is the end product NOT ART?"
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Why do games hold our interest ten, a hundred, or a thousand times longer than movies? I think it's because games are about interesting decisions that matter. In the form of a real human opponent, you are faced with an enemy far more treacherous and ruthless than any scriptwriter could invent.
On the other hand, movies are passive entertainment. They are the same every time you see them. Sure you might pick up on some point upon a rewatch. But a good game can be a whole new experience every time.
Each decision you make in Puerto Rico or Cthulhu Wars makes a difference. I come away from every game of Twilight Imperium with a tale of betrayal; or a clever trick to regret or gloat over. This isn't true when I rewatch a film. And I LIKE films.
So one of my key design philosophies is to fill the game with interesting decisions that matter.
Tell me about your game sessions that have given rise to better stories than a movie or TV show.
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Written fiction is art. Drawing pictures is art. Sculpting is art. Music is art. Acting is art.
But a computer game with fiction, images, sculpted 3-D models, music, and voice acting is somehow not art. Sure.
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