Chris Avellone
Game design in CRPGs – some links
I’m on a Kotaku link buzz here, but these were interesting.
First up is how uber-CRPG designer Chris Avellone hates CRPGs and their clichés.
Second up is how horses change the design of CRPGs and why Dragon Age won’t have any.
Both of these are reasons that as long as I’ve got friends and dice, I’ll keep playing table top games.
Fallout 3 & pen and paper RPGs
The Age‘s Screen Play blog had an interesting post yesterday. Chris Avellone from Obsidian Entertainment (developers of the new Fallout: New Vegas game amongst others) apparently tested his design for the original Fallout 3 (never made, not the one that came out last year) by running playtests using a pen-and-paper version of the game, including running simultaneous parties whose actions affected the other group.
You can read all about it here but it sounds pretty damn cool! Given that Avellone worked on the magnificent Planescape: Torment amongst other clasic games, plus has a tabletop background too it would be very interesting to compare the two Fallout 3 based games when New Vegas is released.
There’s actually a longer interview with Avellone from Edge magazine here as well which is worth a read.