World building is fun. And necessary, for quite a bit of sci-fi and fantasy writing and practically all role-play gaming. Unfortunately, it's too easy to get caught up in building awesome worlds, and lose track of what it's all there for. I suffer this, pretty badly too, and it's the main reason why I don't get much writing (or game mastering) done.

Last night at the Toronto IGDA meeting, I got in a bit of a chat with a few other guys about playtesting to determine how fun a game is. I was bringing up a lot of usability testing examples involving Microsoft’s Usability Labs, and their methods of gauging user reaction to products. (While never having been there, I have read about how they do things, and it’s very sensible.)

We've all played Solitaire. Except for the very youngest of us, probably played it with cards instead of (or, as well as) on the computer. It's a good way to lazily blow some time when you're bored and alone. But the game sucks.

I just did something I was meaning to do for a while, but hadn't gotten around to doing (until now). That is, put some old game designs of mine up on the site for people to read and enjoy.

I devised this quite some time ago, back when Fallout was new, and I had played through it once or twice. The SPECIAL system that Fallout used for play had this interesting turn-based combat system, where characters would have up to ten points per round to spend on various actions. What I've done is take off the cap, and have things move more "real-time" (in the strategy game sense).