free banner exchange by Bpath.com Captain Anorak's Guide to Gaming
The Little Details
A lot of game writers put little details into a game without ever explaining why, but when you think about it, these little details imply a much greater reality which should really have a wider-ranging impact on the game. Magic in fantasy RPGs is a good example. Imagine a game where there are some spells which can only be cast ‘when the stars are right,’ at times of particular astral phemonema. If this is so, it implies that the stars can have an effect on the working of magic. To the logical mind, then, there should be a coherent framework of how the stars affect the working of magic, but how often have you seen a game that works like this?

A game that made sense would build from the ground up: it would start out with an underlying idea of how the stars influence the working of magic, with a set of rules or at least guidelines for how this works, and then the effects of individual astral phenomena on individual spells would be worked out in any given case from these guidelines.

See also Magic.