Role Playing game systems have always been my personal favorite type of game design. They are, however, huge elaborate game systems with many interconnected sub systems, taking quite a bit of time to get right and fully realize. The downside of doing this sort of design is that while other designers have a regular stream of small games to show, the RPG and MMO system designer only produces one every few years. My latest project, the AIR Steampunk MMORPG, has just reached its first year of design, and is coming along nicely. Because I have the honor of working with an absolutely brilliant team of writers, this is the first RPG project where I have gotten to truly focus primarily on the system design and its integration into a storyworld being created in parallel. What follows is a summary of what the team has been up to.
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I rather enjoyed this presentation by Jane McGonigal.  Women in game design tend to have a much more socially conscious view, and  I always enjoy seeing conventional thinking challenged:

Gaming can make a better world

Listening to this talk brought up some old memories. Jane’s talk reminded me that once upon a time, I gave a crap about the world. As a kid, I remember the “Energy Ant” coloring books designed to help kids understand the energy crisis and do something about it. I remember that growing up, I put my young idealistic problem solving mind to the conundrums of society and how they might be resolved. Yet the more and more I learned just how screwed up the world was, I began to realize that there are very few people in this world who care about actually solving society’s problems. As a problem solver, I recognized that politicians didn’t seem to be doing it, they seemed to ignore all the sensible answers and care only about their mysterious agendas.

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