Customer Reviews

Game Guru: Role-Playing Games (Premier Press Game Development)

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"Role-Playing Games" by Dave Morris and Leo Hartas filled the bill. I was looking for something that would help generate ideas and discussion about role-playing games, especially the computer-based variety, and Morris and Hartas have delivered.

The book is chock full of useful and cogent observations, tips and analysis. It's a book a game designer should have on his shelf - it will be referred to often, even though it isn't a reference book.

For development teams, it's a useful book to have hanging around the blue-sky room as a communication tool.

On the negative side, I found the visual format--such as the page backgrounds and font faces (like the use of italics in the design tops)--visually distracting and somewhat annoying.

The tagline for the book implies that it might actually teach a reader the basics of creating a role playing game, and it does, to a certain extent. A good analogy would be a book claiming to teach the reader how to build a toaster, and then offering helpful hints like "A toaster must heat bread", and "a toaster should be an attractive color".

If you have ever actually played a role playing games, you would already know most of the material covered in this book. In fact, the written material could probably be covered in a much smaller volume, since 3/4 of each page, sometimes more, are covered with glossy screenshots from a variety of role playing games.

The casual reader will find this book completely unappealing, and anyone with the goal of creating a game will find it lacking.