This is a new experiment- one that I am curious to see where it goes. I have noticed that in the last year or two my rate of blogging has dropped off considerably. Mostly I think is because there are now a whole host of new social media tools that each does part of what my old blog used to do all on its own back in the day. So its been gather digital dust. (digital dust is like little grey pixels, but smaller...)

Anyway, there have been ideas or thoughts that have been nagging at me- ones that are under various topics, and require a bit more explaining then 140 characters can allow. Plus the more I thought about it, they really fell into two areas- Interaction Design (IxD) and Role Playing Games (typically D&D). So I thought I would create a journal to explore these two areas of thought.

As a point of reference, the earliest Information design problem I can recall was my frustration with the map that came with GDW's Traveller 2300/2300AD game. It was (and still is) a vexing problem of displaying information of stellar geography, so much so that I found I kept returning to it again and again over the years, in the hopes of finally solving it. And along the way, I eventually found I had fallen into a career of solving similar problems for clients.

Actually, I would say that RPGs are at their core a designed experience- one where the Dungeon Master acts as the experience designer for their "users". It is in a lot of ways, a good gaming session is like a Brainstorming session, Focus group testing, and product launch all rolled into one.

So that is what I am going to try and address in this space- how RPGs can be used to improve our understanding of Experience Design, and how in turn the tools of IxD can be used to improve the RPG experience.