About Mystic Ages Publishing

Nathan J. Hill is the author and gamer behind Mystic Ages Publishing.

Mystic Ages was founded as a vehicle for online gaming, such as the ill-fated Delve of Destiny conventions in the late 90s, but soon became a web presence for game design, discussion, and mud flinging. After a brief stint as an ezine covering indie games, Eldritch Ass Kicking was released as Mystic Age's first game. Eldritch Ass Kicking was later picked up by Key20 Games for print, and the PDF version ceased to be in distribution.

Barbarians Versus was Mystic Age's followup game and received critical acclaim for its humor, wit, and elaborate drinking rules. It is still available from your favorite online digital download stories like RPGNow and e23. Mystic Ages plans to introduce some new ridiculous games into circulation soon.

Nathan has written limitedly for a number of other companies. Nathan contributed to Abstract Nova's Noumenon roleplaying game. You can buy it here. You can also find a fun D20 supplement written for the Le Games. Nathan has also contributed to the Inner Voice gaming zine.

Game Design Philosophy

As always, check out the Adventure Pit for current musings on game design.

Fun or funny. If the game setting idea doesn't tickle something, it's not good.

Rolling dice is good. The more the merrier... most of the time.

Simple mechanics. The game system should be easy to learn within a few minutes.

Setting toolkit. The setting and flavor text should be as flexible as possible to allow for maximum imagination.

Different is okay. Just because another game or game system does it like this doesn't mean anything...

Game Design Resources

If you are looking for places to get started in your own game design, check out the Forge first. You'll find discussions and information on numerous topics related to the design, playing, publishing, and marketing of independent roleplaying games. You can also find Nathan hanging out in the RPG.Net Game Design forum from time to time.