Fifty years of Dungeons & Dragons is quite the lesson in technical debt.

Back in 1974, Elf was a class. That is a hard-coded dependency. It was an MVP that shipped, but five years later, when a user inevitably wanted a Dwarven Wizard, the backend required a massive re-architecture. Fast forward to 3rd Edition, and the vendor delivered an over-engineered SAP implementation where calculating a grapple check requires a small, expensive army of consultants.

If you’ve ever had to sit through a digital transformation presentation while wondering if your legacy stack is going to survive the quarter, I’ve mapped the history of the world’s most popular role-playing game to your corporate agony. It covers everything from premature optimisation to the very modern mistake of trying to vendor-lock a user base that understands good vs. evil and does complex probability math for fun.

Have a read. And next time you’re in a strategic alignment meeting, ask yourself: where is your Elf? Read More …

Is LitRPG just a guilty pleasure, or does it actually mean something? Let’s get a little more profound on this shower thought. This is Part 3 of a 3-part series on LitRPG: its past, how to write it, and why it keeps us coming back. LitRPG isn’t just about power-ups and progress bars. It taps into something deeper. Why do these stories hit so hard? Let’s autopsy why this genre is fundamental fantasy rather than a fad. Missed the earlier parts? Introduction There are a few genres that are experiencing break-out success, and with good reason. They scratch an underserved niche and, if done well, expand that niche into a chasm of readership that becomes a defining success. Romantasy is a great example, but we’re here to talk about LitRPG. You’ll still never pry Paladin’s Grace from my hands, but I will Read More …