Researchers from the University of Oklahoma, led by the psychologist Stephanie C. Stern, suggest that fans of fantasy and sci-fi genre have more realistic believes about romantic relationships compared to those who read romance or even highbrow fiction. What’s going on? In the research paper What you read and what you believe: Genre exposure and […]
Geeks twice as likely to be rooting for Loki
Whether you’ve seen Avengers: Infinity War or not you know there’s the sequel move coming. Avengers 4 doesn’t even have a name yet because of the risk of spoilers. … but some famous superheroes might die in the fight against Thanos. The heroes at risk include the brothers Thor and Loki. Let’s just say you […]
Geeks more likely to pester authors
Surprised? Geek Native’s research suggests geeks are 50% more likely to pester authors and encourage them to finish the next book in a series. Let’s rewind and look how we got to those stats. Our methodology would not pass scientific scrutiny but hopefully is robust enough to be a talking point. This month we had […]
Would the world be better with magic? Men and women disagree
Or results would not qualify as a scientific survey and our sample size was less than 100 people, but the results are quite stark. Women are far more likely to think the world would be better if access to magic were commonplace. So, what happened? A few years back Geek Native gave a copy of […]
7,764 free RPGs! It’s Free RPG Day
It’s Free RPG today. Gamers around the world are encouraged to pop into their local store and try a new RPG for free today. It’s made possible by a host of sponsors which Geek Native thank and will mention a little later on. Since 2014 Geek Native has been tracking the number of free RPGs […]
Will we volunteer as cyborgs? Health divides us
Geek Native occasionally has goodies to giveaway in a competition, and when that happens, we like to run a little poll. Some years back we had a copy of Ghost in the Shell: Arise to giveaway so we asked a question about cyborgs. We wanted to know whether readers thought in the future people would […]
Ready Player One: Geeks more likely to warn against the Oasis
This month Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One hits the cinemas. In it geeks battle to survive and safe the virtual reality known as the Oasis. The book features Acererak and the Tomb of Horrors and lots of 80s geek culture from Japan. Trailers from the film suggest a more American spin […]
What do you do as a DM when you realise you’ve made a terrible call?
We’re only human and sometimes we make mistakes. DMs might muddle up initiative order or something just as easy but more serious like forget to act as a helpful NPC or confuse the effects of aggressive magic. It happens. As a rule players are generally good at coping when the DM fesses up to a […]
A game designer’s perspective: Storytelling from computers to RPGs
Based on data from the US statista homepage the sales figures for computer and videogames in 2015 was staggering 16.5 billion US dollars, whereas a similar sales figure for tabletop RPGs in 2015, according to ICv2 correspondence letter #90, was a solid 35 million US dollars. From sales figures alone, the computer game industry is […]
Is knowing the future a gift or a curse?
When this blog has some freebies to giveaway we run a competition. You can find the latest here and check back through the archives. There’s usually a poll to answer in order to take part and then your input becomes part of a fun analytical exercise. This isn’t great science, the sample sets are small […]