By using the lyrics of Iron Maiden's "Dance of Death," we help guide you through the process of creating a bard character that is horrified of dancing. The bard that doesn't dance -- how did that happen, anyway? Read on to find out.

Fans of our level design series probably recall the first of the From Lyrics to Levels column (where we taught you how to create a steampunk level by listening to the lyrics of a song); this is the same concept, but instead uses song lyrics to create and embellish a living character in a typical fantasy setting. We will use the lyrics to build on a personality, profession, character interactions, and essential background for use in a fantasy game -- this column can be used for tabletop games, writing, or video games with equal success. It's all about how you want to interpret the music!

In preparation for our next installment in the From Lyrics to Levels series, I've put together a character design template with the fundamentals for any fantasy setting (though the template can be adopted for use elsewhere). The character design template gives you a format to address quintessential points for any character you're designing -- the idea is to help streamline the character design and development process so that nothing is forgotten.

Green Man Gaming is a UK based independent digital retailer for PC Games. Using globally unique proprietary technology, Green Man Gaming offer consumers the ability to trade-in digitally downloaded games for new purchases and publishers the ability to generate ongoing revenue from their intellectual property.

As part of their continued evolution and growth, online digital retailer Green Man Gaming has just announced the launch of their new, second generation website and desktop application ‘Capsule’.

The ingenuity of April Fools' enablers has increased with each year -- it has rapidly become an internet tradition, but more importantly, it's become a gaming tradition. We've picked out the most entertaining, most devious April Fools' gags of the year: Guild Wars 2's commando class, Blizzard's StarCraft Motion, and Duke Nukem's excrement challenges.

Yeah, you read that right. Continue on for the best videos and websites of April Fools' 2011!

Games. Ever since the dawn of time people have played games, sometimes as a form of competition, sometimes as a display of dominance, or sometimes just to simply pass the time. What happens if you don't enjoy the game you're playing, though? Do you continue anyway, hoping that something will "just click?"

Maybe you should stop playing altogether and find something else to do?

Or... you could be cool. You could just stick two fingers up to the authorities, tell them you're not glued to the predetermined ruleset of their game, and that you're going to make your own game from within the overarching constraints of theirs. That's how we got Rugby League, that's how we got Pool, it's even, to use a more modern analogy, how we got Counter-Strike (Half Life Mod), Team Fortress (Quake Mod), Defense of the Ancients (Warcraft III / StarCraft Mod), and many others.

So where's the fun in that?