“The works of Paul Czege stand apart from the collected works of other Small Press game designers” — writes Chris Perrin — “because Paul himself defies any sort of easy classification.”

Depending on your viewpoint, Paul is either one of the most prolific of the Gaming Outpost/Forge designers or one of the least. Also, depending on you how look at it, his best contribution lies in a single game (the still popular My Life With Master) or in the thought and effort he has put into the hobby of role playing and the practice of game design.

… Paul is deeply analytical and quite concerned with what makes the entire role playing experience a good one. This ranges from understanding why people play the way they do to why certain games lead to role playing (as opposed to roll playing) to why certain behavior is emergent in play (bring aspirin to that chat, trust me.)

With Paul, you get a man who has a design principle named after him (the Czege Principle which is best summarized on Gnomestew as “When one person is the author of both the Character’s adversity and its resolution, play isn’t fun.”) His principle has guided the design of numerous player-author games.

– Chris Perrin: Small Press, Big Game #6: Paul Czege

See also:

— Half Meme Press: the independent RPG publishing and experimental play labworks of Paul Czege

— The Full-Text Abduction of Paul Czege