Small Things

More Apocalypse World/Cyberpunk

2011-06-09T02:44:00.000-07:00

I forgot to say the best thing about the cyberpunk/apocalypse world game we're playing, which is the rules for the internet, which is just "open your brain" with no changes at all. It it sweet, sweet, sweet, and absolutely just like what the internet is like. Sometimes the internet is friendly and nice. Sometimes it's scary and dangerous. Sometimes it shows you eight hours of wierd porn instead of what you wanted. The internet is the psychic maelstrom.

The game is heating up. I was a bit worried about it at first, but the rules are doing their thing, spinning simple situations into wonderfully gnarled disasters.

Kinds of Rules

2011-05-27T22:54:00.001-07:00

Here's something I said on Vincent's blog, which I think is kinda smart. It's about classifying different kinds of rules. I'm usually pretty skeptical about classification systems, but I think maybe games are better when they use a variety of different "kinds" of rule, which this may help with:

Rules can usually be broken down to an "if/then" statement. That's almost never the best way to communicate them, or to remember them, but for the purposes of this analysis, it's useful.

"If [thing] then [action]"

The "thing" referred to above can:

a) Happen in the real world, or in the fiction
b) Happen frequently, or rarely

The "action" referred to above can:

c) Tell you something happens in the fiction, or tell you to do something in the real world
d) Be very predictable, or very unpredictable

I think that covers what Ben's talking about in this post, as well as Vincent's "Mediating Cues" stuff.

Very often, if the "thing" is very common, and the "action" is very predictable, we tend to internalise the rule, and it's never overtly invoked. That's what Ben means by "continuous" rules. They become part of the landscape of play. For example:

"If [someone is talking about something 'their' character does] then [give that credibility - it happens in the fiction]"

That's a very common rule, which is almost never invoked during functional play, because it happens very frequently, and the action is very predictable. The rule is rarely stated outright, but the rule influences our play anyway.

"If [a character is going aggro], then [roll +hard, ...]"

That's a rule from Apocalypse World. It's almost always invoked when it comes up, because it happens infrequently, and the resulting action is unpredictable (in this case, because you have to roll the dice).

Guest Post on Border House

2011-05-18T12:34:00.000-07:00

I have a guest post up on the fantastic blog "Border House" about the process of getting a piece of cover art for my game On Mighty Thews.

Check it out!

Moorcock on World Building

2011-05-11T14:09:00.000-07:00

My buddy Steve showed me this great quote from Michael Moorcock, which sums up exactly the approach to world-building used in my game, On Mighty Thews:

I hardly know what this means. I used to draw a rough map if the story was a 'journey' adventure and made up the rest as needed for the story. My worlds are always inner (unconscious) worlds made manifest. I just learned to tap and shape that unconscious. I've never really understood 'world building' and it seems to derive from D&D etc. about which I know almost nothing.

I honestly believe this is what Howard was doing and what Leiber was doing. I grew up reading Freud and Jung (as it were) and I respond well to plots about people creating their own worlds in their minds. When writing s&s I made my landscapes and weather conditions fit the mood of the characters in straight Romantic tradition. Everything is co-opted into narrative and to a lesser extent character development. Realism or quasi-realism wasn't what I was attracted to in s&s and it's what I rejected in fantasy/sf. It became a convention to suspend disbelief by making the invented world as 'believable' as possible. I preferred mine to be as supportive of the story as possible and not bother to suspend disbelief because my readers already knew what they were reading and why. You don't have to persuade someone who has picked up a fantasy book that it is 'real'. What they want is a good story and characters, some good marvels, and maybe a bit to think about.

That's how you do it. I wrote a little about On Mighty Thews' map rules, which follow this process exactly, here.

On Mighty Thews - Available for Purchase

2011-05-07T23:35:00.000-07:00

In 2007 I was living in Japan, starved for gaming, and reading about amazing developments and innovations in design I was missing. I wanted to be playing these games, exploring these new ideas about play, and contributing to that conversation. But I was stuck in the wilds of Hokkaido, with no one to play with, and no way in.

Into that situation came my friend Rob. A victim of the collapse of the Nova English school, he was stopping past on his way back to New Zealand. Two or three nights, my chance at gaming for the first time in a year. I wanted something to play with him, something easy and fun, that showed off some of the exciting new ideas in gaming I'd discovered and wanted to explore. I hit the web, looking for something to play. "Donjon" was one of my favourites, but it was too complex, and the D&D parody aspect wasn't my thing. Dungeon Squad looked fun, but it was too traditional for what I wanted. I knew we wouldn't have the time or the inclincation for lots of prep or world-building. Time was limited, so I wanted to get into it right away. Nothing on the internet seemed to satisfy my needs: Quick, easy, "player-empowered" gaming.

So I wrote the game I needed myself.

The first iteration was a rough mashup of Donjon and Dungeon Squad, using some bits of my old favourite, Savage Worlds. I wrote it in fifteen minute while Rob waited in the other room. "We'll play for one scene", I said, "and see how it goes."

We played for two hours.

It was fun, it was easy. It showed off some of the exciting new ideas I was reading about. It did the job. There were rough edges, and I made most of the procedures up as I went along, but the idea was solid: If each player is called upon to create just a tiny bit of fiction, something fun and interesting, a little bit at a time, what the group creates together can be something greater and more exciting than they could have imagined.

I played the game non-stop for the next year. I introduced it to everyone. I met friends in Japan who loved to game and we played it every chance we got. I worked on the rules, defining the procedures and honing the rules to get at just what I wanted. Into the mix I added my love of Sword and Sorcery.

I was re-reading a lot of Moorcock, and discovering Tanith Lee and Clark Ashton Smith. The weird worlds these authors created seemed perfect for the games I was playing, filled with the bizzarre and the outre. My old favourite, Robert Howard's Conan, provided the style of action I wanted to create - bloody, visceral, filled with dangerous feats and daring escapes.

There was something I was trying to get at, something I loved (but not uncritically) about sword-and-sorcery stories. It was the way the characters lived in a kind of limbo, halfway between one thing and another. Conan, half-civilised, half-savage. Elric, caught between his fate and his passionate free will. These characters embodied a conflict that was reflected in the world around them.

Malcolm Craig (of Cold City and Hot War fame) provided the impetus to get the game finished. The game we played convinced me of its potential to provide really compelling fiction. Malcolm was excited about the game, and gave me the push to get it finished.

That was a journey in itself. Publishing is hard - far harder than designing. It's taken me years to get the game to its final state. In that time, the gaming world has moved on. What was cutting-edge in 2007 is old-hat now. My own tastes in gaming have changed, and what I'm excited about now is not what I was excited about then. On Mighty Thews is now an old-fashioned game.

But when I read over the text, when I look at the emails playtesters sent me, and when I think about the games I played, I can see there's still life in this game. It's not revolutionary, it's not life-changing, but it's a solid, fun, functional game, and it fills a niche.

If you have a couple of hours to fill, one or two friends, and a love of sword and sorcery stories, you could do worse than giving this game a go. I think you'll love it.

I'm proud to announce that my game, On Mighty Thews, is available for sale.

You can buy the pdf ($5) through its page at the un-store, here.

And check out the website for free downloads here.

Apocalypse World/Cyberpunk

2011-05-07T21:47:00.000-07:00

I recently played the first session of an Apocalypse World game I'm MCing, where the concept is an Apocalypse World that's more cyberpunk-influenced. We're using the core rules, unchanged, but altering our setting expectations.

A key influence is the book "He, She, and It" by Marge Piercy. This is a fucking great book, and I can't understand why it's not part of the core cyberpunk canon. It was written in 1991 and won an Arthur C Clarke award, and yet somehow people who will happily rave at you about Blade Runner and Neuromancer and Snow Crash have never heard of it. I suspect if it had been written by "Mark" Piercy, and if it didn't have so many icky girly feelings in it, it would be more popular.

The setting of the book is one of environmental and societal collapse. A few large corporations control most of the resources, much of the world is uninhabitable, and most people live in giant sprawling burbs around the corporate enclaves, or else in independant towns struggling to survive in the wilderness. We've pretty much stolen that setting wholesale.

One of the things I'm finding exciting about doing the prep for the game after the first session is how the rules for threats are sparking off the setting in really provocative and unexpected ways. A mercenary working for one of the corps becomes a grotesque threat - a mutant, who craves restitution and recompense. The character leaps to life in my mind. The sprawling burbs aren't just a place to live, they're a landscape threat - a breeding pit, generating badness. The place takes on a life of its own.

As with the last game of AW, things feel a little thin after the first session. I'm worried that there's too much of a status quo, that we'll have to work hard to destabilise things, and I'll be working against the characters' best interests to change things up in the town. The character class mix is part of that. We have an Angel (with a clinic), a Savvyhead, and an Operator, all characters with established operations they're loath to jeopardise. We'll have another player joining us next session though, who hopefully will add some violence to the mix.

There are some juicy things coming out of the first session though: Mother/daughter conflicts, drug addiction, a creepy stalker in a position of power, shadowy corporations, a mysterious illness. I'm looking forward to seeing where they go, and trusting that, like the last game, the sauce will thicken up with cooking.

Stock Photos

2011-04-04T16:00:00.000-07:00

Nowhere is the tyranny of white supremacy, patriarchy, and agism more visually apparent than in stock photo galleries.

"Woman" means "sexy woman".
"Police officer" means "white police officer".
"Person" means "young white man".

It is seriously grinding my gears.

Stakes Setting

2011-01-16T00:49:00.000-08:00

This thread on Story Games is what I'd like to see more of on that site, and I hope that it doesn't turn into a stirring defence of Shock: that would make people feel better but wouldn't really achieve anything else. There are real issues to discuss. Here's what I said on the thread:

"The issue of "downtime" in Shock: (and it is a real issue) is the same issue as exists in almost all stakes-setting games. Here's what I see the problems being:

a) There's uncertainty about when to engage the resolution mechanic. Has a conflict started yet or not? Sometimes, especially with talking conflicts, you're halfway through the conflict before you realise that you should be rolling dice.

b) Deciding what the stakes are takes time. Often there's negotiation, and that negotiation takes place outside of the fiction of the game. This problem is sometimes worse in Shock: because you have to decide on two non-contradictory sets of stakes, which isn't always easy.

c) Often if your resolution system is complex, it takes time to resolve who won which stakes. If resolution doesn't add more than yes/no to the fiction, this can feel like wasted time. I actually think Shock: is fairly economical in this regard.

d) Incorporating the results of the resolution into the fiction is often complex. If resolution assigns narration, that can be a help, but often there's a pause as people unpick the ramifications of what has been resolved (Shock:'s double-stakes can add to that).

e) Throughout, there's often an issue where it's not clear who is supposed to be talking, who has responsibility for deciding when there is a conflict, and how you arrive at good stakes. I think Shock: is better than many games in clarifying these issues, but they still exist.

In other words, I think Shock: uses the best technology that was available at the time it was written. These problems are more-or-less present in Dogs in the Vineyard, Legends of Alyria, Cold City, and a lot of other well-regarded games that use stakes-setting as part of resolution. I expect that Human Contact will contain a lot of advances that will help with the above issues, based on Joshua's evolving understanding of how to play the game."

I'll go further here. I think that roleplaying games currently are only scratching the surface of good design. Most games up until now have been average at best, in terms of what they can potentially be. Games like Dogs and Shock and Sorcerer were all brilliant and cutting edge when they were written, but they use old technology. They're steam-powered.

Sexiness and RPGs

2010-12-15T20:09:00.000-08:00

Still waiting to see where the Story Games thread about this will go. I wanted to pull out a thing I said there (which I originally said on Vincent's blog):

Roleplaying is a really intimate, intense, vulnerable act. It's kinda sexy, even. But for a lot of us we learnt to play, and most of our experiences of play are with groups of just men (or boys) often during adolescence, a time of incredible insecurity, messed up interpersonal relationships, and frequntly homophobia (and the attendant hatred of the feminine, and anything that makes you vulnerable). Basically, roleplaying is kinda gay, so we butch it up with swords and guns and fighting and shit.

I think we also inherit from that tradition a stringent divide between players and characters. I think a lot of games really strictly police that boundary, maintaining the fiction that it's just a game, that it's not personal.

I think there's fertile ground for design in breaking down that barrier - play that's more personal, more intimate, more dangerous. Whether people want to play those games is another question. To be honest, I'm not sure if I'm even ready for that, or who I'd play with.

It's kind of where I'd like my most recent project, Dungeonfuckers, to go.

World of Conan - Done!

2010-11-22T23:57:00.000-08:00

It's done! Or, it's as done as it's going to be! (Unless I get some serious internet love for it, in which case who knows?)

Here's the link.

Feedback is welcome, either here or to my email, simoncarryer at gmail.

Which reminds me, I forgot to put my name on it. Don't steal it, anybody!

Give yourself over...

2010-11-13T21:20:00.000-08:00

When you give yourself over to the inexorable urgings of your blood, roll +weird. On a hit, you hold yourself in check. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7-9, hold 1.

Spend one hold to:

- When you inflict harm, inflict +1 harm.
- When you take harm, take -1 harm.
- When you act under fire, roll +1

On a miss the MC will make a hard move.
What does giving yourself over to the inexorable urgings of your blood look like? That’s for you to answer, but probably look at your race for some clues.

World of Conan is pretty much done! I'd love to get an external eye to read over it before I show it to the world though. Let me know if you've got a spare 20 mins to give it a once-over.

World of Conan - The Sorcerer

2010-11-04T11:59:00.000-07:00

Here's a playbook for the AW Conan hack I'm fiddling with. He's pretty nasty.

Sorcerer

Stygian, Khitan, Vendyhan, Zamoran, Pict, Thurian, Lemurian, Other.

Man, woman, other.

Frail body, lanky body, starved body, powerful body, desiccated body.

Stony eyes, crazed eyes, hollow eyes, piercing eyes, blazing eyes.

• Steel+1 Thews+1 Allure-2 Cunning+1 Weird+2
• Steel=0 Thews=0 Allure+1 Cunning=0 Weird+2
• Steel+1 Thews-2 Allure-1 Cunning+2 Weird+2
• Steel+2 Thews-1 Allure-1 Cunning=0 Weird+2

Choose 2:

Whispers: you can roll+weird to get the effects of going aggro, without going aggro. Your victim has to be able to see you, but you don’t have to interact. If your victim forces your hand, your mind counts as a weapon (1-harm ap close loud-optional).

All-seeing eyes: when you read someone, roll+weird instead of roll+cunning. Your victim has to be able to see you, but you don’t have to interact.

Mesmerism: when you try to seduce someone, roll+weird instead of roll+allure.
Genius: When you declare retroactively that you’ve already set something up, roll+cunning. On a 10+, it’s just as you say. On a 7–9, you set it up, yes, but here at the crucial moment the MC can introduce some hitch or delay. On a miss, you set it up, yes, but since then things you don’t know about have seriously changed.

Immortal: when you meet someone important (your call), roll+steel. On a hit, they’ve heard of you, and you say what they’ve heard; the MC will have them respond accordingly. On a 10+, you take +1forward for dealing with them as well. On a miss, they’ve heard of you, but the MC will decide what they’ve heard.

Visions of death: when you go into battle, roll+weird. On a 10+, name one person who’ll die and one who’ll live. On a 7–9, name one person who’ll die OR one person who’ll live. Don’t name a player’s character; name NPCs only. Thee MC will make your vision come true, if it’s even remotely possible. On a miss, you foresee your own death, and accordingly take -1 throughout the battle.

Death Spell: your pointed finger and a spoken word counts as a weapon, (6 harm ap close reload). If you are using a Death Spell, on a miss, you take 6 harm ap.

Youthful guise: in darkness or near-darkness, you have allure+2.

Master of Darkness: you get +1 weird (weird+3)

Then choose two pieces of Sorcerer gear:

Books of Lore: When you spend hours poring over your books of lore, hold 1 (max 1). Spend 1 hold to use any Sorcerer move, even if you don't have the move.

Altar Stone: When you sacrifice a human life or goods worth 1 riches on your altar, ask 1:
• who wishes me harm?
• which enemy is most vulnerable to me?
• which enemy is the biggest threat?
• what should I be on the lookout for?
• what’s my enemy’s true position?

Demon Familiar: The demon familiar counts as a weapon (3 harm remote alive, 2 armour). If you use the demon familiar with a move, on a miss it suffers any consequences, as an NPC, not you.

Mummy Dust: Mummy dust is a weapon (hand s-harm infinite).

Hx

Everyone introduces their characters by name, look and outlook. Take your turn. List the other characters’ names.

Go around again for Hx. On your turn:

• You are mysterious and inscrutable. Tell everyone Hx=0.

On the others’ turns,
Choose the character who you’ve sworn assistance to. Whatever number that player tells you, ignore it; write Hx+3 next to the character’s name instead.

Everyone else, whatever number they tell you, give it +1 and write it next to their character’s name. You see the truth about people.

At the end, find the character with the highest Hx on your sheet. Ask that player which of your stats is most interesting, and highlight it. The MC will have you highlight a second stat too.

Sorcerer Special

If you and another character have sex, Roll+weird. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7–9, hold 2. they can spend your hold, 1 for 1, by:
• giving you something you want
• acting as your eyes and ears
• fighting to protect you
• doing something you tell them to
For NPCs, while you have hold over them they can’t act against you. For PCs, instead, any time you like you can spend your hold, 1 for 1:
• they distract themselves with the thought of you. they’re acting under fire.
• they inspire themselves with the thought of you. they take +1 right now.
On a miss, they hold 2 over you, on the exact same terms.

Sorcerer Improvement

Whenever you roll a highlighted stat, and whenever you reset your Hx with someone, mark an experience circle. When you mark the 5th, improve and erase.
Each time you improve, choose one of the following. Check it off; you can’t choose it again.
__ get +1steel (max steel+2)
__ get +1thews (max thews+2)
__ get +1allure (max allure+2)
__ get +1cunning (max cunning+2)
__ get a new sorcerer move
__ get a new sorcerer move
__ get a new piece of sorcerer gear
__ get a move from another playbook
__ get a move from another playbook

Red Box Agendas

2010-10-12T22:25:00.000-07:00

When I don't get immediate fawning attention for a post on Story Games, I take it to my blog.

Here's a thing I said about how I run red box D&D*, expressed as Apocalypse World agendas and principles.

Agenda:
Make the world seem real
Play to find out who survives
Show off the thing you've made

Do this by saying:

What your prep demands
What the rules demand
What honesty requires
What the principles require, namely:

Principles (not exhaustive):
Look at the player's characters through crosshairs (and your own monsters even more so)
Jump forward with quirky and memorable characters
Interpret the characters' actions charitably - give them a chance to reconsider
Digress occasionally - describe the mushrooms on a cave-wall or the stonework on an archway
Treat your monsters as real, living beings.
Look to the fiction first, and the rules second - roll as a last resort, but always roll when it's called for
Think offscreen (especially about adjacent rooms)
Revel in violence and gore - describe the terrible results of an axe-blow, the screams of dying goblins, the sound of arrows hitting flesh.

Principles for Prep (i.e. dungeon design):
Design an interconnected dungeon (see here for advice)
Include unbeatable threats
Make opportunities for experimentation and exploration
Make your dungeon part of the natural world
But also make it fantastical and weird
Include non-combatants, neutrals, and possible allies

*Mentzer, mostly. Moldvay is for RPG hipsters.

World of Conan

2010-10-04T15:58:00.001-07:00

I'm having just about the most fun possible noodling away on a Conan hack for Apocalypse World. Mostly I'm just reconfiguring and rewriting the regular classes, but check it out:

For the Tyrant:

When you send your armies to do battle, roll +army. On a 10+, you drive your enemies before you. You can:
- Capture territory along your border
- Quell rebellion and crush dissent
- Secure contested territory
- Loot and pillage an area, extracting slaves, food, and wealth
On a 7-9, choose one of the above, but:
- You must face your enemy on the battlefield
- You take heavy losses (take -1army forward)
- You incite rebellion and dissent
On a miss, you are exiled, besieged, or face a coup or assasination attempts.

Now I'm working on a replacement for open your brain. I'm thinking "when you give yourself over to the inexorable urgings of your blood..."

Conflict and Task

2010-09-08T22:45:00.000-07:00

Task vs. Conflict resolution is one of my favourite subjects, because it's straightforward, easy to explain, and immediately useful to design and play. This came up in a post on the Barf Forth Apocalyptica forums, and I thought it would be worth sharing more broadly, if only to provide me something to link people to, rather than swamping threads all over the internet.

Here's a task: "Swing my sword at a guy"
Here's a conflict: "Kill a dude"

Here's a task: "Drive my car real fast through the city"
Here's a conflict: "Get to the hospital in time to save my buddy"

Here's a task: "Climb in through a window"
Here's a conflict: "Get into the tower without being seen"

Tasks are what your character is doing. Conflicts are about what your character wants. It doesn't matter what scale your conflicts and tasks are at. Tasks are what the characters are doing - what's happening in the fiction. Conflicts are about the outcome - what do we care about?

All instances of play have task resolution. A character does a thing, and there's a way of finding out whether they do it well or badly. That system could be explicit in the text, or it could be implied (usually they're explicit though). The system could use some kind of randomiser or other resolution "Roll a d20, add your skill, and try to beat the number the GM says" "See if your Skill score is high enough for the task you're doing, and if it is, you do it well" or it might not: "Say how well your character does a thing. That's how well they do it".

I say "all instances of play" because although the text of the game's rules might not say anything about it, as soon as you have fictional characters in your game performing any kind of action, you have a system for deciding how well they do them.

All instances of play have conflict resolution. A character wants a thing, something is in the way, and there's a way of finding out if they get what they want or not. That system could be explicit in the text, or it could be implied (in traditional games, they're often implied or absent). The system could use some kind of randomiser or other resolution "roll a d10, add your strength. Subtract that number from their hit points. If they've got none left, they're dead" "See if your Will is higher than theirs. If it is, they tell you what you want to know" or it might not: "See how well you did the task, and then the GM will tell you whether that got you what you wanted or not"

That last example is the most common kind of conflict resolution in traditional games. Call of Cthulhu, AD&D (outside of combat), World of Darkness (mostly), all of those pretty much exclusively have systems where the dice tell you how well the character does a thing, and then it's entirely up to the GM whether that gets them what they want or not. People call those "task resolution" games, but in play they have conflict resolution too, it's just handled almost entirely by the GM.

A common thing GMs in those games do is to make conflict resolution depend on task resolution. They'll say "If you make your driving roll, you'll get to the hospital on time" or "If you make your climbing roll, you'll get into the tower without anyone seeing". That's not written down anywhere in the rules text, it's just a thing a lot of people have learnt to do.

Another thing a lot of GMs of these games do is make their decision dependant on their sense of drama and timing "Ok, you've succeeded on your roll, so you're driving fast through the city, and you're nearly at the hospital. But your buddy in the seat next to you, he's burst his stitches and he's bleeding out. You're gonna need to put pressure on the wound and drive at the same time!"

One more thing some GMs do is make their decision based on the needs of the story they have planned in their heads, or that they're imagining the players want. "You're driving fast through the city, you don't hit anything, and you pull up outside the hospital. You run around to the other door to drag your buddy out, but by the time you get there it's too late. He whispers one last thing: "Project... ...Manticore"

So that's one way of doing conflict resolution. Now lets look at an explicit (as in, contained in the rules text) conflict resolution system. D&D3E.

I know. You're all like "But!" and I'm like "Deal with it, haters." D&D3E has an unambiguous conflict resolution system. It's just really difficult to use, time consuming and fiddly, and frequently ignored in play. Except for combat. Combat is the most straightforward conflict resolution system in the game. Let's take a look:

You want to kill a thing, so you take out your sword and hit the thing with it. That triggers the combat conflict resolution system. There's some fussing with initiative and such, but the core of the system determines two things: How well you hit the thing with your sword, and whether or not that kills it. That's task and conflict resolution right there:

"Roll a d20, add your strength and attack bonus, plus any other modifieres, and try to get over the target's AC" This is task resolution. Do you hit it with your sword?

"If you hit, roll a d10, add your strength, and subtract that number from the target's hit points. If they've got zero or fewer left, they're dead." This is conflict resolution. Have you succeeded in making them dead?

All right? Now lets look at non-combat conflict resolution. Your dude wants to climb up a tower into the window, and he doesn't want anyone to see. The DM has prepped this area, so we know where the guards are and how high the window is off the ground, and all that. Lets assume right now that the guards are all elewhere, and all we need to worry about is getting in that window. The system says (and I'm paraphrasing right now because I don't have the books with me) "Roll your climb skill against a difficulty set by the DM. The difficulty is 15 for masonry walls, +5 if it's slimy or wet (which it isn't, according to the GM's prep). If you succeed, you move your speed score in feet up the wall. If you fail by less than five, you move half your speed. If you fail by five or more, you fall."

We roll the dice, you get a 20. So your dude moves 30 feet (your speed) up the wall. That's task resolution.

Is that high enough to reach the window? We look to the DM's prep. If so, you're in, if not, you have to roll again. That's conflict resolution.

In practice, most groups don't rigourously apply the conflict resolution rules in D&D3E, and end up leaving conflict resolution entirely up to the DM, who uses one of the process I described above. D&D3E conflict resolution requires immense dedication to following a lot of fiddly rules, as well as detailed and comprehensive prep from the DM. It's a huge pain in the ass, and hence, in my opinion, not a good set of rules.

Apocalypse World has an explicit conflict resolution system because if you follow the procedure set out in the books, conflicts between fictional characters will be resolved, without the decision being left up to the MC or to any player. Sometimes the MC will have to make a judgement about the fiction of play (will they suck it up, or give in?), and sometimes the player will have to make a decision (inflict terrible harm, or take little harm?), but those aren't usually in and of themselves deciding the outcome of the conflict. Sometimes conflicts won't be resolved by a single move. Sometimes there'll be a whole snopwball of moves before a conflict is resolved. We don't always know whether a given move is going to resolve the conflict right now or not. Sometimes it will be left unresolved for a while, but the immediate situation will have changed. This is what makes Apocalypse World different from explicit stakes-setting games like Dogs in the Vineyard or PTA, and more similar to other conflict resolution games like Sorcerer or D&D3E.

A Thing I've Been Thinking About

2010-08-28T03:13:00.000-07:00

At the risk of stirring shit up just when folks were starting to have productive conversations.

"Play should be personally and socially fulfilling" is the one big thing to come out of the Forge in the last ten years, apparently. I'm like "Yup. Cool." Creative Agenda, as a thing that exists and makes play personally and socially fulfilling is something I can get behind, no problem. Things happen in a game, stuff changes, on your character sheet, in the fiction of the game, and in the social relationships between the players, and you notice and appreciate that change. You see it as "progress" rather than just change, because you've got a creative agenda.

So no problem with that.

But! I'm not sure that the specific formulation of creative agendas as falling into three general categories of "Story Now", "Right to Dream", and "Step on Up" is a useful way of thinking about Creative Agenda. I don't see it helping in design, nor do I see it helping in fixing problems in play. I do see specific understandings about how to design for Story Now play as being useful, but I don't see correlated insights into Step on Up and Right to Dream play. I do see a lot of arguments and explanations and wars over definitions.

So, anyway. Maybe related to that, maybe not, here's a thing I've been thinking about: There are three general things going on in roleplaying games, all of which seem rewarding to players in greater or lesser degree.

Theme

If you looked at the fiction of play as if you were reading a book, what would the book be saying? What's the game "about"? Is it about good triumphing over evil (or failing to do so)? Is it about what difference one person can make in a corrupt society? In the ficton this looks like when you find out that no, your Dog isn't going to shoot that woman in the face, or oh shit yes he is. It's when you discover (to little surprise) that there are no repercussions for killing all those orcs. On character sheets, it's you scratching out that "I will become King" belief, and writing in "I have no use for Kings". It's you checking off that last experience point for killing that dragon, and leveling up your character. Socially, it's having this shared understanding of an issue or an idea not because you've argued about it or maybe even talked about it, but because you've shared a story about it, and maybe you don't quite agree on how to interpret that story but you both see the story itself as true and right.

Experience

How does it feel when you're playing? Are you feeling what your character is feeling? Are you sweating over tough decisions for your character, or do they come easy? Is it scary? Is it sad? Is it hard to do or is it easy? In play this looks like how it feels when you are playing The Mountain Witch, and you're looking around the table trying to figure out what Dark Fate the other players have drawn. Or in Apocalypse World, your character is pinned down, under fire, and the MC gives you an ugly choice and you can feel that knot in your stomach. Or in Bliss Stage, that kind of weightless, shadow-punching feeling the first time your character goes into the dream, where you don't know how to make it work and you and the anchor play feel it out together. Most noticeably, it's that thing some people get where if their character is sad, they're feeling sad themselves, or angry, or whatever. I don't experience that so much myself, but it totally happens. I don't know what this looks like on character sheets. Maybe it's the feeling of leveling up a character - choosing different options and thinking about their consequences. Socially, it's that thing where, hey, our characters slept together and we both know that it's just a game and doesn't mean anything, but at the same time it totally does mean something and you flush a little when you think about it.

Performance

What skills are you showing off when you play? Acting skills? Like, you're speaking for your character, trying to give a convincing portrayal of emotions, an entertaining performance. Also, it's when you're showing off other skills, like, putting your guy in the right spot in a combat so you improve your chances of winning, or when you think of a smart plan and enact it well. In play it's any time you're speaking for your character, but especially when everyone is watching you speak for your character, the big moments. It's when you spend an hour arguing semi-in-character about the best way for your made-up dudes to attack a made-up fortress. On character sheets, I guess it's choosing the best options to level up your dude, or to demonstrate that you can make a better, more creative, more interesting character. Socially, it's like, when you are around the table, who shines brightest? Who is the best? How well did you do last week, and how well will you do this week. More charitably, it's like, we're all playing at a certain level, and we're all egging each other on, trying to see if we can take it to that next level. How far can we go, as a team? How good can we get?

Review Manifesto

2010-08-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

Here's what I want to see:

"I played this game X many times, with Y people, in Z circumstances."

"I think the circumstances in which I played the game had the following effect on play:" (If you do a bunch of stuff in play that's not in the text, talk about that and why you did that stuff. If it's in the text, but maybe not obvious, point it out.)

"I was expecting this from the game, but the experience it gave me was like this"

"The effect of this mechanic on play was to..."

"This aspect of the game was effective in producing this kind of play"

"Games with similar mechanics are the following... ...here's how this game is the same, here's how it's different"

Criticism sandwich! Say something nice about the game at the beginning and the end of the review. Even if you don't really mean it. Even if you have to work hard to think of something. I cannot overstate how effective this technique is in making people actually read and understand things they don't want to hear.

Comparison with other games, or other techniques (in terms of effect on play, not in terms of quality).

Discussion of principles of design.

I care about what the experience of play is like, and how the game's mechanics influence that experience.

Oh! Make the review as short as you reasonably can, without compromising the content.

Here are some things I don't want to see:

A review of the game as a product. I don't care whether you would recommend I buy it.

A biography of the designer. It's cool to put the game in historical context, but it's a review of the game, not of the designer.

Words like "good" or "bad" or "quality". I think words like "useful", "effective" and "taste" are better (and more useful).

A review of the text. I don't really care if the text communicates effectively or not. Let someone else review for that.

Argument from authority. Don't reference theory in the body of the review, unless it's straightforward enough to be explained right there. It's cool to link to "further reading" at the end though. Quotes in the body are iffy. Only do it if it's really the best way to communicate the idea, not to make it sound like some important internet person agrees with you.

Don't make a whole bunch of other essays required reading for your review. Absolutely draw on that knowledge and those ideas, but if it's too complicated to explain in the review, it's probably not that clever anyhow.

Don't affect academic language. The Academic style is a shibboleth for excluding those who haven't paid their dues to the academic hierarchy. Just write like regular. Conversational.

Here are the kinds of games I think should be reviewed:

Any game. All games. Probably your decision about what to review should be informed by how useful your review will be to helping people understand broader concepts of design and play. So, probably a bunch of reviews of near-identical trad games isn't super useful. But I'd be pretty interested in a good review of a few of the more diverse traditional games.

Master of Illusion

2010-06-29T20:11:00.000-07:00

GM's Guide

When the characters aren't doing anything, choose one of the following:

Threaten something they care about
Offer a clue to a mystery
Hint at a greater threat
Introduce immediate danger

When a character does something chancy, have the player roll a die, then choose one of the following:

They get what they want, but with a price
They don't get what they want, but they do get something else

If they rolled a 6, add:
They get exactly what they want
They get what they want, and something else as well

If they rolled a 1, add:
They don't get what they want, and now they're in even worse trouble
They get what they want, but it lands them in even worse trouble

When a character is seeking information, have the player roll a die, then choose one of the following:

They get a small clue, enough to lead them further
They get nothing about what they wanted, but they spot a different opportunity

If they rolled a 6, add:
They get a major break
They get nothing about what they wanted, but some other advantage instead.

If they rolled a 1, add:
They get stonewalled: Nothing
They get nothing, and they land themselves in trouble

In all cases, always:
Misdirect: Don't tell the players which option you chose from the lists. Pretend something in the fiction made it happen.
Make them Work for it: The more the character cares about something, the harder it is for them to get it.

Player's Handbook

Character Creation
Create a character which is a product of your unique artistic vision, and reflects what you desire from play
Make sure your character is compatible with the other characters in the group
Make a character which fits into the setting and story of the game to be played

Players, at all times:
Have your character act as you believe that character would, if they were a real person in those circumstances
Ensure your character is willing and able to follow clues provided by the GM
Speak for your character and have them only act on information available to the character
Express your character's unique personality, and try to "immerse" yourself in the game
Stick with the other characters, and don't fight with them too much
Do not question the Player's Handbook, or the GM

If anyone breaks any of the above rules, choose one of the following:
Accuse them of "metagaming" and make a scene
Complain to the GM that they are hogging the spotlight and being a primma donna
Put up with it, but sulk
Feel smugly superior, and look for a better group

If the player is a woman, add:
Tell them that girls don't understand roleplaying games
Explain to them in simple terms exactly what they did wrong

If you are the GM, add:
Have their character fail more often, until they learn how to do things right

Modular Pre-gens

2010-06-12T22:26:00.001-07:00

I wrote a Story-Games post about the Cold City game I ran at Day of Games, but I wanted to pull out here what I think is the stand-out technique that I used in that game, a technique for producing pre-generated characters, suitable for a convention game or a one-shot, that gives the players some choices about their characters. I think it helps make the players feel connected to their characters and to play them with more nuance and empathy.

I did this for a game of Cold City, but I think it'd work for any game where the characters have shifting agendas or motivations, and where revealing those in play is part of the fun.

I wrote four characters, each with a different national background and a different draw into the situation. By themselves, the characters were fairly stereotyped, straightforward archetypes. An American ex-diplomat, a Russian former soldier, a French Resistance fighter, and a German Bureaucrat.

I also wrote up four "secret agendas", representing a mission given to the character by the spy agency they work for, organisations like the CIA, Gehlen Org, and so on. Here's an example one:

CIA

Your Mission: There’s a Soviet mole in the RPA. Intercepted transmissions indicate that they’ve been assigned to this mission, but don’t give any clues to their identity. Find the Russian agent and eliminate them. You have a syringe of insulin which will kill someone without leaving any traces.
Questions:
Answer now: How did you come to work for the CIA?
Answer during play: Are you willing to kill a colleague, and possibly a friend?

As well as the secret agendas, I wrote "personal motivations", individual motives for the characters, these were also randomly assigned. Here's an example:

Absolution
You did something terrible during the war, something you can’t forget. Maybe this mission is your chance to redeem yourself, or maybe it’s where you finally meet your punishment.
Answer now: What terrible thing did you do?
Answer during play: What will it take for you to find absolution?

So you'll notice that in those examples there's a bit that says "answer now". After the players chose their characters, I randomly handed out the secret agendas and personal motivations. The players then had to work out how these three elements fit together into a whole person.

My hope was that building the character themselves, out of pre-generated pieces, the players would feel a little more ownership of the characters, and play them with a little more nuance. I've found that sometimes in convention games, players can play their characters as slavishly devoted to whatever cause or motivation they're given at the start of the game. For this game, as I think Cold City requires, I wanted the characters to have multiple conflicting goals. I think having the players work on their characters themselves helped them buy into the characters' goals, but also helped them see those goals as negotiable.

In play, it worked out pretty well. The players all reported feeling pretty connected to their character, and they enjoyed answering the questions before and during play. I was really happy with how that aspect of the game worked out.

The Fiction

2010-06-10T01:40:00.000-07:00

This is adapted from the introduction to a game I'm writing.

Imagine you’re watching a group of mimes, performing for you. There’s three or four of them, and they’re doing some ordinary thing, like cooking a meal or cleaning the house, except that all the things they interact with are imaginary. They’re very skilled. When one of them picks up a bucket full of water, we see him strain against its weight, even though we don’t see the bucket itself. He sets it down. Another mime picks it up. We still don’t see the bucket, it’s imaginary, but when the mime goes to pick it up, she picks it up from exactly where the last mime put it down. The mimes pass each other things, open and close doors, trip over objects someone else left lying on the floor, and so on. Even though all the things they interact with are imaginary and invisible, as we watch them we feel we can almost see the bucket, or the doorway, or whatever it is. The rigourous discipline of the mimes, treating every object as if it were real, remembering where things are, their weight, their size, creates the illusion of reality. That’s what makes the mime show compelling (and creepy).

In roleplaying games, we’re doing the same thing as those mimes, except that instead of acting out a scene ourselves, we talk about a scene, describing imaginary characters and things. We each take responsibility for describing the actions of an imaginary person, and talking about how they interact with the world around them. Just like the mimes, when one person describes putting something down, the other players can describe their character picking that thing up. The characters pass each other things, open and close doors, trip over things, and they also explore dungeons and fight monsters.

Just like the mimes, the illusion of reality is important. We know the things we describe aren’t real, but we treat them as if they are, in the game. The sword your character wields has a particular weight and length, the weather is a certain way. Your character dodges like so when the strange subterranean horror lurches in her direction. We remember these things, and they form part of the ongoing narrative of play. They take on an illusion of reality.

In roleplaying games, that narrative, the things we’ve said, the weight of your sword, the slavering fangs of the monster, is called the “fiction”.

The rules of the game will sometimes refer you to the fiction of play. They’ll ask you “what is happening now?” and say “when this happens, do this”. You’ll know what rules to use by looking to the fiction of the game. You make a decision about whether the rules apply, but you make that decision based on the things people have said and that everyone has agreed to. It's not the same as looking at a number someone rolled on a die, or the card they drew, or the position of a miniature on a map. But it's not the same as someone making an arbitrary ruling either. You make your decision based on maintaining that illusion of reality. Just like a mime can't walk through the imaginary wall they've created without shattering the illusion, when you look to the fiction in a roleplaying game, you're making a judgement that's constrained by that illusion of reality, the fiction.

A Thing I Noticed

2010-05-30T21:22:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been interested in how players make decisions during play - how they decide what to say next. I made a diagram of it, and posted in in some places. Here it is again:

The things around the outside are what influence the things on the inside, if you see what I mean. Maybe it's interesting to some people? There's no space for "What would my character do?" I'm not sure if that's a mistake, or the whole point of the thing.

Abandoned Games

2010-05-07T02:16:00.000-07:00

Vincent was saying on a podcast somewhere about how folks could talk more about abandoned games - that it's dangerous to think you've gotta publish every idea you have.

Since apparently I do everything Vincent says, let's talk about that!

I'm a really productive writer. Or at least, recently I have been. I can crank out pages and pages of notes for games, polished game-text, layouts, designs and such. I think part of what fuels this is that I absolutely do not edit myself in terms of what I produce. I work on whatever I'm excited about, for as long as I'm excited about it, and then I stop. Recently I've been pushing myself a bit more with On Mighty Thews, but what I find is that I actually do more work on difficult projects like that when I give myself the time to also work on fun, exciting ideas that may never see the light of day.

I used to be worried about being a chronic non-finisher, always starting new projects and never bringing anything to completion. I think what I decided was that this is my hobby, not my job, so there's no reason I shouldn't work on stuff that's fun, even if it might not become something one day. It's valuable for practice and for the joy of it.

Where I do make more of a commitment to finish things is as soon as other people have commited their time to a project. I find it much harder to abandon playtested games, especially when they've been externally playtested. Other people's enthusiasm is a valuable resource, and I'm loath to waste it. It's a conundrum though, because often it's only after playtesting that you really realise that a game isn't going anywhere.

So, with the above in mind, here are two games I wrote just for the fun of it, and for practice. They've never been played, and they maybe never will be:

Beneath the Honeysuckle

Beneath the Honeysuckle is a game I'd been thinking over and stewing in my mind for a couple of years, and then Ben Lehman had a contest to write a game about love, so I banged it all out in a week (the first game contest I've ever entered). It's about Arthurian Knights and Ladies in love, jousting, going on quests, casting spells and doing embroidery. Ben described it as "surprisingly gay", and still owes me a review. I hereby let him off the hook for it though.

There are things I like about the game, and definitely some fun ideas in there. I think the main thing holding me back from finishing it is that I'd never be able to playtest it enough with the players around my town, and the game would need a lot of playtesting to get right. It's got a kind of economy, which I know would need careful balancing and I can't really see myself doing all that work. I'm still kind of in love with the concept though and the art makes me think it would make a really pretty object.

Shadow of the Ninja: Everything you've ever heard about ninjas is true

Shadow of the Ninja I actually kind of sweated over. It took me a few months. It's a game about Ninjas sneaking into fortresses, and the horrible life they lead between missions. It's kind of "My Life with the Master Ninja". I wrote it mostly to get to grips with some of the stuff Vincent was talking about with judgements of the fiction and such. I still like how in the game mostly all the mechanical information you need about a thing is embedded in the description of it.

I guess I think the world doesn't need another game about ninjas? I don't have much insight into the genre, I suppose. There's some stuff in the game about bullying and power, but it's mostly the same stuff that My Life with Master did with more subtlety and power, so I don't feel a pressing need for it to be in he world.

Of course, I'm working on a bunch of other things at the same time. A thing about medieval fantasy war stories, a thing about what if David Cronenberg wrote D&D, and of course On Mighty Thews, which is actually going pretty well at the moment!

The distant future... ...the year 2000

2010-05-03T02:49:00.000-07:00

I thought the world would be better if more people saw this:

Conan and Racism

2010-04-30T00:32:00.000-07:00

In my continuing project to talk about On Mighty Thews until everyone is sick of hearing about it, here are some things I've been thinking about as I delve into the source material. I've been doing a lot of critical thinking about the pulp fantasy genre, especially Howard's Conan stories, which are my first and greatest love in the genre.

Loving Conan puts me in a pretty difficult position though, given the incredible racism of the stories. How racist are we talking? Pretty damn racist:

The blonde Achaians, Gauls and Britons, for instance, were descendants of pure-blooded AEsir... ...and from pure-blooded Shemites, or Shemites mixed with Hyborian or Nordic blood, were descended the Arabs, the Israelites, and other straighter-featured Semites. - in "The Hyborian Age"

People try to dismiss the racism of the stories by comparing them to other sources from the time, saying Howard was just echoing views popular at the time the stories were written. I'm not convinced. It doesn't make it less racist just because everyone else was doing it too. If you want to make an argument about whether this makes REH a bad person or just someone who lived in a less enlightened time, then go ahead. That's not my issue. I don't care about REH the person, and whether I'd have him over for dinner or whatever. What was going on in his head doesn't matter. What matters is what he wrote, and what he wrote is unambiguously racist:

The hut door opened, and a black woman entered - a lithe pantherish creature, whose supple body gleamed like polished ebony, adorned only by a wisp of silk twisted about her strutting loins. The white of her eyeballs reflected the firelight outside, as she rolled them with wicked meaning. - in "Vale of Lost Women"

So I used to say that I liked Conan despite the racism, that I "read around it", enjoying the action stories and glossing over the racism. But that never quite sat right with me. It felt like a cop out. Racism is so central to what the books are about. The whole theme of the stories is about the difference between civilisation and savagery. Ignoring the racial politics of the stories seems like missing the point. And besides, when I thought about it, I didn't "read around" the racism. I actually enjoyed reading those parts.

Now, maybe it's just the thrill of the forbidden. A guilty pleasure, indulging in the taboo. Maybe it's the seductive simplicity of it, shrugging off the weight of history and enjoying the power and priviledge of being white. That's a pretty ugly thought, and I'd like to think it's completely untrue. But if I'm being honest, there's probably a bit of that going on.

But there's also something else. It was reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan of the Apes" that threw it into relief for me. Tarzan was a big influence on Howard, I'm sure (Burroughs' description of the "Cimmerian darkness" of the jungle seems like an irresistible clue for a possible Conan origin). Burroughs' racisim shares some traits with Howard's:

Presently they reached the center of the village. There D'Arnot was bound securely to the great post from which no live man had ever been released.

A number of the women scattered to their several huts to fetch pots and water, while others built a row of fires on which portions of the feast were to be boiled while the balance would be slowly dried in strips for future use, as they expected the other warriors to return with many prisoners. The festivities were delayed awaiting the return of the warriors who had remained to engage in the skirmish with the white men, so that it was quite late when all were in the village, and the dance of death commenced to circle around the doomed officer.

Half fainting from pain and exhaustion, D'Arnot watched from beneath half-closed lids what seemed but the vagary of delirium, or some horrid nightmare from which he must soon awake.

The bestial faces, daubed with color—the huge mouths and flabby hanging lips—the yellow teeth, sharp filed—the rolling, demon eyes—the shining naked bodies—the cruel spears. Surely no such creatures really existed upon earth—he must indeed be dreaming.

The savage, whirling bodies circled nearer. Now a spear sprang forth and touched his arm. The sharp pain and the feel of hot, trickling blood assured him of the awful reality of his hopeless position.

Another spear and then another touched him. He closed his eyes and held his teeth firm set—he would not cry out.

He was a soldier of France, and he would teach these beasts how an officer and a gentleman died. - in "Tarzan of the Apes"

But then there is also this characiture of a black servant, Esmerelda:

Esmeralda opened her eyes. The first object they encountered was the dripping fangs of the hungry lioness.
With a horrified scream the poor woman rose to her hands and knees, and in this position scurried across the room, shrieking: "O Gaberelle! O Gaberelle!" at the top of her lungs.
Esmeralda weighed some two hundred and eighty pounds, and her extreme haste, added to her extreme corpulency, produced a most amazing result when Esmeralda elected to travel on all fours.
For a moment the lioness remained quiet with intense gaze directed upon the flitting Esmeralda, whose goal appeared to be the cupboard, into which she attempted to propel her huge bulk; but as the shelves were but nine or ten inches apart, she only succeeded in getting her head in; whereupon, with a final screech, which paled the jungle noises into insignificance, she fainted once again. - in "Tarzan of the Apes"

That was really hard to read for me. It was ugly. It felt like an insult, unneccesary hatred sitting in the book like a turd on a tablecloth.

So what's the difference? Why am I cool with reading about "naked savages" and "primitives", but not with Burroughs' caricature?

Here's what I think it is:

I don't believe that an author's intent matters when you're interpreting that work. I don't think Howard's personal racism matters to how we interpret his work. I don't like Farenheit 451 any less knowing that Ray Bradbury thinks it's all about the evils of television. He's wrong. What matters is the words on the page, and how we interpret them in this, modern context. So how do I interpret Howard's Conan stories?

I think the Conan stories, taken as a whole, are about the position of "Man" in the universe, between poles of civilisation and savagery, between the cultured world of cities and technology and sophistication, and the howling wilderness. On the one hand, there is the corruption of civilisation, the filth and the lies and the weakness. Howard has a strong vein of homophobia running through his depiction of civilisation. It is a weakening influence. It makes men soft.

On the other hand, there is the throbbing, black, remorseless jungle. Here, strength prevails, but it is an awful strength, devoid of reason. The primitives are strong but ultimately disgusting, stupid, bent to the will of a stronger white man.

What I see in Howard's Conan is the confrontation of white supremacy with the undeniable humanity of black people. It's an attempt to reconcile the position of white people in a world of increasing social change. It reveals the concurrent fascination with and horror of blackness in our society. The savage is both more powerfully masculine, and yet less fully human, stronger, more vital, and yet more cowed to a stronger will. I think Conan himself is an embodiment of the fantasy of the white man to be fully master of both the savage and the civilised, and yet it's an uneasy fantasy. Conan is a monster. We love him, and yet we are repelled by him.

What if, when we ignore Howard's obviously racist intent in writing the stories, we can see his Conan works not as racist texts, but as texts about racism?

I think that reading Conan today, it reads as a perfect parody of every fear white people have about black people, as an examination of the paradox of the myth of the savage Other. I think Conan shows the natural conclusion of our peverse constructions of the meaning of whiteness and blackness, hysterical masculinty, the peverse fetishisation of purity, justifications for colonialism and slavery, and the continuing opression of people of colour.

On Mighty Thews - The Grind

2010-04-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

I'm working now on layout and design for On Mighty Thews. It's coming along, but it's a long hard process where I'm having to teach myself how to do everything before I even get to the step of making design decisions and implimenting them. I'm getting pretty handy with Photoshop and my layout program now.

I've had some invaluable assistance from Joshua Newman and others at Joshua's design studio. Seriously I don't think this thing would have come together at all without that forum.

On the publishing front, I'm in discussions with Malcolm Craig about a deal to get the game printed with Contested Ground's help. Living in New Zealand makes it punishingly expensive and monumentally difficult to publish overseas, and I think Malcolm's help is gonna make publication possible.

At this stage the whole thing is pure grind. Enthusiasm and love of the game will only get you so far, and I think that dried up for me a while ago. Now I'm running on determination and guilt. I've spent money on this thing, so I'm gonna at least recoup those costs, or break myself trying. I still have faith that it's a good game, a great game even, and much better than it was when I started the publishing process. But the step between "game that's fun for me and my friends and that works fine when I run it" and "game that's reliably fun for people running the game straight out of the book, and that consistently contributes to fun play" was larger than I ever imagined.

I was always an advocate of publishing free games, and I think that worked well for me in the early stages of this design. The ability for the game to be done, and then to come back to it with fresh eyes having received some great external playtesting was invaluable. But I think for me at least the hurdle of taking this game from free on the internet to a thing people spend actual money on has driven me to make the game better than I ever thought it could be. It started as a thing I banged out in five minutes to give me and a friend something to do, and now I think it's a provocative, fun, and sometimes challenging game, with a few genuine innovations.

I think what gives me the drive to actually finish this thing is not my own enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm of others. I'm a productive writer. I've written maybe four or five games since the first draft of On Mighty Thews, but they're all mouldering in my hard drive. They've all helped me to improve as a designer, and been interesting experiments, but I doubt any of them will go firther than they already have. On Mighty Thews is the game I'm taking to completion, and that's fuelled by the enthusiastic contributions of the people who have played the game.

On Mighty Thews

2010-03-18T15:48:00.000-07:00

A while ago on his blog Vincent posted a thing about the "Three Insights" that go into creating an RPG. He says:

First, you're saying something about the subject matter or genre of your game: something you think about adventure fiction, or swords & sorcery, or transhumanist sf, or whatever. Second, you're saying something about roleplaying as a practice, taking a position on how real people should collaborate under these circumstances. Third, you're sying something about real live human nature.

Here's the insights of my game "On Mighty Thews", which will be published this year.

1) Pulp fantasy like Conan, Tarzan, and all the derivative stuff like Jongor and Throngor and so on is basically about "Man's" position between civilisation and nature. Leiber, and then later Moorcock, were more about the tension between predestination and free will. What these things have in common is that the philosophical contradictions exist within the protagonist (Tarzan is a white man raised in the jungle, Conan is a savage mastering the ways of civilisation) but are never resolved within the protagonist. Tarzan never chooses the jungle or civilisation. Conan remains unchanged by his adventures in the civilised world. Elric never meets his fate. Instead, the protagonists inflict their contradictions on the world around them. The adventures are a lens for examining the contradiction at the core of the protagonist.

2) Creativity is kind of a product of the friction between freedom and constraint. Everyone contributing a small, obvious step can create a big, unexpected whole. The tension between protagonists trying to get what they want, and the world standing in their way creates a canvas for players to create a story.

3) I think people are the sum of their actions. We don't have an "inherant nature", and there isn't a "true" self. We exist as competing narratives and the expressions of such. We are what other people think of us.

Until recently, I think I struggled to realise these three insights well in the context of the game. Especially the first. The game was functioning well at producing interesting characters, and good plot. It flows well, with the creative burden passing around the table. But the story of most games never really exceeded pastiche. It was an imitation of a sword-and-sorcery story, rather than an original composition.

But a small change in the rules has, I think, changed all that.

In "On Mighty Thews" you start play by making a map of the world in which the game will take place. Everyone draws a couple of things on the map, and you end up with an exciting world of adventure and mystery. But it always felt a little flat. Sometimes there'd be original and compelling additions, but often they were kind of uninteresting. What was missing was the symbolic import of the locations on the map - their meaning in the world.

I've always been fascinated by old maps of the world - the way the geography was organised into a culturally-specific structure. Roads radiating from Rome. The Vatican as the center of the know world. Christian nations surrounded by the infidel. I wanted some of that symbolic meaning for my maps in "On Mighty Thews".

Characters in On Mighty Thews have a "d20 trait" which is the theme their character exposits. A character with the trait "Violent" will get a small advantage for every scene in which they are violent, and a large bonus for individual actions in which they are non-violent. Through play we see a picture of a person halfway between violence and non-violence. They are neither one nor the other.

My new rule for On Mighty Thews is that before you start drawing your map of the world, you mark "poles" on the map, and write your characters' d20 traits next to those poles. Things on the map near the poles take on the nature of that trait. People who live near the pole of Violence have a culture steeped in violence, while people grow more peaceful as you travel away from it. In this way, the themes of the characters are writ large in the world around them. Their tension becomes not just an internal tension , but a literal struggle between forces in the world. The characters are outsiders, not fitting into any part of the world with ease. They live on borders, they travel, they are wanderers and adventurers, bearing with them the inevitable contradictions of the world around them.

Mountain Witch

2010-02-16T18:14:00.000-08:00

Last night was the first session of a planned four-session game of the Mountain Witch. TMW's a bit passe now it seems, since everyone's played it so many times, and even I've played it a lot, though this is the first multi-session game of it I've played.

There are things about the game though, which I think are still very interesting in play, and that aren't really present in many other games. Specifically, the way that the Dark Fates create a frisson of secrecy around characters actions, how everything the characters do and say is imbued with a deeper significance because it all gives clues to the Dark Fates, is surprisingly enjoyable even after playing the game a number of times.

I think multi-session play definitely makes the game shine. The limited scenario makes it a tempting game for scenario play, but the development of characters that comes across multiple sessions is adding so much to the game.

With four sessions to play with, I let the first session build very slowly, with almost no conflicts at all. We started play with the Ronin showing up in a grimy sakeya in the village at the foot of the mountain. The terrified villagers make their offer, and the Ronin each accepts. This let the players introduce their character in interesting and often significant ways. Some of them were clearly just in it for the money, while others appeared to genuinely care for the villagers.

We left on a cliffhanger, with the hostess of a dilapidated teahouse who had taken the Ronin in for the night transforming into her Ogre husband. Suitably bizarre for Japanese myth, and certainly a surprise for the Ronin, who were taking an onsen after a hearty meal of the local specialty, live nore sore.

KKKKKK

2010-01-04T19:31:00.000-08:00

That's Kazekami Kyoko Kills Kublai Khan, not Kabbalistic Kleptomaniacs Kidnap Ku Klux Klansmen, or anything else.

I'm playing it with a friend on wave, and enjoying the heck out of it all over again. Playing Kyoko instead of the Khan is making me appreciate games with different rules for different character types, and the whole structure of the game, which feels like a kind of shadow-boxing or Capoeira display, is making me thing about Mo's "Push and Pull" in a way that makes it super relevant to game design.

I keep thinking that the game shouldn't work, that there's nothing to push against, that I'll fall over, and yet it keeps working, just fine. As a rule, I dislike games that are just free creation of fiction, without tension or consequences. And yet the game has subtleties that make it work, that provide friction and consequence.

Too much out-of-play discussion would collapse the game, I think, turning it into just another creative writing exercise. But the uncertainty of expectations, the tension between your desires for the story, the other player's desires, and then the sexual nature of the content, preserves a feeling that each statement is a concrete "move" in a game where something real is at stake.

Alien World discovered in Math

2010-01-04T17:50:00.000-08:00

http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html

Woah!

For the Story's Sake

2009-09-06T21:04:00.000-07:00

There's this pernicious misconception that's been around for a while and which has always kind of bugged me. A few threads on Story Games recently have brought that misconception out into the open, and crystallised my thoughts on the issue.

The misconception I'm talking about is the idea that Story Now play is about doing "what's best for the story". The idea goes something like this:

Simulationists are all about "what's realistic?" or "what fits with the genre"
and Gamists are all "what will make me win?", Narrativists are always asking
"what's best for the story?"

Now aside from the stupid idea that creative agendas are a label you can stick on people, what's dumb about this is the fact that asking "what's best for the story?" is completely, directly, and unambiguously the opposite of Story Now play. Play in which the players are focused on creating a "good story" as the point of play is directly incompatible with Story Now play.

That seems kind of counter intuitive.

But it's not! The whole deal with Story Now play is that no one, not the GM, not the players, not anyone, knows what the story you're creating is going to be about, how it will eventually resolve the premise (if it does), and whether the story will eventually have a happy ending or a sad one. All this shit is up in the air. We don't even really know much about the genre of the story we're telling (There's a whole digression here about how genres are things that are retroactively applied to creative works, rather than a formula to be emulated, unless you're doing pastiche).

In Story Now play, it's impossible to know what will make the story "good".

So no one gets to say what the story is about, until it's done, until it comes out in play. If we knew what would make the story "good" we wouldn't be exploring a premise, we'd be emulating a genre. And yeah, sometimes that means that the story is going to suck a little. There'll be times when everyone will wish that the NPC hadn't got his head shot off, or that the dice had come down some other way, but we stick with how it happened in the fiction, because that's the contract we all made with each other when we started playing. We agreed that we'd see this thing through to the end, play by the rules, and live with it.

A "good story" is a shield for players to hide behind when they don't want the responsibility of making a statement in play. My character in Dogs doesn't slap a young woman NPC because I've decided that would titillate the other players. He does it because I'm saying right now that that's how he rolls. He's a guy who will slap a woman right in the face, and you have to deal with that. I'm judging him in my own mind, thinking "Fuck me, this guy is an ass", but I'm also thinking "I can't be honest to who this character is and not have this come out in play". And when the other players' characters judge mine, and find that he's not good enough to be a Dog, I agree with them. But it's not just something I thought would be "cool" in the moment. It was me saying "Here's a guy who, given this power over other people, thinks he's got the right to slap a woman in the face". And the other players are saying "Here are some people, given the same power, who won't cross that line."

It's us, the players, having a conversation about morality and power and the right to judge, and we're doing it through the medium of the game, and it's only possible because we stand behind our portrayals of the characters, and we don't let some idea about what's "good for the story" get in the way of that.

My character in Dogs, Michael, decided to stop being a Dog in our game last Thursday. It was tough, surprising for a lot of players, and the first real sign of the wear that the job is having on the Dogs' faith. Michael struggled to overcome his weakness, but he couldn't do it, and he knew it. He asked another Dog for help, and she told him she didn't think he was good enough either. It was harsh, and awesome. And none of us ever caved to what was "best for the story". There were panicked looks about the table as we discovered what was at stake in the conflict. I think Malcolm and Steve were worried that we'd somehow gone too far, that we should pull it back somehow. But we stayed on course. We saw it through to the end. And it was good.

Dogs Interview

2009-08-27T13:43:00.000-07:00

I don't normally listen to podcasts, mostly because I don't have time, but I've been home sick with the Bacon Fever the last few days, so I gave a few a listen.

Since we're playing Dogs at the moment, I checked out this interview by "ninjas vs pirates" with Vincent regarding Dogs.

I was impressed with the interview. They'd clearly done their homework, because they asked a bunch of questions that had popped up in Story Games threads from the previous couple of weeks. Vincent was cogent as always (is it just my New Zealand ear, or does he sound just like Adam from Mythbusters?). I think what I found most interesting was how they asked about specific mechanics, and how that contributed to the way the game plays. That was interesting from the perspective of playing Dogs, and from the perspective of designing games.

For my own play of Dogs, the question about "what's at stake" in conflicts was the most relevant. In our last game, we'd had a conflict where it took us a long time to figure out exactly what was at stake. I think we came to the right conclusion in the end, but some of the advice in the interview would have helped.

I'm definitely going to check out part two of the interview.

"Roleplaying" in RPGs

2009-08-22T16:09:00.000-07:00

I've been having a frustrating couple of weeks with Story Games. It seems like the interesting threads with good topics get ignored, while bickering and inane banter just piles up the comments. I guess I'm mostly frustrated because I feel like I've made some interesting comments which haven't had any kind of useful response. So in other words, I'm feeling whiny because I haven't been getting enough attention.

Rob Bohl started an interesting thread about encountering players for whom "roleplaying" was an undesirable impediment to the process of playing roleplaying games. The thread (and my comments in it) didn't get the attention I think it deserved, so I'm blogging about it here.

This is largely a semantic issue, which usually means it's boring and pointless, but I thought it was a good opportunity to expand on a thought that had been percolating in the back of my mind for a while.

I think that "roleplaying", in the sense that the gamer Rob is talking about means it, is best described as a set of techniques. An (incomplete) list of these techniques would look something like this:

Saying aloud what your character says
Thinking about and describing "what your character would do"
Having your character interact socially with other characters in the fiction
Describing non-essential information about what your character does

These techniques are often very important to people's experience of roleplaying games, to the point that games that don't support these techniques are often described as "not roleplaying games".

Defining what a roleplaying game is is a notoriously difficult subject, because, I think, there's no clear consensus on which techniques are essential to defining a game as such. For example, there are a large number of techniques that are employed in "traditional" RPGs but not in some newer games, leading some people to lable those new games "not RPGs". Some of these techniques include:

Each player controlling one in-game "piece"
Increasing in-game effectiveness
Mechanics for simulating violence
A "GM" or similar

I think most people likely to be reading this would agree that none of those techniques are essential to a roleplaying game. I'd like to argue, therefore, that the techniques from the first list are not essential either. They're all techniques that are commonly associated with RPGs, but none of them alone make or break the definition.

So are there any techniques that are essential to something being an RPG or not? The best I can come up with is the idea of a shared imagined space.

"Shared Imagined Space" is the idea that the players all contribute to a shared understanding of what is happening in a fictional space. In short, it's players describing fictional stuff about what's happening in the game, and the other players all agreeing that yes, that is happening.

But Shared Imagined Space itself doesn't make an RPG, right? Otherwise you could describe stuff happening in your game of Monopoly, like "oh, the hat and the iron are getting married" or whatever, and make it an RPG. Some people play a lot of games like this (especially games like "Bang!" and "Lunch Money"), but I don't think that makes them RPGs.

Or maybe it does. I don't know, but it doesn't sit easy with me, mostly because I hate playing games like this.

So another way to think about it, that gets around that problem, is to define RPGs by the use of the technique of Shared Imagined Space with impact on the mechanics of the game.

In other words, you describe stuff, and what you describe has an impact on how the rules of the game work. Purely based on judgements about the fictional content of the game, you make decisions about how to impliment the rules of the game.

That's a pretty controversial definition though. It excludes some indie favourites like "Contenders", and nearly excludes "My Life With Master", and I would argue (based on my previous post) that it comes close to excluding D&D4E as well.

So it's close, but not quite right. It's floating around in there though. It's something about how the Shared Imagined Space impacts on the game, or on the decisions that the players make.

In the end though, I don't think it's a very useful thing to have a definition of what is, or is not, an RPG. I think it's more useful to look at the whole list of techniques I described above, and look at a game as having more or less "RPG qualities". That's a useful definition I think, because it frees up thinking about designing and playing games. There is no technique that is "essential" to an RPG, and there is no technique that is forbidden. Not all RPGs use the same techniques, and when you play an RPG, it is useful to be aware of the techniques it supports.

Gaming and Hierarchy

2009-08-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

This post on Chris's blog that links to this post about sexism and violence as "stress release" in RPGs got me thinking about hierarchy in gaming groups and how there are some issues that are kind of "third rails" in discussion of gaming. They're sure to produce sparks when you bring them up.

One of them is the issue of "wish fulfilment" in gaming, how people play these games so they can do things they can't do in day-to-day life. That's an interesting subject, but I think it's being covered in the discussion on Chris's post.

What I've been thinking about though is hierarchy in games, how RPGs sometimes act as a way for groups to reinforce the power structure of the group, how "in character" actions can be a substitute for real life actions, and how sometimes real life issues come out "in game" in ways that we don't expect. I think sometimes players use "in character" actions as a way of keeping others in line socially. I know that looking back at even some quite recent play, there were times when people's in-character actions were clearly about punishing a player for not playing "right", and for not fitting in with the group.

I think "the party" is a pretty clear metaphor for the out-of-play social group.

This is most obvious in adolescent play, where there's a lot of tension and one-up-man-ship in play, where the players are all struggling to define themselves against each other. A lot of interpersonal aggression comes out as in character bickering, fighting, and so on. I don't think it's an accident that GMs tend to be the more socially competent and respected members of their groups. I think the amount of power that traditional games give GMs over the players in the game is directly related to the ways that the people who habitually take the GM role dominate their social groups. I know this was a feature of my early play, and from listening to others, I don't think that's an unusual experience.

I want to take a moment to say that I'm not at all bagging on the concept of GMs in games, or saying that roleplaying is an inherently damaging activity for young people. I'm saying that the format of gaming which has a GM position with considerable power over a group of players naturally facilitates and reinforces the existing social structure of a lot of social groups, and that in-game actions are not exempt from the interpersonal relationships that exist in those groups.

Groups reproduce in play the power structure that exists outside of play. So groups with a strong leader type are going to gravitate towards games that facilitate that role.

I talked about some of this stuff in my post grad thesis, which was about the local gaming club in my town. I didn't really have the roleplaying experience or theoretical grounding to explore the idea fully at the time, but I was very aware of the way that the GM position worked in social groups, and how in-game actions reflected out-of-game social structures. I wrote about how the breakdown in a game I observed was directly related to the power struggle between two players in the group.

Of course, none of this made me very popular in the club. Talking about this stuff was implicitly forbidden. The "It's just a game" mantra was strongly invoked to dispel any analysis of power in gaming.

I think it's pretty clear that it's not "just a game", and that social structures do influence the way people play with each other. What I'm interested in is not the really obviously dysfunctional ways that adolescent players interact with each other in play, but rather the way that all in-game actions are really interpersonal interactions.

I think as a hobby we've got this really strong cognitive divide between "in character" and "out of character" as two totally distinct things. It's an article of faith that what happens in play is totally distinct from our real-life social interactions, and I think that's a mistaken idea.

Not that that is a particularly original observation, but I think it's an important consideration to keep in mind during play, and in design. All interactions between characters are interpersonal interactions between players in the game. They are all "real life" interactions. I think that's one of the strong differences between rpgs and other mediums, and it's both a strength and a weakness of the hobby.

Review of "Radiance" by M.J.Graham

2009-08-11T02:42:00.000-07:00

Here's Vincent from his blog:

"Let's say that you're playing a character who the rest of us really like a lot. We like him a whole lot. We think he's a nice guy who's had a rough time of it. The problem is, there's something you're trying to get at with him, and if he stops having a rough time, you won't get to say what you're trying to say.

Our hearts want to give him a break. For the game to mean something, we have to make things worse for him instead.

I'm the GM. What I want more than anything in that circumstance - we're friends, my heart breaks for your poor character, you're counting on me to give him more and more grief - what I want is rules that won't let me compromise.

I don't want to hurt your character and then point to the rules and say "they, they made me hurt your character!" That's not what I'm getting at.

I want, if I don't hurt your character, I want you to point to the rules and say, "hey, why didn't you follow the rules? Why did you cheat and let my guy off the hook? That sucked." I want the rules to create a powerful expectation between us - part of our unity of interest - that I will hurt your character. Often and hard."

So what I think Vincent's saying here is that the point of game rules is to make things happen at the table that no one wants to see happen, but players are invested enough in the rules of the game that they go with it anyway.

It's that bit in the game where a character is on the brink, hanging off the edge of the cliff, and everyone's cheering for him to drag himself back up, but they know that if that die comes up a 1, he's going over.

It's that bit where the couple is fighting and hurting each other, and everyone's hoping that they'll stop it and get back together, but the dice go the other way, and everyone's heart breaks but they go with it.

That (Vincent argues, and I agree), is what conflict resolution is for.

"Radiance", (link is to pdf) a free game by M.J.Graham, is designed with a different philosophy, I think.

What the game's rules do basically is apportion out narration rights to various players. One player describes some stuff happening, other players suggest complications or "redirections" that may occur, and you draw beads from a bag to see if the redirection is relevant or not. If it is, the player who introduced it gets to narrate what happens next. There's no direction as to how the "redirection" affects the story, just a change in narrator.

So the game doesn't introduce anything into the fiction that the players don't want to be there.

But that's good, right? It means the only stuff that happens is stuff that the players want to happen!

I don't agree. Vincent again (from the same essay):

"The only worthwhile use for rules I know of is to sustain in-game conflict of interest, in the face of the overwhelming unity of interest of the players. "

In other words, if your game rules aren't providing some tension in play, if they're not "pushing back" against the unity of interest of the players, they don't achieve anything. I think what "Radiance" boils down to is M.J.Graham giving you permission to tell a story with your friends.

Let me expand on that. What the rules of "Radiance" do is apportion out narration to various players. They tell you who gets to speak at what time. But there's no rationale for why this particular configuration is better than any other. What does distributing narration around the table add to a story? Why do you need a bag of beads and some candles to do that? If you're going to tell a story with your friends, why would you bother with this, rather than any other way of telling a story?

The author reenforces this impression at the end of the document in a "Q&A" section:

"Why don't you give more tips or instructions on how to make a story?

Because I don't think I know more than you do about creating good stories. I certainly don't know more than you do about creating the kind of stories that you enjoy. Besides, there's nothing I can tell you that you won't pick up faster and more completely than by creating your own stories. "

So what's the game for?

List of Free Games for Designers

2009-07-31T01:59:00.000-07:00

I wrote this post for the Forge, in a thread about getting the most out of a First Thoughts thread. There are a lot of new people posting games over there, and one of the recurring things I notice is that they're often not very aware of what's out there in terms of design, often even inside their own paradigm.

Since this took a long time to put together, I thought it could do double-service as a blog post.

Disclaimer: I can hardly claim to be an expert at game design. I've published a couple of things (to very little acclaim), and I've played a heck of a lot, but I don't have the kind of experience or expertise that you'll find from other people on this forum. I have, however, read a LOT of First Thoughts posts, and participated in a number of them. When I say this stuff, it comes from having seen which posts go on to become published games (virtually none of them), and which get recycled back into the designer's pot of ideas. I think that posting in First Thoughts is as much about learning game design as it is about producing a game, and with that in mind, I think reading other games is a great thing you can do to help yourself.

What this list is for:

This is not a manual for how to design an RPG. Don't look at these games as examples of "how to do it right" or "what works". In my view, this list has only one purpose: To challenge assumptions.

I think the number one enemy to good game design is assumption. People come in with an idea of "how an RPG is made" or the "right" way to play an RPG. These assumptions don't add anything to a design, they just cause trouble, and lead to sucky, derivative games. So challenge those assumptions. There are no objectively "good" rules. Reading games that are similar to, or wildly different from your own design will help you realise what possibilities are out there, and what's been done to death.

A note
A common reaction when reading games that challenge your assumptions is to think "that doesn't work" or "I don't like games like that". I really strongly urge you not to give in to those thoughts. How do you know it doesn't work? How do you know you don't like games like that? What don't you like about them? Thinking about the answers to those questions will help you work out what you want in your own design.

First of all, there's a huge list of free games here:

http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/freerpgs/

It's listed by keywords, so there's good milage in just browsing what looks interesting. Be aware that any game can be listed here, so there are a lot of games that have never been playtested, or even finished.

"Hippy" games

"Hippy" is a jokey name for games that do some really different things with the mechanics of RPGs, often changing, distributing, or removing the GM's authority, or otherwise challenging the "traditional" game structure. These are good games to read if you're considering making a game like this yourself, of if you've never encountered games like this before.

The Shadow of Yesterday
(http://tsoy.crngames.com/)
This is a full length, complete, and very well-loved game, that contains some very interesting ideas. As "hippy" games go, it's pretty traditional, but you'll especially want to check out "Keys" (http://tsoy.crngames.com/Crunchy_Bits#Keys) and "Bringing Down the Pain" (http://tsoy.crngames.com/Resolution#Bringing_Down_the_Pain) as stand-out aspects of the system that mark it as a "hippy" game.

The Pool
(http://www.randomordercreations.com/thepool.rtf) - Link is to rtf file
The Pool is an interesting game that really breaks down roleplaying to some basic ingredients. It's very focused on the narrative of a game, over simulating an in-game reality. Particularly look at the "monologue of victory" rules, for a mechanic that puts some GM power in the hands of players.

Harlekin-Maus Games
(http://www.harlekin-maus.com/games.html)

This isn't one game, but a whole lot of games. I don't know why Zak Arnston isn't better known in the gaming scene. He's produced a whole host of interesting, funny, challenging games. Some of these games seem almost designed to challenge assumptions. I'd particularly check out Shadows (http://www.harlekin-maus.com/games/shadows/shadows.html) and Metal Opera (http://www.harlekin-maus.com/games/metalopera/metalopera.html) as games that get a lot of play, and have some interesting ideas.

"Generic" games

"Generic" is, I think, a total misnomer. The system inevitably puts some slant on the kind of play that you'll get out of it. A game where guns kill you nine times out of ten is going to give you a different feel to one where you can take a number of hits and still keep fighting. A game with half a book worth of detailed combat rules gives a different feel to a game where all conflicts are treated the same. Check out some of the different feels you get from these different games.

GURPS Lite
(http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/)
I have a confession to make: I've never played GURPS. I made a character once, but that's as far as I got. I've heard a lot about it though. It seems GURPS is the game with a supplement for everything. The rules are extensible, reasonably detailed, and to some people's tastes "realistic". This is a stripped-down, free version of the rules.

Fate
(http://www.faterpg.com/)
Fate is an increasingly popular, free "generic" system, that you're free to adapt to your own game. My sense is it's got a more freewheeling, action-oriented take than GURPS, and a few mechanics that play with the normal GM/Player divide.

Savage Worlds (Test Drive)
(http://www.peginc.com/Downloads/SWEX/TD06.pdf) - Link is to pdf file
Savage Worlds is a game I enjoyed for a very long time. It has a bit of a "pulp" flair to it, but it's adaptable to a lot of different genres. It's a very fast and easy system, with some tactical depth and an emphasis on combat. This set of rules is a "test drive" which means you're only getting the very basics of the system, but it's enough to play the game with, and get a feel for the system.

Old Games

I think there are still lessons in design to be learnt from some older games. I think a lot of younger players (and even some older ones) have assumptions about what "old school" play was like, which are pretty misguided. Taking a look at some of these games, you'll see that a lot of the things that are often considered essential aspects of an RPG are actually not present, and that the games promote quite a different style of play to many current games.

Labyrinth Lord
(http://www.goblinoidgames.com/labyrinthlord.htm)
Labyrinth Lord is a "retro clone" of the Moldvay edition of Dungeons and Dragons, published in 1981. That means that it is almost an exact copy of that set of rules, with some editorial changes, and incorporation of rules from supplements. I've had a lot of fun with this game. Pay attention to how almost everything in the world is instantly lethal to first level PCs. The only way to survive is to take advantage of minute details of the fiction.

Warrior and Wizard
(http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dcsfz7gv_9gzdh7hdz&hl=en)
I actually know very little about this game. It's a clone of "The Fantasy Trip" a game that came out very soon after D&D, and contains some things that, at the time, were completely innovative. It also has some board game aspects, which are interesting given the current trend in D&D.

GORE
(http://www.yourgamesnow.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&manufacturers_id=71&products_id=1958) - Link is to an online store, but the game is free
GORE is a clone of the percentile-based "Basic Roleplaying" system used in both Call of Cthulhu and Runequest. Honestly, I'm not sure what design lessons there are here, but these are still very influential and popular games, so maybe it's worth a look?

Heartbreakers

Ron described these games as "truly impressive in terms of the drive, commitment, and personal joy that's evident in both their existence and in their details - yet they are also teeth-grindingly frustrating, in that, like their counterparts from the late 70s, they represent but a single creative step from their source: old-style D&D. And unlike those other games, as such, they were doomed from the start." in his essay, here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/9/

Heartbreakers get a lot of criticism, but I think there's a lot to learn from them as well. When I read these games, I find myself marveling at the truly interesting and original ideas, while being frustrated with the baggage they carry from the author's influences.

By definition, none of the games linked here are truly heartbreakers, as they're published after the 90's, they're often influenced by different sources, and some of them are very innovative. I'm playing very loose with the concept. These are fantasy games that retain a lot of the trappings of traditional play, but also have some new ideas. A lot of these are genuinely good games as well.

Barbarians of Lemuria
(http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/barbarians-of-lemuria)
I've not played this game, so I can't comment too much. Its most recent (and no longer free) version has gotten some good reviews. It's probably an example of some of the better design in this field, a game that has one or two new ideas to offer, in a package that is largely very familiar.

Red Box Hack
(http://redboxhack.blogspot.com/)
Calling this a heartbreaker is going to get me some mean looks over the internet, so let me explain. It started as an attempt to "fix" D&D (though in a direction different to most heartbreakers), it was driven by the enthusiasm and drive of its creator, and it had some interesting and innovative ideas. It's definitely worth a look.

On Mighty Thews 1.2

2009-07-12T12:02:00.000-07:00

On Mighty Thews is a player-empowered pulp fantasy game I wrote last year. It's a combination of Jason Morningstar's "Dungeon Squad" with Clinton Nixon's "Donjon", and a few other elements stolen from various places. It's great for creating pulp fantasy short stories, in the vein of Howard, Leiber, and especially Moorcock.

Since I published the game, I've had heaps of great feedback on it. Which parts work, which parts don't, what's easy to understand and what isn't. I've compiled all that playtest feedback into a new "1.2" edition of the game. The system is largely unchanged, but I've clarified a lot of rules, refined the expression of some others, and added more advice on how to make the game fun in play.

You can download a pdf of the game here, or view it online here.

Bad Ass

2009-07-07T22:16:00.000-07:00

(Found here) These guys look rough. When they're not fighting off Cossaks on their borders, they're riding reindeer around the tundra. They're Koryaks, indigenous inhabitants of the Kamchatka peninsular. This photo is from an anthropologist around 1900, photographing them posing with traditional armour and weapons, at the time being passed down as family hierlooms. More information here, or at Wikipedia, of course.

Dungeons and Debacles

2009-07-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

I played another game of Labyrinth Lord the other day, in what has been a very successful campaign (details here). This game was... less successful. Three characters dead and a group of very frustrated players. It was a downer. We all left feeling a bit down on the whole experience, feeling like there was a lot of risk for very little reward. I'm following the dungeon stocking guidelines pretty scrupulously, so I'm a bit frustrated with the game.

I think I'm going to have to rethink the way I design my dungeons, but the whole "planning for the party's level" is one of the things I got sick of in 3.5. I want to just stock a dungeon with what I think is cool and interesting, and have the players interact with that. On the other hand, I don't want to promote the kind of "take three hours to traverse a 30 foor corridor" paranoia either.

Suggestions?

4E and Fictional Causes

2009-06-30T00:37:00.000-07:00

When 4E came out I had total nerdgasms over all the funky powers, the interactions of abilities and the wonderful crunchyness of it all. I thought it was a really revolutionary step for D&D, kind of the culmination of a direction D&D had been heading for a while. I read the books pretty obsessively, gleaning every nuance from the powers, working out optimal builds, designing adventures, and getting right into the game, all before actually playing it. It was a time when my opportunities for gaming were pretty limited, so I had a bunch of anticipation before I could actually play the game.

When I played it, I had a pretty good time. The combats were, as advertised, interesting tactical excercises, with nice emergent properties as players discovered interactions between powers and began utilising them in combat. In fact, the most fun we had with the game was just fighting a series of random combats in a dungeon. Nothing but a series of fights. So I enjoyed the game, but as time went on, I began to find it a little unsatisfying. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it just felt like the game was not for me. There was something about the combats that just felt a little empty to me. The whole game had a slightly removed-from-reality feel, that I couldn't quite place. It felt like an abstraction of a roleplaying game.

I think Vincent's essay on fictional causes has finally given me the language to describe what I think the problem was. To my mind, the most accessible of Vincent's essays on this is this one, but to go to the root of the discussion, you could start here. I'm not going to bother to restate what was said there.

Someone started a pretty abortive thread at Story Games about this, but the thread got swamped by bickering as if it was on the internet or something, so I wanted to try again here. 4E doesn't have enough fictional causes during combat, which means that the details of the fiction ceases to matter in play, especially in combat, and gets less and less important. People still care that you're saving the villagers or stealing some loot or whatever, but the small details fade into the background. Then people end up playing it like a tactical board game. Which is fine, but not what I want in a roleplaying game, y'know?

Here's why:

In 4E, when you want to know what's going on in a fight, what all the relevant factors are in your decision making, and what rules are going to apply to your actions in your turn, you look at the board. Every relevant fact about the situation is conveyed in information in the "real world" of play. The position of enemies is indicated by tokens or miniatures on a grid. The conditions affecting them have concrete rules that you can look at in a book. "Prone" means -2 to AC and attacks, or whatever, not "lying on the ground, with whatever effects make sense based on that".

When I play Labyrinth Lord (which I'm doing a bit at the moment), the details of the fiction are intensely important. That's because when you want to make a decision about what your character is going to do, you have to look at the fiction. Do you get an advantage when a monster is knocked down? What kind of monster is it? What knocked it down? What did it fall onto? How are you attacking it? The DM makes a judgement call, based on the details of the fiction.

In D&D, the details don't matter. You don't need to refer to the fiction at all. Everything you need to know is in the "real world". You can refer to the fiction if you want to, and you can add as much fictional content to your action as you like. The game doesn't stop you from adding to the fiction as you play. But the fiction never gives anything back.

"Page 42" is the argument I hear most often against the "4E as board game" approach. Page 42 of the DMG has rules for "Actions the Rules Don't Cover", that give guidelines for adjudicating actions that draw on the fiction to have concrete, real world affecting effects (like hit point damage). In essence, it's true that Page 42 is all about fictional causes. My sense though, is that in play the rule doesn't often play out like that. I think that elements of the fiction that are able to inflict real-world effects quickly become "game tokens", represented in the real world, with their effects on the game carefully adjudicated and deliniated. The example in the text of the DMG, and the examples I hear about in discussion are very much pre-determined, well defined game effects introduced by the GM, with an expected and defined method of interaction from the players based on the rules in the book. The opposite of fictional causes.

I'm not saying that 4E is bad game. My Life With Master, for example, is in my opinion pretty similar in this regard, and I had a good time playing that. I'm just saying that I'd rather play HeroQuest

Burning Wheel

2009-06-29T02:12:00.000-07:00

Just finished a six-session Burning Wheel game, which was pretty successful. None of us had played the game before, and we were all keen to try it out. I was excited to scratch that fantasy itch finally, and it's also a game I've been curious about for a while.

I talked about the game a little bit in this post, so I won't go over the details again. I'd like to talk a little bit about how the game worked out in terms of my GMing, and the development of a theme and a kind of premise through play.

The first lesson I learnt was about how to GM this kind of game. We were playing a very politics-heavy game, with lots of intrigue and scheming. There was a secret plot I'd planned, which the PCs would discover through play. In the first few sessions of the game, as GM I was much too concerned with getting the information out "right", rather than just responding to the characters' actions in a sensible fashion, and letting them drive the game. This led to dumb, blocking play from me, which really held up the first two sessions. Eventually I worked out what was making the game suck, and I remedied the problem. I started just prepping each NPC's plans for the session, and played them according to their motives, letting the PCs interfere with those plans as they wished. Once the PCs had uncovered enough of my secret plot, the game really ran itself. They had goals they wanted to accomplish, and as GM my only role was to judge the reaction of my NPCs to those actions, and to set difficulties for rolls.

The other thing I found interesting in the game was the development of thematic play that happend during the game. The players were a pretty broad mix of backgrounds, from a guy who is heavily into hippy story-games, to an old friend of mine who is more focused on tactical simulation and playing his character to win (whatever winning means for that character). I was a bit worried about how this combination of players would work out, in terms of conflicting play styles. I think this started out not working quite right. We had to look closely at some beliefs after the second session to target them more appropriately, but once we did this, things started to fire.

Our characters were three brothers who had made their fortune in piracy, and were trying now to go legit. We did a neat thing with the lifepaths, and made a little timeline of the characters, working out what each was doing during the others' lives. We found some neat coincidences, and worked from those to generate some interesting situations. One of the younger brothers went into the "desperate killer" lifepath just as the elder brother started the "merchant" lifepath. We decided it made sense for the younger brother to have been killing on his older brother's orders, to further the business. This set up great conflicts for the game.

The theme that emerged was all about family loyalty. The brothers were feircely devoted to each other, but also had motives driving them apart. The eldest was driven by profit and greed, and the youngest was enraged by what he'd had to do to help his elder brother succeed. The action in the game continually tested their familial bonds.

I wasn't expecting great character portrayals or highly emotional scenes from this game, but we actually had some pretty powerful material. The final scene was a great reversal of our starting position, with the youngest brother arguing for killing the mastermind of the plot against them, while the eldest argued for working with him. Their argument got personal fast, and all their repressed issues came to light. It wasn't Shakespeare, but it was a good scene, and I think it surprised all of us.

I'm really interested in playing with this group again, to explore this territory more.

Maps

2009-06-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

(From here)

This map is crying out for an RPG. I really like how it isn't the same top-down perspective that pervades modern maps. I'm really interested in maps that show locations in relation to each other in terms of some abstract concept, rather than physical location. Like old maps of the silk road that showed landmarks along the way, rather than precise distances and relationships, or maps of the world that showed Christian nations ratiating out from Rome.

Dogs

2009-06-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

We finished our first Dogs town last week, and I'm pretty relieved to say that it was a really good experience for me. For a while, I was very worried that I wasn't going to be able to like my character, and that's reliably a game-killer for me.

I don't have to believe that the character is a good person (whatever that is), or think they'd make a good friend. I just have to find something sympathetic about them, some aspect of their situation that I can relate to, and that gives me a hook to play them in the game (all this goes only for Story Now type games, I don't care about this in other types of play). I think this is something most people know, but I actually have little experience as a player, and so it's taken until recently to figure this out.

It's a very alchemical process for me, whether I'm going to like a character or not. I throw some mechanical elements together, try to get a picture of the person in my head, and then try to bring that picture out in the game. Sometimes what results is a character that I really like, and which I'm happy to play, and sometimes it emerges that the character isn't someone I can relate to, and the game feels like very hard work. A recent game I played of "Its Complicated" fell down this way for me. Among other problems I had with the game, I didn't really relate to my character, and it made playing her a drag. Covenant was an edge case. I could barely relate to my character, but I struggled through the whole game. That actually worked for that game, which was all about painful moments and unforgivable actions.

In Dogs my character, Michael, is a sixteen-year-old boy who's been the golden boy of his village his whole life. He's very much a stereotypical male member of the faith, with one exception. He's got a propensity for falling in love, and a very active libido. He was shipped off to Bridal Falls to avoid an entanglement with a girl he impregnated.

Malcolm, running the first town, picked up on this issue and another player's character who is an ex-prostitute, and created a town with all kinds of issues about lust, marital fidelity, sexual manipulation, and so on. Michael, my character, was going to find this town pretty challenging. Which was perfect of course. I don't think you can play Dogs and not expect your characters' issues to be challenged. In play though, I found the town very challenging. One of Michael's first conflicts was with the Steward's middle-aged wife, Sister Abigail. She was tryting to make him lust after her. Some poor dice rolling meant that I had no chance of winning the conflict, and Michael failed. This felt like a huge blow to my image of the character. I struggled to reconcile that with how I'd imagined Michael's issue playing out. This was compunded at the end of the session when Sister Abigail succeeded in seducing Michael. This character who I'd imagined as a mostly innocent boy with an overactive sense of romance was sleeping with the Steward's wife under his own roof! I felt a little as though my control of the character had been taken from me, and very much as though Michael was being abused within the fiction. The session ended there, and if that had been the sum of my experience with Dogs, I think I would be very dubious about the game.

Michael's first scene in the next session opened with him running from the Steward's house in tears. Fleeing through the streets, his only real aim was to escape from the shame of what he'd done. We decided it would be interesting if he ended up at the house of Brother Edmund, a character who'd been seen in another character's scene last session. As players, we all liked Edmund, and wanted to see him in the game more. We ended up in a conflict with Michael trying to convince himself that he was unfit to be a Dog, and an irredeemable sinner, while Edmund tried to convince him that he could be forgiven. This was a nice coda to Edmund's previous scene, and for Michael's issue, it was perfect. Everything fell into place for me, and the events of the last session suddenly made sense to me in terms of Michael's story. I'd found the issue that was at the heart of his character - about whether he could live up to his own expectations, or if he would keep letting himself down. That was an issue I could really relate to, and it's something that I think will continue to be compelling in future games. Michael's 2d10 relationship to the sin of lust is going to make it very interesting next time.

Island Map

2009-06-20T22:02:00.000-07:00

Here's the map of the islands we're using for our D&D game. I drew it a couple of years ago in Japan, following Tony Dowler's style.

What I like about the map is that it presents very discreet locations for adventure. It's easy to compartmentalise the environments, and to scale the threat level of each island.

Feel free to use the map for your own purposes.

NPC Generator Update

2009-06-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

So a while ago I wrote this idea for a way to randomly generate NPCs that would help to build rich cultures in games. I posted it at story games here, and it got some pretty good attention, and it even got turned into this thing.

I wrote up the whole idea here.

I was always a bit uneasy about the attention the idea got because even though I could see lots of potential for it, I'd never tried it in actual play and I've found a lot of great random generators actually end up sucking when you come to use them, or worse, they're never quite relevant to what you're doing, and they never get used. I was happy to get the chance to try it out then when I started prepping for the Burning Wheel game I'm running.

The game is set in a very ahistorical version of Constantinople, in which the Crusaders never left, and instead established their own monarchy, integrating slowly with the native Greeks and others, and only adding to the city's (by definition) Byzantine power structure. Especially important is the mixture of cultures, with Frankish nobles, a Greek middle class, and Arab and African underclasses. All these create a rich mix that I wanted to reflect in the NPCs in the game. A perfect opportunity to try out my idea.

And it worked out pretty well. The characters I was making were mostly members of the power structure of the city, and the generator gave them great hooks for the PCs to grab onto. It was good for generating powerful NPCs with weaknesses that felt credible and significant. For example, the head of the Glassblowers guild was an Arab with over twenty wives, far more than he could support personally. He angered other members of the guild by drawing on their help to support his huge family. It also worked well for making "Bad Guy" NPCs with understandable motives. Another of the NPCs was a Frankish noble who broke the cultural tradition of believing Peasants to be chattel. One of his motivations for trying to overthrow the monarchy was to establish a more egalitarian society.

So I'm pleased to report that the generator works, at least in that context, and I'll be using it more. I'm creating a Dogs town soon, and I thought it might be interesting for that, though in the end a mpore delibarate approach may be better. We'll see.

The Other Game

2009-06-17T18:39:00.000-07:00

Here are some things I've written in the past about this other game I'm writing. I'm just throwing these up rather than going into detail so that I can get the boring stuff over with and get to what I really want to talk about.

The game is an exploration of power and whether there is an ethical use of it, or, having power, whether one can ethically not use it. The game puts the player's characters in the position of being immensely powerful people in a world where the normal power structure is crumbling. The system is mostly freeform in the "you say what your character does, the GM says what happens" sense of the word. What stops that from being sucky is this system where players can choose to invoke their character's power to change the world, to basically have their say. The powers are tied to particular "flavours" I guess, so you never just get what you want, your character achieves what they want through the use of a particular power - guns, for example, or lies, or sex, or whatever. There's also a whole intricate system that makes the characters organically change as they use their power.

Each player has a little stck of coins that represent their character's powers. Each side of each coin can either be blank, or have a coloured sticker on it. You "cast" the coins before play starts, tossing them onto the table. During play, you can spend coins from the table to change the world, and to change what the GM has just narrated. If you spend a coin showing a blank face, then you're limited to what's humanly possible. If you spend a coin with a coloured sticker, then you use a power associated with the colour of that sticker - one of the four powers chosen at the start of the game. These powers are also associated with the compass points of the setting, so that the powers are integral to the world, and as you travel towards those compass points, the relevant power grows more influential to the people there. Once you've spent all your coins, you switch the GM around, and cast again. There's a whole economy of gaining and losing coins, and gaining stickers, which underpins the game, but I needn't go into that now. Basically, what the mechanics do is put you in situations where you're faced with a choice between using your godlike powers, or using more human means. Sometimes, the choice is to use your power or to accept what the GM has described.

Read that? Ok.

Where the game is at now: I've playtested it a bunch of times with a bunch of different people, and I've made minor tweaks here and there, and refined my understanding of how to play the game and what each player is doing in the game. The game works ok, in the sense that there aren't major problems with the economy of the powers, and they more-or-less have the effect in play that I want them to.

But, it's not quite fun yet. It's not quite at a point where it naturally drives you toward interesting situations. It's also kind of exhausting to play, partly because I've mostly played it with two people, and also because there are no dice so everything that happens at the table is the result of a choice you've made, and that's really intense and powerful, but also hard work. There's just something a little wrong with it, and I can't figure out what it is. The design is kind of an organic, closed system, which makes it very hard to tweak. Every part has a function that feeds into another part of the system. It's hard to change one part without changing others.

I think the problem is that I'm too close to the thing. I can't see the big changes that need to be made. I think it'd really benefit from some outside playtest, but I'm not sure I can communicate the issues I'm concerned about well enough to highlight that to playtesters, and I'm not sure that playtest would necessarily pick up these problems.

How I'm doing D&D

2009-06-16T17:10:00.000-07:00

Vincent's posts about "fictional causes in games, combined with a hankering for dungeon exploration game me a strong yen to play some Basic D&D. I played a few times with friends, using Metzner Edition (because that's the box I've got), and Labyrinth Lord (I prefer Labyrinth Lord, for no other reason than its lack of explicit endoersement of cheating). I think I've finally settled on a way to play D&D that fulfills my needs.

D&D is a fun game, but I couldn't eat a whole one, y'know? It's fun to play a game now and then, but long-term it's a bit unsatisfying. What's great is just to be able to bust out the 3d6's now and then, roll up a character and explore a dungeon for a while. It's fun to prep some dungeons, but doing it on a weekly basis can be a drag. Casual D&D is where it's at. On the other hand, some of the stuff that's fun about exploration type games is only achieved through long-term play: Getting familiar with locations in the setting, sharing stories with friends, developing history with characters, and actually going up a level or two.

It started with reading about Ben Robbins' "West Marches" game, which was a big area of wilderness explored by various PC parties in 3E D&D. While I really liked the exploration and casual play nature of the game, some aspects of it seemed like too much work for me. I didn't want to prepare the whole environment ahead of time, and I was mostly interested in dungeons, rather than wilderness encounters.

What I wanted was a way to have casual D&D play, with a variety of groups, but have each instance of play contribute to a growing environment for play. I wanted the West Marches aspect of looking at a map and saying "I wonder what's over there?", but the ability for the GM to just run with whatever was prepped, rather than having to know exactly what was in each spot on the map. I wanted a way for each character to contribute to the game, even if they died in the first room of their first dungeon. I wanted a persistant and growing world to explore, that the GM could discover as the players played through it.

What I came up with was this: A wiki documenting the adventures of the "Redrock Raiders". The Redrock Raiders are a fictional group of adventurers, mercenaries, thieves and tomb-robbers based in a small fishing village in a fantasy setting. Their village is fortuitously located near the ruins of an ancient civilisation, drowned in long-forgotten cataclysm.

Multiple groups, potentailly with rotating GMs, run adventures in a shared setting, and document their adventures on the site. Players and characters can migrate between groups, playing on a casual basis, and have their contributions recorded and added to the growing "story" of the Redrock Raiders. It is this fictional group that the story is really about. Individual characters come and go, but what matters is the gradual advancement of the Raiders, from disreputable misfits meeting in a Tavern, to (hopefully) respected heroes, operating out of their own fortress.

So far we've played three "adventures", each with a slightly different cast. I've GMed all of them so far, and it might stay that way, but I'd also like to play. What I'm enjoying is the sense of adventure, the importance of exploration and detail. The ever-present mortality of characters forces the players to interact with the fiction in a very detailed way. I wrote on Vincent's blog:

The vast majority of stuff in the world is WAY more dangerous than a first level player character is prepared for, and the only way to give yourself even a slight chance of survival is to avoid using the rules for fighting as much as possible. The result is lots of "Ok, we position by the door. I've got my spear out ready for if it charges, and the elf is gonna shoot it with his bow. If he misses, we're all ready to run."

If you play Basic D&D like a tactical boardgame, you'll lose, every time. The only way to survive is to engage with the fiction, to scramble for every slight advantage, to invest absolutely in the details of how your character moves, the way they're bracing their polearm, the way they carry their kit. It's all vitally important, because if you get it wrong, your character is dead. In play, this is starting to come through, with lots of very tense moments and near misses, as well as cheap deaths at the hands of fate, and lucky escapes.

Running the game, I'm realising that Basic D&D is as much a horror game as anything else, much as early pulp fantasy had a strong influence from horror. Death stalks the characters wherever they go, and dungeons are home to bizzare nightmare creatures who will murder a man without hesitation. You're in the dark, far from home, and surrounded by things that mean you harm. The ceiling wants to eat you.

Throwaway Setting Idea: Catholicspace

2009-06-16T15:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes setting ideas come at a time when you're not prepared to use them. Other times the ideas are compelling, but the actual gameability of the setting is questionable. It's a shame to waste that stuff though, so I'm going to blog it for posterity.

Catholicspace

It's "A Canticle for Leibowitz" mixed with Vincent Ward's Alien 3, with a dash of Dune, and a sprinkling of WH40k.

The central conceit is FTL travel powered by starship drives that are fueled by consecrated communion wafers, a.k.a. the flesh of God. They fly around, still taking many years to complete their journeys, run like little flying monastaries. There are wooden planets, pykrete space stations, prison hulks, peasant farmers, and space-libraries. There are religious conflicts over the use of the communion. There are atheists dealing with incontrivertable proof of the existance of god - or of some kind of thing. There are the ruins of alien civilisations, vast and incomprehensible.

The issues are things like: "What if there is objective morality, and it goes against everything you believe?" "What if there was proof of the existance of a deity, but it wasn't what people expected?" "What if progress isn't always good?"

I think you could play this with Sorcerer (you'd have to add some stuff about Demons and humanity), or hacked Dogs, or a Solar System thing, maybe, if you were less intested in some of the themes, and more interested in the colour.

Cyberpunk Game

2009-06-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

I've got a bit on the go at the moment, and there are a few gaming projects that I'm working on intermittantly. I tend to work in fits and starts on various things, getting really excited about one thing and doing some work, and then leaving it fallow for a while while I pursue other things.

The project that I'm spending the most time on at the moment is a Cyberpunk-styled game that uses otherkind dice, the bare bones of my "say yes or face the dungeon" concept, and an initiative system from an old wargame I wrote. The idea is trying to recreate the fun of an old cyberpunk styled game I used to play, that was constantly stymied by sucky rules. The main goals are "heist movie" storylines, Cyberpunk colour (and to some extent cyperpunk themes), "players versus environment", lots of player planning and scheming, and functional GM prep.

I haven't put anything up at my other site about this yet, because it still doesn't really have a playtestable shape. What I've got is a bunch of skills, and rules for using them, a bunch of equipstuff, and rules for shooting at people.

The playtest I ran was pretty painful, with lots of false starts and moments of disconnect, with a few really fun moments. Here's what's working:

Skills (kinda): It's reliably fun to roll the dice for your skills, assign them to some categories, and succeed or fail, usually with some complications. I'm pretty sure that the basic concept of the skill system works, but it may well see some major revision.

Aaaaand, that's about it. Here's what's not working:

Character Creation: I threw character creation togwther at the last minute, and it really doesn't work. Characters need a range of skills to achieve anything in the game, and it's too easy to create a character with no skills, or skills that don't compliment the group. The system's also pretty restrictive in terms of not giving you a lot of scope to create the character you want. I possibly need more skills, or skills with broader scope. I'm still at sea about this.

Missions: The idea is that you fit your mission around what the GM has prepped, so that if your mission is to take out some corporation, and the GM has prepped some anarchist gang, you work out how interacting with that gang will help your mission, and you do that. That little scrap of it is working, but the problem is that the missions seem arbitrary, and when a particular character isn't involved, there's nothing for them to do. The system falls apart a little when the action isn't intiated by the players, and that's a problem. Malcolm suggested I try importing something of the mission structure from Duty and Honour, and I think that's an awesome idea.

There's a lot more stuff that still needs work, but those are the two things I'll try to fix before playtesting the game again. I'll also try to make a few more skills, especially interesting skills, because I think seeing skills on the list that aren't in any other games will be part of the fun of the game. That's a bunch of work, but I think it's doable.

Getting Started

2009-06-15T02:43:00.000-07:00

Hey so lets see where this goes eh? Blogging!