Planet Story Games

Hey, all. My buddy Don is running With Great Power... and blogging about it. Check it out!

Heya,

One of the largest barriers, if not the largest barrier, to playing an RPG is learning the mechanics. Human beings are so unpredictable in the way they use words, understand words, and act upon words. For instance, back in the 90's I played ADnD with three different groups. Each group interpreted the text differently. Everything from the number of spells wizards got per level to how to roll initiative was slightly different- not because of house rules, but because people just read the official rules differently. IMO, this sort of thing is not all that desirable. So how can we avoid it?

First, examples play a key role in helping people understand new content. Giving players a model to follow offers them a template for their own experiences with your game. There are three types of examples I'd like to talk about for a moment: Generic, Faux-play, and Actual Play.

Generic examples are quick bites of information just to make an abstract idea concrete. For instance, if you were to give an example for Stats, you might say "John's character has a Strength of 5, an Agility of 4, a Logic of 10, and a Charisma of 8." That's a Generic example. Usually, you are not recounting anything that actually happened while someone was playing the game. It doesn't matter what the numbers were or who the players were, and the example will have no further bearing on the text beyond the section where it is included.

Faux-play examples are very common in RPGs. They often appear at the beginning (like my own Ember Twilight), during the resolution chapter, or at the ending of a book. They are usually written as a script where players are sitting around a table talking through their play. Sometimes, they include an over use of words like "Awesome" or have lots of exclamation points. Such an example might go something like this:

GM (rolls and 18): Okay, the orc swings and hits you with his club. 5 Damage. Your turn, Jake.

Jake: Ouch that hurts. I'm going to swing back. (rolls a 17). I hit!

GM: Nice hit, Jake! He takes 8 damage and dies.

Jake: Awesome!

I call this a Faux-play because it's totally manufactured. This is hardly how people play an RPG, but it is how play is commonly portrayed in an RPG text. However, these kinds of examples are still useful. They can demonstrate the order of mechanics and how various parts of the system work in concert with each other.

An Actual Play example is when a writer uses an Actual Play report, either one posted on the Internet or one he wrote for his own reflection, and includes that in the text. This isn't done too often. However, an Actual Play example provides the reader with an authentic model for play. By reading an Actual Play report within the text of a game, the reader will gain much more insight as to how the game truly works with real people in the real world. This can be invaluable especially if the game has a lot of complex mechanics.

There is room for all three kinds of examples in an RPG. A writer should be aware of each and use them appropriately.

A second way an RPG can teach its mechanics is to be aware of how learning takes place. Over on Story Games, Doyce Testerman wrote a series of posts talking about adult learning styles. Rather than replicate his work, I'll link them here for you:

[Teaching Your Game] Rules for Teaching Adults
[Teaching Your Game] Teaching Specific Tasks
[Teaching Your Game] Attention Span and Effective Use of Time
[Teaching Your Game] Readability – The Fog Index
[Teaching Your Game] Using Adult Learning Techniques to Deliver Game Content

Finally, a game can teach its mechanics through a tutorial. Some games turn themselves into graphic novels that visually and literarily teach the mechanics to the readers. Sometimes a game will offer a step by step procedure for the players to follow to create and use their characters for the first time. This is most common on CRPGs or MMORPGs, but tabletop games can do the same. It becomes a matter of writer's choice.

It is very important to be aware that a game must do its best to teach the mechanics it contains to the reader. Failure to provide clear examples or failure to understand how people read and learn will cause real problems when people sit down to play your game. If you would like to test the "learnability" of your game, give it to someone who's never seen it before and ask them to make a character and tell you how they will use that character in play. It might just surprise you.

Peace,

-Troy

Who's the Protoganist?

John Kim has posted a short essay containing his thoughts on Story Control. If the main characters are supposed to determine the shape of stories, why are GMs the author of game sessions?

Mind and Body

Carl Craven discusses why he doesn't like letting social mechanics control his NPC's actions, and ponders whether there's a fundamental difference between mechanics that represent the physical and mental worlds.

Mainstream and Fringe

Fang Langford's earlier post on bringing RPGs to the First World yielded a bevy of responses; he reflects upon some of them in his latest post. Is trying to bring roleplaying to the mainstream a good idea? If so, what social trends can be used to accomplish this?

What Else Besides Dice?

Socratic Design has a brief review of non-polyhedral resolution mechanics.

I started writing a short Darkpages piece about "wh1te p0w3r" (haxx0red to avoid web searches from finding this post). Specifically, a good-guy vigilante type who patrolled a small area of Hamilton and protected the small, white, European community. So yeah, a racist skinhead with super powers who uses them to help other whites.

His schtick is that his body is covered with "bulletproof tattos" that enable him to shrug off what would otherwise be fatal injuries (frex: a "Mother" heart over his heart). Cool, eh? Think of a good old Irish lad stalking the white neighborhoods of of Hamilton. If The Hood can protect his turf, why can't this guy? That's the question.

I decided that for now, it's probably not going to happen. Maybe I'll write it for the actual game. It's a cool character idea I've had for awhile. Not a deconstructed "super-hero" who hates certain (like Marshal Law or Judge Jury from "Bratpack") but a character that chooses to look after "his own" (and has an unsavory ideology behind it).

Repeat after me: Jared's not a bad person, he just writes about them.

Okay?

Just to set the record straight, Blair is the racist, I'm the misogynist.

Agendas are a recurring theme among RPG theories. Succinctly they are how and why players make decisions. But in different places agendas can mean different things.

Some uses of agenda delve into the motives of the player or players making the decisions. These are often based on identifying what a particular player or group wants from play, and then extrapolating that to their decisions during play. So, if someone wants to identify with their character, they will tend to choose to act out that character or place that character in situations where that player can learn or invent more about who the character is.

Other uses of agenda focus more on the method of play. In this case, the agenda doesn't represent the motives of the players, even shared ones. Instead it is the observed regularity of the actions of the group. These agendas often speak in the language of reinforcement, where certain decisions reinforce those same decisions due to the system. A good example of this sort of agenda are the creative agendas in the Big Model.

While agendas can discuss many different things. Some agendas focus very narrowly (delving into your character's family or getting the most points), and some are much broader (impressing others or constructing a story). Distinguishing different agendas can be very useful. But as a tool ofRPG theory, it is especially important to distinguish when an agenda is why someone makes decisions versus when it is how someone makes decisions.

So, there has been some buzz around the webs this week about indie game design and publishing, specifically here at Story Games and here at the Forge. The gist of these conversations is that some games have been published in an unfinished or half-baked form, and many folks believe that this is harmful to indie games in general, and unfair to gamers who may have purchased these products.

This is a topic of some interest, of course, and I agree with (most of) what everyone here is saying. Some of the solutions being put forward are excellent, including the idea of printing ashcans, or beta versions of games, in cheap formats for low prices, and then incorporating all the live play feedback you can get into a final version of the game. Plenty of people have done this, and it works.

If you've followed the discussions above at all, you will know that the reason I'm bringing the subject up here is that Mortal Coil gets called out for some heavy critique on these threads. I wanted to say my piece about it in my own space, rather than jumping into these other threads with long discourses about my own game. The main reason for this is I'm not really interested in getting into a long argument about the game on those other threads, or dealing with the attacks and well-meaning defenses that would inevitably come up.

I know that Mortal Coil has some problems with how the rules are presented. Lots of feedback from players, with the same questions coming up again and again, are an excellent indication that some areas of the rules are not well explained. If I had done a better job communicating everything in the text, I wouldn't have as many questions coming up about it.

Some players are going to contact me and ask questions no matter what. There are players out there who like to gather all the info they can before starting a game, even one that is well layed-out and explained. These aren't the people I'm talking about. The ones I feel I've failed are those who bought the game and couldn't understand it well enough to give it a try. Some of these people have contacted me, or gone on the web and found some of the FAQs and examples I've posted. Many of these people, on the other hand, took the game and put it on their shelf, and they will never play it. Those are the ones I feel I have failed.

So, mea culpa aside, I want to talk a bit about the expectations that go into a design and second editions. I've been accused of picking gamers' pockets by publishing Mortal Coil the way I did. I don't really see it that way. Mortal Coil is playable, and many people have figured out how to play from the text alone (I know because I have heard from some of them).

I design and publish games and try to put the best product out there I can, and I spent a lot of time thinking about how to present the rules in Mortal Coil so they can be understood. After getting all of this feedback, I have a much better understanding of how I missed, and what I need to do next time to present the rules in a better way. My next product will be much better. I also plan on revising and releasing a new version of Mortal Coil at some point, to better explain the rules. Nothing about them is going to change, I am just going to adjust the areas where comprehension was difficult, and add in the extended examples of play I've written for the forum. This will be a better product than the first version.

All I can do is learn, and improve. That's my duty as a designer, and that's where I am going to go in the future.

I'm a big fan of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, and was delighted to hear there's a film in the works, starring Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, not to mention a whole host of armoured bears (rock!). For those who don't know anything about it, it's a trilogy of books set in an alternate, vaguely steampunky/magical world that is really quite unique and very cool indeed. It's aimed at young adults, but don't let that put you off - it's really much more than that.

Anyway, all this has a point. The very cool website went live today, complete with a bit where you get to meet your own daemon (everyone has their own daemon - think of it as a familiar). Here's mine, a mouse called Bryanna!

After a manic burst of caffeine-fueled energy late last night, I typed out the last of Darkpages' latest and greatest mechanics. It's not done but it's ready for playtesting (yay). And once Jason and I write up the "How to Run This Monstrosity" section, it'll be ready for public consumption vis a vis "Litepages" or whatever the hell I call the free version.

The coolest thing about the game right now is that unlike a lot of superhero games, Darkpages' game isn't front-loaded in character creation. Choose a concept, choose an archetype and you're ready to go. The details come out in play (and between games). Oh, and incarnations. Those are cool. Less cool because Tim Fucking Koppang beat me to the idea! ;)

Also wrote up some characters for a possible imprint called The Edge of Mysteries. One of them is a mummified soldier wrapped in the remnants of battle flags. His name? The Corporal. Get it?!

Speaking of mummies, I'll be attending DartCon, Dreamation, GenCon and the Shared Worlds camp this summah!

Also, DONUT! Frosted, filled or covered in sprinkles, you all will cram it into your gobs and choke on the fun!

So I've had this idea that I've been kicking around for a bit, and I wanted to write a full essay on it -- but after procrastinating a while, I think I'll post a blog with the core of the idea and see what people think of it.

The basic dilemma I want to tackle is as follows: I believe that the main characters -- their backgrounds, personalities, dialogue, and actions -- are absolutely central to story in traditional media, especially performative media like theater and film. These are the center of the drama. However, despite this, when talking about traditional role-playing, the view is frequently expressed that the GM has primary control over the story -- and that the creation and control of PCs is minor by comparison.

My idea is that in practice, the GM wields authority primarily through indirect social pressure -- not by direct in-game mechanics. That is, the GM gives meta-game cues as to what the PCs are supposed to be like and do. The players follow those cues instead of bringing in their own ideas. The most obvious case is the most traditional: the dungeon. It is a well-known idea, often mocked, of having the PCs come to the entrance to a dungeon -- and then proceed past it to go to the next town. i.e.





This is the humorous exception that suggests the more common rule, though, that the players will follow the GM's lead in going into the dungeon.

In practice, here are many different kinds of cues:

1. Location or item descriptions are often cues. i.e. If something is described in detail, it is known to be important. The PCs are expected to pay careful attention to it. If they instead ignore it, then it is considered a slap in the GM's face.
2. NPC advice or requests are often GM cues. This likely will not involve breaking character -- the NPC generally has a good reason to give the advice or make the request. Rather, it stands out because bad advice and/or insignificant requests are not normally played out. For example, how often do the PCs receive job offers for jobs that don't make interesting adventures?
3. Repeated questions to the player are a common cue, as in "Are you sure you want to do that?" This can be helpful to the PCs, but helping the PCs is generally guiding. Often this is to make sure that they aren't "stuck" -- when by stuck they mean not progressing along the predicted path.

That's what I have at the moment, and I'm pondering people's thoughts on this.

Seven months ago, I reviewed Spirit of the Century. Since then, I've done a one-shot and some chargen sessions, which were mad fun. Tonight, we start a full-on SotC series. Woo hoo! I'm so psyched.

We're using SotC to continue our now-epic pulp adventure series, which began many years ago as Pulp d20, then transitioned into The Shadow of Yesterday (Tales from the Aether) and The Dictionary of Mu. Now, we finally come home to the ultimate pulp game system in SotC. I am filled with glee.

I also get to play my favorite RPG character, Nick Timber. He's from the original Pulp d20 game, and it's been a blast updating him for TSOY and now for SotC. Brandon, the GM, is using my sorcerer character from Mu (Kai Shira Khai -- Black Radiance of the Wastes -- Lord of Science) as the big villain for the new series, which will be extra special fun for me, too.

Only five more hours 'til the game...

UPDATE: I posted a mini-AP thing over on Story Games. I'll do more APs for the game as it goes on.

Episode 7 is now live! Paul and I review Hero's Banner and interview Chris Hanrahan of Endgame Oakland.

Show notes:
0:29 - Despite audio problems, Paul and Brennan are back for the April show. As always, the episode starts with IPR news. New:

The Zorcerer of Zo (PDF)
Intergalactic Cooking Challenge (PDF)
Nine Worlds (PDF)
Seven Leagues (PDF)
Vs. Monsters (PDF)

Dust Devils Revenged
Beast Hunters

02:41 - Hero's Banner, by Tim C. Koppang, is a roleplaying game that focuses on coming of age stories.
15:38 - Chris Hanrahan of Endgame in Oakland, CA, talks with Paul and Brennan about indie games from a retailer's perspective.
29:07 - Brennan talks about the process of procuring art for your game in the latest installment of Pravda.
39:26 - Paul and Brennan talk about what they're playing now. Paul even goes first this time.

Other games:

Polaris
Agon
Dogs in the Vineyard
Mortal Coil
Don't Rest Your Head
The Shab-Al-Hiri Roach
carry. a game about war.
Primetime Adventures
Mystery of the Abbey

So my game group and I started a World of Darkness game. Don't ask why. It two days of neogtiations to find something everyone was willing to play. We tacked on portions of the 2nd edition (I think it was that edition) Gypsies book that caused such controversy. Basically our characters are all cousins from a gypsie neighborhood in Paris and have some low magic powers that we don't even know are magic. That kinda shit.

We played last night and man does the system suck. Two things in particular came out in play. Round, by round combat is slow, tedious and boring. I mean it sucked. It was the least amount of fun combat I've been a part of since I don't know when...

The other thing is the botch rules. Ones taking away successes sucks. It is one thing to have a bad roll right. To have the dice not fall in your favor. It is another thing for it to feel like the system is taking shit away from you. Fuck that shit.

Other shit that was annoying were:

• Explain to me why I can move and shoot but I can't draw and shoot. What the fuck is that?
  
• No unified system even for the fucking skills. Sometimes you roll against someone, sometimes you take dice away. Fucking nonsense. Having separate systems for combat and skills in fine, but don't make me have to look the skill up in the book.
  
• The vague hand waving crap for the virtues and vices. I mean there is trust in my group. Lots of it. We are friends first, game players second. But no one, not even Oscar, our GM (or should I use the retarded Storyteller monicker) likes the fiated hand waving shit. If a game is creating a situation like that it damn well should have a solution.
  
• There was more but I can't think of it now.

Solutions
So we debriefed as always and came up with some solutions. For the round, by round combat shit we decided to use scripting from Burning Wheel. Take the Initiative Mod, divide in half and add one. That is how many actions you got per phase. Averages out to be about the same as Burning Wheel.

For the botch shit, we just cut it out like the cancer that it is. Fuck botches. Kept the exploding 10s only cause the success rate is pretty fucking shitty (8, 9, 10 is fucking bullshit boring we don't want you to be too good and maybe have fun while playing the game design). So ones no longer harsh our vibe.

Why not just play Burning Wheel you ask? Well the guys don't think it translates well with the lifepaths. I disagree, but I'm not interested in fighting about it. We are going to continue this game and see what happens. I suspect, as we play, we are going to be rewriting the fucking thing a lot.

Game Chef reviewing/voting wrapped up on sunday night, and what a mammoth task it was! I think the review stage was just as hard as the writing stage, and certainly at least as time consuming.

Well, it's all over now folks, at least for now, at least for me. The final scores have been released and the top 8 (which will be voted on to determine the winner) announced. Whilst Lost Days of Memories and Madness didn't get that high, it did make the top 20 (number 19, to be precise), which ain't bad at all when you consider there were close to 100 games entered!

So congratulations to everyone who entered, and especially to those who made the top 8! I'm looking at you especially drivingblind !

Now onto the question about what to do with LDDoMaM ... first up, a playtest at Spodley in a few weeks. Then we'll see ...

Heya,

I’m going to talk just a little bit about resolution systems today- specifically using things other than dice. Nothing too deep. I just got back from Forge Midwest and grad school is still swamping me with work. But anyway, I haven’t made a real post in a while, and I thought I it’s about time I did.

First, let me say that not using dice in your resolution system does not automatically make your game cool or awesome. Nor does it instantly garner you some kind of “indie cred” with other designers if that’s the sort of thing you’re after. Choosing not to use dice will not make your game any better if all the other mechanics don’t hold up on their own. Do not interpret this as a call for more diceless games or an article extolling the virtues of non-traditional resolution systems. This is simply an informational post about a certain portion of resolution mechanics I’ve either used, toyed with, or played with in some way. Also, do not mistake this as an exhaustive list of how to use non-dice resolutions mechanics. These are just the ones I’ve considered at some point. Maybe you’ll find them useful too :)

Cards: A deck of cards can be a useful set of randomizers to use instead of dice. Without the jokers, you have 52 possibilities. That’s quite a few, and may give you the range of possibilities you want for your game if a d20 is too few and a d100 is too much. You can also organize cards into various groups. You have 4 suits, 2 colors, 12 face cards (not counting aces, 16 if you do), evens and odds. Depending on how often you want a certain result to come up, you can look at card groupings to get percentages and probabilities. If you decide to include jokers, you have the opportunity to throw in really rare or powerful effects when the jokers do get played that won’t come up so often that they break the game, but often enough that they get noticed. Also, don’t overlook the fact that there are already many games out there that use a standard 52 deck of cards. Games like poker, blackjack, and euchre can all be employed by an RPG designer to act as the resolution system itself. They become a game within a game.

Coins: Coin flipping is a game almost everyone has played as a child. It usually involves very low stakes gambling, and provides binary results (heads or tales). However, coins can be expanded in an RPG to where players are flipping multiple coins and checking the results either against another player’s flip, a table of some kind, or a difficulty rating. Coins are fairly accessible, but can be a pain to keep up with if the numbers coins getting flipped gets too high. But the fact that they are quick, easy to find, and can serve double as tokens or currency markers, makes coins a viable choice for RPG resolution.

Dominos: Dominos are seldom used by RPG designers, but they are just as legitimate as anything else. There are several different sets you can get on the market. Some sets go from double zero (a blank domino) to double 6 (six dots on both sides). There are others that go from double zero all the way to double 18! And, of course, there’s everything in between. Dominos can be used in several ways for resolution, and I’m sure there’s some that I won’t list here. First, you can use random draws w/ a comparison of the totals on the dominos to see who wins. A domino that is 6/8 would beet a domino that is 1/2. You could actually build a train of dominos on the table, and if a player want’s his character to do something, but can’t play a tile, then he is unable to act. The dominos would serve as gate keepers in this sense. Players could also possible build their own trains, then spend the dominos as currency throughout the game to gain the effects they want. And there’s plenty more creative uses for dominos in an RPG. The key to this, however, is to take advantage of the properties of the domino. That is, they are physical object, they have two values, probably have varying colors, and rules for a game that uses them already exists.

Tokens: Tokens can be anything from glass beads to plastic disks to rose petals. Tokens keep track of some resource a player has access to or can serve as a countdown to some endgame scenario. They are physical objects and thus, everyone at the table is probably going to know who has how many tokens everyone has available to them. In resolution, tokens can be used in bidding wars, comparisons, gambling, and spending. In a bidding war, players would go back and forth bidding tokens until one person gives up or they both run out. Comparisons between token pools would put an emphasis only on accumulating large numbers of tokens in order to defeat enemies. The more tokens you have, the stronger the foe you can overcome. Gambling is like a bidding war, but instead the winner would receive some amount of tokens back. The loser would lose all of his. Gambling puts an emphasis on resource management and risk-taking. Finally, spending tokens is the simplest way to use them. A player would simply need to spend X number of tokens to generate Y effect. There is no real randomness in that system unless the X is somehow variable and constantly changing.

Point Pools: Point pools are a lot like tokens, however they are easier to keep secret. Typically, there is a spot on a character sheet to track them. They can be used in much the same way tokens can, but don’t require the players to have physical objects at the table to manipulate during the resolution phase of the game. In fact, this is they system I’m using with one of my games that I’ll link over on my design blog once I get the chance. One nice thing about point pools vs. tokens is that trading points between different pools is quite easy. Shift points from your “Power Pool” to your “Relationship Pool” involves just an eraser and a couple pencil marks. This can be done quickly and easily. Counting out tokens, sorting different colors of beads or chips from each other, and stacking them all in a neat pile can be tedious and time consuming.

Talk: Finally, the last non-dice resolution mechanic I’m going to cover is talking. Of all the gimmicky things I mentioned, talking is probably the most basic. In fact, you probably do this all the time in your group. The GM might say, “Okay, you walk into the bar…” and another player replies, “No wait, I want to get something out of the trunk of my car first…” That right there is an example of talk resolving a conflict. An entire game can work like that, however, there has to be a significant “buy-in” by all the players. You, as the designer, are counting on them not to just run wild and describe themselves conquering the world in a single instance of resolution. You’re also not giving the players much to work with. IMO, people generally do feel more comfortable with some “objective” item telling them what happens. Dice, cards, and points are all popular for a reason. Talk can be tricky to incorporate into the actual mechanics of a game. Use it with caution.

Like I said earlier, nothing profound here. Just a simple catalog of a few non-traditional mechanics. I am neither encouraging nor discouraging their use, but I definitely wanted to get this up on my blog for future reference. It’s good to be aware of the wide variety of possibilities out there when it comes to resolution systems. Take care all! :)

Peace,

-Troy

The "Myth of Planet Earth" playtest was extremely instructive. I took out the rules for being out-bid by your own Aspect tokens and the game ran way short and suffered for it. This is great! I now know that those particular rules are vitally important for both pacing and excitement. Perhaps the best part to come out of that was the post-game discussion where a number of ideas of how to put these rules back in (while still addressing the reason I had taken them out) were bandied about. Several of them look promising.

I also introduced Quest Cards. They provide a sort of overarching narrative/alternate victory condition to seek out. Players all start with one card which can be bid as a simple +3 if they choose they're not interested in the Quest. If they are, then each card matches with a specific other card out there, to reveal other cards. So, if I have the Port Half of Ancient Starmap and you have the Starboard Half of Ancient Starmap, and we both play our cards together, we get the Oldest Known Starmap Card. If we apply that information to the Original Design Specs of Central Computer card, it gives us the Override Code we need to get the computer to reveal the ultimate goal: The Coordinates of Planet Earth. The Quest Cards need some development, but I think they seem extremely promising.

Also, the "big board" came up in the post-game discussion. And I realized that the reason I kept rejecting it was I kept conceiving of it as a timeline sort of thing. Like WGP's Synopsis Sheet. But when the idea of making it a map was put forth, it seemed obvious how that would help to synchronize everyone's ideas about the game world.

So, I've got my work cut out for me. Camp Nerdly is in a week and a half, and I've got a lot to get together before then. See you in 7!

I think I've done fairly well to avoid discussion on the GNS Model. The last time I had a post focused on the GNS Model was back in November 2005: "Me and GNS", where I commented that I wouldn't post about it much -- which it appears I've done fairly well on.

Still, there are posts on it to time to time that I read, and I thought I'd summarize again. There's Jono's Natural Log post GNS theory. Also, I've listened to Clyde Rhoer's Theory from the Closet podcast on my commute. Also, there was recently adamdray's post "An example of Simulationist thinking" -- referring to jediwiker's post "From Hollywood to Home Campaign (Part II of V)".

On a personal note, it still gets me very frustrated to see Ron Edwards' vision of primarily genre-emulating, predefined-theme play (i.e. GNS Simulationism) conflated with cause-and-effect exploration of actions and consequences (i.e. rgfa Threefold Simulationism) -- which I think happens in Jono's post. In my opinion, following from in-game cause to effect is directly antithetical to pre-authored themes and storylines -- and is excellent for exploring choices and consequences.

However, at this point I feel that both GNS and the Threefold are both too narrow in scope. These days, I am more interested in the larger picture of real-world goals of play -- socializing, learning, stress relief, competitive exhibition -- and how game processes feed into these. At some point I would want to revisit my old Forge post, "Classifying by Social Function". In-game cause and effect is a useful tool for a number of these, but it isn't a goal.

Still, GNS is there, and so I thought I should post on it as I thought about it. For a more general introduction to it, I would recommend first M. Joseph Young's series on Places to Go, People to Be:

• Theory 101: System and the Shared Imagined Space
• Theory 101: The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast
• Theory 101: Creative Agenda

There is also Ben Lehman's "Introduction to Forge Theory" series of blog posts,

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Addendum

Heya,

The guys over at Cannon Puncture have posted the second part of my interview with them. It's my first podcast interview and I'll have to say it was intimidating at first. But I got to talk about two things I really love: playing and designing games. Oh, and I got to plug my two favorite OOP CCGs, too! That rocks. Anyway, hope you enjoy :)

Peace,

-Troy

So I had two games this weekend, both starting off new things for two of my groups.

So one of my groups had finished up an Amber DRPG campaign game-mastered by zdashamber a few months ago, and we played a few one-shots but are now starting a new campaign. So Saturday evening we did brainstorming and character creation for Dragons of the Yellow Sea -- a campaign that I'm GMing set in 1860s Korea of the world of Naomi Novik's Temeraire novels. It is a parallel history of our world where there are domesticated dragons. We talked about the background, who the PCs would be, and then created characters using a variant of Spirit of the Century. I had a modified stunt list -- mainly that "Drive" (cars) and "Pilot" (planes) were replaced by "Seamanship" (ships) and "Airmanship" (dragons), and modifying the "Mysteries" stunts to fit with shamans rather than turn-of-the-century psychics.

Overall, I think everyone's excited about this, and we liked all the ideas going in. I'm going to have to do a bunch more to prepare, but it's all interesting material. There's certainly an aspect to GMing this campaign which is connecting to my cultural heritage as a Korean that I've largely been distant from.

The other group just finished up a Call of Cthulhu campaign that I had been game-mastering, and on Sunday we did a one-shot adventure using Burning Wheel -- the convention scenario "The Sword" available on the BW downloads page. We're preparing to play a BW campaign set in Hârn, GMed by Jim, and we're doing two one-shot adventures to introduce us to the system.

This was mostly all about learning the mechanics. The larger lesson that I took from it was that I get competitive with this sort of mechanical environment, which I think I have to avoid. It occurs to me that in that group, we've generally been pretty cooperative as far as role-playing, and then gotten out our competitiveness in our tradition of having a round of Liar's Dice at the end of the session.

Luckily, when freedoms are threatened (as they were scant hours ago in my previous blog post), we have Bruce Willis to rely on! Live Free or Die Hard appears to feature the most preposterous stunts of 2007, including Bruce Willis shooting a helicopter down with a car, Bruce Willis using traffic as a shield against falling cars and Bruce Willis surfing a JETFIGHTER!

Yippe kay-a and all that!

This article by Naomi Wolf about 10 easy steps to making a fascist America is absolutely terrifying. I'm sure many similar examples can be drawn from Britain too.

As alarmed as I am by the whole thing, it does make for fantastic research and inspiration for the dystopian setting in Yesterday's Tomorrow. Of course, I can see I'm going to have to ratchet up the dystopia another notch to make sure the fiction is more dystopian than the reality - unfortunately, not for the first time in the past 5 years either.

This week has seen several theory developments, often building off of existing more accepted ideas.

GNS for Timmy, Johnny, and Spike

Jono summarizes his view of the Gamism, Narrativism, and Simulationism (GNS) theory. Covering what it means for play, games, and players to interact with these three approaches to RPGs. In addition he mentions a connection between these three categories and the break down of Magic: the Gathering (the collectable card game) players used by its designers. Timmy seeks flash and fun. Johnny seeks a chance to show creativity. And Spike seeks to win the competition which is each game. Jono suggests that these are related to Simulationism, Narrativism, and Gamism respectively.

Story Leverage

Emily Care discusses a common problem for her and others, the difficulty in locating story leverage within a given situation. This is further expanded at I would knife fight a man, including suggesting that (to extend the metaphor) that the leverage remains, but the problem is a lack of fulcrum to move the story where the player wants or expects it to go.

Translating Theories

Also at I would knife fight a man, Ben Lehman relates two different theories of RPGs: Moyra Turkington's theory of sockets, goals, and payoffs and the Big Model. Much of this involves describing how the social and personal elements translate between the two theories.

I've been thinking of Dead of Night supplements for a long while now.

My first idea was for a straightforward book of scenarios, based around the fictional town of Chaddlestone that features in the original (and entitled "Things to do in Chaddlestone when you're Undead" or something equally b-movie-ish.

My second was a proper, full-on 50s b-movie expansion for the game, filled with aliens and pod people and the like, but I'm not sure if that should be a supplement or a standalone. The working title is be something along the lines of  "Attack of the 100ft Cheerleaders."

Both, I feel, fill a neglected niche in the core game - the adventure book complements the game's pick up and play, instant game style, whereas the b-movie expansion twists the game towards a different genre.

Or, would a better approach be to take

boxninja's idea (for a Best Friends supplement) and go for a supplement that features some fully fleshed out alternate settings and genres, with monsters and adventures for each?

 

Malcolm/rpgactionfigure has some very insightful comments to add on the cloned thread at the Collective Endeavour, which is possibly  the direction I'm going to end up going in.

A while back Brandon made a wiki for Attacks of Opportunity. Not we've got some content on there, so go take a look. Our Actual Play links are now collected there. In future, I think we'll also add links to our various rules hacks and other gaming projects.

What the hell are you on about?

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=322755

And why do people have such a hard time imagining that I quit my job to work on a game called Donut? Just because I fooled people last year on April Fool's Day doesn't mean...oh whatever.

For a band who only released their debut a little over a year ago, it's amazing to the extent that the sound of the Arctic Monkeys has seeped into the national consciousness, almost becoming an anthem for a generation or two. And despite their recent debut, it's amazing quite how ready I am for a new album, probably because their debut songs were so familiar to a lot of us by the time they actually released them officially, thanks to myspace et al.

Luckily someone else must have thought so too, for today Favourite Worst Nightmare was released.

I listened to it in the car on the way home and was distinctly underwhelmed, except for the few instantly standout songs (Brianstorm, Teddy Picker and 505) but, as I remember being the case when I first heard their now classic early songs, it's creepingly growing on me, song by song, chorus by chorus. Now I'm convinced that this is another classic in the making, albeit a subtler, more refined classic.

Favourite line so far: "who'd want to be men of the people when there's people like you."