Lee Short

Houses of the Blooded

2009-09-15T04:16:32Z

Tried to play this yesterday. GOD does that game need an editor. It's also screamingly unbalanced, once you really figure out how to play. Which is really a shame, as Wick can really write a setting. He should really hire out the mechanics, though. Um, and get an editor.

Playtesting 4E baddies?

2009-05-11T04:13:12Z

I've got a number of low-level 4E DnD monsters I need to get playtested. I'd love to hear from anyone who's interested in giving them a try.

JAGS Wonderland

2007-06-13T00:36:36Z

Anybody read it? Other than Marco, duh!

After our recent Don't Rest Your Head game, I got this idea to do DRYH crossed with Wonderland with Star, Moon, and Cross mechanics. So: as a pure setting/advice book, how is JAGS Wonderland? What are the contents? Would it be easily amenable to a hybrid setting (some setting books are, some aren't)?

Enquiring minds, and all that. Marco is of course welcome to weigh in with his 2 cents.

Marco gets major kudos for

2007-02-08T02:52:13Z

this reference

A political sideline

2006-12-13T15:44:53Z

Stolen from lollardfish

You've already heard about the illegal DHS scheme that assigns a terrorist risk assessment score to any American who crosses the border by air. As you may know, DHS is trying to paper-up this nonsense by publishing a notice in the Federal Register.

I’ve set up an easy way for you to submit your comments without having to navigate the Byzantine labyrinth that is the Federal Register. Simply click here to be taken to a user-friendly submission form.

http://ws.privacyalertnetwork.net/points/point?id=444

The comment period closes December 29th, so now is the time to have your say. Can you please help me get the good word out on this?

Old News

2006-11-15T03:48:58Z

...to many of you.

Anyway, if you're at all familiar with the RPG theory forums/blogs, and haven't yet seen The Indie Gaming Scene, you're missing out. Big-time.

Reflections on Polaris

2006-11-08T04:18:32Z

So I played in the Polaris game that jhkimrpg ran last weekend at AmberCon Northwest. Damn, it was fun. We had an awesome group of players, if I do say so myself.

It was the end-of-the-con Sunday slot -- usually when all the players' attention spans are at their lowest. Certainly this game was a bit over-the-top, but not all that much.

The odd thing about the game is that it never really felt like we were engaging with the mechanics. The basic mechanic of the game is that each PC has a player ("heart") and an opposition ("mistaken"). The Heart is supposed to further the cause of the character; the Mistaken to thwart the character's progress. This isn't really how it played out in our game. In many cases, the Heart acted the thwart the character just as much as the Mistaken did (you say I have to cut my arm to defeat the demon -- no, I cut my arm off). It never really felt like the Heart and the Mistaken were in any real sort of opposition.

So what did we take from the game book that made this game any different than "d20 Doomed Frostknights"? I think it mostly boils down to the vision of play.

ACNW Game List

2006-10-16T00:01:20Z

1 -- Revenge of the Babysat
2 -- NINF -- Horror Rise
3 -- The End of the World
4 -- Amber Shadows
5 -- Karm vs. Osric
6 -- AmberQuest
7 -- Polaris

Damn! I got nearly all my 1sts. Maybe all of them, even -- I'd have to look to see for sure.

I'm playing in 3 quite big games (1,3,5), 3 quite small games (including the 2 that I'm running) (4,6,7), and 1 that's probably in the middle (2). Mostly classic amberish. Looks like a lot of fun. My only regret is that I mostly ended up playing with GMs I played under before; I kind of wanted to give some of the new blood a go. I loaded up my 2nd and 3rd choices with them; I didn't count on getting so many of my first choices.

Sadly, there were no Ameer games this year. Happily, Rob D and Lydia L will be back for the first time in 2-3 years. With luck, Fred and Deb will be with them.

ACNW, Part 2

2006-09-08T17:41:06Z

Well, I've put up the AmberQuest (Amber done with HeroQuest) game. I've got to do 2-3 pages of rules adaptations for it, but they'll be fun. I'm really looking forward to character sheets with things like "Grayswandir 5w3", "Army of Dogmen 10w", "Pattern 3w7" and "Warfare 8w5". I'm thinking of using Endurance Points much like Hero Points are used in the standard game -- except that certain actions like Hellriding automatically cost Endurance Points.

I chose to go with a throne war because I think that will spotlight the system best in a 5-hour slot.

It sounds like there's a big turnout this year. I wonder how big? IIRC, the biggest ACNW has been while I've been going is about 110, and the smallest is mid-80s. I've seen some buzz online about ACNW this past year, and I'm wondering how much of an affect it has had.

ACNW

2006-09-05T16:09:03Z

Well, I've submitted my 2 slots of Amber Shadows for this year. I also want to run a slot of Amber under the HeroQuest rules, but I need to sort out a thing or two before that game is gelled enough to write a description for.

Campaign Cartographer 2

2006-01-20T23:46:40Z

For some time, I've been meaning to dig this out and put in some time coming up to speed again. I finally got to do it this afternoon. I'd forgotten how much fun this is to play around with. Not only that, but you get cool maps as a byproduct!

New Star, Moon, Cross Draft posted

2005-12-22T05:55:58Z

...at the wiki. It's integrated most (but not all) of the feedback from the ACNW game, and the great feedback that ewilen sent me. I also posted the First Session Checklist (aka Gaming Preferences Discussion worksheet) to the wiki a couple weeks ago. I'm hoping to eventually expand this into something that might be more generally applicable.

The Lumpley Principle, Take 2

2005-12-18T17:32:40Z

In this thread on Matt Snyder's blog, there is a discussion on "GM Fiat", and player authority in the game. This post will reply to some of the points there, regarding "GM Fiat" and who actually has authority in the game.

Theory wonks, read on.

Let's start with the Lumpley Principle, that "System (including but not limited to 'the rules') is defined as the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play." A key part of this is that System is the means used during play, not the means stated in the rulebook (if there is one). Following the dictum that "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy", no set of rules survives contact with the play group. This means that the actual System is informally negotiated amongst the game's players, no matter what the game text says. The best that the game author can hope for is to set the terms of that negotiation and influence its course. This can be a powerful influence, but the players at the table have the final word.

Practically, what this means is that the social dynamics of the play group trump the written game text. D20 is often touted as an example of a game that is driven by GM fiat. Yet I've seen D20 games where the titular GM had authority over virtually nothing to do with interpretations of the mechanics, and these issues were negotiated among the other players at the table with no input from the GM. True to form, after the players had made their decision, the GM rubber-stamped it. But the real power was with the players. Dogs in the Vineyard is often touted as an example of a game that has strong rules to assure that each player gets authorial input. Yet I know of a Dogs session where one of the players had virtually no input at all, because of the social dynamics of the gaming group. 'The rules' said that this player had the right to frame their own conflicts...but some of the other players bulldozed through that shit.

No rules text in the world can stop bullies from being bullies, and no rules text in the world can stop timid players from being timid. Overcoming the players' Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits is easier said than done.

The first implication of all this is that "GM Fiat" is no such thing, unless that's the agreement that the players negotiate. Even then, the GM power to decree may be absolute in theory, but it never is in practice --- the players always have more power than this. Typically, much more power...though in the presence of bullies, all bets are off.

"GM fiat" theoretically represents a System where the gamemaster has unlimited power, but actually represents a myriad of underlying Systems. Attempting to analyze play of such Systems according to the theoretical System rather than the actual System cannot hope to have any degree of accuracy. Any analysis of such systems must account for all of the actual Systems represented. Yet there is continual synecdoche on this issue, mistaking certain dysfunctional forms of these Systems as representative of the whole. “GM fiat” systems often give their players little help in creating a functional System, but that does not mean that they can be pigeonholed as they so often are.

I propose a thought experiment. Imagine you are in a “GM fiat” game entering its fifth session. At the beginning of the session, the gamemaster says “Oops, sorry, guys. I just rolled a Force 5 Hurricane on the weather chart and you all die. Let’s roll up some new characters. I think you should all be elves this time.” If the players are truly powerless in the game and the GM is all-powerful, then you all must take the abuse and roll up new characters. But the fact is, you’ll probably leave the game, or convince the GM to give way. Your ability to walk from the game gives you power, and you don’t have to sit there and take this abuse.

It’s the players’ ability to walk from the game that gives them power in any game. Imagine a game of Primetime Adventures where all the players show up and then the Director turns up the Metallica to 120 decibels and yells into their ears “I’ve decided that our game tonight will be a TV series about giant furry Martian spiders…study this map.” The only thing that gives the players power to deal with this high-handed behavior is their ability to walk from the game. In fact, no one at the table has any power that doesn’t have its basis in their ability to walk from the game. "GM fiat" is a myth: it is simply the gamemaster exercising his prerogative to walk away from the gaming table if what happens there doesn't suit him --- a power which all of the players have. It is not a power unique to the gamemaster.

Now, what can be said about some of the “GM fiat” games is that the game text discourages the players from using this power. This in no way changes the fact that the players actually have that power. To believe so is to vastly overestimate the power of the game text. The ADRPG text practically screams at the players, telling them not to use this power and to let the GM walk all over them. This is just one of the reasons it is widely scoffed at by many of the actual players.

The implication for game design is that the game text is limited in its ability to combat dysfunction (for several reasons, only two of which will I mention here). In brief, its power is limited to specifying some aspects of a baseline System. In cannot specify the actual System to be used by the players, it can only be a baseline System from which the players will create their own System. Secondly, any actual System consists of a very large number of actual rules. Any game text must choose to focus on a small subset of these rules, yet all of them are important. For instance, Dogs in the Vineyard does not contain any text that states "don't shout down the other players." Nor should it; that's not a good use of the limited game text. Given the finite nature of the game text, the play group will be left on its own to fill in a large number of informal rules. Sometimes the rules they build will include "don't shout down the other players," sometimes they will include "shouting down the other players is acceptable." These rules don't even have to be created until they come into play (and they typically aren't).

ACNW Amber Shadows

2005-12-09T02:26:14Z

This is a writeup of the Amber Shadows game I ran at AmberCon NorthWest. Let me know what you think about the format.

The players were John Kim (jhkimrpg), Emma Sansone, Pol Jackson (pjack), Kath Nyborg, and myself. Thaddeus Rice was slotted for the game but had to cancel from the con. That left 5 players. SMC has never been played before with more than 4; 5 was fine. With 6, I think the game would have gone too long for a round of turns (that would have pushed it to 2 hours between turns). Had Thaddeus shown up, I would have facilitated the game and not played. Probably experienced players could make a group of six work but the game is really designed for 4 or 5. We sat around the table in the order Pol->me->Kath->John->Emma, in clockwise order. The player to your left is your GM, so I GMed for Pol, Kath GMed for me, etc.

I had originally asked for 2 separated slots, 4 hours Thursday night and 4 hours Friday morning. I wanted the players to have time for the game's process to sink in after the first slot, so that we'd hit the ground running in the second slot. That didn't happen (no fault of the schedulers); we had one 7.5 hour slot instead (including time for lunch). One of the things that I dropped from the game was the Gaming Preferences Discussion. The place where I think this discussion would have really helped the game was in the pacing. There was once at the table when it seemed that John wanted faster pacing than Emma, who was his GM. There was another time where I figured out too late that I scene I was running for Pol was too slow for his tastes (right?). I had the impression that Pol wanted the fastest pacing in the group, and Emma wanted the slowest, with the rest of us in betweeen. From table feel, I had the impression that there might not be any compromise pacing that would really satisfy both Pol and Emma -- but that, with a little discussion about references, either one could have worked with the other 3 of us.

I made a mistake right away by presenting the players with their full character sheets (we used pregens). We got sidetracked explaining stuff on the sheet, stuff that would have been better explained after we had done The Newsreel. I should have only presented them with a brief description of their characters, which was all they needed for The Newsreel. In The Newsreel, the players generated the plot that our player characters would be interacting with. I had prepped a *very* sketchy setting and no situation at all. Fortunately, everyone caught on very quickly and generated a bunch of interesting stuff. Since there is no single GM, The Newsreel has to both fill out setting details and set plot threads in motion. Everyone seemed to grasp this clearly and it worked very well; it was the smoothest part of the game. Mechanically, The Newsreel works by the players taking turns around the table playing tarot cards and then adding a new character or event to the setting that is based on the meaning of the card (two other mechanisms, Full Resolution and Free Exposition, are both similar).

After The Newsreel, each player framed a short introductory scene that illustrated some aspect of their character. I don't recall much about these scenes, but I think they did a servicable job at introducing the characters. To complete the character introduction, we had a common scene where we all interacted in character. The thing that's a little different about the common introduction scene is that there's no GM to play any NPCs -- every player has a PC, so the only significant characters are the PCs. We chose to play an informal, family-only dinner. As it turned out, our interactions in this scene set the stage for our individual scenes -- we discussed an upcoming visit of state, what needed to be done to prepare for it, and which of us would do each of these tasks. We were pretty cooperative in character -- a big change from the other playtests, where each of the characters was usually doing their own thing.

After this, we went to a round of Player Turns. In S,M,C, each Player Turn is generally a single long scene or 2-3 short scenes. The acting player can aggressively frame the scene if he wants, or not. Most of the time, it is the acting player who is framing the scene, but it is OK for the GM to spring a scene on the player once in a while.
Kibitzing from the other players about the scene framing is fine. Unfortunately, I didn't really explain any of this at game time and this caused some hiccups.

During the scenes, we got to use Quick Resolution and Full Resolution and Free Exposition. Unfortunately, there was an unnecessary glitch in Quick Resolution. The original rules had made trump cards in the player's hand useless in Quick Resolution. That was one of the things playtesting had uncovered, and I forgot about the updated rule during play. It was signficant because Kath tried something that was resolved with Quick Resolution where her trumps would have been useful. Because I had forgotten about the rule, she had a tough time of it and was a bit frustrated.

During Emma's turn, we ran into an undeveloped part of the setting background that we wanted to develop some more. Here we used Free Exposition, similar to The Newsreel, to develop the background. Normally Free Exposition is about developing the background, not resolving character actions but in this case we did both at the same time ("your character finds out that Marcus knows the Kashfan ambassador" rather than "Marcus knows the Kashfan ambassador"). This worked out just fine. Free Exposition was designed for exactly those times when you're on the spot as GM but you don't really have any good ideas about what to do or where to go -- it's a way of getting some help from the other players at the table. It also works if you just want to give the other players some input. Full Resolution also works in this GM-by-committee kind of way (in Quick Resolution, only the Acting Player plays cards and only she and the GM are involved).

One of the features of S,M,C is that the other players can act for your player character (usually when "the right choice" is obvious). For example, when my character Jacques boarded a ghost ship, the Lord of Chaos who had conjured the ship jumped overboard and let the conjuration lapse. At this point, Emma narrated that Jacques felt the deck giving way beneath him and jumped back on his own ship. In S,M,C this is perfectly acceptable (with the caveat that the player of the character may contradict the narration) but it is strongly against traditional social contracts and game texts -- so Emma was hesitant about doing it until I told her to go ahead.

Another item of note about S,M,C is that the other players are almost never allowed to cause real harm to your player character. Unless you take suicidal actions, the only person who can harm your player character is you, through the Concession mechanic. I failed to make this clear, and it led to some confusion. During the scene, we had had a combat with a shapeshifted manticore and I had narrated that my character closed with the manticore and was struck on the arm. That is well within the rights of narration; I or any other player could have narrated that my character was struck. What cannot be simply narrated is the extent of the injury resulting. That is determined by how many Concessions the character takes in the scene. In our game, after the scene where Jacques took the blow, there was an issue about how wounded he had been. To me, it was obvious -- there were no Concessions, so Jacques wasn't wounded unless I wanted him to be. But I hadn't explained that at all.

I thought it was a very positive playtest. Everyone seemed to have fun, and I got some useful feedback about explaining how the system works. I also thought that it showed the system's strengths and weaknesses fairly well. IMO, the biggest weaknesses are (1) how the system handles group actions (though I made some improvements based on this experience), and (2) since the "default gaming social contract" is out the window, social contract needs to be very clearly communicated or there will be problems. I think the system has several strengths. First, I think it gets real group ownership of the plot and the setting -- you are left with the feeling of "look at what WE made". Lots of cool stuff happened -- but for most of it, I can't remember who did it (except for The Finger). Also, it's great for low/no-prep gaming.

On (Freeform) Play, Part the Second

2005-12-01T21:12:59Z

One of the keys to successful freeform is to communicate what your game is about. The reason why this is often more successful than you might expect is that all freeform players realize that they've got to clearly communicate what their game is about, because there is no default. They can't rely on "hey, let's play some Vampire." This latter form of communication relies on the fallacious notion that "Vampire" is a well-defined game and that the game is well-specified by saying "Vampire". The freeformer knows that he's got to communicate better than that if he wants to have fun with his game. So he learns how to do it.

That said, I once went to a freeform game at the local con here in St Paul where the event description was "Chris being arbitrary." I had never played with any of the players before (and haven't since, either). It was great fun , and I think the event description was an effective piece of communication. It said "don't show up unless you're willing to go with the flow." A number of the freeform games from my college days that I played in LA-area conventions were more hit-or-miss (but there were notable hits), I think largely because the communication was lacking. IME, if you show up to a freeform game and everybody wants to be in the game that the GM wants to run, you are 95% of the way to a great game. In fact, I think this statement holds for just about any RPG at all, not just freeform.

And I think it's this element that is the strength of games like Dogs in the Vineyard and My Life with Master. The game rules themselves specify quite narrowly "what game the GM wants to run" when he invites everyone over for a game of Dogs. This is also the weakness of those games: by specifying this narrowly, they become inflexible. If you don't want to play the narrowly-specified game that Dogs is, you're out of luck. That's why Star, Moon, and Cross takes a more toolkit approach: through the Gaming Preferences Discussion part of the game, it helps the players make their own game specification. This fails in a different way than Dogs fails: it fails when the players fail to communicate effectively with each other -- either through simple miscommunication, or because the Gaming Preferences section omits important items of discussion. IME, this approach fails most often through ambiguity in communicating the game's specification. Players with flexible game preferences will tend not to find that this is an issue; players with firmer game preferences will tend to have more trouble with this approach.

On Freeform Play, Part the First

2005-12-01T05:56:04Z

In this thread on John Kim's LJ, Mark W raises this question about freeform play in general and ADRPG in particular:

the case, there's _something_ going on that makes play work. It clearly isn't anything about the publicly acknowledged rules. Unless you can give me a better explanation, I'm going to believe that it's a culture.

When you're saying "it's a culture" here, I think you really mean something like "it's because each of the players is mentored by an experienced player," because otherwise it has no relevance to the topics in the parent thread [newcomers may wish to view that thread to understand this]. Saying that "it's a culture" doesn't really answer any of the important questions, because "the culture" includes so many things (including the rulebook). Certainly ADRPG is a culture. But Ultimate Frisbee and Rockclimbing are cultures too, and those cultures can't produce satisfying freeform RPG play. So the questions we have to answer are: what are the elements of ADRPG culture that allow it to produce satisfying freeform RPG play, are they unique to that culture, and how can we communicate them?

It's clearly the case that the ADRP rulebook has none of these answers, and that a good guidebook for freeform games would have them. The ADRP rulebook consists of X pages of solid advice on how to create a character sheet for a freeform Amber game, Y pages of NPC background, and Z pages of haphazard "how to GM like I do" advice -- none of which answers these questions.

Your answer to those questions appears to be "because each new player is trained in by experienced ADRP players." I disagree with this. When white-box D&D came out, new players somehow figured out how to get functional play out of it, or the hobby would be dead today. The only thing that white box D&D had that ADRPG lacks is a functional combat system. That combat system doesn't address any of the issues you've raised here: those holes existed in OD&D, too.

When I got my white box OD&D in junior high, there was literally not a single other person in our junior high who played the game. There was no one to mentor us, but somehow we figured it out with the two kids from down the street. We loved it; we played so much our mom was sure our grades would suffer.

I've got a bunch more to say, but it will have to wait for tomorrow.

S,M,C Update

2005-11-29T01:23:42Z

I've put up an updated version of Star, Moon, and Cross at the website. The only major change is the inclusion of mechanics for situations when more than one player character is involved in the action. There's a few updates with feedback from ACNW, but I've got some more feedback that I need to integrate. Thanks to both pjack and jhkimrpg for feedback (and for playing in the game). I owe ewilen (at least) an Actual Play report on that, too.

I'm more-or-less done with Chapters One (Introduction), Two (How to Play), Three (Character Generation), Five (Resolution), and Six (Other Mechanics). I expect that these chapters are not exactly finished, but I'd be surprised if there's more than one reorg left in them. Current body count is 64 pages, with 29000++ words (I say ++ because MS Word isn't smart enough to include sidebars in the word count).

That leaves untouched Chapters Four (Alchemy), Seven (The Circle of Antioch), Eight (The Crusades, Religion, and Culture), Nine (Politics and Economy) and the appendices (How to adapt SMC for other settings, Glossary, and Reading List)....so, lots of reading to do. I've gone through about seven or so books so far. Recommended: The Asssassins, Bernard Lewis, and Crusading Warfare, R.C. Smail (the latter is a bit dated but quite good). Disappointing: Science in Medieval Islam, Howard R. Turner.

Busy of late

2005-11-15T05:07:21Z

I've done no writing for at least a month. I should be writing now, but instead I'm surfing...you should see this thread at rpgnet. It's too funny to miss out on.

On the plus side, things look really positive for moving out to Oregon early next year (Hood River, to be specific). Oh, and Ambercon Northwest is in 3 days.

Stuff

2005-10-04T04:41:35Z

It's awesome to see some really good conversations catching on in ewilen and jhkimrpg's livejournals. We'll get critical mass yet.

SMC update: re-organized some stuff over the weekend. Hacked Chapter Two in half, put half of it in Chapter Three and half of it in Chapter Six (nee Seven). Chapters 1 to 3 and 5 are now done, Chapter 6 has about 4-5 pages (of probably 10-12) done. I posted a draft on Friday to the wiki so it would be available when the ACNW gamebook came out --- and now the text is already very different.

Yawn

2005-09-25T23:57:34Z

I'm so tired of this sort of thing: In specific: If you disagree with Forge theory before reading this, it will likely not convince you otherwise. It will, however, allow you to argue from a position of knowledge, rather than a position of ignorance. (from Ben Lehman's blog).

The arrogance is tiring. The continued assumption that if you disagree with Forge theory, it is because you don't understand it. This is the sort of 'discussion' about theory that I refuse to have. It's an unhealthy, incestuous discussion. The same sort of 'discussion' that allowed Chris Chinn and Vincent to make blanket assertions about "what traditional games do" and have those assertions go unchallenged...rather, the readers all nodded their heads sagely and said "tis so, tis so." Frankly, I don't blame Vincent & Chris...everyone slips once in a while. But everyone who nodded their heads along with the crowd...can't say a lot for them. John (and I) called them on it, and they all told him he was full of it. Oh, well, I guess everyone is welcome to their opinion. It's just kind of funny that they seem to think that this is a healthy discussion.

-------------

On to positive topics. The Star, The Moon, and The Cross -- I'm nearly done with chapter 6. Just a few key examples to go. Up to 21000+ words (48 pages), excluding the sidebars. For some reason, MS Word refuses to tally them in the word count. The first big feedback change from playback is in, too. Can't wait to give it (in the guise of Amber Shadows) a spin at AmberCon Northwest.

Update -- Star, Moon, and Cross

2005-09-19T04:45:17Z

Chapters One to Four (Introduction, How to Play, The First Session, Character Generation and Development) pretty much done, 6 or 7 more to go. Over 14000 words so far, if MS Word can be trusted. 32 pages with present formatting. For now, I'm skipping Chapter Five (Alchemy) and going on to Chapters Six, Seven, Eight (respectively: Resolution, The Newsreel, Other Mechanics). I'd love to get some feedback if anyone has the time to look it over.

I've got lots of reading to do before I can write chapters five, nine, or ten (but then, I should get some real help from Dave on the latter two); books keep coming in the mail. This book on Islamic science and this book on Arabic culture and this novel look especially interesting. There's some really cool looking $125 academic works that maybe Dave can get from the library with his academic connections. They show up on my Amazon wish list as "8 new and used available from $71.95."

Wow! Talk about a change of heart!!

2005-08-21T05:44:19Z

With some help from my friends, I'm really psyched about making my _Amber Shadows_ project into a semi-historical Crusades-era games called _The Star, The Moon, and The Cross_. Me and a few of my friends are psyched about it -- best of all, my good friend Dave has volunteered to help with editing and writing. This is very good, as Dave is all-but-dissertation (and only a few months left on that) in his PhD in crusader history.

Plus, on Friday, we had a knockout playtest session (still using the Amber setting). It was our second session with the second playtest group; they seem to be getting the hang of the system a bit faster. Hopefully our first playtest group will work out better in another session or two.

Now I just need to get off my ass and write.

Project Report: Amber Shadows

2005-07-30T16:32:46Z

So last night was our first pre-Alpha session of my Amber Shadows takeoff of Chris Lehrich's Shadows in the Fog. There were a number of speed bumps; that was expected. On the plus side, there wasn't really anything that I thought was fundamentally off. So, no major rework in the offing just yet. But there's much playtest yet to come. I've updated the play aids and our second playtest group will kick off on Tuesday. I've updated the play aids and summary sheets, and I expect the first session with the next group will go smoother because of it.

Now that it's time to revise the outline and get going on the game text, I'm a little unmotivated in one regard. I'm pretty disappointed that I won't be able to formally publish it with the Amber setting, as I feel that the setting is a really good match for the mechanics. Which leaves me with 2 options: publish the game as a generic system, or come up with a setting. If I went generic, I would aim it for genres like Amber, Nobilis, Sandman, In Nomine, etc. That could work, but I'm thinking that the game text will be awkward to write in a generic manner. OTOH, I have yet to brainstorm up a setting that's got me psyched...and if I'm not psyched about the setting, it'll be *very* hard to work my way through the text.

I'm also beginning to think about if I want to actually do a hardcopy version. This wasn't even vaguely on my agenda earlier, but I'm really happy with how the mechanics have fit together. So far. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, and my scouts have only just been sent out. And the game text isn't written, either.

An Open Reply to Vincent Baker on Setting and such

2005-07-21T05:24:36Z

When I read your Op Ed piece on Setting, I reacted as I often do to your writing -- you have valuable thoughts on where to take games in the future, but the analysis of past games is completely off the mark. To be more specific, you have a talent for identifying elements that were missing in past games. Elements that improve the gaming experience. Elements that would make great additions to new games.

I agree that the players should look at setting materials as a tool, not a restriction. The setting should be theirs to play with and modify and expand upon. If I didn't feel this way, I would hardly have written Clay of the Gods.

So when you say

What do we roleplayers need? We need the starting point of the creative process instead.

Because what we're doing? It's creative.

I'm totally there.

But when we look at the complete statement

The punchline is: most RPGs' setting material (along with all primary source fiction, like Firefly or The Lord of the Rings) is the end product of a creative process. What do we roleplayers need? We need the starting point of the creative process instead.

Because what we're doing? It's creative.

I find myself in complete disagreement with the connotations of this statement. Ben Lehman's comment got it right: The Lord of the Rings can be both the end product of a creative process, and the starting point of a creative process. There's no reason at all it has to be one or the other. In fact, the more brilliantly creative the setting material is, the more it inspires further creativity. Brilliantly creative setting material can also inspire slavish imitation too. But there's nothing that says it has to be used that way.

Let's use one of my own games to explore this in a little more depth. I recently ran a campaign set in Glen Cook The Black Company world, set shortly after the conclusion of the first set of books. I set the game in Roses, one of the cities that gets a lot of spotlight time in the books. Despite Roses' prominence in one of the books, there is a great deal that we don't know about Roses. During the course of my game, we collectively built our Roses, with setting building sessions for the first hour or so of each game session. We built our Roses on top of Cook's Roses; we filled in a small part of the vast field of details that Cook does not cover in his books. We used Cook's work as a springboard for our own creative work.

Do you disagree with this analysis? I think so, but I can't tell for sure from the other thread.

But where we definitely part ways is when we get to this statement:

But I stand: fetishizing our source material is something we do a lot, something that most rpgs insist that we do, and it's holding us back - holding us back relative to my agenda and the stated purpose of this blog thingy.

I totally disagree.

The first part that I would challenge is the assertion that "fetishizing our source material is something we do a lot." My response to that is "who's we, white man?" In other words, I think individual experiences with this will vary a lot. It's not something I've done or seen done much at all. But then I've rarely played games in "stock" settings; mostly they leave me cold. From Greyhawk and Blackmoor through World of Darkness and out the other side to the settings in Riddle of Steel and The Shadow of Yesterday. Yawnsville, all of it. I know other people who prefer to play in these stock settings -- I just don't play them often, and never have. So I've played a lot of games in homespun worlds, and alternative universes (based on both the real world and fiction). To make a long story short: my experience is different than yours, and the sum total of our two experiences adds up to just anecdotes. People whose personal experience is closer to yours will be inclined to believe your version; people whose personal experience is closer to mine will be inclined not to. If there's any real research on the topic, I'd love to see it. In fact, that would be some pretty valuable market research.

The other part I disagree with is your claim that there's game text in "most rpgs" that "insists" that we do this. In fact, I think that the topic of setting material and how it should be treated isn't something that's even mentioned in 90% of rpgs. Or more. I've never seen anything like "here, take this setting material and treat it as holy writ." Now I'll also admit that "here, take this setting material and have your way with it" shows up pretty damn rarely -- and I totally agree that this kind of text would be useful. But you say that there's "holy writ" text in "most games." I disagree. Fortunately, this really isn't a matter of opinion. Either the text is there, or it isn't. If it's there in "most games", then it should be easy to find several influential games that have it. So I'd like to see some actual game text that supports this claim of yours.

Lee