Ventastic

So I don’t really do personal stuff on here, in general, but I’m having a really shitty couple of weeks, and this is my sandbox so if I want to get some shit out, this is where it’s happening.

I’m extremely frustrated with an industry where everyone expects you to give 100% when they’re only paying you 20%. Where you can’t affort to work at only one place at a time, but when the inevitable conflicts come up, it’s your fault that you have to cut time out of each so you can get everything done. Where no matter what, it’s the freelancers fault, basically.

And it’s ’specially bad because then I get to feeling all guilty and shit, like I really should be doing more (ignore the string of 14-hour days, I should be getting more DONE, dammit). Where every two-bit fucking outfit thinks that it’s gods gift to theatre, and that the production is going to be the only thing thats important in your life, but then you start thinking that you’re not giving enough.

I have this sick feeling in my stomach and I don’t know if it’s because I decided to take the morning to get my shit together (and thus not putting in some more hours on deck), or general fatigue, or disgust that I’m getting so fucking strung out that I can’t just accept that sometimes, shit doesn’t get done. Or maybe just that I’ve done so much physical labor that my digestive system is revolting and trying to rip itself out of my stomach.

I’m sick of not being able to work on games. I’m sick of only seeing my girlfriend for two nights a week. I’m fucking sick of getting flak for not getting more done when there’s a serious crew shortage and the place isn’t willing to spend more money and I’ve already put in so many hours that I wouldn’t be able to legally work anymore at union gigs. I’m sick of figuring out that my pay is working out to about 10 cents an hour.

Well, time to do some more shopping. But I do know one thing….I’ve never letting this fucking happen again.

I can’t wait for Thursday. Happy thanksgiving, everyone.

Awww, Thanks Guys

The Sons of Kryos have some very nice things to say about carry, which Judd played at DexCon and Jeff played at JiffyCon, in their latest podcast. They go a bit into detail about their thoughts on the game and liken it to Spirit of the Century (!), and it was really nice for me to hear some analysis about the game from others.

And you should be listening to the podcast anyway, so….where, I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.

Identification

So there’s this thing that happens with roleplaying, where you can have an awesome game session, but then if you retell the narrative, it’s flat or staid or not particularly interesting. And this is a dissonance, because you know that it was a really fun game, and you guys were all really into making that narrative through your audience-participation, so why is the “plot” so lame?

So there’s this thing that happens in literature and film where it’s creator gets you to identify with different characters in different ways. It’’s really easy to see in film because it’s how film works as an emotional medium - the good guy has a set of attributes, and is presented to you in such a way, as to make you project your sense of self-identity into him. The villain is presented in such a way as for you to project things and people that you have experience with as being wrong or bad into him. And so on.

So there’s this thing in roleplay called “character creation,” where the process of creating your filter for interaction with the fiction is a process of straight-up, no-holds-barred, identification with that character.  And so, your game is full of characters that you start off the bat as identifying with in a way that nobody else can.

So I think that’s really interesting.

Ok, Seriously

So…uh…I guess I get all warm and fuzzy when I see the word “awesome” being note-ad-ly edited “out” of yer posts, and all, but it’s getting old.

If you wanna say something about it, say it. If you don’t, I don’t need the flak, yo.

Experiential

Sometimes you just have to start throwing shite at the wall and see what sticks.

I have a draft of a character sheet now. Characters have traits that have boxes, stuff about their Perversity (including Discipline and Nerve and Malocchio’s), stuff about the Imp they are playing (including Influence, Duplicity and Lusus Naturae), and a section called Grim and Horrible Tales that is stuff that other people get to give to your character (under the headings of Compassion, Desperation, Discovery, Tricks and Secrets) and is the means of character advancement.

Now I’m figuring out how this all hooks into the resolution matrix idea that I’m running with for resolution stuff.

The Reverse Engineer experience is totally helping here. I’m putting stuff on the sheet that I want to be there, and figuring out how it all works as I go.

I’m trying to keep the fiddly bits to a minimum - that is, there is going to be a deck of cards, and the resolution matrix of cards, but I think I want everything on the sheet to be about effecting the matrix. You never have a hand of cards, or anything. I dunno if this will be boring.

I think that this design process is going to be extremely iterative.

Mmm, New Theme

And I really like it. A couple tweaks to make, tho.

In other blog news, people apparently like pictures. I’ve had the most traffic of any day I’ve had this blog yesterday, and almost half of the views were for JiffyCon pics.

In other non-blog news, The Imp Of The Perverse is proceeding in dribs and drabs. Which is nice.

I dunno. Working a lot. Tired a lot. Hopefully I’ll have more free time in December.

JiffyCon In Pictures

I fully intended to take more pics, but I kinda lost at that game. But here’s what I managed to get that didn’t suck. Click to enlarge. More info about the Con to follow!

In the Morning
Dev, Eben, Tom’s back, the back of Jeff’s head, glowing Vincent, Judd, the back of Jon Walson’s head, and Shreyas.

Tom, Jeff, someone’s arm, Judd and Jon.
Judd is a rockstar.

Going to Eat

I had a couple more, but this is the only one that came out half-way decent. Joshua and the back of Shreyas’s head star.
Good Times at Casa Del Baker

I really dig the quality of light in this house, and took a bunch of pictures, most of which suck. Here we have Tom doing some reading, and closeup on Emily.

Hey Judd? Stop being such a rockstar. You’re making the rest of us look bad.

Dev is perplexed.

Best. Picture. Ever.

There just aren’t the words. Tovey will be your master now!

(Is it weird that I think Tovey looks strangely similar to Luke in this picture? Can someone link me to the pic of Luke playin Agon at Gen Con?)

So yes. Much fun was had. More details to come.

Tired Of Awesome

So…I dunno. I’m starting to get tired of awesome.

I’m sure there’s a liguistic term for it, but it’s the thing where the constant (over)use of a term makes it meaningless. It seems that everything I see on teh intarwebz is described as awesome. Or bringing the awesome. Or stepping up with the awesome. Or whatever.

Is this merely a linguistic rant? Perhaps. But I think it’s a sign of something a little more important, and this links into some of the post-Gen Con kerfluffle (remember that, kids?) regarding criticism and feedback. In internet discourse, at least, there’s a lot of pressure to only post with things that are awesome. Games that are great, things you think are really good, game experiences that kicked ass, and all of that stuff.

Like most things, this is both good and bad. It’s good because we are a small community, and there’s a lot of negativity out there, and we need to have the energy of awesome in order to have a comfortable sphere within which to interact. And that’s all good.

But it’s bad in terms of creating a culture of feedback and constructive criticism. Not everything is awesome! There’s a lot of stuff out there that happens that isn’t awesome. A lot of it is still quite good. And, more importantly, much of is has potential to be really good. But it is never going to get to the next level if there isn’t critique and criticism!

“It” could be a game design, playing a game, reviewing games, whatever. Doesn’t matter.

I personally am a little frustrated because I’ve gotten private feedback about one of my games, and when I said “hey, could you/are you going to do an AP post?” I got the response “well, it wasn’t a great session, so I don’t think it’s worth it.”

I mean, post, don’t post, whatever. But I think making the deciding factor whether a given session was awesome or not?

Well…it’s hard to critique awesome.

[EDIT: Definitly read the comments on this one, folks]

Some Thoughts on DRYH

I ran a Halloween-themed game of Don’t Rest Your Head at StoryGames Boston the other night. The premise of the game was that the characters would be insomniac children going Trick-or-Treating on Halloween, and they would slip into the spooky suburbs of the Mad City over the course of the evening. I made some pre-gen characters (filling in bio info, What Keeps You Awake and What’s On The Surface - I used the latter to put down their Halloween costume!). I had three players (Jon Walton, Dev and DJ).

I have two main observations. First, was that I made a poor choice. DRYH does not specify how narration rights are distributed, and explicity says “each group will have its own style, you should talk about it with your group.” I thought it would be interesting to experiment, and have me as the GM basically have all narration authority. I wanted to see how/if this would work, with the way that the game produces outcomes through it’s dice mechanic.

In restrospect, this was a very poor choice. I was tired anyway, and boy, it’s hard to do all the talking! It led to at least one case of hard deprotaginization, of Jon’s character, because I had a specific idea in my head of how a conflict would go, and he had a very different idea. The burden was all on me to make the cool happen, and I petered out pretty quick. It was a very solid illustration of the Czege principle - I was creating the adversity for the characters, and I was also resolving it. The resolution was informed by the mechanics and the information I got from the players between rolls, but it was still coming from me.

Next time, I think it would be most awesome to split up narrational authority based on what is dominent in a roll. So, Pain = GM, Disclipline = Player, Madness = Player to left, and Exhaustion = Player to right. Or Madness and Exhaustion are explicitly “lets all brianstorm on this one.”

The second observation is about the game itself. It’s very interesting to me that it’s totally up to an individual player as to whether they engage with the reward system or not. I mean, yes, the GM can present huge amount of Pain in order to push a player to bring in more dice, but, really, until you choose to bring in Exhaustion or Madness, you don’t engage with the reward system, AND you don’t face the two ultimate penalties (falling asleep or snapping).

Once you step onto the spiral, the GM has more tools to push you, and you have more forces pushing you farther down. But, that first step is totally up to the player, and thats very interesting.

RPG Design Handbook: Chapter 2 (part 1)

So far:

• Table Of Contents
• Chapter 1, Part 1
• Chapter 1, Part 2
• Chapter 1, Part 3

Chapter 2: Core Questions

So far, we’ve stated the assumptions this book is going to be based on, and talked about some of the tools you can use to identify your play and design preferences. This chapter is going to describe some systems to use once you’ve had an idea that you want to develop.

Chances are, you picked up this book because you already have a great idea for a game, and want some help in realizing it. Or, maybe, now that you’ve been actively “listening” to how you play, you’re discovering the areas that you want to improve or modify. In any case, this chapter is going to assume that you have some concept that you’re ready to run with. Whether it be one sentance (”Vampire priest’s saving the world from the tyranny of the sun”) or a notebook full of weapon statistics, there tools given in this chapter are meant to shape and channel your ideas into something unique, productive, and producable.

Here are three sets of overlapping questions, each approaching the same conceptual territory from slightly different angles. Those are the “Big Three,” the “Alternate Three,” and the “Power 19.”
The Big Three

The big three questions you need to ask yourself when your ready to sink time, effort, and money into your game idea:

• What is this game about?
• What do the characters do?
• What do the players do?

What is this game about?

The first thing to know about the answer to this question is what it isn’t. It isn’t the sales pitch, and it isn’t the back-cover blurb or ad promo for the game. It isn’t the cool damage mechanic, and it’s not the dragon mythology or the epic backstory. These are all tempting, tempting answers, because they are what we’re used to hearing when we ask what a game is about.

“What is Dungeons and Dragons about?” “Well, it’s about being an adventurer in a fantasy world, where you can do anything you can imagine!”

“What is Vampire: the Masquerade about?” “It’s a storytelling game with a dice pool system where you’re a vampire and you have to deal with your bestial nature all the time.”

“What is Dogs in the Vineyard about?” “It’s about mormon gunslingers in a west that never quite was.”

None of those answers are correct, or useful to designing those games. Or, to put it another way, these are not answers that underlie the actual design content of those games.

Answering this question is almost like answering “Why am I writing this game in the first place?” with something of the construction “I haven’t seen any game that does X, and thats what I want this game to do.”

To take Dogs In The Vineyard as an example, the answer is probably closer to “This game is about judgement, including both the judgements that the characters bring to bear in their roles as gods watchdogs, and the judgements that the players of the game make about their characters.”

This question can be a hard one to answer, or at least it can be hard to find the right words to express your answer. But it’s worth taking the time to think about it, because finding those words will help orient the rest of your design thinking.

What Do The Characters Do?

“Adventure” and “explore the game world” are both bad answers to this question. This is because those are components of almost every game, and (arguably) of every kind of roleplay. Many times, what the characters do is the hook into what the game is about. Or, to put it another way, once you know what the game is about, you can see what kinds of activities the characters will have to have the ability and opportunity to do in order to engage with that subject matter.

To look at our earlier examples: In D&D, characters overcome threats, usually physical or magical, with their strength and wits in order to gain rewards and increased resources. In Dogs In The Vineyard, characters ride from town to town, solving problems and doling out judgement on sinners.

An Aside: See how the answers for a “traditional” design (D&D) and a “focused” design (DitV) differ in scope? Many traditional designs couch their character hook in more general terms with an implied connection to what the game is about, which many focused designs make a direct, strong and explicit connection.

Characters are the vehicle for engagement between the players and the shared game fiction - so, what the characters are up to, whether explicit or implied in the rules text, are one of the first filters through which a potential player will view your game. Many games are “pitched” to a group via what kind of characters they can play (”You play Mecha pilots duking it out with alien invaders!”) as opposed to more conceptual or structural elements of the game (”This game is about imperialism and cultural identity!”) So answering this question is valuable both as a guide for various design elements that center around character building and advancement, and as a conceptual tool for identifying how others will approach your game.

What Do The Players Do?

Again, the number one answer is not a helpful one: “Play their characters.” Again, this is a definitional answer, not a constructive one. Playing a character can take many different forms, and the answer to this question can aim at a number of places. What does playing a character entail? Does the player get complete control over their character, or are there other influences? Are there certain ways of playing (like character immersion, say, or developing backstory through play) that you want to encourage or discourage with your game?

Secondly, there are many more ways a player can have an influence on the game than just by playing their character. For more details on this specifically, see the later sections on Stances and GM Duties & Responsibilities. But, in short, can players contribute to developing the game world? Introduce NPCs? Reward or punish the GM, or other players, for certain behaviors?

You can look at this question as answering why a player will have fun playing your game, and/or as what kinds of interactions an outside observer would see while watching people play your game. This question is all about the actual people at the actual table, and how they engage with the game and with each other through the game.

For more on the Big Three, see What are “The Big Three”?; Troy’s Standard Rant #1; and Troy’s Standard Rant #2.

(Next Up: The Alternate Three)