I ran a short game of My Life With Master this evening. Tomorrow I should have some time to actually talk about it.

It was really, really good. Without hyperbole, I think it’s one of the tightest, most effective games I’ve ever played. I wouldn’t say I had the best game ever (we got through maybe Act I of a three-act story arc, and I’m not going to have a chance to continue the game with these players for a long time, if ever), but it was very solid.

We made extremely vibrant fiction. More thoughts tomorrow.

Here’s the (filled-out) play aid that I threw together for the JiffyCon Boston playtest of Annalise. Click for full size.

Whenever you get into a moment in the game, the group generates an array of possible achievements and consequences that could come out of the moment. If you read down the paper, you can kinda see the flow of the game based on which achievements and consequences were on hand for the various moments. Which is hella cool!

I plan to revise it into something a little easier to parse at the table (probably with little circles or boxes for assigning dice, with the chart at the bottom that tells you which number means which either relegated to a different play aid kinda thing, or integrated into the sheet in a less obtrusive manner).

Anyway, something I’ve been meaning to post for awhile. In general life news, we’re at the end of the season at the shop I work at, so we’re in the big final build crunch. Lot’s of overtime in the next two weeks, but no free time a’tall. I am waiting on the proofs for the next printing of carry, though, so that is probably the next thing I’ll be posting about.

Also, news soon about my booth at Gen Con!

That is all.

This turned out longer than I thought. Skip to the end for the point.

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Characters are (usually, not always, but the vast majority of the time) the interface that the players use to interface with the fiction.

Character “effectiveness” is a good (and commonly understood, I think) phrase for talking about the way in which that interface works. A characters effectiveness may be because of the stats that it has, or it may be measured by a metaresource that is used by the player in order to change the fiction in order to “help the character out,” or whatever else. But it’s a trivial point to say that a 10th level D&D character is more effective than a 1st level D&D character, right?

Well, I’m not sure that thats a trivial point at all. Because, yes, a 1st level D&D character in the same party as the 10th level one will be overwhelmed - they just won’t be able to effect the fiction in a meaningful way through the manipulation of mechanics. They will not be able to hit any of the monsters, for example. Now, the person playing that character may be able to make them effective in a “soft” fashion - for example, someone plays a 1st level noble in that 10th level game, and he has social authority in the fiction that the 10th level barbarian doesn’t have. But, as a general statement, most characters in a given game usually have about the same amount of effectiveness, right?

Let’s keep looking at D&D. Whats the other measure of character effectiveness? Your hit points. When your hit points hit 0, you are no longer effective, because your character is dead.

This is the big thing that lurks in the background of most games, right? That your character, at some point, could die, thereby severing the players ability to effect the fiction.

Man what?

The point of a roleplaying game is that you are playing, right? So what is up with the constant threat of you not getting to play anymore?

Anyway, thats not what I actually wanted to talk about. Got sidetracked, sorry.

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Ahem.

So, for a certain style of play, player effectiveness = character effectiveness. My GURPS character that I just made has a 15 in the Occultism skill, so I the player have a chance north of 90% of successfully influencing the fiction whenever I use him to find something out thats related to Occultism.

For another certain style of play, player effectiveness is completely disassociated from character effectiveness. My last GURPS character died because I talked to the GM and said “hey, I’m not really interested in playing Reyes anymore, and I know you think it would be appropriate for a PC to die during this mission,” not because Reyes blew any rolls.

My question to you, gentle reader, is whether it’s ever more desirable for thematic or genre-celebratory play for player effectiveness to be curtailed because the character effectiveness has gone down. Easiest example, why should you have to stop effecting the fiction because your character dies?

The problem that I’m seeing in some of my play is that I don’t want characters to be injured, because it makes them less effective, which means that their players don’t have as much ability to have input into the game, which make it less fun for me.

This is a genuine question. Is mechanically determined lowering of character effectiveness useful? Why? When?

April Fools is, like, the lamest thing ever. Google usually gets me, and Jared has had some good ones, but other than those? Gah. Please stop.

In productive news, some things I’ve been thinking of posting about!

- First Quarter play report.

- Useful technique: three-stage character jam.

- How I run InSpectres.

- Empires of Glass.

And finally, new Annalise stuff soon! I hope!

I dunno if Dev shared this with anyone else, but I think it’s hilarious.

(via Dev)

…I will be using these images.

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2008/03/japanese-toy-designs.html

Damn but I love running that game.

Wow, what a great time!

This my first time co-sponsoring an event (along with Dev) and it went pretty darn smoothly. We had a good attendance of 30+, including peeps from far-flung NYC and New Jersey (thanks for making the trip, yo!) as well as locals and many representative from Western Mass. We even had more people than games in our morning slot, and Dev got to run a playtest of his game The Dance and the Dawn. So it was, like, Boston designer playtest day, between that, my Annalise, and Jonathon’s Geiger Counter.

I facilitated a very solid playtest game of Annalise in the morning, and played Misspent Youth (again, a playtest) in the afternoon. I think Rob got some good feedback out of that game, so that’s a nice feeling.

And I saw friends and had a good solid chunk of social time! Shreyas and Elizabeth were wonderful houseguests, and it’s always exciting to see the friends I’ve made since getting into this fragment of the hobby. Thanks everyone for coming!

And, without further ado, the pictures:

Jonathon and Shreyas have introspective moments while playing Annalise. Prominently displayed is our third sponsor and official morning fuel of JiffyCon, Dunkin’ Donuts. In the background are Melissa, Kat and someone I can’t make out playing the Dance and the Dawn.

Adam Flynn winds up for another knockout punch while running Spirit of the Century! for a full and (from what I was overhearing at the time) enthusiastic table.

There were some kind folks present who have been filming a documentary on Pandemonium, the game store that graciously provided our venue for JiffyCon. They came by and filmed a couple games and did a couple of interviews, and were generally cool people. Yay, JiffyCon on film! I’ll be sure to put a link when the thing is available.

Two friendly fellows whose names I, unfortunately, don’t remember (sorry guys! though, they were playing characters by the names of Sam and Cornelius, respectively) flank Eppy as he poses for me. Ah, always posing for me, thats my Epidiah. We were playing Misspent Youth, by the way.

My Misspent Youth character sheet and notes.

Emily Care Boss playing Shooting the Moon with John and Deanne Adams. John is aghast at the dastardly deeds of Emily’s shootin’ fingers.

Shreyas runs a playtest of Mist Robed Gate for a packed and super-boisterous table. There were tears AND Kung Fu. Most excellent.

So, again, thanks everyone for coming! It was a blast!

So, something I think I try in almost all of my designs is to have competition be a thing. Like, there are rewards there for you to mess with other peoples characters, even though you all are also cooperating with each other to make fun.

And it’s something that I always toss out after playtesting, because it always feels weird and forced to me, and I don’t actually like playing with that dynamic!

So, in Annalise, the downward pressure is now purely mechanical, I think. Even getting a lot of what you want out of a given moment will drain your resources (heh, drain, vampires, get it?!), and I think you will always have to be measuring your replenishing resource against whats happening in the fiction. I hope. Play will tell.

Anyway, I’m working on finishing the current draft for JiffyCon, and I think a last piece that I really like just fell into place. See, in the first (well, technically second) part of play, it is certainly possible that you will hit 0 in at least one of your core stats. What that means in the fiction is that the Vampire gains some kind of hold over you (be it mystical, emotional, mind control, whatever). This can potentially happen multiple times, though I don’t see it happening much more than twice unless you want it to happen to your character.

The last (well, technically second-to-last) part of play is about confronting the Vampire. And I was all “so, how should that thing about the Vampires hold over you matter once you actually confront the bastard?”. And I came up with this little slightly baroque thing where you have a consequence (any moment has both consequences and achievements) that is automatically added to any moment during your confrontation with the Vampire. This consequence says “You give in to the Vampire.” Mechanically, if you have no holds on you, it’s present but it is guaranteed not to happen unless someone else at the table rerolls it on purpose, and it becomes more mechanically likely the more holds the Vampire has over you.

It’s a little pure system thing that I think (and hope) will really push the core arc of the game without having to force the people at the table to compete with each other. You can all get along great and really wanna help each other out, and it’s still a possible threat to everyone, all the time.

I hope it works! We’ll see soon!

I hope somebody tells me when I sell out. Seriously. Just send me an email saying  “dude. This thing you just did? You sold out.” I’ll appreciate it.

It’s kind of nice being around a bunch of people who are designing out on the fringe (Walton & Dev & Shreyas, for the record). It makes me feel warm and safe in my standardized/normalized design and business practices. But then I look back at the people setting those standards (Vincent & Evil Hat & Luke), and go “holy crap, I am doing something wierd and strange, aren’t I?”

I hope y’all don’t mind when I name names. It’s a response to the nethabit of never specifying who or what you are talking about. Particularly when yer yelling about trends in game design and publishing.

In happy news, Annalise playtest at JiffyCon Boston! Once that’s over, I should be able to finish up the current draft and get in touch with you poor bastards who have indicated interest in reading/playtesting. Then, once my current Wednesday D&D game wraps up in a couple weeks, full playtest with that group. Super exciting!