Couple of years back I bumped into this video:
If you don’t care to watch it, I fully understand. The basic message is this:
During the time it takes for you characters to rise one level, they should encounter the following:
1 easy combat encounter,
3 standard combat encounters,
1 hard combat encounter,
1 very hard combat encounter,
2 skill challenges, and
2 roleplaying challenges.
A caveat: I studied communications a bit in university not much, but some. I graduated eight years ago and started my studies in the mists of the last millenium, so maybe this isn’t something people in communications still talk about or subscribe to. Since my knowledge on the subject is quite shallow, maybe this was never a serious theory. Or maybe this is the core of communications theory. Who knows? (Well, people who have actually studied the field probably do.) There’s a strong chance I’m using somewhat wrong terminology, but I can live with that.
Here’s the core of it: When you want to keep your audience’s attention, you need to remember the these three things: familiarity, surprise and completion.
Lets take a sequel to a movie.
Living in Finland makes our yearly gaming cycle quite interesting. During summer we have lots of time but it spend mostly on other things at the cost of gaming. We tend to drift towards random gaming of oneshots, Magic and board games since the group we can get together is different each time.
But now it is winter and the time for campaigns.
It think that winter as the fuel of longer rpg campaigns comes with the free time that we had while we where studying. Evenings are dark, it’s usually freaking cold and the weather is bad. Not that we would take part to any outdoor activities anyway but at least during winter we have an excuse. Continue reading
There’s a method for making “fonetic” random passwords. Well, there are many, but this one is a bit more interesting, because you can produce passwords, which feel right for your language. Of course, whenever there are random elements involved, things might not go quite right, but that’s just part of the fun.
Here, instead of making passwords, we are making names, which sound like they could be names from a certain language, or culture. PHP-code included (sadly, no indents, as the WordPress can’t display them properly). Below, I’m doing names for my Viking set for MtG, but it can be used for fantasy worlds as well, if you can find a good list of names. No offense to the Mongol people, but their names made a very nice basis for goblin names.
With three gaming sessions with this Apocalypse World hack I am beginning to see where I want this game to go. I started out with of what I was doing and what the game is about but have ended up realising there is a lot to change.
I want this game to resemble X-Files with working class characters. Sessions should be about mysteries the group is trying to solve (without getting killed). The deeper they get into the mystery the more entangled with unanswered questions they become. The action and the story flow should be fast enough to be easily narrated but still retain the elements of this being a game.
When writing this hack I started out with a lot of setting rules. Most of them were tested in my own gaming system and only transferred to this new engine. Some of them were stolen from other AWhack (namely tremulus). Little by little I have been removing them from the rules. The last one to go was the Sanity damage mechanic. Continue reading
Another book I finished on my vacation was 20 Master Plots by Ronald Tobias (for those not interested in the MtG-posts, I mentioned a pretty interesting book called A Brief History of Vikings I also read in one of those yesterday). My former writing teacher (obligatory namedrop, because some of you will undoutably know her or know of her: Saara Henriksson) recommended it, so I read it. Its exactly what it says on the can: It describes 20 different plots with structures, emotional hooks, examples, and simplified lists of things you should bear in mind.
These are indeed the plots we see over and over again in fiction. Of course, this is just one view and the number of plots can be counted in a number of different ways as plots can be categorized in any way the author chooses. I bet there are plenty of people who are ready to find such an abtract plot that you can boil every story down to it. However, that wouldn’t be very helpful if we want this model to actually help us in some way (besides philosophical debates).
Anyway, one pretty common denominator in these twenty plots is that you have one protagonist and one antagonist. There might be all sorts of other characters running around in the plot, but everything pretty much revolves around the protagonist. Think about classic fairytales. They always have exactly one main character, who we follow through the story.
My character took pretty bad hits again during our Wayward Sons session last Friday. This means its time to start thinking about a plan B in case my character happens to die (although I did write-up a hacker character I would probably enjoy playing, but which might be a bit too on the nose). Obviously, in most games the players don’t come up with the playbooks as they go, but this is still a game in development, so I have pretty free hands to do what I want.
Lauri has tried his best to emphasize that the playbooks should be normal people (although their stats say they are pretty good at what they are doing). They just happen to have strange experiences and want to act on them for whatever reasons.
So here’s one pretty normal person: a middle-manager. You know… someone who thinks (or used to think) he’s important because he has a few underlings below him, but isn’t actually that competent, except maybe in office politics. You know, a good old-fashioned yuppie.
Let’s see what Lauri says.
It isn’t really demon week anymore but as Halloween (weekend) is here I decided to “wrap up” what I started back then.
Previously I discussed a little about demonic possession and how it was handled in a couple of games I have played or read. This time it I plan to give you some pointers of what to watch for inspiration.
Movies and TV have given us a wide variety of examples of demonic possession. Mainly this works (for those who make them) because it present an opportunity to play up a wide range of our fears with little financial cost. Ie. it does not cost as to get someone to play possessed as it would cost to get someone in a suitable mask to play a space alien (or create a believable monster with CGI).
The effect of possession in roleplaying games is not as strong as in visual media. Most players can relate to their characters and into some extent to the NPCs but I doubt it is likely they will be as intimidated or related as they would be while watching what is actually going on. (I am not saying this is the case always. I am just using this assumption as the basis of choosing what movies to discuss.)
Spoilers from movies will follow.
The latest movie I watched in this genre was the Possession. It is not very imaginative when it comes to script but it does present an interesting MacGuffin to be used – the Dybbuk Box. In essence the box works as a demon prison. It demon is trapped in the box with personal items and it is forced to look at itself from a mirror for all eternity. Now I don’t get why the demon needs the personal items or why it is necessary to make its imprisonment torture but a similar item could easily be used in supernatural/horror games. An insane demon that can be freed to cause havoc is always fun.
First off, I’m very busy this week, but I don’t won’t to postpone this any further as I’m going to be out of the country next week (so this blog’ll probably be slower than usual), so you are going to get this very unedited (not that I generally use much time to edit these) version of my thoughts on the reactions my previous posting on 3:16 has evoked. This means I’m probably going to ramble even more than usual.
For those who are not familiar with the game, sorry about this. You probably won’t get anything out of reading this.
Now, this is a screenshot from our usage data. Guess which one is the day I posted the review?
On Creativity
People misunderstand creativity. Its not only about originality, even in arts, where originality is especially valued, creativity still has other components. You still need to work within a framework and part of being creative is finding the right limits to what you are doing.
Even in arts, where this isn’t necessarily appreciated, this is actually very important part of the process. If I’m producing a movie, I don’t want my casting director going outside the perimeters, but I do want him/her being creative with the choices. If I’m publishing a newspaper, I want the cartoons to be creative, but they still need to fit into the area I’ve designated for them. Even if these kinds of pressures don’t exist, artists will make them for themselves. Most online comics will use the same format for their comics all the time.
All creativity is actually based on limits. Even if you are starting a project, you’ll generally have an idea of what you want to do. You usually know the medium you are going to use. That’s a limitation right there. Once you get going, you are building more and more limitations. You are establishing characters, places and so on. You are making decisions on what the names look like on your fantasy world, or which corporation runs the chain of cozy diners in your cyberpunk world.
Those limitations are important mostly because they push us into unexpected directions. Lets look at Calvin & Hobbes (which I’ve been reading lately). The strips for Monday through Saturday are all the same general size for strips, but within that limit, Watterson finds great flexibility. Most of the strips are three or four panels, but sometimes less, if needed. This is why he was so great. He knew what being creative meant. He knew how to use the limits he was working with.
For a group of people to be able to work together, they need to have common limits. The system used is one of those limitations. So…
System as Communication
The most important part of a roleplaying system is what it communicates. The number of dice you roll, the stats, the damage tables, these should all serve the purpose of telling everyone at the table what we are working on as a group.
Every game should have a feedback system. That’s the major way the game communicates what its about. We know D&D is about tactical combat, because that’s what the feedback system tells us to do. There are other ways of getting XP, but that’s the major way.
Does 3:16 do this? Its definitely telling us that killing is important. It doesn’t go much beyond that. It isn’t giving you anything else.
One of the criticisms of my post was that I don’t seem to be getting it. Maybe. If this is the case, that’s a problem of the system. I can clearly see what the system is telling me. So, if I’m not “getting the point”, the system isn’t doing a very good job of showing me.
“Don’t Use the Mechanics” Is Not a Valid Defense of a System
Every game has corner cases which the rules don’t and shouldn’t try to cover. However, if the system simply disregards all problems by just waving a hand, that isn’t a solution. That’s just telling eveyrone that this systems sucks, live with it. Of course, invoking the creativity and roleplaying card makes this an attractive proposition, but clearly, this can’t be the supporting structure of the system. If it is, why are we using this system? Again, we need to lay out some common rules for the game, and this is clearly just dismissing that idea.
We do use the rules systems for a reason. Again, they are actually helping us be more creative. By not giving us that component, the system is basically worthless.
There’s a Distinction Between the Game and the System
As far as I can see, people have different interests in the game. Some people apparently like to parody the US military, some people like to kill aliens en masse. There probably are other less apparent reasons as well, and of course we have the more casual players who don’t really care.
In any case, the defenses of the system seem to be based on liking the game as a whole, not the system. The system seems to get a bunch of excuses, because people like the theme, whatever they think it is.
Now, this is wrong. Obviously, this system is specifically designed for this purpose, and I don’t know of any other, but this doesn’t mean it works. The concept of the game can be good, but the system can fail in its goal of presenting the themes.
In this case, if the the real goal is just to be an effective alien-killer, I’m guessing you could argue its doing a pretty good job (although it isn’t). If it has any other goals, its doing a very lousy job. Well, unless its trying to piss me off.
The Value of NFA
My assessment of the NFA as worthless seems to be getting backlash.
Than again, it is. No one has been able to present an actual case for it. Yes, I rolled NFA on some occasions besides the dominance rolls. None of those rolls mattered. Yes, at some point some of the characters were out of breath because I jogged them to our next destination. Did this affect them in any way? No. Did they even roleplay it? No, because it didn’t matter to them, because they were there to kill aliens.
… and again. If it actually had a purpose in, say, gathering intelligence or formulating a plan, the benefits are reaped by all players and therefore, as I said before, I’m basically sacrificing my character for the good of the whole, as my strengths are in an area which benefits us, whereas the other players, who put their emphasis in FA are benefiting mostly themselves.
Actually, I lied. There was one NFA roll which had actual benefit for me. In this case I tried to find ways of using it, so I used my turn to give out orders and get the men organized. The GM gave me a +1 on the next FA roll. Based on this, my 8 in NFA is actually worth exactly 0.8 in FA, if I use a whole turn. Basically worthless.
The Random Advance
A couple of people have defended the system by saying that I can get advances randomly. This idea seems very condensending to me. Basically, the designer is saying that I can’t actually earn those advances, so he’s just giving me a random chance of getting them. I’d much rather be able to earn them.
Why does this even exist? Because the designer knew the weakness of his system and threw this in there to cover it up. He knew very well that the system would favor the corporal in a huge way, but didn’t bother to actually fix that.
One Final Thing
The role of the sergeant has been overly emphasized in these texts, since I played that role in the game. However, looking at the whole, I think the other characters, those who actually thought about how much points they’ll put into each of the stats, are actually in a much worse situation. They have a very hard time competing with the corporal and if the sergeant starts messing with the others for his own benefit, those characters will feel the brunt of it just the same as the corporal.
I think that’s actually much, much worse. Those players, who actually tried to make something more than a one-dimensional asshole, are being punished by the system much worse than the sergeant. In our group, Peetu, who put 4 in FA and 6 in NFA is probably in the worst position. Because he did put some thought into these stats is never going to advance through kills, will never have access to the same weaponry the others have and so forth. And this is basically a punishment for actually caring.
What does that say about the system?
Kagematsu is a game about shame, honour and love. It tells of a wandering ronin who ends up in a Japanese village in 1572, during the Sengoku era. All the men are at war, and only children, elders and women are left. The village is hard to defend. Everyone is afraid that the village will be devastated by an outside threat. It’s the women’s job to persuade the ronin to stay and defend the village.
Kagematsu, the lone male character, has to be played by a woman. That’s a rule. The rest of the players can be women or men, but I’ve played twice, and both times they’ve been male. Both games rank among my best roleplaying experiences.
The game focuses on seduction. The women characters have two active stats, Innocence and Charm, with seven points divided among them in any way. The women are after shows of affection (called Affections, in short) from Kagematsu: a stolen glance, a kind word, an introduction, a kiss, and so on. Some Affections you can only get by Innocence (a confession of love), some by Charm (a roll in the hay), and some by either one. If you succeed at the task with a single roll of dice, you lower your Fear. That’s the third and final stat, and the only use for it is in the end, when Kagematsu fights against the total Fear score of the women.
So you want to lower your Fear by succeeding at the die roll. If the woman’s player rolls more than Kagematsu’s, she lowers her fear score.
However.
You also want to gain Kagematsu’s love. But there’s no die roll for that. Instead, Kagematsu’s player makes a subjective evaluation on the scene, and decides whether your character receives Love or Pity. Love makes your subsequent rolls a tad easier, and Kagematsu uses the power of his most loved woman to fight the final battle. Pity, on the other hand, only has a psychological effect: it’s a different thing entirely to decide between a) giving a Love point or not giving any point at all and b) giving a Love point or a Pity point.
So as the woman’s player, you need to plan your way to Kagematsu’s favour. Probably your plan goes haywire. It seems so simple: first you make a good first impression, and then slowly get acquainted and gain his favour. But you can only try gaining each Affection once. What if you fail at making a good first impression? What if all your easier tasks fail, and it seems to you that Kagematsu hates you? How can you then get him to both touch you and love you for it? (It’s possible to gain extra dice by getting desperate. Desperations are a neat little mechanic which I won’t get into here. Basically they improve your chances at die rolls at the very real risk of gaining pity.)
It’s insanely challenging and gratifying! After the second game, one of the players uttered that the game is way more tactical than D&D4. In some games, waiting for your own turn while the others are playing can be a bit tedious, but here it’s not. You have to pay attention to what’s happening between the other women and Kagematsu, and what Kagematsu might be like, and what your next approach is going to be like.
And that’s only part of the fun. The theme and the unusual setup are sure to be provocative. I’m sure each player has her or his own thoughts about stuff, and they’re sure to differ from game to game. At my first game, this July at Ropecon, I thought a lot about representing female characters. When a woman explicitly evaluates how you play, at least I reflected intensely about how I portray women at roleplaying games on the one hand, and how I should play them on the other. Some of the game’s mechanics also emphasise the reversed gender roles: the women’s players don’t ever get to say how Kagematsu enters the scene, for example. It might not sound like much in theory, but if you’re as active at the gaming table as I am, it packs a nice psychological punch by forcing you to accept a more passive – in traditional terms, a feminine – role
The second time we played, I put a lot of my younger self to the woman I played. I made her an innocent, well-disciplined but shy 17-year old who tried to gain favour by gaining sympathy. She made a good impression on Kagematsu, who seemed to be a lot more sympathetic to her than to other characters; but in the end, Kagematsu who was quite old, couldn’t commit himself to someone much younger, to someone who reminded him of his past. It was heartbreaking! And a lot more personal, too.
The characters go through a lot in the game, and I don’t think it’s possible to stick to your initial character concept unless the dice really favour you. In the first game I had really bad luck with the dice and had to get desperate. I took Kagematsu for the Mr. Darcy type and tried lizziebenneting him. I failed miserably and loved it.
If it sounds uncomfortable, weird, and awkward, it can be! Especially the first session felt really weird and awkward. But not once did I feel threatened, or humiliated, or judged. It’s due to the players in part (thank you, Emmi and Laura), but also, I think, to the nature of the game. Kagematsu’s player doesn’t judge your attempt at being charming, but your character’s. They’re not wholly separate, but it becomes quite clear, quite soon that the character’s path isn’t necessarily the one the player wants. It’s a valuable experience to feel both vulnerable and safe at the same time.
