Apparently Google will be covering up the search terms even more then they do it now. I guess that’s good, but I did want to wait for a good set of search terms to write this, but that day will perhaps never come, so I’ll have to do this with only four interesting search terms which have brought people to this blog.

Note: Since the owner of the browser can (and usually do by default) also prevent the browser from telling the referrer to the page, oftentimes we just don’t get these for our statistics anyway. Google’s new policies are one more way to keep them from us. On the other hand, since this isn’t business, and I’m not into trying to use these to drive traffic to our site, this is fine. I just like to know.

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As the regular readers of this blog know, I write a lot. The quality of my writing is probably up for debate, but for someone who does this as a hobby on top of working pretty long workdays and other hobbies, the quantity of my output is unrefutably good.

So, what’s my secret?

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Last summer we were at Lauri’s gathering for guild members. We played a lot of games, one of which was MtG. We didn’t play much of it, but I played against a younger guy. I had a bunch of decks with me and I decided to play my copy of Travis Woo’s Monogreen Eldrazi deck. I curved out perfectly. I got a [scryfall]Spawnsire of Ulamog[/scryfall] into play on turn three (with a small [scryfall]Genesis Wave[/scryfall]) and activated him to cast the real big boys from my sideboard on my next turn.

Yeah, I crushed him. He had so little to say in that game that I don’t actually remember what he played.

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Dice whirligiging
(c)2010 Lauri Maijala

Ville published a comment on Goolge+ that turned into an interesting (though a bit small) discussion. He was discussing about the GM’s role and how different people see it. One of the points he raised was “DM / GM / Whatever tries to be neutral.” My mind immediately jumped to dice with that comment.

Dice.

I am quite certain that there are not many gamers out there that would not have a special relationship to their dice.

In our gaming group we have a “rule” that when ever a player rolls a “church” (or whatever it is called in English when a die lands on its corner) he/she must immediately be ashamed and train his roleplaying skills. We have been known to keep count on the worst players in this area also.  Continue reading →

Recently, Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff podcast asked for sponsorship from their listeners. You can see the rates in the PDF linked to in that article. Hopefully I’m not reading too much into this…

Ken Hite and Robin D. Laws are pretty well-established people in the industry, who are very talented, very experienced and seem to have an endless pool of knowledge from which to draw on. Still, they are selling time on their podcast for the price of 25 dollars per spot (there are higher costing spots as well). That’s not much. Since each hour long podcast takes several hours to research, author, and record, not to mention going through comments, questions and other feedback, that doesn’t accumulate to much of a renumeration even if they could get several more sponsors.

Is this really where we are? Even the luminaries aren’t doing all that well? Can’t say I’m really that surprised, but this is a more concrete indicator that not everything is right. Obviously, the industry is small and there are a lot of people who are enthusiastic about it and will work for little or no reward (well, I’m writing this with no expection of a monetary reward for example, but than again, I have a pretty dependable source of income outside gaming), actually making money with all the competition is hard. I would still have expected that these luminaries would be making a bit more than that.

I guess that’s the price you pay for working in the industry, but it shouldn’t be. Since I’m not going to go against market forces on this one, I don’t really know what the answer to this problem would be, besides buying more products (I’m actually happier now, that I took part in Laws’s Hillfolk KS).

(Our readership is quite small, but hey, if I can help, I will. So, if you happen to have a business which might benefit from a spot in a show for the more sophisticated roleplayer, give it a thought. You’d be helping a great part of the community.)

According to Entertainment Software Associations study in 2011 (via Reality Is Broken by Jane McGonigal)

• 69 percent of all heads of household play computer and video games
• 97 percent of youth play computer and video games
• 40 percent of all games are women
• One out of four gamers is over the age of fifty
• The average game player is thirty-five years old and has been playing for twelve years
• Most gamers except to continue playing games for the rest of their lives

And this is just digital games. With 97% of the youth gaming, in a couple of decades, everyone is a gamer. Despite this, gaming is often seen as a negative thing. However, think about it this way: People have a limited amount of time. What are they not doing anymore in order to game? I don’t have data (and I don’t know if anyone does), but I’d be willing to bet most of the time spent on gaming used to be spent on watching TV.

Now, these two forms of entertainment have a pretty significant difference. Watching TV is passive, whereas playing games is active. So, even if you happen to be in the small minority that actually watches intelligent programming like documentaries, you are still only receiving information instead of actually going out and finding it yourself. While gaming, you actively try to figure out how achieve the best result based on the rules and the feedback. You are actually using your brain. Even if this is something quite simple, you are still honing some skill.

Since most skills (well, quite a few, at least) are in some way useful in the real life, this change is overall quite beneficial to the mankind. Depending on what kind of skills you are honing, they could be used for a number of things.

The definition of a game is pretty loose (and I’ll probably write about that on a later date), since they are hard to define, but one definition a game should have the following components (again, via McGonigal):

1. A goal
2. Rules
3. Systematic feedback
4. They are voluntary

I’m not sure this is the perfect definition, but its something we can work with. Now, lets say, our problem is to solve the unemployment problem. By setting the goals right (not just eliminating the statistical numbers, but the actual problems caused by lack of jobs or underpaying jobs), and have a system to give us the right feedback, we could find gamers who could find the solution. This is what we do. This is what we have spent (in many cases) most of our lives doing.

Although gaming is fun, it is also (probably because it is fun) the key to our future.

Now, I’ve only read 25 or so pages of the aforementioned book by McGonigal. She’ll probably have a lot of viewpoints which I’ll probably discuss in length in the future.

RopeCon, the largest non-commercial gaming-related event in Europe (or something like that) begins tomorrow. I’ll be there over the weekend, as will many members of our “guild”, including Lauri.

Well, so far it sucks. I was trying to get some sort of grasp on what games I should participate in, but the problem is that the program page is missing events, such as one event I preregistered for. Gladly, I know the organizer, so I could easily get the right time, but I’m sure there are plenty of interested parties, who don’t even know about it, because you can’t find it on the page.

Also, I scanned through the RPGs at the event. Sadly, they are listed in a format with a very poor usability, with all the descriptions on their own individual pages. So, I have to load a bunch of pages to find out what these games are about. Even then, most of the descriptions are poorly written and seem to be missing plenty of information, including the game system in many cases. Also, many of the GMs seem to have gone for a short tagline, which they feel is enough. Mostly, it isn’t. They are just not descriptive enough. They are basically just stating the system in other terms.

One thing I always wonder about: Do the GMs who have “refined” or “developed” a popular system to suit their personal tastes, really think they are marketing game properly by informing us of that? I guess there are some people out there who can really make an existing system better, but even so, trying to make a system better for a con is just not a good idea. There are players out there, who know the system already. If you change it, you lose some of the advantage of using a known system. There is a learning curve to games. Why make players go through it again for some self-glorification? Especially, since we all know most of these changes are generally damaging to the game.

… but hey, I’m going to try and have some fun. I’ll try to make at least three games and I’ll report on them Monday, if not before. Although participating in the games of the guests of honor would be great, I’m not banking on that and my primary goal is to take part in a MonsterHearts game and traumatize someone permanently. There are also a Fiasco and a Dungeon World games, but scheduling everything is hard, because so many of the interesting games either overlap or are on Sunday, which means I probably don’t get to participate in pretty much anything I want to. I can’t really blame anyone… except maybe the GMs who could run more interesting games, so I wouldn’t have to try to juggle the few interesting games.