Philosophy of Games

What indie rpgs do you love?

2011-12-12T17:02:00.000-06:00

As I stated in my last post, I've been fairly busy over the past two years. And although I've had time to do some gaming (mostly DnD and WoD) I haven't had time to keep up with the indie rpg community. In the past, many of my favorite games were indie ones, and I'd love to see what's been made over the past few years.

Anyone have any recommendations?

And we're back...

2011-12-10T09:07:00.001-06:00

I haven't posted on this blog for the past two years.

I didn't lose interest in gaming or philosophy, but I did join the navy. As you might be able to imagine, I've had little free time over the past two years. Between bootcamp, "A" school, and being sent to a ship that had just entered a deployment as part of Operation: Enduring Freedom, I didn't have free time to post here.

I did, on some occasions, have time to play many wonderful games with shipmates, friends, and family. And I continue to do so. Currently, I also have more free time than I've had in the past two years, and so I've decided to come back to this blog to talk about games I'm currently playing as well as thoughts I've had on gaming generally in the past few years.

Anyway, in the near future you should start seeing a post or two a week on various gaming topics. Please post your own thoughts in the comments section. As before, I love to have discussions on games, philosophy, and especially the two together.

Secrets and Lies: A Review

2009-08-03T11:37:00.003-05:00

Secrets and Lies: A Hardboiled Detective Game is a new offering from Daniel Bayn. I've discussed another one of Bayn's games before - the super fun, rules lite, Wushu (also recommended).

I'm a fan of noir and this game has some great genre enforcing rules. To start with, character attributes are labeled: savy, moxie, nerve, guts, and mojo as opposed to more traditional attributes. The way these work is also interesting. As opposed to making roles immediately players take hits to these stats depending on what they're doing. Eventually the character is asked to boil one of these stats which can result in game changing failure.

One problem our group had was that there were five players and this made it too easy to spread hits to attributes out. For a one shot story this made it very easy to pass the boiling of stats.

Speaking of problems, only one player in our group had ever seen a film noir before. Because of this general ignorance of the genre a lot of the tropes went unused, and character types didn't necessarily match the tone. This wasn't a fault of the game, however, we still had a good time playing a more gentle inquisitive game of mobsters.

For GMs I love the gordian knot style of npc relationships. Everyone has something to hide, and this can be exploited by the players to reach whatever conclusion they're after. This is also great for more improvised styled games. Our game involved the players being hired to investigate a blackmailed gangster and turned into an investigation of his death. The answers the players received largely hinged on who they chose to interact with the most and what leads they chose to follow. The style of gameplay S&L promotes is one of the least railroading systems I've encountered.

Overall, I thought this was an innovative and fun genre game. It comes with my strongest recommendation to all fans of mystery, or those just looking to explore creative rules for their games.

I'll try and get another post summing up our session and specific examples of some of the mechanics in action, but I make no promises. I leave for Navy bootcamp in a week so time is a bit precious.

Call for DnD suggestions

2009-02-28T19:09:00.002-06:00

I started running Dungeons and Dragons 4e about two months ago. I've STed in World of Darkness for years, run Exalted, and a handful of indie games, but I'm still kinda new to DnD. So far, I think I'm doing okay, but I think I could be doing better. This is an open call for suggestions/comments.

Here are some specific questions I have:

What's the best thing a DM has ever done in a game you've run/you've done as a DM?

What's the worst?

What are some good tactics/strategies to use in general during combat encounters?

Are there any good riddles, puzzles, traps lists on other sites you've used?

Thanks in advance!

How to turn Dungeons and Dragons into a Noir Thriller.

2009-01-23T07:00:00.000-06:00

I love film noir. From the black and white cinematography, the anti-heros, to the fatalism it's one of my favorite genres. Although mysteries are quite common in rpg's, the particular style of the noir is not, and so I'd like to offer this simple guide to help you turn your average game of Dungeons and Dragons (or any old world fantasy) into a noir thriller.

For players:

Be an anti-hero. Pick fights for no damn good reason. Be cynical. Get drunk and hurt the ones you love.

Monologue. Talk to the group before the game begins and make sure that everyone understands this is okay - and advisable. But talk about the world, the case (quest) you're on, or the doomed fate you're inevitably marching towards in your bleak and uncaring way.

Double cross (this goes double, err... triple for all you femme fatals). Shake the guy who gives you a quest down, or just outright kill him. Make a deal with the antagonist and join his organization instead of fighting him. It's a dog eat dog world. You gotta look out for number one.

Betray the group. Normally this isn't recommended, but if you're doing a one shot, and doing it noir, then nothing could be better than betraying the group - having them all suffer or be killed due to your evil. Or better yet, if everyone betrays everyone you can end the story with your revelations of betrayal and a kickass pvp standoff.

For game masters:

Thieves Guild. Have the thieves guild (mafia) be central to the group or cities you're characters are in. The underworld is played up in nearly every noir, and in addition owns everything. If the player characters go to a tavern or casino, make sure to highlight it's owned by the local thieves guild.

Double cross. Yeah, this is advice for players already. But everyone double crosses everyone in noirs. The NPCs need to get in on this too.

Women can't be trusted. It's sexist, but a trope of the genre. Sometimes women are the saviors of the male anti-hero, sometimes the downfall. Have women be chaotically unreliable.

Kill the Informant. Arrange for an informant to meet the group, or one of them, late at night in the dark, lonely back streets. When the player/s find the informant, they are already dead in the street, or are killed by a silhouetted figure (which leads to a chase) before the vital clue is shared.

Fate comes knocking. Don't be afraid to let the player characters get killed off in the end. Especially if they're playing good-ish guys. The world doesn't give a damn who gets offed, and neither should you. Reconsider this if the players have played horribly selfish bastards the entire game. Selfish bastards only sometimes get their comeuppance in noirs.

Movies and Books for inspiration:

5 Things All Gamers Should Try

2009-01-22T16:20:00.002-06:00

1. Talk with a funny voice. And by that I mean just play a character who's not you with a sword in your hands or with pointy teeth. Your gaming group is not a theatrical audience. It doesn't matter if you can't really act. If you're only playing yourself then you're missing out on a big part of the roleplay game.

2. Power game. Build that character who's tricked out and can one shot an enemy 3 levels higher than him. Playing with the system and figuring out its loopholes and limits will give you a deeper appreciation for everything mechanical that you can do with your game.

3. Play an indie game. There's a large number of games out there that stretch our imaginations as well as our definition of "roleplay game". Maybe you've always wanted to play something that doesn't require lots of DM prep time to build encounters. Might I recommend Don't Rest Your Head? How about a character growth intensive game? Primetime Adventures could be for you.

4. Game Master. At worst, doing this once might make you more empathetic the next time your GM doesn't recall a rule or forgets an NPC's name, and at best you might find that you love crafting stories, world building, and playing 50 characters instead of just one.

5. Play your weakness. Build a character with a significant weakness or phobia, and play it up. Maybe your character is low in charisma or manipulation on the character sheet. That doesn't mean he'd never try to tell a lie. Play it up, but rp how horrible he might be at it. This can be fun, and get you to care less about failing rolls.

Fate Be Damned: a Wushu setting

2008-12-15T10:15:00.006-06:00

I've run Wushu twice now, and our last session left off at a halfway point, so I assume I'll be running it again in the near future. I like Wushu for several reasons that I've already gone into, but one of them that I didn't mention was that it gave me an excuse to work on a setting I've been developing since high school. Here's a cliffnotes guide to the setting. I've been adding lots to it, and in the near future I might release a short pdf of it and Wushu packaged together.

Fate Be Damned.

Introduction

It's 2152. Much of the Midwest has turned into a vast desert of ghost towns inhabited by zombies, the rich retreat into their glamortech palace The Fantasy, while the rest of the world is either obsessed with trendsetting outlandish lifestyles or suffering in non-consumer (3rd world) regions.

You wanted to change this. You want a better future. That's why you became a Fatalist. Secret Agent, Terrorist, Techno-powered Vigilante, Assassin you're all of these now. The Oedipus Agency found you, enhanced you, trained you, and now you know what tomorrow will be by consulting The Certainty Machine. Rather, you know what tomorrow will be without your intervention.

No day is ever the same: Take down a legion of cyborgs, negotiate with the controllers of The Fantasy, save one of the stars of Teenage Wasteland from a horde of zombies, infiltrate one of the pocket universes of The Abandoned Amusement Park.

Be careful though. Libertines know of The Certainty Machine, and they want it destroyed. Cybernetics, and genetic modification have become staples of the underworld. Police forces are unwilling to continue the arms war with criminals to the point of altering their bodies. Fatalists are often all that can stop today's super-criminals.

Humanity without your intervention is doomed. Change the world. Fate Be Damned.

Basics

Premise: Player characters work for The Oedipus Agency. TOA uses a device called The Certainty Machine to track the most probable future and alter this towards a better world.
Agents: Fatalists are the primary force of TOA. They simultaneously alter small and large events (leaving a penny head's up on the ground, robbing a bank) for both immediate goals as well as creating butterfly effects.
Setting Description: A futuristic world that is fatalistically moving towards several paths of destruction. Nanotechnology, hover cars, robots, genetic altering, and cybernetic upgrades all exist, though some of these are rare, illegal, or not yet public.
Inspiration: Lacuna, MiB, James Bond, Minority Report, The Invisibles
Powers: The characters work for The Oedipus Agency. This secretive organization not only possesses The Certainty Machine but has made unbelievable advancements in nanotechnology which they put into their agents making them hardy, strong, and fast. Other advanced weaponry is available as well.
Chi is: Nano-enhanced vitality, luck.
Typical Tasks: Spilling a drink on a woman at a club, killing the vice-president, sneezing in a movie theatre, punching Scientologists in the face.
Suitable Traits: various martial arts, firearms, stealth, charm, lock picking, tech wizard
Mooks: Cops, gangs, cyborgs, robot assassins, human/animal genetic hybrids
Nemeses: Rogue Agents, Hackers of The Certainty Machine, Outliers (people The Certainty Machine cannot account for), Libertines (groups who actively work against TOA for various reasons).

More Details:

The Certainty Machine

In 2138 The Certainty Machine made its first significant prediction: China will go bankrupt due to a poor foreign investment, and this will lead to the assassination of China's prime minster, carried out by a Chinese army Lieutenant. This will lead to a civil war, and escalate over fifty years into a global war that will wipe out 97% of humanity. The Certainty Machine was then in possession of the CIA. After the prime minister's assassination by the lieutenant, the technology was dubbed a success, and agents were sent in to stop China's civil war.

In 2145 The Oedipus Agency was formed. This agency is independent of any government to stop any one nation from using The Certainty Machine for selfish gains. Andrew Marcus, inventor of the machine, is head of TOA, and believes strongly that his machine and agency will make the world better.

The Oedipus Agency keeps its missions secret from the world. This is due to a global variation of the observer effect. After China's prevented civil war, worldwide media outlets reported on the Certainty Machine's predictions, thus creating unintentional alterations, and making the predictions unreliable.

Fatalists and The Oedipus Agency

Field Agents for TOA are nicknamed "Minutia Men" for their first few months/years of missions. Such missions involve fixing seemingly trivial details in the world, or performing simple tasks such as giving a grade schooler a pack of cigarettes, stealing a car and crashing it at a certain location, or responding to a specific person's online relationship ad. Though these tasks are often easily done, they lead to butterfly effects that will significantly impact the world weeks, months, or years later.

After a year of field work an agent is promoted to Fatalist. Fatalists' goals are often more immediate and violent as well as vague on how they ought to be carried out. For large scale disaster prevention the Certainty Machine can only work with probabilities and so less information is often known or given to Fatalists. The vagueness of objectiveness, and the brutality that almost certainly comes from these, leaves many Fatalists indistinguishable from any other terrorist organization.

Andrew Marcus has never released specific details (other than those on China's civil war) but he's gone on record with the UN and his own agents that TOA has prevented two end of humanity scenarios, stopped an African genocide, and the spread of a pandemic. Marcus refuses to share his personal politics, but cyborgs and genetically modified persons, as well as their supporters, have raised questions of bigotry against their subcultures. Some insist that the "pandemic" TOA prevented was in fact the global acceptance of these groups. Marcus has stated that this is not the case, but many Fatalists have reported that their missions involved taking down large groups of cyborgs/GMP's.

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There's a lot more to the setting, but I don't want to paste and edit it all into the body of a single blog post. I might post more later, or just finish the pdf and put that up. Hope you guys like it.

Using Moral Dilemmas In Games

2008-12-09T10:25:00.002-06:00

Moral dilemma will be defined in three ways, each relevant for the purpose of this article, and each definition comes from The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd edition.

1. Any problem where morality is relevant. Ex: I have promised to pick up my best friend from the airport. A writer I admire happens to be at the cafe I'm at before I'm to go pick my friend up. I start a conversation with the writer, and then am in a dilemma of promise breaking/valuing my friendship less than talking to someone I admire.

2. Any topic area where it is not known whether something is morally good/right or not. Ex: When someone asks if abortion is immoral in anyway this refers to abortion as a moral dilemma.

3. A situation where an agent morally ought to do each of two acts but cannot do both. Sarte's classic example: a boy who ought to care for his sick mother but also ought to join the resistance to fight the Nazis.

I will now go over why moral dilemmas ought to be presented in roleplay games, and give some suggestions on how they ought to be handled.

If you are interested in having your characters, or your player's characters act out complex issues, to discuss the consequences of their decisions, then you ought to use moral dilemmas. By their very definition, moral dilemmas are ambiguous, or at least challenging to reach conclusions to. It therefore ought not be possible for a player to simply roll a skill check to have the GM tell them what the "correct" answer is. These dilemmas necessitate the characters think, discuss, and possibly grow or conflict with one another over these issues. This creates drama and adds extra detail to characters.

It should be suggested now though that you ought not to create a moral dilemma where you, the GM, believe there is only one correct answer, and then judge the player for disagreeing with you. Similarly for players, having moral dilemmas in games requires some maturity and ability to both think as the character while distancing oneself enough to not judge the other players when they think otherwise than you. Conflict is drama. If you want the characters in your group to be more than monster killers or stats on a sheet this can help, but decisions and arguments in character should never be taken personally.

Also, for players, in moral dilemmas such as example 1. a more dramatic version of this: you have the opportunity to find out who murdered your wife by meeting a stranger BUT at that same time the rest of your group is fighting for their lives, and if you don't show up to help it is likely one of them may die. Personally, I like scenarios where knowledge (or any kind of growth) has a price. If the other players in your group are actor-types or at least think of their characters from a first person standpoint, it can be fun and rewarding to have your character take a dark turn, abandon the group to pursue knowledge solely for vengeance. Players who are more tactical might get angry at such a decision because you hurt the group's chance of winning a fight, but otherwise when presented with a situation where you can aid the group or aid yourself, in the right group, doing the "selfish" thing would be a way of exploring your character and creating interesting conflict in the group. Or, if your character misses the opportunity to go see the stranger to save the group this can give your character cause for depression or some resentment to the group. This creates drama and depth but will not be appropriate for every game.

It's advisable to not use moral dilemmas in games where the characters are meant to be the paragons of virtue. In such cases when they are GOOD then it is probably best their conflicts be with purely evil types. Putting these characters in moral dilemmas interferes with the player's ability to have the character the game is meant to have, and destroys the tone of the game. It's best when starting a new game to talk to players about the tone, themes of the game so everyone is in agreement about what kind of characters they should play and what kinds of situations they'd be dealing with.

Here's a link to some classic moral dilemmas that you can try to use in your stories.

How To Deal With Players When They Miss Clues Or Don't Infer What You Thought They Would

2008-12-05T01:00:00.001-06:00

I don't think I've gamed with anyone I'd call stupid. In fact, I've been fortunate to game with people I regard as fairly intelligent. Yet somehow they, and I when I'm playing and someone else is running, have this weird habit of not seeing the obvious OR what appears to be obvious to the GM. This post will be on the subtle and desperate art of figuring out "How the hell did they get from A to B to arrive at Q?"

On Clues

First an essential rule on clues: If you have a group of player characters in a sprawling mansion searching for some evidence of who killed Mr. Mansion Owner don't ever assume or ask players to describe each and every area that they search for clues in. This is a bad idea for multiple reasons. Pen and paper rpgs take place in our heads and only through explicit social agreement of location description do we share vaguely related images of the same imaginary places. Chances are you didn't describe the sprawling mansion so well that the players even imagine what you are, and so checking a specific place in the mansion that they're not picturing is out of the question. If you have described the mansion out fully, drawn a blueprint, et cetera don't assume these details will help. Say the mansion has 40 rooms (I have no idea how many rooms mansions have - I live in a studio) and it is only in the fourth parlor that the vital clue is in. Chances are players will just want to make a basic roll like "I investigate the mansion" or "I investigate the floor." For the love of speeding past redundant rolls just let them. Don't make them search through every single room unless each room has its own unique flavor, something interesting to discover, or something fun. If you make your players go through every room until they get to that one with the vital clue, they will never make it. They will disengage entirely by the time you get them there. By then they won't give a damn about the vital clue or who killed Mr. Mansion Owner (Answer: It was Mr. Wants-to-Own-a-Mansion).

On Inferences

Hinted at in the above is that it is not the clues that are interesting, but the inferences that players make with them once they have them. If you are of this opinion then I recommend making the acquisition of clues comparatively easy to the inferences that players must make with them. Scavenger hunting for clues doesn't lend itself to rpgs because it would essentially come down to a player saying, "I look in the dresser. Anything in the dresser?" GM: "No". "The refrigerator?" "GM "ahhh... sure, but it's not really important." Player: "oh..."

Inference, however, creates a logical puzzle for gamers to solve. Mr. Mansion Owner's corpse is found in his cellar, drained of blood. A half burnt circle is on the priceless rug in the library, and the maid says it was not there this morning. The study is filled with hundreds of lunar moths that are foreign to the region. Right away the mystery lover in me wants to know how these are related (or if any of them are red herrings). None of these would be hard to discover (or require a roll). The real challenge comes down not to the characters, but the players to find the connections. Which leads us to the next section:

But My Character Would Know!

If a player isn't great at logic puzzles but they're playing a character who is, or at least better than themselves, then to allow them to enjoy what their character is supposed to be good at let them roll, and if they succeed give them a hint. I believe that advice was in the DM guide for 4e. I thought it was a good compromise.

They Have All The Clues, Why Don't They Know Who The Murderer Is?

The players have seen Mr. Mansion Owner's corpse in the basement drained of blood. They've seen the half burnt circle, and the lunar moths. Shouldn't they instantly jump to the conclusion that Mr. Wants-to-Own-a-Mansion drained the blood to fool the player characters into thinking the local vampire killed Mr. Mansion Owner instead of Mr. Wants-to-Own-a-Mansion who used some obscure spell from a supplement text your players probably didn't read that involves burning half a circle into the victim's home, and the ritual, for some trivial reason, summons Lunar moths?

Don't make assumptions about what out of game knowledge your players have OR do have (but won't remember).

Don't rely on information from a gaming book and not share this information with your players if you want them to use it.

Do use complex and odd clues to be inferred, but don't assume what you believe to be the inference to the best solution will necessarily be the same that they come to. Chances are when you thought up your mystery you thought of the ending first, or thought of a good hook, came up with the conclusion and filled in the middle details. What I'm getting at is that you didn't have to solve your mystery and so you can't objectively assess if the inferences required of the players both validly and easily warrant your conclusion.

Also, if player characters infer that they ought to go to Night Club X to talk to Drunk Y, but you thought they'd for sure go to Park B to talk to Homeless Park Guy C either tell them that the nightclub is irrelevant or better yet just turn Homeless Park Guy C into Drunk Y. It'll save time, trust me.

One last thing on mysteries in general: Use common tropes like red herrings sparingly. They get old and predictable if used too often. Do use them on occasion. Just make sure to change up what tropes you're using: red herrings, player characters waking up with amnesia, et cetera (I don't want to give a comprehensive list because players I game with read this blog).

Green Ronin, George RR Martin, and delays on A Song of Ice and Fire.

2008-12-03T23:49:00.005-06:00

A few months back I made a post on how excited I was for the still upcoming Song of Ice and Fire game that Green Ronin is putting out. Judging from the design notes and free preview Green Ronin put out the game looks like an excellent adaptation that focuses on the family politics of the fantasy world, has brutal combat, and a simple conflict resolution system as to not get in the way of the war and behind-the-thrown intrigue. In short, this game looks amazing and I'm slightly pissed that it didn't come out this summer, that it didn't come out in October, and that when Green Ronin now says it will be out in early 2009, that I doubt them.

But why is the game not out yet? It was scheduled to be out months ago. Green Ronin says it's done. It's time for some super easy detective work:

From Green Ronin's website in an update before Gencon:

The game itself is finished and entered layout a couple of weeks back. However, we are revising the release date to October. We had really hoped to debut the game at GenCon, but things always get more complicated when licenses are involved. As fans of the series already know, George R.R. Martin has been hard at work on the next volume, A Dance with Dragons. Basically, there was no way we were going to get in the way of George finishing the book. That, of course, must be his priority. So, we're going to take a couple of extra months to polish the game and make it look truly spectacular. Then we'll launch it in grand style. We may release the PDF version of the game earlier, but the printed game will come out in October.

From this it's very clear that the good folks at Green Ronin have done their job. They made, what design notes and a free preview adventure indicate to me, a quality game. George RR Martin is ruining this. Let's not even talk about the delays with A Dance With Dragons. All Martin needs to do for Green Ronin is skim through the book, or hell read the damn thing over a few hours, and then tell them they have his seal of approval. Over several months he has not been able to do this. Yet the man can't stop updating us on his football teams.

To completely contradict my rage at Martin for this, I am excited about the HBO series of A Song of Ice and Fire. I hope they at least get a whole first season of A Game of Thrones made.

Wushu overview/review

2008-12-03T13:22:00.004-06:00

I ran my first game of Wushu last night. If you're not familiar with Wushu, it's a wuxia emulating system that rewards description and over-the-top narrative accounts to resolve conflict. One of the important features of the system is called The Principle of Narrative Truth. What a player says happens, happens. If a player, or GM, says something happens that is out of sync in some way with the game - not thematically appropriate, logically impossible - then another player can veto this action, but otherwise the dice rolls do not tell you if you succeed, but how much further your actions advance the scene.

I find this kind of game refreshing. When playing pen and paper rpg's I want to do things with these games that I can't do in a video game. This is because I believe video games do certain things very well, and that pen and paper games that try to emulate the video game experience or those that have been replaced by the video game are simply slow and dull competitors. The use of imagination to resolve conflict, or do anything, is something that a video game cannot capture, and so the more that this is done in a pen and paper game, the more I like that game.

The only things that didn't go well with the session were my own fault: I didn't plan out "Nemesis" fights well enough. Fighting in this system is divided between Nemesis fights and fights with "mooks". Mooks do not roll against player characters, they simply come at them in droves to provide the opportunity to perform crazy actions against many enemies at once. This is especially fun because there is no initiative, or division of time to resolve combat. It simply happens as the player says it does, unless vetoed, and dice rolls happen after this (dice pools are based on the amount of description a player gives about their character's action), and the amount of successes determines not IF the players succeed, but if their actions advanced their ultimate goals (knocking all the mooks out, disarming a bomb, evading security, et cetera). For nemesis fights, the nemeses are treated like players and can make rolls, describe their attacks and defensive maneuvers, and have "chi" which counts as health when attacks are not properly defended against. My nemesis fights were pretty standard fair (I thought more about the setting I wanted to run the game in than the story itself), but afterwards I did find this great list of nemesis tactics to use in the future.

I'll write on the setting we used for this game later (I'm currently refining it to try and use again), but overall I found Wushu to be a great system for quick flowing, action intensive games. I downloaded Wirefu and there are several other pdf books for it if you want greater detail on specific settings/play styles for $5 bucks a pop. Or just download the free open rules from the creator (Daniel Bayn)'s website.

Killing Your Character For The Greater Good

2008-12-01T15:36:00.003-06:00

One of my last posts was a write up of a Hunter story I ran. I'm currently running another story in our Hunter group. It's been a fun game, and it's interesting shifting ST's around every story giving us widely different types of problems to deal with, but one thing thats been bothering me is that on the back of the Hunter book is it mentions many hunters die or go mad.

The way that our group has run in the past, and this is likely my own fault, is that there was this implicit rule: unless you wanted your character to, or unless you fucked up somehow, you didn't die - despite what the dice may say. In hunter this has led to many adventures where our characters get by just fine, and where the threat of death seems unrealistic so long as we take the time to plan our actions and go into any situation as prepared as we can be.

This kind of play has kept us, at least slightly, at odds with the darker themes that hunter wants the player to experience. Last night during the story I ran I don't think I changed that, but I did the next best thing: I killed my own character. I really liked playing him, and I thought he contributed well enough to the group, but I felt it was long overdue for someone to die; to drive home the brutality inherent in maintaining The Vigil. The players' group was helping another hunter who's cell had just been killed by a pack of werewolves. They hunted those same werewolves down. This happened quickly so maybe no one had time to think about it, but no one mentioned the possibility of death or the danger involved in fighting three werewolves that just took down the bulk of a strongly armed hunter cell.

I tried to make the death savage and fast. One of the werewolves took a huge chunk of my character's torso out, and another bit him in the neck (while still in human form). The loss of blood came on so fast that he didn't even get the chance to speak any last words. I get the impression that the reality of this didn't hit the player's until after much damage had already been done. This was somewhat intentional though: I had my character act as comic relief twice earlier in the session - once even as the fight began - to try and catch everyone off guard. I think this worked, and the fight itself - I'm guessing - at first probably came across as just another fight. But that's what I wanted it to be. There's no reason why a hunter wouldn't die in any fight with supernatural beings. These werewolves weren't big antagonists or especially gifted, but they were still something that ought to be terrifying and able to rip apart mortals.

Thematically, I believe this is appropriate for Hunter, and probably the World of Darkness in general. For other games, Exalted, realism is less required, and it's probably only a "boss" fight that a character death would be thematically appropriate. Overall, I believe I killed my character off for the greater good of our episodic hunter chronicle.

Risk, 2008 Review

2008-11-10T13:44:00.004-06:00

Risk: the 2008 reinvention.

The game is excellent. If you've ever played Risk before and enjoyed it even slightly you ought to play this game. If you've never played Risk, this is the one to start playing. I've been a fan of "classic" Risk as well as Risk: Godstorm, but the first gets tiresome and futile (if you're loosing early on), the second has a time constraint on it, but becomes overwhelming with all the layers to it - the underworld, Gods, cards (that's not to say that all of these elements aren't fun, but overwhelming especially if you haven't played for awhile and need to relearn the rules).

This reinvention brings in Objectives. Instead of conquering the world you can play optionally to capture 3 objectives. You have eight possible objectives - 4 major (hard), 4 minor (mild?). You have more possible objectives than that though so each game will have a different set of objectives, and also you can mix and match rewards to objectives. Rewards range from bonus attack or defense die to extra troops per turn, to additional maneuvers. Each is useful, some are devastatingly helpful. Also in this version are 15 cities. Each game you shuffle out 15 cards and place the cities on the countries of the cards. This also adds a uniqueness to every game. Cities make a country worth "twice" as much when counting up territories to determine the number of troops you get on your turn. Also each player has a capital. Controlling this gives you an additional troop per turn, and also you must control your capital to win the game (a way to prevent another player from winning is capturing their capital and making great effort to hold it).

I've played the game three times now. Twice with three players. Once with four. The longest game was with four. After all the "easy" objectives got taken it became a brutal struggle to capture the remaining or to try and take out one of the other players (which gives you their objectives). Each game has been incredibly fun for every player, and each game that ends has left a strong desire to play again.

Hunter: the Vigil Story/Session Summary

2008-11-04T12:02:00.002-06:00

I haven't posted in awhile. Sorry about that. A combination of not gaming too often (and thus not thinking about gaming), as well as preparing stuff for graduate school applications, studying for the GRE, and a few other things have occupied my time. Last Sunday I ran my first session of Hunter: The Vigil though so I thought I'd write about that.

I'm in a group who's been playing Hunter for the past few months. We rotate Storytellers - ideally having two session stories per ST at a time. I'd been running WoD games for most of the past four years, so I decided to take a break. I love the WoD, but lately I just couldn't work up the same enthusiasm for it I used to have.

However, between writing some posts on Horror for this blog, reading posts on horror in gaming on other blogs (scroll back through my blog and read others comments - a few link to what they've written on their blogs and it's all very good), and reading a mountain of H.P. Lovecraft I felt inspired to try running Hunter.

Before I get into the story I'll briefly explain the participants in my group:

We have two members of the Aegis Kai Doru. One is a cop and the other a new age/used bookstore owner. We have a member of the Lucifuge. I'm fairly certain he does something illegal for his trade, but I don't recall what this is. We have a member of the Cheiron Group (not present for this session), and my own character, a doctor for the Null Mysteriis (my character was not present). The group lives within the city of Miami, and we use the bookstore as our unofficial base.

It started with them waking up in a dilapidated hotel room. The furniture was from eras past, the wallpaper peeling off the walls, the smell of mold prevalent, the wood floors swollen from water damage. They all had headaches, their eyes stung, and there was a metallic taste in their mouths. In the room with them is a briefcase, open, with a note from a man named Atticus which stated something like:

I couldn't sleep after what we saw them doing at the Monolith. I'm going back out there with gun and relic. If I'm not back by noon something has gone wrong.

postscript: I went to the cafe and the waitress had the same symbols on her wrists that the sheriff did. The cafe was crowded for 4am, otherwise I would have confronted her.

Underneath this note was The Testimony of Lester Ford. This was the partial transcript of a former resident of Fallow's Glade (the group's current location) and his dark memories there of the town's people, a sacrifice they made in the past, and one they were all too willing to make again. He mentions A Toby Smyth in the present reviving in the old ways as well as his ancestor Ogden Smyth. He also mentioned horrible creatures that came out of the swamps. Both of these documents I wrote and printed out in real life to use as props. Some of my favorite horror stories (Dracula, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde) are epistolary, or are in part, and this to me invokes atmosphere in a way that merely describing such documents can't.

The group recalled that they once worked with an Atticus who was also a member of the Aegis. They recalled him coming by the bookstore, desperate for help. They went with him and then there memories blank. The clothing that they are wearing smells awful - as though they'd been in them for days. Also: One of the characters had a message on his phone from my character about a picture he'd sent via his cellphone of a bunch of (recently) dead birds. My character believed these birds to be extinct for at least the past century.

They stepped out into the hall, it was in the same rundown state of their room, but then they saw the wallpaper hang itself back up, the burnt out lights began to shine, and the floor looked fresh and the smell of wood polish rose from the ground. A woman dressed in clothing from several decades ago stepped out of a room from down the hall. She saw one of the Hunters, became terrified, and fled back into her room. They heard her bolt clasp across the door.

Two of the characters (the book seller and cop) went to knock on her door while the other character (Lucifuge) proceeded downstairs. When the bookseller went to knock on the woman's door his fist went right through it. The wallpaper tore and fell around them again and the smell of mold was again over the hall. The door practically collapsed with his knock. Inside they did not find the woman but a grey skinned, slimy creature who's fingers melted like wax into long claws. They fought. The cop took 5 lethal (a lot for a first fight).

The Lucifuge member saw men in a hypnotic state eating breakfast in the lobby (now in a dilapidated condition again). He walked outside, saw their cars were not present, and proceeded to the cafe. He talked with the waitress and received a note, likely from the cook, to go to the old Sears and speak to Toby Smyth (mentioned as the source of brining back the 'old ways' in the Testimony).

The members of the Aegis were shot back into the past again (I say this to briefly summarize. During the campaign I tried as much as possible not to interpret facts for them, but giving them the raw sensory data and leaving it up to them to decide what is happening to them) and they were in the woman's room now. The door was back up and bolted, and she cowered from them. She held up an odd circular symbol to one of them and said in Tallow's name begone. They instantly found themselves back in the dilapidated room.

The Lucifuge character talked to the others via cellphone, learned of their situation and went to a general store to get a first aid kit. The clerk of the store was silent and glared at him the entire time. His fingers were long and had the look of melted wax. On his way back from or to the general store buffalo and mercury head coins began raining from the sky.

They met back up, patched up the Aegis member, and decided to head down to the Sears. In the hall they encountered one of the men who was eating breakfast and he was experiencing great mental pain and wanted out of the town. They found out he was a location scout for Wal-Mart and had no idea why he was in Fallow's Glade. He didn't want to be here, but felt compelled to come. They helped him to his room as they could not leave the town yet.

On the way to Sears, the pot-holed concrete street eroded away to an old brick road, the storefronts looked inhabited (as opposed to mostly empty) and one of the buildings featured the strange emblem the woman had held up in front of the bookseller. They went into this building, though the scene changed to the present day again.

Inside they found a painting of what they guessed correctly to be "The Monolith". A black stone that rose from the ground and had branches that formed into sharp points. The painting looked "vague" as if the Monolith could not be properly captured by the artist. Also in the "church" was a podium with a piece of black stone on it (from the Monolith). The cop, while looking at this had her headache worsen, eyes sting, and a stronger metallic taste came into her mouth. She ran her hand near the stone and found it cut though her eyes did not indicate that she had touched it. She pushed the podium to get it to fall, and it hung in space for a few moments then fell much faster than it should have - cutting down the podium though it seemingly did not touch it. In a shelf on the podium the cop also found a skull. The face of the skull had no holes (for eyes, nose, or mouth) but off the sides long, sharp mandibles/tusks extended.

Inside a back room the bookseller found several old, handwritten journals on a shelf as well as a book on a table entitled The King in Waiting. He opened this up to scan over it, but found himself compelled to read through it. Unable to break away he read for twenty some pages, his eyes beginning to bleed, but then the Lucifuge character snapped the book shut while avoiding eye contact with the book. The book explained rituals that involved 21 ritual killings over twenty one days at the Monolith as well as a disfigurement that must occur there. They left the church then and proceeded to the Sears.

The Sears looked under construction. They went inside and found it dark but lit with flood lamps. The cop disappeared and found herself in the store's past when it was thriving. The other two went forward and found Toby Smyth doing carpentry. They talked briefly. His fingers were long, melted like. He spoke of his "children" which were around them in the Sears - they looked like the creature they shot in the hotel room. He told them where the Monolith was, and said that Atticus had volunteered to be part of his cause. Overall, he seemed unconcerned with the Hunters and they in turn did not attack. The cop reappeared during some point of this conversation and he mentioned that Tallow is a god of time and fortune. To be displaced is a sign of his favor.

They proceeded to the Monolith. The found a large, hideous black rock that caused their headaches to become more intense, metallic taste to come back into their mouth, eyes to sting. They saw 7 shallow graves, and the tail of something slither around the rock. They followed and found the body of a swamp rat and alligator mixed together with the face and hands of Atticus. it attacked and so they killed him. On the way to the Monolith (I said this after they arrived because I forgot) they saw a trail for a junkyard and proceeded there in hopes of finding their SUVs. They did. From Atticus' SUV they took a dufflebag full of dynamite. In the bookseller's they found his shotgun. They took the bookseller's SUV and headed back to the Monolith.

Three creatures leapt out of the swamp. They had some resemblance, but were not identical with, the other creatures they'd already encountered. These flew and hand long arms that did not end in hands but turned to long claws/talons from the elbows. Their arms were very long and extended in ways that the human mind does not anticipate. One grabbed onto the top of the car and clawed in. One flew straight at the car. The other clung to the side. Some damage to the car, and a few shot gun blasts later and they were back at the Monolith. Time had once again changed. Before them a bearded man crouched before the Monolith. The trees of the swamp looked much smaller, younger. The shallow graves were absent. The Lucifuge member shot this man. They used the dynamite to blow up the Monolith.

They road back through the swamp but the road was much harsher - coming in and out of existence. Finally they came back to where the town should have been but found only an empty glade where an old shack stood. They left the area after a brief exploration of the shack which showed only an old, moth eaten blanket and a chamber pot.

Horror in Games: Making the Mundane Magical

2008-09-18T13:02:00.005-05:00

This has been a perennial topic on my and others blogs: How do you evoke horror in games?

The World of Darkness allows you to play vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural and horrific beings. To do this fairly and affectively they had to give all of these creatures clear rules on what their powers are, how they work, as well as detailing their weaknesses, where they come from (or think they come from), et cetera. This places the dark and sinister creatures that were once hidden in the shadows in the spot light. I've said this before - in many cases this makes WoD games not horror games, but dark fantasy. It turns the magical into the mundane.

I believe that the opposite of this: making the mundane magical is one way of adding horror back into these (and other) games. How is this done?

This is repeated from a few posts back, but is important: Don't simply tell the players that, "Four zombies stand in front of you." This makes the situation seem everyday - almost trivial. Just another hurdle to get over. Instead when they first encounter these beings describe the stench that grows stronger as they delve deeper into the room, cavern, et cetera, when their eyes first spot the zombies describe the rotting flesh, brown, dried blood across them. This is a right step in the direction, BUT in can be ruined as soon as a player shouts something like, "Oh, it's just zombies."

Experienced players are probably familiar with common monster templates, know how much health these things are supposed to have, know their powers, and know their weaknesses. So change things up. Make them unpredictable. Instead of having zombies in front of them have them smell the rotting stench of a corpse, but when they come face to face they instead see a creature with a rotting body that has tendril fingers, six eyes that glow red, and an alien shriek that chills the air. In the moment they won't know what this creature is, won't be able to easily classify it, and this will make them feel uncertain - How deadly is this creature? What is it? What can it do to me? Related to this: don't have the players encounter the same types of creatures over and over - if your goal is horror or even to challenge them. Encountering this same strange being a second time might have other advantages: it allows them to apply knowledge they learned fighting it the first time making their progression feel meaningful - and if this is more valuable than creating horror by all means go that route, but if your primary goal is to create horror, than don't have redundant encounters.

Another way is to make the effects of an area erratic. One character who enters a haunted tomb goes blind as he enters. He comes out and reports this. The players might expect they'll all go blind on entry, and so prepare for this (maybe casting some kind of spell they think can prevent this, or taking a magical antidote). When they all enter only the first player goes blind. Another gets dizzy and has to roll to see if they can even walk on their own, another may not realize it right away but his gun (or whatever weapon) is covered in centuries of rust. This throws things off balance, and it's then not clear what will happen.

Related to the above is the idea that player characters should not have the power to affect all levels of reality if your goal is horror. Having levels to reality allows there to be evil or horror that isn't defeatable or maybe even understandable. These outer levels though should be more hinted at and permeate scenes or areas. Directly fighting such evil is an exercise in futility. I like the way Spirit of the Century defines one of its primary antagonist NPCS: He's not so much a character as an event. A warning though: you must be careful how you use such levels of reality. If every time a character wants to cast a simple light spell in a dark place and you don't allow this to work because a deeper or stronger kind of magic is there it makes the player feel powerless and merely walking down whatever path you want them to instead of being able to make decisions themselves.

With this then it should be noted that not every scene or even maybe the majority of them in a story should have the goal of creating horror. Horror is or is much like suspense. It needs to be built up gradually to work affectively, and if every scene has a horror beyond reason then once again this becomes the mundane.

Why Changeling: The Lost is my favorite nWoD Game

2008-09-17T10:50:00.002-05:00

The title and subject of this post makes me feel like I'm writing a corny grade school essay, but I really do love Changeling, and would like to share the many reasons why. I should say though that I don't dislike a single World of Darkness game.

The True Fae are horrifying.

To paraphrase one of the Changeling books: In their realms, the True Faes' desires overrides the laws of nature. They're often hyper-intelligent, but sometimes in ways that humanity wouldn't recognize. They have no real compassion for mortals. They can alter a person's body in anyway that pleases them: distorting their very being into whatever their whims dictate. The fact that they are both alien, yet somehow understandable is scary. They can look like us, talk like us, but from there it's entirely chaotic.

Robust Character Creation:

There are six basic Seemings (character race) and a million more specific Kiths (sub-races) that players can chose to be. In addition, players can combine seemings or kiths until they have a character concept they want to play. This matches the Chaotic nature of Faerie very well, and allows players to create nearly any Fae-being they can imagine. Before this, the main WoD books were very 5x5 (5 clans, 5 covenants for V:tR, same for Werewolf, Mage). Instead the Changeling writers made as many character types as made sense. I've run a few Changeling chronicles now, and a few players have duel-kithed or took duel-seemings, and the level of individuality felt by this was greatly appreciated.

The World:

Changelings are able to go into all of these settings: The Mortal World, Arcadia (Faerie), The Hedge, and Dreams. This allows for many different kinds of chronicles to be run: from exploration games (Hedge, Arcadia), Protecting those you love (Dreams, Mortal World), Court Based Politics games (Mortal World, Hedge), epic games of vengeance and rescue (Arcadia, Hedge), and so on.

Fetches:

A straw man has taken over your old life - works your old job, plays with your children, and sleeps with your wife. Fetches can have great and terrible powers, or be weak. They are often antagonists, but can also be made into allies against the True Fae. They offer an interesting and personal being to act against or with you no matter what kind of chronicle you are in.

Contracts & Pledges:

I group these together because they're both the magic of Changelings. I like magic that has a cool story behind it. The fae make pacts with abstract concepts: stone, mirrors, hearth, et cetera. Everything only works for the Fae because they've made these pacts. Nothing makes sense unless a deal has been worked out, and often these are done in the way that allows the Fae to best exploit their contract (catches exists in all contracts to allow the free use of these). Pledges are similar to these. You pledge to another particular being to perform a task or do something, and in return you are rewarded. If you fail, you are punished - by the Wyrd (the mystical, chaotic Fate of the Fae). Player characters can be exploited by pledges and player characters can exploit others by pledges. This offers interest story devices and role play opportunities.

The Seasonal Courts:

It's usually a good sign of a game when I don't know what I want to play. Changeling overwhelms me with too many good options. Many seemings/kiths fascinate me, and all the seasonal courts' goals make sense to me. I like that (ideally) power changes every season, that each season has its own rituals and festivals, and that each Court has unique contracts associated with it.

Goblin Markets:

This technically could have gone with the other settings, but I'm making its own heading. At the Goblin Markets you can trade away your youth, memories, eye color, for any number of odd benefits from the strange and shrewd goblins. Whole stories could also be told about the market - deals going bad, a rare object showing up.

There are other interesting elements to Changeling (entitlements, hedge beasts, goblin contracts), but I feel I've covered enough of the game. I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and I like that Changeling uses the same kind of Fae magic and malicious though gentlemanly fae beings as JS&MN. The game offers any number of thematic ways to play it, but I love the subtitle's suggestion best: A Game of Beautiful Madness.

Horror in Games (Stolen from Turtles All The Way Down)

2008-09-16T12:37:00.002-05:00

This was my reply to Turtles All The Way Down.

Another Lovecraft quote I like: “Never state an horror when it can be suggested.”
—H.P. Lovecraft

Lately, similar to brining fear into a game, I’ve been thinking of how to create real horror in games. This largely comes down to creating fear.

I like Lovecraft’s advice - it’s somewhat similar to ’show don’t tell’. It’s scary to be give the raw sensory facts to players, as this is how their characters would perceive, and not simply say something like “Four zombies are standing in front of you.” This makes the threat of zombies sound mundane. Instead describing the stench of the corpses, the way their faces are rotting, their jaws hang loose might cause more fear.

Another way to take what he says is to just hint at the horrific undertow. Let the players know true horror exists just behind the curtain, but make it somewhat intangible. Something that can’t simply be beat by their fists. They might stop specific horrific threats, but something deeper, darker, and alien is still there despite their success.

The Happy Medium Principle (When Ought A GM Call For A Dice Roll Part ii)

2008-09-15T11:23:00.004-05:00

A friend of mine has never played a pen and paper rpg before. He has played games like Baldur's Gate though, so he has some familiarity with how a past DnD system works. Trying to explain what pnp gaming is like to someone who hasn't done it before can be difficult because other types of games have little in common, so finding an appropriate analogy is hard.

One thing he asked me is do you roll for everything?

And this is something I'd thought about before: What principled ways can a GM call for a dice roll? This is the philosopher in me being concerned that I'm merely using intuitive feelings to decide when it's appropriate to ask players for a dice roll and not a rational principle. If a GM asked players to roll for everything, this would be principled. It would also be tedious and turn role play into nothing more than a dice game.

At the opposite end of absolutism one could never ask for a dice roll (in something that's intended to be a dice rolled rpg), but then it's not clear that there is a mutually agreed upon conflict resolution system between players and GM on how to decide outcomes - I'd worry a GM in such cases is being needlessly whimsical.

In the games we play it seems we're trying to have a happy medium. We want dice rolling to decide conflict resolution, but we don't want any trivial thing that could be contested to be rolled out, and we don't want to do away with dice rolling completely as then it's unclear why some things are successful and some things are not.

Attempts at a happy medium:

These are really just off the top of my head (which means I'll probably think about this more and post again on this later):

All significant actions ought to be dice rolled. This calls out for a definition of significant otherwise it's just a restatement of: We need a principled happy medium. Let's say significant actions are those that the story turns upon, that will alter characters depending on the outcome. For some, this might be problematic because many things that we do call for dice rolls may not fall under this. For more dice heavy gamers, this then would be seen as a bad principle. However, others might respond that maybe those gamers aren't being principled (or following a different one), and this principle would work for gamers who want to be more permissive on the minor details.

The principle might also depend on the kind of game being played: are the characters heroic/supernatural or mundane?

If the characters are in the first group, then it could be good to take for granted that they are capable of succeeding at many mundane actions without rolling. If they're in the second group this might not be assumed.

Those are my scattershot thoughts on returning to the issue of dice rolling.

Some Games I'd Like To Play

2008-09-10T13:15:00.003-05:00

Dungeons and Dragons 4e: At first I dismissed this because of some negative reviews I read, but then some friends convinced me I was being far too hasty, and that a lot of the negative complaints (it's like an MMO) actually streamline the game very well. Also, I've never been deeply involved in a DnD game. I feel like someone who's only had blowjobs but never penial-vaginal sex (I almost called this real sex, but then I remembered my sex,values, and human nature teacher would scoff at this judgement). That got entirely away from the point - 4e looks simple - in a good way that's inviting for new DnD players such as myself, and fun.

Spirit of the Century: I purchased this awhile back, went through character creation - fun in of itself - but haven't run or played it yet. I'm hoping to highjack the Hunter game I'm in now in a few weeks and run a session or two of SotC. The Fate system underlying it is easy, aspects is the most interesting game mechanic I've run across, and it just looks so damn fun it's ridiculous.

Monte Cook's World of Darkness: After I realized I was making a lot of harsh judgments against 4e without really playing it, I realized I did the same with McWoD. It's not the WoD I'm used to, but it could still prove to be a good game. Anyone play it? Thoughts?

Roanoke: Another game I've purchased but not played. I'll probably only get a one shot out of it, but the setting is ripe for good horror.

Nobilis: Another how-the-fuck-have-I-owned-this-and-not-played-it!? game. You are the representation of some abstract concept: Fear, unrequited love, conspiracy, and you stand for and against others like you and those things that wish to unmake you.

Burning Wheel: The chaotic and dirty combat system looks unique. Also, after playing mostly in contemporary WoD settings, I'd really like to try more past/fantasy settings.

Dogs in the Vineyard: Mostly want to play it because of its reputation.

And there's at least twenty more books to throw on this list... but I'm feeling lazy.

Story Within A Story Game

2008-09-09T10:33:00.002-05:00

This is something I'd like to see or make for a game:

An inter-related set of story-worlds that are all stories that are being told within the other worlds. Or, at least, one story world that constantly refers to another story world.

I'll elaborate:

Players start with multiple character sheets. Each is designed for a different setting: one might take place in an ancient, mythical time, one during the Renaissance, another during the early 21st Century, and one in the distant future (I'm using different chronological periods of our own world, but this is not necessary). In fact, having this many different settings could end up being too chaotic. I'll focus on only two instead. For example, Renaissance and mythical time.

Each of these settings is controlled by a different player. The players are all well aware in advance of the different worlds, who GMs which, and who the players play in each world.

So, say, the first story starts in the Renaissance. The Renaissance story continues for awhile - maybe a few hours, maybe a session or two, but at some point one of the characters says that a myth of the ancient world is relevant to their current situation, and so the player's jump to the ancient past and begin living out this myth. This might go on for awhile, and eventually either the GM of the mythic past turns back into the character in the Renaissance narrating - and then they once again start playing their game in the Renaissance.

Obviously problems could happen:

What if the ancient myth doesn't really tie into the current situation? - This would be a criticism against the literary merit of this particular chronicle, but still might be fun to play.

What if the two GMs constantly try to force switching narrative roles when the other doesn't want to? This could be a more serious problem. Really, this kind of gaming would require two mature and diplomatic GMs to work properly. Related:

What if one GM doesn't want to relinquish control? Same answer as above.

This game would likely be far more situationalist than narrative or gamist based. If played at all, it would probably need to be played for the love of exploring different settings. This would both be a limitation and something to embrace.

Another - not problem per se - but style the game would have to embrace is impromptu storytelling. Because each GM may not know much before a switch occurs they'd have to know how to continue their part of the game at anytime.

Also, related to this style of game, or another form of it, is having characters who are virtually immortal: Highlanders, Vampires, et cetera and having them flashback to past centuries. With this, I've been wanting to do this with Requiem for Rome and Vampire: The Requiem to jump from the Roman eras with kindred who've recently awoken from torpor in modern nights.

Thoughts on this? Anyone try any of these styles of play? Anyone recommend any games that are especially open to this style of play?

Books, movies, etc I'd like to see licensed into games.

2008-09-03T10:54:00.002-05:00

I'm sure there's lot of other things that could be added to this, but here's some movies, books, and video games I'd like to be made into pen and paper rpgs:

Harry Potter: This seems like an obvious starting place. Come on, picture character creation: What house did the sorting hat place you in? Do you favor charms, curses, maybe broomsticks? prophecy? I'm not the biggest Potter geek, but I have to give the series credit: the world is lavish, and I want to run around Hogwarts, and Diagon Ally.

Night Watch: This is a Russian book/movie series. Personally, I enjoyed the first novel, but preferred the movie series. It sounds like a basic mythology (but is very well executed): There are Others who are light or dark. Over time, they realized they'd destroy each other if they continued to fight. They have a treaty, of sorts. The light watches over night, and the dark watches over day. They make sure neither side gets to powerful. The world and magic of the world is flavorful enough that it could be its own game franchise. Really though, there's no reason why you couldn't just adapt the World of Darkness (Mage specifically) to play a Night Watch game.

The Kingkiller Chronicle (The Name of the Wind): So far Rothfuss has only released the first book, but The Name of the Wind has wowed both the press and legends in the fantasy field (Ursula K. Le Guin, Orson Scott Card). The series has hardly begun to explore the rich mythology of the world but we already have humans, fey, as well as darker, stranger creatures (I love the Chandrian) . We have an academy (great base location for any game), cool magic: sympathy and whatever knowing the name of something is called (it's been awhile since I read the book). I'm anxious to see where the series goes, but also anxious to see if a game gets made based on this series.

Kingdom Hearts: I like this series too much. Really though, the game offers up many fun, classic Disney worlds, as well as original worlds. You have standard Final Fantasy classes, as well as the Keyblade wielder.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I'm not kidding. Film noir world + Cartoon world = two unique worlds that offer players the ability to be vastly different kinds of characters. The one problem: What the hell would you do in this game?

The Matrix: Another obvious choice. Next.

Sandman: Obvious as well. Damn.

Okay, I'll just say there's any number of other fantasy books or vertigo comic book series that I'd like to see made into games. I really don't need to catalog everyone of them. Anything you'd like to see made into a game?

What Makes A Game Entertaining?

2008-09-03T00:15:00.001-05:00

Yesterday in my 8 Qualities a Game Should Have, I listed the first quality as ‘entertaining’.
I don’t regret putting this on the list, but like some of the other qualities, this is such a general concept, it needs more exploration.

So, what makes a game entertaining?

This is a big question. One that’s going to have lots of answers, but here’s a preliminary exploration:

An rpg is entertaining when it engages players (GM included) in conflict.

• This can be dramatic conflict where story characters act against player characters or vice versa or
• Physical conflict in which players must make important tactical decisions to both survive and thrive or
• In an ethical dilemma where players’ characters are forced to engage the world in a way where no matter what their decision will matter.

An rpg is entertaining when “the plot” is not obviously linear.

• Good players will give the GM a break and go to a plot location, especially as the game begins, to help progress the story forward, but if the entire game the players are asked not to make real decisions but to simply jump from one plot point to the next and their input does not matter, then this is dull for the players. In such cases, the GM has something more like a novel outline, and not an rpg.

An rpg is entertaining when the characters have depth.

• A character who merely acts as the vessel for a player’s whims is uninteresting. Their past does not matter, their actions are not meaningful, and characters like this are all the more likely to break the mood or genre of the game. The player of this character in such cases might be entertained, but it is less likely the whole group will be (unless all their characters are this shallow).

The first statement could be seen as from a GM or game designer standpoint, the second from a GM standpoint, and the third from a player standpoint. There are obviously more answers to what makes a game entertaining, so feel free to share your thoughts.

8 Qualities A Game Should Have

2008-09-02T14:07:00.003-05:00

What qualities does a game need to have for you to want to play it or purchase it?

My list:

1. Entertaining - if it's not fun, why bother?

2. Genre/setting/theme that interests me in some way. This could be something like: low fantasy, morally ambiguous game that asks the question: How far will you go to change the world?

3. Simple rules. I hate stopping game play every ten minutes to look something up. ESPECIALLY when there is no index, or the index is awful.

4. Potential for ongoing games/stories. I've played several indie games as one shots, and I enjoy them, but I prefer to have longer games that allow characters to develop over time and the potential for long stories.

5. Fun or short character creation. I hate spending an hour (or longer) on character creation that feels like work. Simply put: character creation needs to be fun or short.

6. Does not require supplement books to play. I don't mind supplement books, and often enjoy them. However, I can't stand lugging around a shelf of books unless I have a damn good reason to do so.

7. Conflict resolution that is either cinematic, simple or both. I don't mind making four dice rolls for a single turn if I get to narrate something cool, but I'd much prefer making a single (easy to figure out) roll and getting to make that same narration.

8. The game should promote roleplay. I don't care if other players aren't using funny voices (I do), but if the game doesn't get them to think about their character as a character and not a pawn to move around, then it's not really a roleplay game. - I will say sometimes this is the player's fault, no matter how good the game is.

How Morality is Portrayed in RPGs: part iii

2008-09-02T13:21:00.003-05:00

World of Darkness: Virtues and Vices

One (possibly shallow) problem with virtue ethics is that it does not tell us what we ought to do as well as deontology or consequentialism. Deontology, in the form of the categorical imperative offers advice on how to proceed in certain situations as does utilitarianism, which offers up something like a cost benefit analysis of pleasure v. pain. These moral systems offer solutions in many cases - sometimes too easily [Bernard Williams makes this criticism of Utilitarianism], or not the answer we want to say is moral, but they offer solutions where virtue ethics might be unclear on answers. When a teenage girl is pregnant and she wants to decide if she ought to get an abortion she can weigh the pleasures v. pain this could cause now and throughout her life and her relationships to others, she can look at the interpretations of the categorical imperative and wonder if she'd be treating the fetus as a mere means, but what do the virtues tell her?

Is it courageous to get an abortion or to have the baby? It can be in both cases.

Is it just? - It's hard to say in the moment that a decision needs to be made (or even hypothetically with infinite time).

Temperance, wise - none of these may help.

But what if she asks: What would the virtuous person do? Would Socrates have an abortion?

Neither of these questions seems helpful to anyone who isn't virtuous already.

Yet despite this, we clearly recognize some situations where virtues are applicable: it's charitable to give money to non-profit organizations like Doctors Without Borders, it's courageous of firemen to selflessly run into the flames to save another's life. In turn, it's cowardly of the firefighter who has been properly trained who doesn't run into the building that's only partially on fire and not in danger of collapsing. It's wrathful to beat someone who's only committed the slightest of crimes against you - or merely been accused.

I don't know if this is common, but when going over moral theory deontology and consequentialism were often paired off against each other, while virtue ethics seemed to handle morality from such a different standpoint it wasn't necessarily against the other two theories. In fact, I've heard that Buddhism can be interpreted (morally) as self-effacing consequentialism that utilizes virtue ethics to reach the best consequences. Virtue ethics is often more about our relationships with others while deontology and consequentialism are about finding a principled way of abstracting all moral problems.

Related more directly to the WoD: I like that the virtues and vices stand apart from Morality the mechanic. It reminds me of this separation in how it was viewed in studying morality. I also like that being virtuous contributes to willpower. There is no happiness or eudiamonia (mechanically speaking) in WoD, but the fact that being a virtuous person replenishes your willpower suggests very much that it is good to be virtuous.

How Morality is Portrayed in RPGs: part ii

2008-08-29T22:27:00.000-05:00

World of Darkness: Morality

The morality system of the World of Darkness could be broken down in several interesting ways. One way: the psychological link between loss of morality (compassion) and how this causes manifestations of derangements is interesting but not relevant to this post. I recognize this as more of a psychological issue, and only mention it because the multi-faceted nature of this morality system is worth noting. WoD morality exists on a scale of 1 to 10. Characters at level 10 represent the moral exemplars made manifest while those at 1 are capable and likely to commit mass murder. The average person (and starting character unless otherwise stated) starts at 7. There is a hierarchy of moral acts, and each level between one and ten lists what someone at the level might do without rolling to see if they take a step down. Morality is regained by spending experience points and acting out a desire to redeem oneself.

This hierarchy of morality is similar to Ross' deontology. One criticism made against Kantian deontology is that it does not account for how we ought to proceed when two or more moral duties come into conflict. I'm sure there are answers Kantians have to this, but I'm unaware of them. I do know that under Ross' system we have what he calls prime facie duties that exist in a hierarchy: lying is wrong, but it is not as bad as murder. By placing duties in a hierarchy they do not come into conflict. This system does rely upon intuitionism however, and when two or more people have different intuitions about what is morally worse than something else then they have no principled way of resolving these disputes (if they are merely appealing to their intuitions). Intuitively, the WoD morality hierarchy probably works well enough for most players, but in specific cases with the Werewolf hierarchy I remember running into problems (this will be discussed in another post) when another player and I's intuitions did not match the intuitions of the Werewolf writers. This is less of a problem in a game though because we can simply create house rules to deal with such problems. I've never met a philosopher who resolved philosophical disputes by declaring house rules. I'd love to see someone do this in the middle of an argument.

So we might say that the flaw of the WoD morality system is that it is founded on intuitionism, but we might also say that the WoD developers did utilize one of the morality systems (prime facie duties) that best captures folk morality. Whether this was done on purpose or not, I have no idea, but I'm impressed either way. In the next post I'll continue discussing the core World of Darkness book with their use of virtues and vices.

Special note: Many deontological theories are strongly based on reason instead of compassion (Hume saw the basis of morality as compassion, Kant saw it as reason). The WoD book associates morality with compassion however, and this might make it more of a sentimental theory. This might be explored later (if I brush up on my Kant and Hume).

How Morality is Portrayed in RPGs: part i

2008-08-29T11:59:00.001-05:00

There are three major divisions of moral theory that are typically recognized in philosophy. I would like to discuss these, some other moral based ideas, and their relation to how morality in rpgs has been handled. First I will outline the three major divisions so the reader can be familiar with them. After this I plan on examining the morality system that is in the World of Darkness core book, the use of virtues and vices in WoD, and then some of variations of that system in other core books such as Vampire, Werewolf, and Promethean. I will also discuss the alignments found within Dungeons and Dragons. I will likely go over other games as well, but I will focus on World of Darkness and Dungeons and Dragons because they are both popular and they both utilize different approaches to morality.

I guess I'll share some background information as well: Nearly a third of all the philosophy courses I took in college were related to morality. Courses on classic moral theory, contemporary, metaethics, issues of collectivity. My senior thesis was on the metaethical issue of internal v. external motivation within statements such as "X is right." It was this that first led me to examine motivation in rpgs and breaking them down into internally driven v. externally (this was one of my firsts writings on games, and partially inspired me to start this blog). It comes as no surprise then that the way that various games portray morality in their systems is of great interest to me. I would now like to explore that over the course of several posts.

Three Models of Moral Theory:

Virtue Ethics: Historically virtue ethics goes back to Plato and Aristotle. It was also immensely popular during the medieval period, less so during the Enlightenment, but became popular again in the middle of the 20th century. Virtue ethics emphasizes character above behavior. The vitreous person holds the dispositions that lead to human flourishing. Examples of virtues are: courage, wisdom, justice, and prudence. It's interesting that virtue ethics is linked to human flourishing. In this way it can be understood as an inter-subjective theory, and not necessarily making a claim about objective morality. This system will be of special interest when looking at the World of Darkness as the virtues are explicitly written into their system.

Deontology: The most famous of deontological theories was that developed by Immanual Kant. Kant's theory is absolutist - there are some actions that are wrong, always, and some good, always. Kant cared more about intentions than outcomes in many cases. Imagine two shopkeepers: A boy walks into the store to buy candy. The boy mistakes the price of candy to be far more expensive than it is, but gives the shopkeeper all this money. The first shopkeeper wants to give the boy his money back because if the rest of the town found out he cheated the boy they would not shop from him again. The second shopkeeper doesn't want to cheat the boy because this is wrong. The first shopkeeper can be said to be performing the right action, but for a selfish reason. Kant might label this amoral or immoral. With the second shopkeeper however, he is performing the right action and for the right reason. This is then moral, according to Kant. The method to determine right from wrong is formalized in Kant's Categorical Imperative: Act only on that maxim that you would also will it to become a universal law.

Consequentialism: The ends justify the means. That platitude, in a way, sums up consequentialism. Consequentialists deny absolute right and wrong. Lying is permissible, or obligatory, in some cases. Killing is as well, or even in the most horrible of thought experiments so is raping children. Consequentialism is unintuitive to many in such cases. The consequentialist is committed to outcomes always being of the highest value: greater than personal integrity, responsibility, everything. The most famous example of consequentialism comes from John Stuart Mill in the form of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism values happiness above all else, and equates happiness with maximizing pleasure while lowering pain in the greatest number of beings capable of feeling pleasure and pain. This theory is often unfairly criticized for being hedonistic, but Mill recognizes intellectual pleasures as a higher sort than base pleasures. Whether he argues this well is questionable.

In short, those are the three major moral theories. I'll also likely bring up issues of egoism and the role of intuitions in moral thinking, divine command theory, cultural relativism, as well when discussing specific treatments of morality in games. Tomorrow I'll post an analysis of the World of Darkness core book's morality system and their use of virtues and vices.

RPGs are literary forms: A reply to Pat Harrigan

2008-08-28T21:51:00.005-05:00

Awhile ago I wrote a mini-review of Things We Think About Games, and in it I said I'd like to explore the 109th thought in that book: RPGs are not literary forms. This comes from Pat Harrigan who's other tidbits in Things We Think were some of the best. In fact, I think I partially agree with him, but I'd like to explore this issue further.

Harrigan paraphrases a line about great books not being able to be read, but only reread. Great literature has a quality in its depth that might only reveal itself on further examination. So far I'm not in disagreement with him.

RPGs though - or the scenarios we play out in games - are only played once. No examination, only further movement.

First, I want to challenge this point on making our sole criteria of literary quality the reread-ability of great works. There are many classics of literature that have thematic depth, subtext, and other qualities that are noticeable on first reading - especially to intelligent and enthusiastic readers (I'm not accusing Harrigan of lacking these traits, I'm just saying I think he forgot about further literary qualities).

RPGs are capable - and often greatly encouraged - to develop a theme woven into stories and chronicles. I believe White Wolf's World of Darkness line does an excellent job of this. Both in the first chapters and storyteller chapters of their books they discuss the use of theme in games. This is one way that RPGs can have literary quality.

RPGs could - in theory - have subtext woven into them too, but I believe this would be more difficult. It's the same with improv theater. In theory an improv scene can have subtext in it, but this is not the primary goal and the group would either have to go out of their way to introduce the subtext or it would have to come out by accident. So, this is a possibility, but less so than theme.

In RPGs characters can develop, change, and reach great depth as chronicles progress. I believe this is another way RPGs can have something approaching literary quality. This becomes a more collaborative effort though on both the game master and players part, and there is an element of luck in characters surviving and characters engaging in the right kinds of situations that would give them depth - this isn't entirely luck, not by far - but it seems like luck would play a greater role in these instances than in the development of a novel.

Finally, on reexamination - why couldn't we replay certain campaigns and re-explore issues further? Granted, this isn't often likely done, but replaying the same scenario to explore a certain issue of character or theme might give RPGs something more like the literary quality that Harrigan says they lack.

It's Getting Mighty Crowded: World of Darkness

2008-08-28T10:18:00.003-05:00

The World of Darkness setting contains large groups of vampires, mages, changelings, and other supernatural oddities. Many others in fact. When I first starting playing Vampire: The Requiem there were no other specific supernatural core books released, and our vampires lived in isolation. They didn't just have the whole city of Chicago to themselves, but the entire World of Darkness*.

Now there's many core books out featuring various supernatural beings - as well as supernatural antagonists (Demons in the new Hunter book) - and it feels like every other house contains a supernatural of some kind, and every other shady downtown building is the clubhouse for some grand secret society of monsters.

Personally, I like playing more isolated games: games where the other supernatural don't exist, per se. There might be glowing eyes that stare out at you from the darkness, but I like to leave it at that. I've found player's too often will fill in details in ways that pigeon hold story characters: A player's character investigates the glowing eyes that stare at him from the woods. They learn it's a werewolf, and after this the player (not character) states that it's a New Moon, Boneshadow.

This as a GM (Storyteller) frustrates me. 1. I probably am not using the Werewolf book, and 2. I very much believe that the unknown is scary. Even if players are wrong about specifics, the fact that they're forming images in their heads using specifics takes some of the fright away (and also misleads them).

Having secret societies of monsters works well towards running long chronicles, but taking knowledge of these societies into other games depletes the level of horror. Players of Vampire who know (whether it's true or not in your specific chronicle) that Werewolves are guardians of the Shadow and its borders makes them come across more noble, or altruistic and less savage beasts.

Other than Hunter, which depends on there being supernaturals to take down, I'm at the point where I want to discard all of the World of Darkness that doesn't pertain to the specific game I'm running. I might make up monsters that aren't part of that group, but I'll try to make them seem too much like other supernaturals that are already detailed in other books so player's can be kept somewhat in the dark about these beings, and thus (hopefully) run a more frightening World of Darkness game.

Has anyone had similar issues arise? How have you dealt with them?

Oh, and fellow RPG Blogger Stargazer put up a post recently full of advice on how to promote better horror atmosphere in games. Check it out if this interests you.

*Not entirely true. There are ghosts detailed in the WoD core book, but we largely ignored ghosts in our Vampire chronicle.

postscript: Also I want to thank typhinius for making me the awesome header that's now at the top of the blog. He also gave me an avatar and banner. Thanks again.

Racial Traits in Games... is this racism?

2008-08-27T12:14:00.002-05:00

"All Asians are good at math and know martial arts," is a racist statement.

"All Gnomes are good at engineering and are intelligent," is a statement about Gnomes in World of Warcraft. Is it equally racist?

I've been wrestling back and forth on this, and at first I thought it is racist but in a benign way... but then when I think of "What do I mean by benign?" I usually mean something like, "It's not meant to be offensive," but neither is the statement about Asian people.

Does the fact that the first statement is false and the second statement is true determine whether or not these statements are racist? This might be an out for racial traits in games.

If I say that all black people have dark skin, or safer still, have darker skin than white people, then this could just be an observation that holds true in all cases. In fact, it could be seen as an analytical truth (true by definition) if we define "white people" and "black people" in the right way. We could treat racial traits as a part of race in games in a similar way. A gnome's ability to engineer is just part of the definition of "Gnome" in World of Warcraft.

However, this could still be seen as racist because it takes a more significant claim about people's inherent ability and makes it be a truth claim about an entire race. Isn't this exactly what racists do? They take generalizations (often ignorantly made) and claim they are true of all or most of that race.

If this is racist, should racial traits be taken out of games?

I don't know. I'm still stuck on this. Your thoughts?

Being Heroic in a Morally Ambiguous Setting

2008-08-25T13:06:00.000-05:00

Heroism in many settings typically implies a strict division between good and evil. Why is it meaningful if a group of adventurers stops the big bad, if they themselves are also big bads? I often run into problems like this when I think of what kind of setting I want to portray in games. I want moral ambiguity because I find it realistic, but I also want to give the players' characters a chance to shine and be heroes.

I think this is doable, but because realism is being asked for in the portrayal of morality then it also must be asked for in the portrayal of psychology. Antagonists who are evil just for evil's sake do not account for the types of evil that exist in our world. Really, "evil" people are either mad - in which case are they morally responsible?- have some awful biological/social deterministic element that causes them to act a certain way - in which case they are tragic - or their values are alien to the values of our cultures - or other cultures - in which case they are simply different.

On this last point - alien values - a moral realist might argue I'm simply pleading cultural relativism, and I think that is the point I'm making, but I strongly doubt our ability to question our values in an objective manner and then assert their goodness over alien values that are our opposites. This is not meant to defeat moral realism, but merely provide practical skepticism to it.

I worry I'm rambling and not making myself clear. In a standard Heroic game I would allow evil antagonists to reach cartoonish levels of evil. They'll twist their mustaches and tie women to train tracks just for the sake of doing this activity.

In a morally ambiguous game I expect an antagonist to have a more relatable goal or something that is self-serving, but in contrast to what the players' characters want. If the antagonist kidnaps one of the PC's girlfriends he doesn't tie her to the train tracks - he does so to get a ransom OR if he does tie her to the train tracks, it's only because the PC killed the antagonist's lover and so he's claiming vengeance. This doesn't make the antagonist's action good, but we can understand their motivation and maybe even empathize with what they feel.

In future games I'd like to explore morally ambiguous settings with characters who are Heroic. My worry with this though is that Heroic characters would be one dimensional compared to morally ambiguous villains. If villains are relatable in morally ambiguous settings, than heroes need to be too. So Heroes in this setting will need strong self-motivation on why they go out of their way to fight evil. Good for good's sake doesn't seem to hold any more water in this type of setting than evil for evil's sake. In a way, this makes the Heroes selfish in the weak sense, but deeper for the purpose of this kind of setting.

What are your thoughts on morally ambiguous settings v. Heroic characters?

postscript: I'll be in Chicago for a few days (probably no update till Wednesday). I have an interview Tuesday, and I'm hoping if that goes well I'll be moving up there soon.

A Song of Ice and Fire

2008-08-24T23:03:00.002-05:00

I'm not a big fantasy reader. I appreciate Tolkien and a few other writers, but over all a lot of common themes in fantasy: a "chosen one" - often young white male - who has to fight the big, ultimate evil with some magic weapon just turns me off. I like mythological elements when they're woven subtly into stories, but I dislike stories with absolute black and white morality.

A few years ago a friend introduced me to George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. It's a low magic setting that evokes a War of the Roses medieval family saga focusing on the noble houses of a world called Westeros. There are those who are honorable in the world (but not absolutely good), and there are those who act dastardly (selfish beyond belief, or sadistic), but not evil in the stronger sense.

Anyway, I bring this book series up because Green Ronin is coming out with an RPG soon. Guardans of Order (now out of business?) produced a game of the world before, and it looked great, but I never bought or played it because 1. It was pricey. 2. It was... really just the expensive price tag I saw on it at Barnes and Noble turned me off. Other than that it looked like a good gritty, low fantasy game focused more on deceptive politics than combat.

I picked up the free pdf quick start. The system is very basic - d6 based - but I like this because the lack of complication doesn't allow the mechanics to outshine the role playing - which should be essential - in a game like this. I see a lot of potential with playing a single household: one player takes on the role of Lord, one Maester, Sept, some Sers or bannermen, and you have the makings of a potentially good household v. household political drama. There do seem to be some magical objects hidden across the world too, so I don't see why an old fashion dungeon crawl would be out of the question.

The game comes out in October. I've been anxious to play a fantasy game that takes place in the mythic past. Other than some one session runnings of DRYH and some other indie games I've downloaded lately, I've mostly been playing Changeling, or other WoD products straight for the past three years. I love WoD, but I need more variety in my gaming. --- I do want to go back and play some more Requiem for Rome though. As far as I'm concerned, that was the perfect Vampire setting.

Openrpg

2008-08-23T22:53:00.003-05:00

I'm downloading Openrpg as I type this. I'm told it does what DnD Insider's thing will do, but it doesn't cost anything.

We'll see.

Mostly the fact that they made it mac compliant and DnD Insider isn't made me want to try it. And it's free. That too.

For games like DnD I'm not opposed to maps and miniatures for fights - it helps in games where tactics actually matters - Personally I just don't like the idea of buying all that shit. Having virtual components is much more appealing to me.

The Amnesia Detective

2008-08-23T13:34:00.003-05:00

I've started the rough draft for The Amnesia Detective. To help focus this I did the Power 19 and posted my answers here. For several of the questions I ask for help or suggestions. If you could, please read through and tell me what you think either at The Forge or reply to this post.

Lacuna The Creation of the Mystery and The Girl from Blue City

2008-08-22T11:34:00.002-05:00

I downloaded this last night as well. I take this to be the first attempt. Where can I download the second attempt? Indie Press Revolution only sells stuff if they have a print component as well and they were sold out of the print book. Same with the others sites I've tried.

The second attempt, I believe, has a revised multiplier system and static. Other than mechanical changes, does it have any content difference?

I'd like to run this and Roanoke soon.

"A Game For Everyone"

2008-08-22T11:00:00.002-05:00

I saw that written on a board game box on my way to the cafe.

The weird thing is, that's obviously meant to draw all people in to play it. But does it?

To me that phrase communicates a certain blandness that a game made for specific audience wouldn't possess. To appeal to everyone the game would have to do away with any morbidity, inappropriate humor, or many other forms of color that would appeal to a specific audience, but not everyone.

That being said, I've played games meant for general audiences (Clue, Monopoly, et cetera), and these can be enjoyable, but still bland to some degree. Can anyone think of a really good example of a game meant for everyone that doesn't sacrifice unique characteristics?

Roanoke

2008-08-21T17:23:00.001-05:00

I just downloaded Roanoke. The premise is just too perfect for a horror game. I'm actually jealous the idea of using Roanoke as a game setting never occurred to me. I'll probably review it after I read and run it.

The Virtues of Adventurers

2008-08-21T09:35:00.004-05:00

Dungeons and Dragons used to get pegged as something devil worshipers do. I'm not sure if this is still a common view or not, but I know that D&D, and gaming in general, still has the faint smell of geek all over it. People fail to see the virtues that games like D&D promote. Take for example, Tolerance.

I've gone adventuring as a Changeling through lands in Eberron that are downright hostile to shapeshifters. My party included a warforged, human, and elf. None of us judged each other based on our races or sexes. Really, we let all our differences aside to further the purpose of showing a foreign diplomat around.

I like the morality that adventure groups promote: they're pragmatic. They don't encourage the group to love one another - My character was a cowardly poison using assassin, why should a warforged respect or love that? However, tolerance of one another is a realistic goal and allowed each of us to live in peace enough and learn to trust each other.

So when a group starts with, at the very least, tolerance of one another this can lead to further virtues like trust and loyalty. Really, games like Dungeons and Dragons are some of the best tools for teaching basic social virtues. I mean no disrespect to religious people, but reading the bible or having morality preached at you, I'm sure, instructs you what is virtuous and what isn't, but I can say the same of the Superman comics I read as I child (I really did learn to value truth and justice from these), but Dungeons and Dragons is an actual social experience where one must act out these virtues and learn to use them. The fun of the game aside, this is a valuable experience that puts the theory of virtues into practice.

If I ever have children I'm raising them as gamers. I really believe this won't just bring enjoyment into their lives but teach them valuable lessons.

(Lack of) Romance in Role Play Games

2008-08-20T12:54:00.001-05:00

Role play games typically utilize genres that in literature contain romance. RPGs rarely contain romance. In games that I've participated in - at most - characters list that they have a lover or spouse, but this is seen as equal detail to what color of eyes the character has. I don't write this to encourage more romance in rpgs, but just question why they haven't been present.

I do not base this on any surveys or empirical data, so this is purely speculative, but I'm assuming that in many cases most pen and paper gaming groups are male so romance would uncomfortably force homoeroticism onto the group.

Is it a problem that rpgs don't contain much romance?

No. I don't mean to judge groups that do have some form of romance in their game successfully (and if you do, please share how you go about it) but lets go over how romance in games could work out:

1. Two same sex players can have characters in love (either both male, both female, or male and female).

2. Two opposite sex players can have characters in love.

3. The GM can have an NPC in love with a player's character (male or female).

One could add further options with polyamorous groups of lovers and the transgendered, but I'll stick with the above three. In 1. I've already mentioned that homoeroticism in gaming could just creep some players out - even if they're fine with homosexuals that doesn't mean they want to pretend to be in a gay relationship. In 2. this could weird one of the players out, or even if it didn't it might make the rest of the gaming group feel awkward - though this isn't necessarily the case. In the third option this meets the same problems as 1 and 2.

I will say that I do think it's odd though that we very easily will kill vast numbers of fictional beings in games, but acting out something meaningful like a relationship or pleasurable like sex intuitively feels very weird and inappropriate. I take these intuitions are common. Am I wrong?

However, I will note that this is different than in mmorpgs. I've attended weddings of characters on rp servers for WoW. This seems to be easier online, and I assume it's because we're not connected to other people at the personal level we are with players around a gaming table. Any other thoughts on this?

Books on this topic:

Blue Rose offers romance in the more general sense that is often found within the fantasy genre. The game focuses less on combat and more on role play and interacting with others. The kingdom within the game is very sexually open of gay/lesbian/transgender lifestyles as well as causes like environmentalism.

Book of Erotic Fantasy offers more of a practical guide on how erotic romance can be put into games. The book also covers everything from playing a character who's pregnant to the often overly sexual nature of actual polytheistic belief systems and the absence of this sexual element in the polytheistic systems in most games.

EDIT:

Breaking the Ice: Actually looks like a really fun date rpg. In that context, a romance game would be appropriate and probably a great way to get to know one another.

Things We Think About Games

2008-08-18T21:31:00.006-05:00

I recently got a copy of Things We Think About Games. Shortly after I started this blog I went exploring to see what else was out there. I was aware of The Forge, found some indie game makers who put a lot of thought into their games, and then I was happy to run across gameplaywright. I'm sorry to say before reading their blog I was not familiar with Jeff Tidball, but Will Hindmarch was very well known to me - he being the developer behind the first pen and paper rpg I'd ever played: Vampire: The Requiem.

Getting to the book, my expectations about it were a little off, though I don't blame the authors for this - they did nothing to mislead. I was expecting longer essays on various aspects of games and game design. Instead it's a book, as Robin Laws put it, of "... rampaging gaming koans." If gamers had fortune cookies they ate at the end of play, then I'd hope those fortune cookies had the advice that Hindmarch, Tidball, & company offer in their little book. Saying that though, at times, I also had the opposite feeling that some of their short page statements, observations, advice, et cetera could have been expanded upon and offered as something more substantive.

One of the more interesting rpg related issues they bring up is their 29th thought: that the GM ultimately decides what sensory facts are present. Players shouldn't be penalized for a misconception or misunderstanding, and GMs need to be aware of possible vagueness in saying something like, "you hear a squeaking sound." I don't recall ever getting into a major dispute over issues like this, but I know little quibbles have constantly occurred over such problems. A role play game is a strange experience. Every player is agreeing that they are participating in the same imaginary world, but because each is a mental construct in the player's mind they no doubt form vastly different views from each other and the GM. A GM who takes her time to clarify can bring those different mental constructs closer to being the same imaginary world.

The 109th thought states that: "Whatever artistic qualities RPGs may have, they are not literary ones." (from the contributer Pat Harrigan). I don't think this is necessarily the case, but I'll hold off to write a longer post on this issue.

The book's available at the above linked site. If you're the type of person who actually goes out of their way to read a blog entitled Philosophy of Games then you're likely to also enjoy reading a book entitled Things We Think About Games.

Is it bad to role play the same character type in every game?

2008-08-18T09:17:00.000-05:00

This topic is related to character playing as wish fulfillment, but it's different enough to deserve a separate post. Last night one of my friends told me he always plays a rogue who's usually a more asshole-ish version of himself. He was unapologetic about this, so he was not asking, "Is it bad to role play the same character type in every game?"

However, the question did strike me as something that a player who does this might ask themselves. We might think of the way this could be bad in two different ways: bad towards the self, and bad towards the group.

Bad Towards the Self:

Variety and experimentation allow us to discover more about ourselves as well as lead us to new passions. Playing the same character type over and over might allow us to act out a strong wish fulfillment we possess, but it does not lead to growth.

However if you already know yourself well, you know you hate playing a warrior or detective, but love playing the amoral mage, then by all means play that mage.

Bad Towards the Group:

This complaint was also listed in the post on wish fulfillment, but if you play a character that doesn't fit into the particular game you're playing: You want to play the asskicker in a game of subtle investigation, then both GM and the other players might easily grow sick of your character. Constantly insisting on playing the same character type, especially in stories that really don't support that character, can become annoying and might alienate you from a group of gamers unless they plan on playing a game that would fit in with the character you always want to play.

However if you're willing to make small changes to that basic character you find yourself playing you might find the group appreciates what you bring: You like playing an asskicker. BUT in a game of investigators it might help playing a highly perceptive asskicker. That way you contribute to the group's larger goal, but still have a talent that others in the group may not possess.

Role play games offer us the chance to explore ourselves or pretend to be people we're not. You might enjoy constantly trying something new or playing the same character type frequently. In either case it's good to be aware of the benefits and drawbacks of how this can affect the game and group.

Don't Rest Your Head: A review, rant, and personal exploration

2008-08-17T22:02:00.002-05:00

In a few previous posts I've mentioned Don't Rest Your Head. I've wanted to write a review for the game, and this is what came out. The game does several things exceptionally well, and it has altered my perceptions entirely on what we can do with role play games. In a lot of ways this review will be very personal and explore my own assumptions going into the game, but I hope my thinking process and these assumptions are applicable to many others who also have had little to no experience with role play games outside of those published by White Wolf or are D20 based.

The premise of the game is this: Your character is an insomniac. You've snapped and awoken to the Mad City - a place full of Nightmares that can do horrible things to you. Every 13th hour the Mad City closes, and you cannot escape back to The City Slumbering. From there it's up to you to decide what happens: Do you sell away those traits that make you human in the bizarre bazaar, or attempt to win favor with the Wax King? You must avoid falling asleep - or the Nightmares will get you, and you must avoid going mad - or you will become a Nightmare yourself.

I'll start with some assumptions I had about role play games. I wasn't aware I thought these until DRYH bent or broke these assumptions:

1. Character sheets need a health bar of some kind.

2. A game should be (in theory) sustainable for many sessions or not go out of its way to try and kill a character off.

3. Game Masters decide the story and need to prepare this in advance.

4. A game needs a meta-goal that determines what the players are trying to accomplish.

On 1., DRYH has simultaneously one of the most bare bones but interesting character sheets I've run across. The game asks the player several questions, and these ought to be very relevant for the specific story-game that character goes through. An Example: What's Just Happened To You? and What's Your Path? are my favorite questions. The player has complete control to determine how the game begins, the level of tension they want the game to open with, and ultimately - if the Mad City doesn't fuck them over too much - where they're going. In a previous post I mentioned internal character motivation, and DRYH is the perfect example of the game that creates character driven stories that are intense and require little advance planning on the GM's part.

Specifically in 1. I mentioned the lack of health bar. I've never liked having x number of health points in a game. It's too mathematical - not in a I have to think about numbers!? way, but in a way that abstracts an element of being human that doesn't make sense to me: If my character is shot in the arm and a major vein was hit, then I don't need to be told this takes 4 health points away - I'm aware I'm a fucking dead man if I don't get away quick, or have a potion, et cetera.

Anyway, replacing health is the possibility of going mad or succumbing to exhaustion and being eaten by the Nightmares. This is inserted into the system in a way where characters can decide to add madness or exhaustion dice to each roll. Each can easily help the character gain more successes, however the accumulation of more exhaustion is likely to cause a character to crash or too much madness can cause a character to snap, and if this happens too many times till they become a Nightmare. This mechanic adds a high level of tension into dice rolls and deciding what a dice pool should be. It also forces GMs to make sure they're only having players make rolls when it's absolutely necessary - too many bad rolls in a row can easily mean the end of the game.

2. Technically, DRYH is sustainable for many sessions (and even has one of the best ways of handling experience that I've seen), but I've mostly been running it as a one session game with only one other player at a time. The game too easily allows death, exhaustion, madness, et cetera - though the game has ways to help the player ward these off. However, the game just doesn't feel like a long term single game to me - The Mad City is at its scariest when it's being encountered for the first time. For one shots, it has been perfect. Players have gone in knowing their character may die, or at least not meet a good end, and this has allowed them to have fun attitudes that don't force meta-level player decisions based on survivability to ruin the fun of dangerous situations.

The mechanic I casually mentioned for longer games: These are called scars. When something memorable (tragic, in many cases) happens to a character they can write these down as scars, and then they can associate new situations they're in that remind them of this scar to gain a bonus. I much prefer this to exp that allows players to buy or level up. Although both buying new shit and leveling up to get new shit is useful, it doesn't reflect the causal nature of the story as well as scars do. I've liked this mechanic so much I've thought about adding it into other games I run.

3. I'm a control freak with a God complex. Also, I like storytelling. That's part of what lead me into GMing. The first time I ran DRYH I didn't know what to do. I felt so powerless to decide what should happen, and I just wasn't sure how things were going to work out. But then I realized I improv a lot of story elements anyway, and all DRYH really does in addition to this is allow the player to have some control as well as give helpful hints on where the story should go by how the player answered the questions for their character. The fact that DRYH can be played, and played well, so spontaneously has lead me to run many sessions of it over a short period of time. So far all of them have been fun. They all have had many strange middle parts where lots of doors are opened that never lead to anything, but in hindsight we simply label those subplots and talk about the parts of the story that ended up being important and how much fun we had.

4. This was already talked about in my post on character motivation. Many games have external plot devices built into them, and this is the simplest way to rally a group of characters to work together. However, DRYH works great just as a one on one game with GM and Player, so an external goal isn't needed for these, but if you are running a DRYH game with multiple players the book offers several suggestions on what these goals might be (page 64) if you need them.

In Conclusion:

Don't Rest Your Head creates one of the best suspense/horror atmospheres in role playing games that I've experienced. The setting is scary, interesting, and unique enough to draw players in. Several of the game mechanics are innovative and add to this level of suspense. One player of mine did sum up some problems we were having in saying that DRYH's dice system is, "Simple but not intuitive." It took awhile for me to explain how dice pools worked for the game, but once we got passed this every time I've run the game the players and I have had an enjoyable experience. If you're looking for a different kind of gaming experience that is full of suspense and spontaneity, I highly recommend Don't Rest Your Head.

Post Script: I haven't looked at it yet, but Evil Hat Productions has just released a supplement for DRYH called Don't Lose Your Mind. I also recommend Spirit of the Century, which is also by Evil Hat Productions. I haven't run the game yet, but I've read it and gone through a character creation (which is a game in itself). It's a great pulp adventure game that's also innovative and fun. After I get a chance to run it I'll write a review.

Character Playing As Wish Fulfillment

2008-08-17T21:25:00.000-05:00

Let's face it: many role play gamers enjoy playing characters for the purpose of wish fulfillment. This might be an idealized version of ourselves who says the things we always wish we'd say or has some career we idolize, or it might be something that isn't a part of us at all, but we admire it anyway.

This isn't categorically bad, but should be recognized in ourselves. Also, it might tell you something about yourself: Do you frequently play a character who's an author, but you don't write? Maybe you should. Of course, this isn't true in all cases: If you frequently play a warlock who goes around slaughtering whole villages... well you get it.

When you're playing with a group though, try to not let your wish fulfillment fantasies come at odds with what the rest of the group wants. Example: A lone warrior in a group of thieves shouldn't force the group to get into fights they aren't prepared for and they don't want to be in. Related: in character creation this should also be kept in mind. If the GM communicates he wants to run a game about a thieves guild, then a loud, challenging warrior looking for epic fights probably isn't a good character for that chronicle (unless the group always needs someone to serve as a distraction). In some cases the GM might run a balanced game so everyone can play the character they want, but this is a hard balancing act, and still might bore players when it's not their time to shine.

Again, it's not bad to play characters types that you idolize - hell, you'll probably have more fun this way - but don't let this interfere with other aspects of the game, and try to be self-aware of your own wish fulfillment desires so they don't hinder enjoyment.

Why "Philosophy" of Games?

2008-08-17T11:08:00.000-05:00

I already wrote an introduction for the blog, and I don't wish to be redundant in this post, but I realized I could have written more on why this blog is called The Philosophy of Games.

Why not Advice for Gamers? or How to Game Master?

Both of those will be covered in this blog, so they wouldn't be bad titles.

But they don't fully capture what I'd like to be doing.

I believe a body of knowledge, a subject matter, or something equivalent becomes philosophical when those studying or practicing in that field start asking self-aware questions. An example: In the field of biology, biologists classify various organisms into different categories of family, kingdom, et cetera. However, a biologists might ask, What do we mean by organism? or What do we mean by species? Does the world cleanly divide into organisms or do humans impose these categorizations onto the world?

When questions like this arise biology turns into the philosophy of biology. We can say this about any of the sciences, mathematics, or even fields like art and literature. Nothing is safe from clever people asking meta-level questions about the field that they love.

People don't need to be the specialist in a certain field to be philosophers of that field though. It certainly helps a great deal to have in-depth knowledge of subject matter, but someone can be a philosopher of science and not ever perform a scientific experiment. Many professional philosophers write and research about the various logical inferences that can be made from fields they themselves do not practice in.

On a different note, the first definition of philosophy that I heard in my 101 class was the love of wisdom. Usually when someone asks me, "So what is philosophy anyway?" and I don't have enough time to explain asking self-aware questions in other fields I give the quick "love of wisdom" answer. It's a functional definition, but people often comment on how impractical learning an ancient study like philosophy is if I want to find work (they couldn't be more wrong). The love of wisdom still holds true for philosophers of this day.

The philosophers I've had the pleasure to study under and argue with are people who clearly want to know the truth of things, the reasons behind all that we see (or don't see, in some cases), and are willing to follow anything to their logical conclusions or at least admit when something absurd is at the very least a logical possibility.

Related to the love of wisdom, especially in ancient philosophers like Aristotle, is the offering of practical advice. As I said at the beginning of this post, that is also a goal of this blog, and also philosophical.

I hope I've given a better understanding of what I mean when I say that this blog is about the philosophy of games.

Post script: One of my friends was kind enough to pick up a copy of Things We Think About Games for me at gencon. I still have no idea of what any specific chapters are about, but you better believe I plan on writing about that book. I'll also post a review of Don't Rest Your Head soon, since it's lesser known than games like Dungeons and Dragons, but deserves a great deal of attention.

Character Motivation That Matches The Story

2008-08-16T01:32:00.000-05:00

Internal stories for rpgs focus on the character's backstory and use this directly to create a story about that character in particular (or group of characters). Example: Recently a friend and I played Don't Rest Your Head a strange game about insomniacs who wake up to a nightmare city. The game's character creation strongly favors an internal story. The character sheet lets the character decide what just happened to them, what's there path, in addition to more typical questions like their overall character concept. This was somewhat refreshing and also strange because I couldn't prepare a lot for the game (I was GMing it). The player had decided his character was a sleazy Vegas guy who's just married a stripper who turned into a monster in front of him. From there we added that she'd ripped out his happiness (a hexagon jewel) and fled out of their hotel room into a nightmare world he'd never seen before. From what the player gave on his character sheet, how the game began was decided. We added a bit of extra motivation or plot goal (get happiness back), but the player gave the setting and primary antagonist, and from there had much control over how he went about this, and what could be found within the Mad City (this setting is a great combination of Neverwhere and Dark City). It was interesting because neither of us knew where this story would go, and compared to the more external based stories I'm used to telling, his character had great personal investment in this particular tale.

External stories in rpgs provide motivation that isn't dependent on any particular character or their background. The character's backstory may factor much less in this, however this has the advantage of allowing a group of characters to hold the same external goal and cooperate better. Example: In Changeling the Lost our motley is the official freehold detectives. Some of the characters were once policemen or investigators before this, but others held jobs unrelated to detective work. With the premise of being the detectives however it offered plausible motivation for a group of characters to work together to solve problems that they had nothing to do with the origination of. - The bulk of our stories were focused on single session mysteries.

In what I've said so far I believe I've touched on some pros and cons of both styles:

Internal Pros:
Character has great control over the story, and their past is very relevant to current events. This can create very character driven stories that are easy to make up on the spot and require less planning. NOTE: Because Internal Pros is shorter than External Pros please do not take it that there are less reasons to play a more internal focused game.

Internal Cons:
Story is limited to solving character's goals, and once this is finished the game is essentially over. This isn't necessarily bad, but it's not good if a game is meant to be self-sustaining for a long period of time. However, a story-driven player (I define as a player who doesn't play a rpg to "win" but to constantly be engaged with story and conflict) or they and the GM might constantly introduce new internal or external conflicts might become internal as time goes on.

External Pros:
It is much simpler to have a larger group of players use an external goal to rally under. The above example of Changeling provides an external goal, but some characters were made as detectives. This implies that a few of the characters have an internal goal to want to investigate and solve citywide puzzles, murders, et cetera. Even further, a player could create a character like Agent Mulder from The X Files: he is a special agent, but this isn't just a job to him. His sister was abducted by aliens and this has driven him his whole life. He attempts to solve all strange cases because they bring him further knowledge that could be truths of his sister's abduction. Having a similar goal in our chronicle of Changeling would take what the GM has specified as the external goal: You'll be the detectives of the freehold, and internalizes it so the character's primary motivation is also the external goal for the whole group. This is not necessary, but it offers a happy medium between external and internal motivation where a character is likely to be useful and driven when working with a group.

External Cons:
If a character isn't driven or interested in the external goals that the group or worse - they by themselves - are meant to be driven or interested in then alienation from the story is likely to occur. This is especially likely if the GM doesn't specify what genre of story the chronicle will focus on or tell other important details like mood or theme (if the GM has explicitly thought these out), or give some other indication to allow players to plan their characters with reasonable expectations.

Avoid the following mistake:
For awhile when I first started GMing I thought that it was better not to let anything out about a campaign or chronicle. The less players knew, the more in suspense I could keep them and the more surprised they'd be. From reading forums, I take this to be a common rookie mistake, but I'd like to state what was wrong with this: If you create a story that is intended as high mystery, low violence, and do not tell your players this, you could easily get a group of bruisers with no interest in solving a mystery so much as beating the crap out of whoever did it. In which case both players and GM become bored or blame the other for not going along with the game that they want. It's important to share if a game is going to be a mystery, political conspiracy, violent, et cetera. You can tell the players that they'll be solving a mystery without giving away the specific details of the mystery they'll be investigating. Writing that out right now, that reads as obvious advice, but I wish someone would have told me that.

In closing:
Most games I've played or run have leaned much more on the external side. As I said before, I believe this is the simplest way to run a game when dealing with a large group, but simplest is not the same as the best. Several game books I've read recently have put forward the idea of having one character or another stand in the limelight and have their turn to be the protagonist. One game in particular, Spirit of the Century, utilizes a mechanic called "Aspects" some of which can be possible plot devices such as "Rival of (Insert NPC)". In such a case, if a player goes out of their way to name and create a rival, then there is very good reason for a GM to include that rival in a scene or build a whole campaign using that npc as an antagonist. As long as the GM doesn't alienate the rest of the group by doing this, a more personal, character driven game can be played. Also, as earlier stated, a happy medium between internal and external goals can be reached as long as the GM is willing to share key information and work with players. Hopefully this creates accurate expectations and characters that not only can meet the conflicts they face, but do so for meaningful reasons.

When ought a GM call for a dice roll?

2008-08-15T13:04:00.000-05:00

In role play games that I've participated in both as GM and player I've noticed that how often and for what reasons dice rolls are called for can alter the entire gaming experience. For those unfamiliar, in the majority of pen and paper rpgs rolling dice is the method of determining the outcomes of attempted actions. Some games (Nobilis) move away from this mechanic and instead give a number of points to each player to spend as fuel for various character actions. I believe conflict resolution systems outside of dice rolling are interesting, but the focus of this post will be entirely on dice rolling. Personally, I've had a love/hate relationship with using dice in games, but now embrace them - not for the gamist mechanic they introduce - but for the unexpected narrative element they can be in a well GMed game.

Some GMs will call for a dice roll on any action that has a probability of failure. Most GMs are not this dice crazy. The problem with calling for dice rolls over even trivial tasks is when they DO fail they derail the game, and can make a player's roleplay feel unappreciated because no matter how good they might roleplay or describe their character's actions for trivial tasks, a failed dice roll counters this, and then an attitude of: Why bother RPing if the dice decide everything? can enter their minds. Another related problem is that if a dice roll to gain necessary knowledge or complete a necessary task critically fails is it runs the story into a deadend. In such cases where a failure or dramatic failure occurs a player is aware that a necessary path has been blocked from them because of a bad dice roll, and the options available to the GM in such a case are not great: They can ignore the dice roll or have the player reroll - in either case it implicitly suggests that the dice rolling is irrelevant, and in turn this causes us to ask: then why did a roll need to occur in the first place? Or the GM can try to impromptu introduce a new path, which often may feel like a deus ex machina, though is forgivable if the characters get reinvested in the story and ,preferably, if the ex machina is subtle, or if not that, made fun of for how obvious it is .

Example of critical failure on obtaining necessary knowledge: Private Detective Wright (character) has finally tracked down the hiding place of Julia Moon, his missing femme fatal informant. The door is locked and no one answers, but the GM needs the player to get inside to find Moon's dead body. He has Wright's player make a dice roll to break in... but crit fails. The GM had already indicated that there was no other way in. The crit failure can either be ignored, and rerolled, again (this can be disguised by saying the character can come back the next night), but then why have the roll it in the first place?, or the GM can add a window or extra door that turns out is unlocked after all - again, why was the roll necessary?

In the above, saying the character can come back the next night or adding an extra entrance to the house are not awful options. They can be improved by adding consequences: If the character comes back the next night, the body is further decomposed, or maybe someone else had time to come back between last night and the night before and has left some further clue. If the character breaks into a window that has been added (this, I believe is the worse option, because it simply adds new paths to ignore the seriousness of dice rolls), then the GM might have some new interesting consequence occur like a neighbor calls the police and they come to question Wright for the breaking-and-entry and murder. If you believe dice rolling is essential, especially in moments like the example described, but have a critical failure occur, then these are ways that could get out of having the game meet a dead end for no other reason than a bad dice roll.

Lately, when GMing, I've asked for less and less dice rolling for many tasks. In physical conflicts I'll even sometimes label some antagonists as "throw-aways" or "extras" meaning: easily defeatable, and present not to give chance of failure for the group, but simply there to provide a scenario where characters can engage in cinematic description of action based scenes. I first borrowed the idea from Exalted, and have found similar lines of thinking in games like Spirit of the Century.

From Evil Hat Productions (makers of Don't Rest Your Head, Spirit of the Century) I saw these intuitions and house rules explicitly stated in their games: don't ask for a dice roll every time a lock needs to be picked. Only ask for a dice roll when a lock needs to be picked and there's something horrible on the other side. If a lock is only present on a door because it logically would be, then just have the character be able to pick it. Failing this stops the story for a trivial challenge. They expand this idea further in SotC, and give what I've adopted as a golden rule of dice rolling: For anytime you ask for a dice roll picture what the success will be, picture the failure, are both interesting and move the story forward? If not, then do not ask for the roll.

A nice consequence of this rule is that I try harder to come up with stories that leave out the boring parts. Scenes of inconsequential work that add nothing significant to the story are cut out or briefly described by GM or player and the next scene of significance is immediately gotten to. This might give the impression that I run only games with every scene happening at a break-neck speed and the characters constantly surrounded by insurmountable danger, but this is not the case. Especially when using the World of Darkness setting a slowly built horror feeling is often hoped for. This is not always achieved (inadequacies on my part, or the group can't help but turn anything into a joke), but it is greatly relevant to the genre of game (horror) that we often play in.

A specific form of dice rolling is when it is necessary to gain new knowledge: through research, interviews, academic memory, et cetera. Such rolls have come to feel tedious to me because they are essentially knowledge dumping (I believe I stole this term from SotC). The GM has a bunch of information he's been holding back, a few successful rolls on the players part, and they gain this knowledge. If the roll/s fail then they don't get the knowledge, and the game halts. SotC utilizes one of the most interesting mechanics to do away with this problem: players are allowed to spend fate points declaring facts about the world. I love the idea of this because it makes the story creation far more interactive on the players part and allows them to share this more with the GM instead of simply being told the way the world is. An example: Two monster hunters arrive in a dark castle. One has been here before and is aware that vampires are likely lurking all over the place. He spends a fate point and his character declares: "Holy water? Don't make me laugh. Crosses? Not on your life. The sun? If it were only that simple... These immortal creatures can only be stopped by summoning Death herself to take them from this mortal world. It's not easy. It may mean our own lives, but we must do it."

Obviously such powers could be abused, but this is easily mitigated by a GM who doesn't allow purely self-serving, dull additions to be declared with fate points. There's much more to be said about fate points, and the unique system mechanic of "Aspects" that SotC utilizes, but those move away from dice rolling.

These express my general thoughts on the topic of dice rolling. There are more specific topics related to dice rolling (Making social rolls v. RPing social scenes) that I'll eventually get to. I'm not of the opinion that everyone must play their games exactly as I've outlined, but I hope some of what I said or borrowed from others is useful to you.

Introduction

2008-08-15T10:10:00.000-05:00

I've been playing pen and paper role-playing games for the past few years.

I'd also been studying philosophy (I just finished my BA).

Most of the games I played early on were all part of the new World of Darkness. Occasionally I've had the chance to try out other games: Dungeons and Dragons, Star Wars, Exalted, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, D20 Modern, Don't Rest Your Head.

With every game I've played or GMed questions kept coming into my head or other gamers would ask them: Do you need dice to settle conflict resolution? (Turns out, no). When creating a character how important is it to have the character's life goals inline with the game's premise? When ought a GM call for a dice roll? What's more important for social scenes - the dice roll or the role play the player contributes? When designing a game, how important is it that the mechanics highlight or underlie the mood you are trying to create? What properties are necessary for something to be labeled a "game"?

Questions of categorization have also come up, and I was happy to see that these have been addressed by a pretty smart group of guys already. Often I find myself using their terminology, and utilizing some of their views.

This blog will be dedicated to trying to answer those questions I've listed (and likely more) as well as offer advice for both GM and player. Using some of the ideas that get developed here, I plan on releasing some games myself. Occasionally, I'll ask for playtesters. I've included my email address onto this blog if you have any specific question you'd like addressed, or if you would like to playtest. Or, if you disagree with me, please write and say so. Philosophy is dialectic. There will always be different sides and opinions that probably have arguments in their favor. If you believe I'm being unfair or not seriously considering all the possibilities, please state so in the comments, or email me and I'll let you write a guest blog explaining your position. Or, if there's a gaming issue that strikes you as philosophical that I've ignored, and you've thought of quite a bit, then please write it down, and I'd be happy to have you post here.

That's all I have for now.

Up next will be a post entitled, "When ought a GM call for a dice roll?"