Socratic Design

D&D Spell Components: A Lament

2012-02-02T06:57:00.000-08:00

Heya,

A few months ago I wrote a lament about DnD Alignments. I’m going to turn this into a mini-series for Socratic Design: lamenting design aspects of games I grew up with that I wish were explored and perfected by indie games. In light of the news about DnD 5e, I think this series is quite relevant. Today, I’m going to talk about Spell Components.

Specifically, I’m referring to material components. The verbal and somatic were just kind of “meh” to me, but material components piqued my interest. As I stated last time, I came late to AD&D2e, and my group used books from OD&D to AD&D1 to AD&D2 and tried to reconcile them all somehow. As I poured over these manuals trying to learn the system, spell components jumped out at me. I saw them as a flavorful (colorful) addition to spell casting and a way to balance out wizards. In Rolemaster (my first RPG), Mages are really powerful once they get to 6th or 8th level. Icebolt was a brutal spell.

When I actually got to play DnD for the first time, spell components were entirely ignored by the group. The wizard never had to buy any, we never had to quest for any, and even when we would be captured and restrained, he could cast his spells. It was disappointing. When I switched colleges my sophomore and junior years, I found other DnD play groups. None of them used spell components either. Once I started going to conventions like Origins and GenCon, I found that most players around the country routinely ignored the spell component requirement. “Why was it in there then?” I wondered. It’s probably a better question than I thought at the time.

Anyway, I believe that material components for spells is a game mechanic full of potential. I’ve written before on how I think Magic could be used in RPGs. I’m going to expand on those ideas a bit here. In that older article I suggested that Magic could be used to accomplish one of three goals. I’m going to delve into Answer 3C: “Magic is used as Color to enhance the description of the Setting.”

I’ve written before that mechanics should work in a way that reinforces what the game is about (i.e. its thematic elements). For me, material spell components can accomplish this very well. Think about the scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where Lord Voldemort is restored. The spell requires a ritual and physical components to do something. Each of those components is significant in a thematic and resonate way. It’s more than just pixie dust you bought at the local general store while on your adventure. Those items are meaningful to the characters, the story, and the setting. They enhance the importance of the spell-casting and required work and sacrifice for the characters to attain.

Take also how magic in Middle-earth seems to require physical objects to work. Gandalf turns pinecones into fireballs in the Hobbit. Galadriel can see the future in her water basin in The Lord of the Rings. All this stuff reinforces that the characters have a deep connection to the world and that the mundane can be special.

A roleplaying game that took advantage of spell components (and made them a critical function of actual play) wouldn’t have to worry about balancing powerful spells mechanically. Those spells could just require rare components that must be quested. You can’t just go to Ignacio’s Curio Shop in Freeport and buy what you need. Spell power could also scale up if the mage used rarer, purer, or more personal items as components. It would also enhance the system for creating magical items since that subsystem could share mechanics with the spell casting subsystem.

I never got to play in a game where spell components meant anything to the players on any level: not in theme, not in challenge, not in exploration, not in any way, shape, or form. I think that’s a shame. I feel games that support all three creative agendas could easily incorporate material components into their mechanics and improve both the color and effect of their system. I hope someday somebody does, ‘cause I’d be the first to line up to buy it.

Peace,

-Troy

Be Part of the Solution

2012-01-13T07:13:00.000-08:00

Heya,

In case you've missed it, Wizards is coming out with a 5th Edition for DnD and YOU can be part of it. I imagine it'll run mostly through brick and mortar stores and the DnD Encounters thing. So if you're interested in being a part of revising the oldest RPG out there (and they're serious about asking for fan help, guys), sign up!

Peace,

-Troy

How Do I get Started?

2012-01-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

Heya,

Since it’s the beginning of the year, I figure a good thing to write about would be the beginning of the process. People come to RPG design at many different stages. There’s the wide-eyed youth who’s played one game all his life and is ready to make a better version of it. There’s the setting enthusiast who’s worked on a fictional map/culture/world for years, hammering away at people, places, and things that stoke his or her imagination. There’s the veteran gamer who’s played dozens of games and, unsatisfied, is taking to the task of creating his own. And finally, there’s the veteran designer who’s created and perhaps published several games in the past and is putting his nose to the grindstone yet again. Maybe you fall into one of these categories, or perhaps you’re a different breed. In any case, the way I’m going to suggest you begin your design applies to all.

IMHO, the best way to begin to design a roleplaying game is to envision what you want to happen around the game table (or computer interface). This goes back, in some degree, to the Big Three: What do you want your game to be about? What do you want the players to do? What do you want the characters to do?

I tend to start my designs with what the game will be about. Sometimes, this is short and simple, “I want a game about courtroom drama.” Other times, it can take me a while to really settle on what I would like to design, “Do I want a gritty post-apocalyptic world or a new world, devoid of civilization ready to be settled?” I think answering the question of what your game will be about is the most fundamental question of all RPG design.

Next, I think about what I want the players to do. Do I want them to go balls-out, trying to win every challenge they face? Do I want them to explore the world I have created? Do I want them to examine a pressing social issue or question? Roleplaying games are about real people interacting in ways they would not ordinarily interact, so getting a firm grasp on what you want them to do is highly important.

Thus, I begin with brainstorming. I often make little notes in a notebook or Word document as I think up what I want the players to be doing. Here is an example of a game I toyed with called “Judge and Jury.”

Judge and Jury
-Players play a jury.
---GM is the judge and bailiff
---Based on the themes of 12 angry men
------ Clues and facts from case are made up on the fly
---------- GM just referees
-------------- Players given story tokens to buy clues and facts
----------------- Anyone can override for 2 tokens
---Players win if votes = all guilty or all not guilty
------Players fail if jury is hung
---------- Order goes according to jury # (draw numbers)
---------------- One player acts as Foreman
---------------- Maybe he plays judge and bailiff too
------------------- Perhaps everyone does

As you can see, my quick brainstorming took me in several directions. I didn’t need to make any final decisions at this point. I just needed to get ideas down on paper.

After the brainstorming, it’s time to reflect and revise. Looking back, I could have decided to make the game with a GM or without a GM. I could adjust the override costs, raise/lower/eliminate the clues/facts cost, or adjust who gets to play the Judge, Bailiff, or other non-jury characters. These are the first real decisions I will have to make concerning the game’s System.

After that, I might begin to brainstorm about the game’s characters, setting, mechanics, or endgame, often in that order. I would just follow the same procedures I did when brainstorming for the players. For instance, I might think about what it means to be the Foreman, the Judge, or the Bailiff etc. I might think about how characters could form alliances or rivalries during play. The object, at this stage, is just to get your ideas on paper. The revision and refinement come once you have had a chance to reflect.

If you are just starting your game, try simple brainstorming first. Start with what your game is about, then proceed to what the players do, then think about what the characters will do. Don’t worry about making hard decisions right away like “what does it mean to lose” or “how much currency should players start with?” Just jot down your thoughts in stream of consciousness and let your imagination take you where it wants to go.

Peace,

-Troy

What are some Different Publishing Models?

2011-12-02T04:42:00.001-08:00

Heya,

I’m going to briefly tackle some of the different styles of RPG Publishing I’ve seen over the years. Some have proven successful, others have proven potential. This list is not exhaustive, but it is extensive. Hopefully, if you are getting close to publishing your book, these ideas will prove useful to you.

Method 1: Traditional Publishing

This is probably the worst way to do it. In Traditional Publishing, you (the creator/owner) send the book to a printer and order probably 2,000 copies or so. Then, after going through all that pain and suffering (really, printers are a total pain in the ass, I can’t stand them) you have to line up some type of distributor. The most famous is Alliance, but there are others. If you can get a distributor to carry your game, it gets added to a humongous catalog where brick-and-mortar stores might decide to buy a few copies at a 50% to 60% discount if they have some extra cash lying around (most don’t). If the stores choose not buy it, the games get sent back to you (I assume at your expense) or do nothing but collect dust in a warehouse never to be seen again.

The risks of publishing this way are massive. The publisher (that’s you) assumes almost all costs. You pay for printing, shipping, and in some cases, warehousing costs. Then, you have to wait for the distributor to find a few stores willing to take a risk on your new game with little to no name recognition or support. Then, you have to wait on the distributor to get around to paying you for whatever games it managed to sell, and remember, the distributor sells those games at a steep discount to the stores (50-60%) taking a cut of whatever it managed to get for you. I don’t have hard numbers on this because there is no way I would ever publish this way and no reason you should either. This method of publishing is a death trap. Stay away!

Method 2: Using a Fulfillment Service

I talked a bit about this method in a post from 2007 called “What is a Fulfillment Service?” Most of it is still true. You can read about it there. The Fulfillment Service route is one that has been taken by many successful independent RPG companies and worked fairly well for them. Fair warning up front, you may take a steep loss if your fulfillment service goes out of business and has no way to return your stock. Risks here are mostly low, but real.

Method 3: Subscription Service

Back in 2007-2008 I published four RPGs. I had them all playtested and ready to go before I released the first one. I decided to try a new model of publishing. Back then, I overestimated my skill in design and figured I could pump out four short games a year. Based on that assumption, I offered my customers a change to buy all four of my finished games at a discount. They would receive a game quarterly (every three months). The one time “subscription” fee would guarantee them games for a year.

This actually worked quite well from my perspective. I got a lot of money up front that covered my printing and shipping costs. I had customers waiting and excited about my games coming in the mail. And it gave me enough margin for error when it game to getting my books back from the printer that any printing mistakes could be corrected before the next shipping deadline. So this model showed a lot of promise.

Unfortunately, the margin for error wasn’t large enough. I had all sorts of trouble from my printer. I had to delay sending out several games by three to four weeks, and I found the publication schedule actually difficult to keep up with. That was partly due to me being in grad-school at the time, moving to a new city, and changing jobs, but that sort of real-life happenings plague every book publisher. So that’s no real excuse.

In the end, I think this model held some promise, but it’s best for someone who has a lot of games ready to go- preferably short games that are relatively cheap to print and easy to learn to play.

Model #4: The Ransom Model

Greg Stolze pioneered this model. It’s mainly just used for PDF games. Basically, it works like this: first, the publisher creates a game or some other game-related content. Then he sets a target dollar amount he wishes to earn for his work on the game. It might be $100 for instance. Whatever the number, it is enough for the author-publisher to recoup his costs and have a little left over. The publisher then posts a notice on his or another’s website that he is accepting donations for the game. He might provide a little teaser and maybe a sample chapter which are helpful enticements to get people donating. Over time, people donate however much they want to the publisher. It can be a penny or it could be the full $100 amount. Once the target dollar amount is achieved, the donation window is closed and the publisher puts the game up for download FREE OF CHARGE for everyone. So the whole community benefits from the generosity of others.

This system works best if the designer has either A) a lot of buzz about his upcoming project or B) a terrific track record of making fun games. If people don’t think that their donations will ransom a good game, then they won’t donate. And a failure to achieve the target number and consequently failure to release the game can do lasting damage to a publisher’s reputation. Approach this method with caution.

Model #5: Pay What You Want

This method is used by Ben Lehman, and I think it’s great. The publisher designs a game and then makes it available via PDF through e-mail. Anyone who wants the game can get it for free, if they like, or they can donate any amount of money to the publisher. It’s similar to the ransom model in that respect, except there’s no minimum threshold the community has to reach to ransom the game. The publisher will email a PDF copy of the game to anyone who wants it. You only give the publisher money for the game if you want to.

This method has some great benefits, but also some risks. One great thing about it is that it can get your game in the hands of lots of people quickly. Some people wait for a game to come out for a while and be reviewed (or talked about in Actual Play reports) before investing their money. Others don’t want to spend any money on a PDF game, even if the content interests them. The best advertising for your game is people playing it. So giving them an opportunity to get your game cheaply can lead to future sales as word of how your game plays is spread. I think that Ben has found this method very successful in promoting his games.

There are some risks, though. It is very possible that you will make little to no money on your game using this method. If you’re okay with that, then this might be the model for you. However, if you are looking to be compensated for the time and effort you put into making your game, the Pay What You Want model probably isn’t going to work for you- especially on your first game.

Model #6: The PDF Warrior

For some people, just starting out, they are interested most in exposure- just getting their games out there where people can buy them regardless of the fees associated with doing it. If you just want to sell PDF versions of your game without having to worry about running your own software, website, or payment scheme, there are four good sites for this: Onebookshelf.com, e23, IPR, and Lulu. Onebookshelf is actually a merger between Drive Thru RPGs and RPGNow. Most gamers are familiar with these sites and they have thousands, if not tens of thousands of titles available. e23 is owned and operated by Steve Jackson Games. By listing your game there you are not associating yourself with SJG, so if that’s a concern, don’t let it be. IPR has changed ownership and business models a couple of times, but it’s still a great place to shop for smaller titles. It has fewer games than the other three, so the market there isn’t as crowded. Finally, there’s Lulu. One of the benefits of Lulu is that if your customers want a printed version of your game, you can set it up for them to order such a thing without you having to get your hands dirty with warehousing, tracking, and sending stock. If you’re really new to RPG publishing, Lulu might be your best option.

Each of these outlets, though, have some problems. First, all of them take a cut of your sales. That means less money for you, and if you’re serious about developing your game company, you need every cent you can get. Also, with the possible exception of IPR, these websites carry thousands upon thousands of titles. There’s no real way your game will get noticed by someone browsing the site. In other words, you’re still responsible for sending people to those sites to find and buy your game. It’s not going to happen magically on its own. If you are looking for a no-muss, no-fuss way of selling your game on PDF, these sites might work for you. If you’re looking to grow your business, the next option is where you probably want to be.

Model #7: The Independent RPG Model

This method of publishing a game was pioneered by John Wick and Ron Edwards and later perfected (IMHO) by Vincent Baker. This is the ideal, best way for you to sell your game to your audience in the modern RPG publishing world. I recognize that we don’t live in an ideal world, so it might not be the best way for you, but if this model can fit your goals, you should really try it.

To use the Independent RPG Model, you’ll need several things. You’ll need a book printer you can rely on. Those are hard to find. Ask in the Forge’s Publishing Forum or the Story Games Game Design Forum for advice in this area. Second, you’ll probably need your own website. Right now I’m running RPG Crossroads and RPG Crosstalk through Webs. I wish I weren’t, so I can’t recommend them. I’ve heard Intuit is good for novice web designers, but I have no experience there. If you contact Ron Edwards, Andy Kitkowski, or Vincent Baker, I’m willing to bet they’ll point you in the right direction on this topic. They won’t do any of it for you, nor should they, but they have lots of good advice on running websites. Finally, you’ll need some infrastructure. What I mean by that is a system for accepting payments, tracking customer orders, mailing books, emailing PDFs, and interacting with potential customers. PayPal is the standard for accepting online payments. When it comes to checks, cash, and money orders, you’ll have to decide if you want that to be part of your business model. You might use Open Office or Google Docs to track customers, orders, and payments, or Microsoft Office if you own a copy. Avery Labels are helpful for shipping. But all of this you have to do on your own. This model is all about you: the creator-publisher.

The Independent Model does not rely on a fulfillment house or third party storefront such as IPR or RPGNow. Instead, the creator-publisher assumes full responsibility, and therefore full profits, for selling his game. The publisher creates his own website, his own Paypal account, and his own system of delivery for his games.

This is a lot of work! You have to go to the post-office every couple of days, buy the stamps, envelopes, and boxes to send your games. You have to Hand write or print off the address for each of your customers, email each customer your PDF individually, track your stock, and answer questions on a multitude of Internet forums about your game. You have to keep up with customs if you ship internationally. It’s hard. If you haven’t read the posts I’ve made about how tough it really is, you need to. BUT (and that’s a big BUT), it is so rewarding. You get to keep every dollar you earn. You get to reinvest that money in your company to buy better art, better covers, and maybe even booth space at a convention. And it’s not just the money that makes this model so great; it’s the satisfaction that you are running your own small business. My career as a game designer is filled with many regrets, but I cherish the time I spent running my own business. It gave me the confidence I needed to tackle so many other challenges in my life.

This model is not for everyone, especially if you feel you don’t have the time and patience to deal with the headaches of printers, postal workers, and damaged stock. I’ve used this method, and it is tough, but I’ll say it again, running your own business is very rewarding in many ways and it’s the best way to make the maximum amount of cash.

I hope this post has been helpful to you. At the very least, I think it will enumerate the many different methods of publishing that are available to an independent game publisher. Publishing a game is a tough road to walk. There are many pitfalls along the way, but if you stick to it, and truly believe in your game, then the rewards definitely outweigh the heartache.

Peace,

-Troy

Is there a Missing Box in the Big Model?

2011-11-03T12:25:00.000-07:00

Heya,

First off, I’m going to qualify this by saying I’m only now just starting to understand the Big Model. So don’t scourge me if I just missed a point made by Ron or Vincent somewhere along the line.

Second, this is not an attempt to overthrow the Big Model, but to understand one small facet of it in a better light. I am a full believer in the Big Model’s accuracy and usefulness. No one should use this thread as a chance to poke holes in it.

Third, I will greatly appreciate input from everyone, but I’m especially interested in replies from Ron, Vincent, Ben, and Ralph. They’ve both helped me understand parts of the Big Model in the past.

So anyway, here we go. The more I work on the designs of my games and the more I look at the crop of designs from this year’s Game Chef, the more I see games incorporating physical objects into their mechanics and into play. At the same time, I’m seeing DnD renew its interest in minis with the release of the Dungeon Tile series books which the website reports as selling quite well for a few years now. So based on my play of these games and reading of the mechanics, I’m wondering if there should be a box between Social Contract and the Exploration/SIS box in the Big Model called the “Shared Playing Environment” or the “Physical Playing Environment.”

For this post, I’m going to be referencing the following games as examples of games using Physical Items:

Polaris (specifically its candle)
DnD (specifically the minis and dungeon tiles)
Glorantha (specifically the map)
1001 Night (the bowl of gem-looking dice)
Hunter Rose- My Old Game Chef Entry- (specifically its rose, thread, and beads)
The Roach and Standoff- (for the cards used during play)
Code of Unaris uses computers and the InternetDeadlands (1st Edition) uses a community deck of cards
A Hypothetical Game using the phases of the Moon
A Hypothetical Game that denotes a rotating GM by using a hat that is traded around
A Hypothetical Game the uses a Podcast to add content to play
Any RPG ever played (specifically the venue for the game) perhaps including LARPs

The Case for the Physical Playing Environment Not Being Currently Well Represented By Social Contract:

I pulled up the diagram of the Big Model, the Provisional Glossary, and the article GNS and Other Matters. I look at the list of things that characterize the Social Contract: Courtesy, Food, Transportation, Communication, Friendship, Hosting, Romance, and more. While “and more” can be infinitely expanded to include just about anything under the sun, things like maps, miniatures, roses, and other play aids are of a totally different breed of things than “Courtesy, Friendship, Transportation, and Romance.”

The definition of the Social Contract from the glossary says, “All interactions and relationships among the role-playing group, including emotional connections, logistic arrangements, and expectations. All role-playing is a subset of the Social Contract.” Everything that has to do with a group roleplaying is part of the Social Contract and is a subset of it. However, it seems like referencing the Social Contract itself and only itself during play is exclusively done when there are “relationships, emotional connections, logistical arrangements, and expectations” are involved. For anything more specific than that, you look at the boxes contained within the Social Contract. For instance, you would not reference the Social Contract if you used the Hacking rule in Code of Unaris (which is an ephemera term) unless the act of Hacking caused a conflict in the relationships, connections, arrangements, or expectations of the group.

Finally, the Social Contract contains everything needed for play. However, the Social Contract does not describe play. That is covered by the boxes contained within it. Since things like miniatures, cards, tokens, and maps can help describe play, they specifically aren’t an aspect of the broader concept of the Social Contract per se, they should instead be contained within some smaller box once play begins. Just like the textual rules of Polaris aren’t what makes up the Social Contract, but instead are part of what is referenced by the System (Exploration/SIS box). The physical objects a group decides to use are unique to that group.

Basically, what I’m saying there is that the Social Contract doesn’t describe play, it only contains it. The physical objects players actually use, however, can help describe the fiction that is taking place. Therefore, I see it as needing to be in a separate box within Social Contract since physical items are so radically different from what is currently described by the Social Contract Box.

The Case for the Physical Playing Environment Not Being Part of the Exploration/SIS Box:

First, the objects I’m talking about (the Candle from Polaris, or the Cards from Roach) are not imaginary, fictitious objects. They are tangible items. They can be as objectively viewed by all participants and non-participants as any object can be when dealing with human beings. Therefore, putting them in the Shared Imagined Space doesn’t make much sense to me.

Second, during play I’ve observed slight disconnects between the nature of the physical objects used to support play and the shared fiction of the Exploration. For instance, take a miniature in DnD. A mini might depict a character as carrying a bow. However, the character has never owned a bow nor does he ever use one. Therefore, that aspect of the mini is ignored and never enters the Fiction/Exploration/SIS of the game. Another might be the use of gender specific pronouns on a card from a game like Standoff. A card may say, “On his turn, a character…” The character the card references may well be female. So that part of the card is replaced with something the group agrees enters the fiction of the game. It’s small, but I feel it’s important that such distinctions are made. A physical object depicts one thing, but the group agrees that it doesn’t. As a second example, Vincent said here that the character sheet is not the character. The sheet may reference or allude to the character but is not the character in and of itself. It seems to me that would clearly show the difference between a physical object and an imaginary regarding of what that object represents.

Third, play usually does not explore the physical nature of the objects used to aid play. The color and texture of the cards in Deadlands are totally irrelevant to the Exploration of the game. The online map of Glorantha itself is not what the players explore, but the relevant elements of Setting agreed to in the game’s shared fiction. A hypothetical game that uses the phases of the Moon (in real life) to determine a werewolf’s power does not explore the Moon, only the mechanical affects of the System. The Moon only facilitates the System. It is not itself the point of play.

Fourth, game-related objects that are contained within the physical environment where play is going on may not ever get included in the SIS/Exploration. For instance, unused portions of a dungeon in the Dungeon Tiles set never make it to the SIS. Areas of the Glorantha map where the characters never venture don’t make it into the Exploration of the game. Cards in games like Standoff that never get dealt are there and can help facilitate play, but never enter the fiction of the game. The beads in Hunter Rose are accumulated and tied to the thread, but only reflect play- never influence it. Basically, leftovers.

The Case of Physical Playing Environment Not Being Part of System (also SIS box):

This is all System in the lumpley/Baker-Care Principle sense. Just for quick reference, from the Provisional Glossary it says, "System (including but not limited to 'the rules') is defined as the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play."

First, for the way I’m looking at the Physical Play Environment of a game, the physical objects must exist prior to the “group agrees to imagined events during play.” If a group is going to agree to use the scale on the map of Glorantha to chart the distance the PCs traveled, then the scale and the map must already exist before they reference it. If the players are to agree that a card should be drawn in Roach, the cards must already be in the play area for them to do that. Therefore, the objects have an existence separate from the System of the game.

Second, though the System can reference the physical item, it is not a requirement that every aspect of the physical item become part of “how we decide what happens during play.” As mentioned earlier, details on miniatures, the surface of the moon, the gender pronouns on a card, the color of the dice, etc. can all be ignored yet the object can still help determine what happens. Thus, I don’t think that the physical objects are a part of the System but only reflect the System and/or can only be referenced by the System.

Third, like Exploration, System relies on communication. However, not everything communicated is part of the System. The type, scent, and color of the candle in Polaris may enhance the ambiance of the play session, but it plays no part in deciding how things happen- just when we start, and when we stop. Right? The candle may communicate something about the player as a person, but is almost never a part of the SIS. The SIS may reference the candle, but the candle is apart. Since System is only concerned with “the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play,” what aesthetics the candle provides, while part of the environment where play is happening, isn’t part of the System used for play.

The Case for Social Contract Containing the Physical Playing Environment:

First, as stated by the Big Model Diagram and the definition provided by the Provisional Glossary, everything that has to do with roleplaying is contained within the Social Contract. Physical objects manipulated during play in reaction to or in reference of in-game events are part of roleplaying. Therefore, the Social Contract would contain the Physical Playing Environment.

Second, the Physical Play Environment could not be a larger box than the Social Contract since deciding who would bring the maps, cards, minis, roses, dice, and so on would definitely be characterized by the “interactions and relationships among the role-playing group, including emotional connections, logistic arrangements, and expectations.” The physical objects could not be part of play as physical objects unless the conditions for the Social Contract are met first. Referencing physical objects that are not in the Physical Environment would make them imaginary objects, in my opinion.

Third, the Physical Objects used during play are one among many things that are part of the interactions of the roleplaying group (like the fiction, techniques, and ephemera of the game). Thus, I believe the Physical Playing Environment is a recognizable and discrete component of play.

The Case of SIS/Exploration Being Contained within the Physical Playing Environment:

First, just as the SIS/Exploration of a game can only reference or rely on the Social Contract, the SIS/Exploration can only reference or rely on the Physical Objects present that the group agreed to bring as aids to facilitate play as well as the people who are actually there participating. Since the Physical Playing Environment is like the Social Contract in this way, it seems to me at least, that it too would be a box that encases the SIS/Exploration box.

Second, since the Physical Playing Environment contains things that were agreed to be brought to the game by the Social Contract but might not be incorporated into the Exploration of the game, then the SIS/Exploration of a game would be a subset of everything in the Physical Playing Environment. For instance, not all the minis brought to the game might be used that night. However, they are still game-related and a part of the Social Contract.

The Case for Making the Physical Playing Environment a Distinct Box within Social Contract:

As an area of design and play, the Physical Playing Environment holds great potential for roleplaying games. Relegating the Physical Playing Environment to the “and more” part of the Social Contract downplays its importance, almost making it non-existent as part of the theory. The Big Model is useful for both examining play and designing games. It should help facilitate understanding and innovation in both areas. By not expressing the Physical Playing Environment more clearly, I believe it leaves a gap its communication to a reader- especially for newcomers to Forge theory. To me, that is a problem.

By highlighting the importance of the Physical Playing Environment, it brings another layer of understanding to the Big Model without adding a layer of complexity. The Physical Playing Environment, including the unconventional environments like the Internet or empty field used for LARPing, is an easily grasped concept. It adds a level of detail that makes the Big Model more concrete.

When it comes to examining the Big Model, we are mainly looking at human interaction. However, there is more to roleplaying than just humans interacting with humans. While we roleplay, we are also interacting with non-human objects. Dice, cards, books, pictures, miniatures, foam swords, and other props are part of the ritual. Yet, those things are not found listed on the Big Model as it currently stands. Many newcomers look at the Big Model and go, “So where does the Player’s Guide fit in? I see where it says, ‘reference to the rules’ but I don’t see the rules themselves.” I regard this as a small oversight in the current Big Model. Not a critical or fatal oversight, but I believe it is an oversight.

Finally, I can’t see that anything is lost by adding this new box to the Big Model. The concept of a Physical Playing Environment does not shortchange the concept of the Social Contract nor the Shared Imagined Space. It does not dilute the definitions or relevance of the other boxes; therefore, adding it should not cause any major upheaval in the theory. It does alter it some (anything new should) but not in a cataclysmic way. Hence, I think the model would be improved by adding the Physical Playing Environment to it.

Closing Remarks

Since it seems to me that the SIS/Exploration box includes reference/reliance on some things that are in the Physical Playing Environment but also can exclude things included in the subsets of the “interactions and relationships among the role-playing group,” the Physical Playing Environment is a discrete facet of the Big Model. Keeping all that I said above in mind, I would tentatively put forth that the Shared Playing Environment is “Anything physical that assists and/or participates in play including but not limited to manipulatives (minis, cards, tokens), venues (a dorm room, Skype, chat rooms), and visual aids (maps, character sheets, character sketches) and people (players, GMs, observers). I don’t know if the Big Model was meant to include LARP play, but if it were, I would think that the Physical Playing Environment would be a vital, obvious, and important aspect of play, and thus the model too.

I may be totally off here, so I am willing to get GNS copped on this by the big-wigs. But I’ve always wondered where things like maps, character sheets, minis, and models (and LARP props if they count) fit in when it comes to play and the Big Model. I’m hoping that this blog entry is the starting point for some good discussion on the topic.

Peace,

-Troy

D&D Alignments: A Lament

2011-10-21T04:58:00.000-07:00

Heya,

When I first started roleplaying, I was introduced to the hobby through MERP, a Rolemaster variant. It was lots of fun, though it was a simple game with plenty of design issues. We explored Middle-earth, got tired of it, made our own worlds, and pursued radically different creative agendas concurrently and somehow made it work. I got to play with some awesome people who were my best friends, and we had some deep, rich, and rewarding campaigns.

Then I went away to college. I was introduced to AD&D2e. I had heard it wasn’t all that great of a system, but it was the only thing the guys around there knew how to play. When I first met up with them, I asked to borrow the Player’s Handbook. As I read over Chargen, I seized on Alignments. I thought it was the coolest part of making a character. I could see how it would challenge me as a player to hold to it, and I figured that the game would reward sticking to your alignment even in situations where it would be advantageous to abandon it. The game did no such thing.

In fact, alignment almost never came up in the games I played. I got to game with about five separate DnD groups in college (truth be told, I crammed 4 years of college into 6). And not one time did alignment matter. No one cared about it. The mechanic seemed more of a shackle than invitation for roleplaying. Eventually, I gave up my quest for it to matter.

I hated that. I really wanted alignment to be important, in fact the center of my character. In truth, I think it should have been. It seems obvious that, at some point in DnD’s design, someone thought moral dilemma would be an interesting facet of play, but the game never supported it. Alignment is the ultimate flag in DnD when it comes to what a player wants his character to really be about, but the game never provided incentives for challenging and changing alignments. It would tell you how to do that (and offer some nominal punishments for the change), but not why a person should, or when, or offer bonuses and temptations for doing so. I felt the mechanic was almost entirely ignored by the game. I wish it wouldn’t have been.

This is why I have high hopes for Dungeon World. I’m not really plugging that game here, just relating that I am sorrowful that my experience with DnD marginalized what I found to be the most intriguing part of character creation, and that I hope DW offers me the chance to see what it would have been like if Alignment mattered.

Have you ever felt this way about a game? That there was a mechanic that seemed really awesome and even central to play, but was ignored altogether by the rest of the rules and/or players?

Peace,

-Troy

How Can My Game Better Teach Mechanics? pt.2

2011-10-10T09:43:00.000-07:00

Heya,

Back in 2007, I wrote an articled called “How Can My Game Better Teach Mechanics?” I’ve learned a lot since then, so this is a follow-up article to that.

The definitions of mechanics vs. rules can be a little bit fuzzy. I’m not going to worry about the minutiae of that debate today. Basically, I’m going to refer to the Rules as the printed text in your book, and the System as the lumpley principle (see link). Anyway, here’s some pointers on helping your rules better teach people how to play your game:

#1: Write the Rules according to what the players (including the GM) actually do:

Rules should be written to provoke action by the players. The text explains what the players are supposed to be doing at the table during play. Therefore it reasons that rules should be written with player action in mind. If the characters in your game are Texas lawmen from the old west and you want to give them a bonus for aiming their rifles rather than shooting from the hip, don’t write this: “Aiming: +3 bonus to hit.” Instead, write, “Aiming: If you have your character spend one round aiming his gun, add a plus three bonus to your Attack value.” As I said in my article on writing mechanics, mechanics (rules) are for people, not for characters. The character is getting a bonus for aiming, but it’s the player that decides to have him aim.

When writing your game, you will inevitably come across a sentence or two that seems confusing. If you do, ask yourself, “Is this written in a way that talks about what the players are actually physically doing, or is it talking about something else?” If the answer is “something else” then it probably needs to be rewritten. Focus on real people making real decisions and taking real actions around the game table and your text will be much better at communicating your vision for play.

#2: Don’t just explain the rules, explain the rationale behind the rules.

Designers are getting better and better at explaining not only what to do but also why players should be doing it. It used to be that a game might propose combat options as just a list of bonuses a character could get if the player simply declared he/she is using them. There was no explanation of where to use them or why to use them. It was just assumed the players would figure it out.

This was especially true in Chargen. Take alignment from AD&D 2e for example. There was a listing of each alignment and then an explanation of that alignment, but never any rules or text about why you should play your alignment, why you should change your alignment, or why you should care what other people’s alignments were. There were rules on HOW to do those things but not WHY you should do those things. Therefore, it was my experience, that alignment rules were pretty much disregarded with the occasional exception of the cleric class.

So how can you explain the why in addition to the how?

Well, the simplest way to do that is just include it as part of the chapter or section where the rule is introduced. Vincent Baker is a master at this. Dogs in the Vineyard, In a Wicked Age, and Apocalypse World are all exemplar texts for discussing the Why along with the How without breaking up or interrupting the text.

That’s not to say that breaking up the text is a bad thing. It isn’t. Using a designer’s sidebar on the outside margins of a text is a perfectly viable alternative as well. D&D 3e did this. They called it, “Behind the Curtain.” It introduced the reader to the thinking of the designer and developer when it came to certain mechanics. This was extraordinarily helpful for players (like myself) who were converting over from AD&D 2e rules.

Another way to do this is just to have a subsection at the end of each chapter or whatever explaining your rationale for the various mechanics. So at the end of Character Advancement, you might have a section entitled “My Vision For These Rules” or “Why This Should Matter to You.” It’s okay to come right out and say “Hey Mr. Reader, this part’s important. Let me tell you why it is.”

#3: Don’t hide anything.

This is related to the first. There’s been a tradition in roleplaying texts (see my article on TITB4B) to hold back on telling the reader everything for fear of ruining the surprise or suspension of disbelief. This is silliness. Leaving out critical parts of the instructions for prescribing play is a BAD IDEA.

You are inventing a new game, even if you are basing off some other game like FUDGE, FATE, or TSOY. Therefore you need to explain, in detail, everything you as the designer expect to go on during play. You must prescribe to the players the actions they should take in order to understand, play, and enjoy your game. I’m not talking about dictating every move or adding rewards and punishments for what the characters do. I trust that a reader of this blog knows that. Instead, what I’m saying is if challenging other player-characters to duels is really fun in your game, come out and say that! Don’t just include the rules for having duels without any type of text explaining that dueling is an important aspect of game-play.

I think that some of the talk about the “Fruitful Void” is sometimes confusing to new designers. When Vincent talks about the Fruitful Void, he’s not saying that the game gets fun when the players finally figure out what you left out of the text. He’s saying the game gets fun when the players finally figure out exactly what you put in your text. The Fruitful Void is a very heavy topic and one I’m not comfortable going into at great length without its own article. For the purposes of this entry let me just say, don’t get hung up on whether or not your game has a Fruitful Void. Instead, play, play, play and then explain-explain-explain.

#4: Give model characters, items, techniques, etc.

People learn best in an apprenticeship. However, that is rarely feasible with an RPG that has any sizable print run at all. You, the designer, can’t be everywhere. Therefore you have to resort to another very effective method of teaching: models.

I regard the following as key sections in an RPG rule book:

Character Creation
Character Advancement
Resolution
Reward Mechanics
GM Prep (if there is a GM)

(You can reference my article on the System Design Checklist for further explanation) In each of the above sections, I highly recommend you give finished, polished, and multiple models of what you, as the designer, expect. In fact, if your character creation, resolution, or GM prep rules are complicated, I would encourage you to give examples at each step and then one final, holistic example at the end. The more models the better.

Models make the abstract concrete. If someone trying to play your game gets stuck, a model can serve as a guidepost they can use to see if they are doing it right. Multiple models are preferred since it gives the reader/player multiple points of reference, thus increasing the likelihood they will understand your text.

#5: Use text features, more importantly, use uniform text features.

Text features are things like headings, titles, sub-titles, boldface, italics, bullets, pictures, graphs, timelines, charts, text boxes, colors, and fonts. There are many more, but those are the most commonly used text features.

Text features are important because they can cue a reader that something new or something important is being presented. A text box at the bottom of the page cues the reader that there may be some supplemental information relevant to the topic in that section. It also tells the reader that what’s in the box is separate from the rest of the text and therefore meant to be read separately.

One thing I’d like to stress is using uniform text features. Make all your titles, headings, and sub-headings the same size, font, and whatever else. All your titles should look the same. All the heading should look the same. All the sub-headings should look the same, and each of these things should look DIFFERENT from each other. I can’t tell you how difficult it can be to read a game text where some of the headings are boldface, others are underlined, everything is in the same font or size, and some key words are capitalized and others aren’t.

Create a style guide for yourself or adopt one from some other source like the APA or MLA. Whatever you do, be consistent. Your readers will thank you for it, and doing so will lead to better comprehension and more consistent play.

#6: Include Bonus Resources Players Can Complete or Customize.

When people think of resources in an RPG book they usually think of one of two things: Character Sheets or Maps. Those are a good start, but they aren’t enough. If the GameMaster’s job is to create a villain, give him a villain sheet to help out- one with all the relevant stats, values, and space for notes that he’ll need. If the GM has to create setting for play, give him some type of setting sheet that is- at the very least- a checklist of things he/she needs to consider when making the setting.

All sorts of tally sheets, note sheets, blank maps with a legend at the bottom, character sheets, monster sheets, charts, diagrams, or logs can be provided to help make implementing the game’s rules easier. For years players have had to create their own, and a lot of confusion can arise from this. If you provide everyone with what they need in this regard, then the resources everyone uses will be uniform and easily understood by the other participants.

The easiest way to come up with resources for your game is to watch people during playtesting. What cheat-sheets or help-sheets did they create? What sorts of suggestions did they make? What parts did they note were cumbersome to keep track of or confusing to catalogue? Playtesting is a gold mine for this sort of thing. Don’t let such valuable feedback go to waste. Use it to make your game more convenient and easier to play by turning those player-made resources into game-provided resources. Before you finish a game, ask yourself, “What else could I include that would make all the book keeping and handling time easier for this game?” Then add that stuff.

Peace,

-Troy

What Should My Mechanics Be Like?

2011-09-29T18:23:00.000-07:00

Heya,

In the world of RPG design, there are millions of different mechanics that have been invented over the four decades of our hobby. Sometimes these mechanics work really well with how the game is played or with the theme, genre, mood, and/or setting of the game. Other times, the mechanics seem disjointed, false, or imported from an entirely different game and given a thin veneer of originality. How does one design mechanics that not only function well but also fit the focus of play the game is trying to evoke? That’s what I’m going to try to talk about today.

For this article, I plan on using a lot of examples, anecdotes, and hypothetical situations. It’s impossible to intelligently talk about mechanics in a vacuum. So as best I can, I will try to provide some amount of context as I go.

The key to designing good mechanics is to constantly, diligently stay focused on what your game is about and what the players do. You may recognize the italicized portion from the Big 3, but there’s something I intentionally left out with regards to the questions the Big 3 poses: what the characters do. Mechanics are not for characters; they are for people. To rephrase: mechanics are what the players do and what the players do should reinforce what the game is about. If you get nothing else from this entry, I hope you get that.

So, let’s start with some negative examples. Take Call of Cthullu for instance (6th Edition). The BRP system it uses is great for creating a very simple and generic resolution mechanic that holds up fairly well under most circumstances during play. But, how does a d100 roll-under mechanic really reinforce the horror of H.P. Lovecraft’s writing? The truth is, it doesn’t. That’s why CoC has a totally separate and tacked-on sub-system called Sanity.

Having these two separate systems always felt disjointed to me. It increased handling time right in the middle of the satisfying, high-tension moments of play. It forced players to stop doing one thing, and start doing another, then go back to doing the first thing again. Also, since the connection between the two mechanics is loose, it is easy to go through lengthy periods of play during a session ignoring one or the other. To me, that was unsatisfying and an example of taking the easy way out in game design. BRP worked, so they used it. It reinforced Chaosium’s branding, so they used it. In my way of thinking, those are not good reasons for using a particular mechanic or set of mechanics.

Instead, let’s imagine a different resolution system, one that more closely integrates what the players do to the sanity genre trope associated with CoC (i.e. what the game is really about). Rather than a d100, I would give each player a standard deck of cards, jokers included. Whenever a character attempted a task, the player would shuffle his deck and flip over the top card. If that card’s value beat the target number, then the character succeeded. If it didn’t, the character fails OR the player has the option to flip over another card and add its value to the original. He could repeat this any number of times. Once the value beat the target number, he’d have to stop flipping. Values for face cards, aces, and jokers would all have different effects. This would have to involve some kind of risk, however.

Any successful skill-check involving the occult or monsters or scary places automatically causes the player to remove from his pile of flipped cards the card or cards with the lowest value. A failure would result in the loss of all cards. When a player runs out of cards in his deck, his character goes insane. Thus, the resolution mechanics and the sanity mechanics are much more intertwined and visceral. As the deck gets thinner, the player knows he’s getting closer to losing his character. But at the same time he also knows that his average card values are getting higher, so it entices him to take more risks in his skill checks- especially those made when not dealing with the spooky stuff, which is a true sign of someone who is losing his/her mind. I believe this would do a better job of communicating to the players through play what the game was really about: the genre convention of slowly going insane as you fight against unimaginable powers.

Let’s take another example that might surprise some: The Riddle of Steel. This game was first published in 2002 by Jake Norwood. TRoS is among the most venerable and beautiful independent RPGs ever produced, so I do not choose to criticize it lightly. I know full well that TRoS is a very functional and enjoyable game to play.

My criticism of The Riddle of Steel comes from the seeming mis-match of combat rules and Spiritual Attributes. The game is really about the Spiritual Attributes and the moral dilemmas they present the players during play. The SA mechanic can force the players to make hard-hitting, gut-wrenching decisions and to reexamine their values. Then, all of a sudden, players are thrust into a highly technical, simulationsist style of sword fencing the moment combat enters the scene. It’s jarring for some. At times, it felt like I pulling my mind out of a deep well of narrativist decisions making, link by link, and then plunging it into the boiling cauldron of an SCA fencing tournament.

It wasn’t jolting every time, but there were moments when the group wanted a fight, and I was like, “Fiddling with all these moves is the last thing I want to do right now.” Unlike the call of Cthullu example, there is nothing generic, cheap, or “easy way out” about Jake’s design. It’s brilliant. But I’ve wondered on several occasions if the combat system would have fit better in a game about sword duals and if the Spiritual Abilities mechanic would have been better served by a more direct and relevant combat system (what I mean by ‘relevant’ is putting what the characters were fighting about at the center of the conflict rather than the thrusts and parries Jake meticulously described in his text). In TroS, I felt at times that I was leaving behind what I really cared about in favor of caring about which fencing technique would be best to defeat the character played by the GM this time around.

Is The Riddle of Steel functional as is? Heck yeah! Is it fun? Heck yeah! Could it be improved by swapping out one set of mechanics for another? I think maybe it could.

Now, let’s talk about some positive examples.

First up, I’m going to talk about Prime Time Adventures. The game is all about exploring the types of themes explored on TV shows. Players portray television (or movie) characters through episodes and seasons. That description actually does the game a disservice. There’s lots more to it than that. If you’re interested in learning more about Matt Willson’s game, I encourage you to pick it up. For the purposes of this article, though, the above description will suffice.

So anyway, PTA incorporates its mechanics extremely well into what the game is about and what the players do. In fact, it does it so well, that it’s hard for me to know where to start in the chain of mechanics. Let’s take the Fan Mail mechanic for instance. Fan Mail is given out by the players to the other players for doing a good job portraying their characters and addressing the premise. The Fan Mail is then used as currency to buy bonus die to be used during play.

I love this mechanic for several reasons. First, it incentivizes players to do what they are supposed to do which is to portray their characters well and engage the story lines in accordance with the premise the group has decided upon. Second, it fits the television motif perfectly. Imagine if Fan Mail was called advancement points or story points instead. It wouldn’t have anything close to the impactful connotation “Fan Mail” brings to the game. So, yes, keywords matter, and flavorful keywords are almost always better and more effective than something generic and common. Finally, I love this mechanic because it creates a closed circuit. It leads the players from the “how we play” mechanics to the rewards mechanics and then back to the “how we play” mechanics. It’s beautiful, symmetrical, and fun. Fan Mail tells the players what to do while helping “what the game is about” to be front and center the whole time.

Let’s take a look at another example. At first I was reluctant to use this game as an example because I always use the game as an example. But a good example is a good example, so here we go.

Dogs in the Vineyard has several mechanics that I feel are expertly woven into what the game is about and what the players are to do. The Escalation mechanic is among its best, IMO. The game, in large part, is about violence and the problems it causes. The resolution system of DitV puts violence at the heart of what the game is about. As the level of violence increases, i.e. Escalates, the player adds more and bigger dice to his pool. The mechanic nails what I am talking about both on a thematic and a visceral level. Physically adding bigger dice to one’s pool gives this mechanic a sensory aspect that enhances its effect on play. Imagine if Vincent had decided that escalation just let you reroll your dice or gave you a +3 bonus to your highest three rolls instead. The mechanic would not be nearly as powerful in communicating the increase in tension and in stakes. It would be dry and uninspiring IMHO. I don’t think the role the physical aspect of game mechanics plays in design and play can be understated. It certainly is underappreciated in many games. I salute DitV for equating the physical act of escalating the number of dice in a pool to the escalating level of violence in-game. (for more on cool mechanics about violence, see also Vincent Baker’s Poison’d- IMO, it’s DitV cranked to 11).

Moving on, there are some games that start off well with regards to the mechanics reinforcing what the game is about, but then lose that initial brilliance in the interest of expedience. Deadlands is the poster child for this, IMO. When it first came out, the poker mechanics used for resolution were very fun and flavorful. Later, though the game switched to the Savage Worlds Engine which is dice-based. I felt the game lost a large amount of its charm when that happened.

Some games have mechanics and play that are totally unrelated, but as time passes and newer editions come out, the game moves toward a greater convergence between mechanics and play. Take AD&D2E’s evolution into D&D4e. AD&D’s mechanics were very abstract, generic, and at times, counter intuitive. They did nothing to tie together what the players did, let alone reinforce the fact that they were actually playing a fantasy RPG. The migration through 3E into 4E, however, changed that. Now mechanics like feats and stances are much more flavorful with regards to the fantasy tropes the game is all about, and the requirement of using miniatures throughout play is much better at mating the mechanics to what the players are actually doing during a play session. Fourth Edition is not everyone’s cup of tea (it’s certainly not mine), but I respect the fact that the mechanics are much more tightly woven into to the types of play and color the game wants to create.

It’s probably time for me to close this article. I’ve rambled long enough. Just remember, your mechanics are for people, and the implementation of those mechanics should closely resemble and reinforce what the game is all about and what the players are actually doing.

Peace,

-Troy

SD Topical Index #1

2011-03-02T06:55:00.000-08:00

Heya,

This is my 100th post on Socratic Design. IMHO, that’s quite a feat. It gave me pause for reflection. I looked over my anthologies and thoughts, “Geez. These are really hard to use. There’s no organization here.” As I am often referring to my older posts, it can take me a long time to locate a particular entry. Therefore, with my 100th post, I am creating a topical index. I will do so on every 100th post.

So here you go. If you were hoping for an easier reference for my blog, this is probably the best you’ll ever get.

SD Topical Index 1

On Design Aids

-What is The Big 3?
-What is The Alt. Three?
-What are the Power 19? Pt.1
-What are the Power 19? Pt. 2
-Why should I post my Power 19?
-Whatever Happened to the Power 19?
-What is the System Design Checklist?
-What is the Setting Design Checklist?
-Are There any Design Outlines?

On The Big Model

-What is Character?
-What is Setting?
-What is Situation?
-What is System?
-What is Color?
-What is TITB4B and Why’s It Bad?

On Other RPG Theory

-What is Stance Theory? Pt. 1
-What is Stance Theory? Pt. 2
-Is Min-Maxing Bad?
-Which is Better, Hit Points or DPS?
-What is a GM?
-How can Magic be Used in a RPG?
-What is Chargen?

On Resolution

-What is Resolution?
-What is Narration Rights?
-What is DFK?
-What are the Different Types of Fortune Mechanics?

On Setting

-Does Setting Still Matter?
-What is Setting? Pt. 1
-What is Setting? Pt. 2
-What is Setting? Pt. 3
-What is Setting? Pt. 4
-Is There a New Blasted Sands Available?

On Writing and Designing A Game

-Why Do People Do RPGs?
-What Should I Design?
-What Should I Expect from My First Design?
-When Do I Abandon a Game?
-What is the Mathematician Syndrome?
-What are Some Common Pitfalls?
-Another Pitfall.
-What Do I Do If I get Stuck?
-What is a Sacred Cow?
-How Can My Game Better Teach Mechanics? Pt. 1
-What Else Besides Dice?
-What is Strength of Emphasis?
-When is a Concept Ready to Be a Draft?

On Publishing

-What Is It Like to Publish a RPG?
-Is Publishing Really That Painful?
-What if my Game Turns Out Crappy?
-What is a Fulfillment Service?
-What is Troy’s Twelve Step Process?
-Another Process.
-Yet Another Process.
-Where can I get Art for My Game?

On The Community

-What Is/Was The Forge About?
-What is RPG Crossroads?
-What is the (Iron) Game Chef?
-What is Diaspora?

On Rewards

-Is Character Advancement Necessary?
-Is Play Its Own Reward?

On Character Death

-When Should a Character Die?
-What is a Death Spiral?

Editorials

-What is the Future of RPGs?
-Why Design a RPG?
-What is a Heartbreaker?
-What is a Traditional Game?
-So What Are We Looking For?
-How Do I Appeal To Youth?
-A Side Rant.

Anthologies

-Socratic Design Anthology #1
-Socratic Design Anthology #2
-Socratic Design Anthology #3
-Socratic Design Anthology #4
-Socratic Design Anthology #5
-Socratic Design Anthology #6

Please, please, please report any dead links. Also, if you have any questions about any of the articles, please post them in response to this entry. I don’t check the older ones very often. Enjoy!

Peace,

-Troy

Socratic Design Anthology #6

2011-02-10T07:36:00.000-08:00

Heya,

I haven't done an anthology for Socratic Design since 2009. It seems like yesterday to me, but a lot of time has passed since then. I figured it's time to do one, just to review what I've talked about for the last year and a quarter. Here they are:

-What is DFK?
-How Do Fortune Mechanics Work?
-What is Stance Theory? Pt. 1
-What is Stance Theory? Pt. 2
-What is TITB4B and Why’s it Bad?
-When Do I Abandon a Game?
-Is Publishing Really That Painful?
-Is there a New Blasted Sands Available?

Please report any malfunctioning links. I've often had trouble with these in the past. For reference, here are the previous Anthologies listed in order:

-Socratic Design Anthology #1
-Socratic Design Anthology #2
-Socratic Design Anthology #3
-Socratic Design Anthology #4
-Socratic Design Anthology #5

If you wish to comment on any of these posts, please go ahead and post that reply here on this article. I do go back and check my old posts from time to time, but not very often. I'll be happy to entertain any questions on any of these links here. Anyway, I hope you enjoy them!

Peace,

-Troy

How Do Fortune Resolution Mehcanics Work?

2011-02-04T10:36:00.000-08:00

Heya,

There is some required prior reading for this article: What is Resolution? and What is DFK? If you have not read those articles yet, I would recommend doing so. Otherwise a lot of what I have to say here will lack proper context. I’m writing with the assumption that the reader has, indeed, read those articles.

All Fortune mechanics have the same four basic components: Declaring Actions, Narrating Actions, Rolling Dice and Applying Resources such as currencies, modifiers, escalation techniques, rerolls and so on. The order of these four steps, though, matters a great deal and can completely change how a game is played. There are four Fortune methods I’ll be covering here today: Fortune at the Beginning (FatB), Fortune in the Middle (FitM), Fortune in the Middle with Teeth (FitMw/T), and Fortune at the End (FatE).

Fortune at the Beginning (FatB): Fortune at the Beginning has only been experimented with. I am not aware of any large scale game production that has found a way to effectively use it. Not to say it hasn't been done at all. Daniel Solis' games "Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple", "The Leftovers", and "Happy Birthday, Robot!" feature FatB. Currently, I am experimenting with it myself. You can find an example of what I’m doing with the G.A.M.E. system over on 1km1kt.

Fortune at the Beginning works like this. First, before declaring anything, a player adds up all modifiers and resources that might affect the roll. Second, he rolls the dice. Then, after the results of the roll are revealed the player gets to decide what to do. Based on the result, the player may decline to have his/her characters act, may assign any number of successes to any number of actions, or declare what his character won as a result of the rolls. Basically, in Fortune at the Beginning, the player is rolling blind.

The advantages of this system are mostly tactical. In a dice pool system where multiple successful results are possible with the dice, the player can prioritize the actions or tasks he wants his character to complete. He or she knows which actions/tasks will be successful or which prizes he will win. FatB almost becomes a Karma system at that point. It’s not as much of a guess like it is with the other resolution systems.

FatB as opposed to Fortune at the End (FatE), decreases the amount of opportunity costs for acting. If a result shows up in the dice that the player is unhappy with, he can decline action and thus avoid outright failure. If the results are unexpectedly fortuitous, he can react by taking advantage. The order of operations basically looks like this: Apply Resources (if available)->Roll Dice->Declare Actions->Narrate Outcome. In a way FatB resembles FatE in that the dice do get to decide pass/fail, but unlike FatE the player is not locked into a specific action prior to rolling.

I feel that FatB is best suited for tactical games where characters are trying to execute a number of maneuvers in order to win against an opponent or obstacle. Games with the play philosophy of Dungeons and Dragons lend themselves well to FatB IMO. It really supports well many Gamist tendencies.

The problem with this system is, it can be a little unnatural. Rolling prior to declaring anything in the fiction or at the table is strange. You initiate a conflict or trial, but don’t talk about the results, what’s at stake, or what the characters are trying to do until the dice are rolled. It’s very strange. And honestly, I don’t think there’s a well played, widely used functional example of it yet. However, I've just recently been made aware of Daniel's games, so I'll have to give them a whirl.

As a quick aside, a FatBw/T would order its operations like so: Roll Dice->Apply Resources (if available)->Declare Actions->Narrate Outcome. More on the whole “with Teeth” idea in a bit.

Fortune in the Middle (FitM): A bare-bones Fortune in the Middle resolution system places the rolling in (surprise!) the middle of the operations. Players declare what their characters are trying to do, roll the dice, and then narrate the outcomes based on the dice. The narration in this resolution system is really key. In order for a resolution system to really be a FitM system, the narration has to have a mechanical effect on the in-game fiction. This is not saying, “I strike my opponent with my sword” after rolling a natural twenty in D&D. Hitting with a Nat-20 was something decided waaaaaaaaay before anyone said anything. In fact, it’s pre-supposed in the rules. The 20 would hit regardless of whether or not the player said anything. FitM narration is retroactive and can override anything that was said prior to the roll. Players are free to adjust their actions and tactics based on what the rolls’ results are. The dice (or cards or dominos or chicken bones or whatever) are not the final arbiter of what happens in the game’s fiction.

Bare-bones FitM systems operate like this: Declare Actions->Apply Resources(if available)->Roll Dice->Narrate Outcome.

Fortune in the Middle (both with teeth and without) really support Narrativist tendencies. It’s not exclusively so. It can support Gamist play as well, but the types of conflicts Narrativist play tends towards are very well supported by FitM. Simluationist tendencies are not so much. Simulationist play really wants things to be well defined and dedicated to supporting the reinforcement of the area of exploration. I’ll get into the distinctions between the creative agendas at a later date. For now, this information may be useful to designers who are already familiar with them.

Fortune in the Middle with Teeth (FitMw/T):

FitMw/T is where you’ll find a lot of indie game design. Hero Wars, Dogs in the Vineyard, The Shadow of Yesterday, Prime Time Adventures, and so and so on have Fortune in the Middle with Teeth systems. The key feature and key difference between with Teeth and without Teeth systems is where the Spend Currency/Apply Resources operation is located. Instead of applying modifiers, bonus dice, hero points, or whatever before the roll is made, that stuff comes after the roll is made. This is very important because it allows players to escalate the conflict, make better tactical decisions, lend a hand in someone else’s fight, or adjust their character’s actions to better suit the result.

In FitMw/T results are fluid and more subject to what the players want rather than what the rules or dice dictate. For instance, if a player in Dogs in the Vineyard is unhappy with his roll, he can escalate the conflict. If a player in Hero Wars is unhappy with her roll, she can spend a Hero Point to reroll. FitMw/T allows for ways to get around or obviate the initial roll and replace it with something else.

Fortune in the Middle with Teeth systems arrange the resolution operations basically like this: Declare Actions->Roll Dice->Apply Resources (if available)->Narrate Outcome.

The problem with this system is it can be labor and/or time intensive. If the resolution of conflicts or tasks is not what you want your game to be about, then FitMw/T may not be the best choice for your game.

Fortune at the End (FatE): This is not to be confused with the FATE engine used with Spirit of the Century. IMO, Fortune at the End is the simplest and was the most commonly used resolution system for the first three decades of RPG design. D&D/AD&D, Rolemaster, RuneQuest, CoC, Tunnels and Trolls, Boot Hill, MERP, GURPS, WoD, Rifts, Shadowrun, Deadlands, and so on and so on all used a Fortune at the End mechanic*.

In Fortune at the End, a player first declares what his character wants/is trying to do. Second, all tweaking of values, modifiers, dice pools, et cetera is done prior to the actual rolling of the dice. You figure in your attack bonus, defense modifier, saving throw, THAC0, and all that sort of stuff before the dice hit the table. Third, the player rolls the dice (reveals the cards, flips the pennies, or whatever). After the dice reveal their values, the fortune system is done. Normally, you’ll compare the values to a chart or some target number, and read your results from that.

There are two important features of a Fortune at the End system. The first is that once the dice are thrown, the players (including the GM if there is one) are unable to alter the results. The results stand and you deal with the consequences there. The second feature is that what you are rolling for is decided before you roll. There is no going back and changing your mind once the dice are counted. You can’t take your swing of the sword back after you rolled your d20. Players can’t change their minds. Fortune at the End, much as its name suggests, is final. It arranges the order of operations as such: Declare Actions-> Apply Resources (if available)->Narrate Outcome->Roll Dice.

Fortune at the End excellently supports Simulationist play and is practical for Gamist play as well. Narrativist play tendencies seem to be stifled under this system. The idea that a conflict is wrapped up independent to player-input after the roll is antithetical to most Narrativist players’ priorities.

Well, that’s just about all I have to say on this for now. Just for reference, here are the order of operations for each system in shorthand:

=FatB: Apply Resources (if available)->Roll Dice->Declare Actions->Narrate Outcome.

=FitM: Declare Actions-> Apply Resources (if available)->Roll Dice->Narrate Outcome.

=FitMw/T: Declare Actions->Roll Dice-> Apply Resources (if available)->Narrate Outcome.

=FatE: Declare Actions-> Apply Resources (if available)->Narrate Outcome->Roll Dice.

As you design your games, I hope that you experiment with all of these at some point. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Play with them and decide which one is right for your vision of how your game should work.

Peace,

-Troy

*Technically, many of the games have resolution mechanics that are abstract enough that they are easy to drift towards FitM or maybe even FatB; however, the intent of the designs strongly indicate that they are FatE.

What is Stance Theory? Part2

2011-01-24T10:20:00.000-08:00

Heya,

In our last episode, I ran down the four main roleplaying stances and gave a brief description of each. In this installment (much shorter than the first), I’ll describe how designers can use Stance Theory when making their games.

Here’s the big thing you need to take away from Stance Theory: all it does is to say who can say what when and how much credibility what they say has. Let me unpack that.

First, is “who can say what?” All the stances except Director Stance state that the player may only make statements about a character. It does not have to be “their” character. It can be any character or all the characters or a whole group of characters. Actor, Pawn, and Author are all character-centric. Director is the only stance that permits a player to make statements about non-character things such as furniture, location, geography, foliage, the weather, and so on and so forth.

Second is “when can they say it?” Each stance has certain conditions that have to be met in order for a person’s spoken words to be added to the fiction. If you want to speak in Actor Stance, you must be acting within the motivations of your character and take in-game causality into account. If you’re not in a position to do that, then you can’t use Actor Stance until you are.

Third is “how much credibility do they have?” A person who is expected to be acting in Pawn Stance cannot suddenly narrate in an open treasure chest in the middle of the room. A person expected to be engaging in Actor Stance cannot suddenly disregard the sensibility of the Setting and past fiction just to gain a tactical advantage. Stances set up expectations that assist people in communication during roleplay.

And that’s sort of how this all relates to design. Remember, that Stance Theory is meant to be used as a tool to describe play. When we design a game, we sort of turn that on its head. Stance theory becomes a way to prescribe play. A game designer helps make the decisions about when each stance can or should be used. But instead of using that terminology (it would just go over everyone’s head), the rules you create give the players guidelines for setting up permissions and expectations of how the game should be played.

The rules imbue the participants with different levels of access or “permissions” to enter fiction into the Shared Imagined Space. In a game like InSpectres, everyone is given permission to use Director Stance powers at will. The expectation then is that the players will add clues, NPCs, locations, or whatever to the game’s fiction as they play just like the GM. Conversely, in a game like AD&D, only the DM is given permission to use Director Stance while players are ostensibly instructed to remain in Actor Stance as much as possible using their characters’ Alignments as a guide. (Granted, AD&D’s texts are horribly unclear on this at times, but go with me on this) The expectations then are the players act with within the bounds of the fictional world using only their characters abilities, knowledge, and motives while the DM gets to control everything else.

As a game designer, it is your job to write the rules so that the players know their roles and know how to play. Understanding Stance Theory provides you with a foundation of knowledge you can draw upon as you write those rules. It can help you to communicate your vision of how play should unfold through the permissions of your rules and the expectations of the players.

As you write your game, you should be cognizant of who can say what and when they can say it. And not only should YOU as the designer be aware of it, anyone who picks up your game and reads it should be aware of it. Setting up permissions and expectations is not something that should be shrouded in the text for the players to discover as they play. It’s not emergent. It should explicit and upfront.

Now, like I said, don’t use Stance terminology in your game! Don’t write, “Now the GM has Directorial Powers but the players should maintain Author Stance except in the following instances…” That would be horrible! Even people who enjoy RPG theory don’t want to read stuff like that in a game. Instead, write something like, “The GM is the one who introduces new places and items, but it is up to the players to decide how they and their characters want to react to them…”

Knowing the how the different stances work gives designers an insight into how communication during play works. Armed with that knowledge, you will be in a better position to write the rules of your game. Just remember, all of the fancy Stance labels and theory talk are just window dressing. The real meat of the matter is setting permissions and expectations for communication during play. I.E.: Who gets to say what, when do they get to say it, and who cares if they do?

Peace,

-Troy

PS: As you design and playtest your game, don’t believe for a minute that if you set the permissions and expectations that players should always speak in Actor Stance that the players will always do that. They won’t, and it’s okay. Groups will move in and out of stances as the individual situations call. That’s part of playing the game. But, there should be a default position (read: permission and expectation) for each participant explicitly stated in the rules. This way, when people aren’t sure what to do next or what they should be doing at all, the rules are there to guide them. Lapses in Stance are often used to solve a social problem, not a system problem.

What is RPG Crossroads?

2011-01-18T10:25:00.000-08:00

Heya,

A while back I mentioned the The Neighborhood. Since that time, the website has gone through a number of very beneficial changes. Do you have an RPG company? What about a Podcast or YouTube channel? If you answered yes to any of those questions, there’s a place for you at the renamed RPG Crossroads.

RPG Crossroads is a place where I’m trying to bring together all the great, creative minds that are doing work with roleplaying games. There’s forums just for publishers to talk about their games and where their fans can ask questions and post suggestions. There are forums for podcasters to talk about their shows, promote their sites, post upcoming shows, and discuss issues facing podcasting on the Internet. Already, there’s some great conversations going on there. There’s also a forum for people who want to talk about theory or heavy issues like race and sex in RPGs.

If you want a place to meet a broad cross-section of gamers, RPG Crossroads is design exactly for that. I hope to see you there!

Peace,

-Troy

What is TITB4B and Why’s it Bad?

2010-12-17T09:21:00.000-08:00

Heya,

Let’s start with a history review. A long time ago in a land that now seems so very far away, a man named Gary Gygax published a game named Dungeons and Dragons (1974). It was the first commercial RPG in the modern sense. What this game did was to compile rules for games that people were already playing based on another type of game: miniatures wargaming.

So let me explain what I mean in that last sentence. It’s very important. Dungeons and Dragons was NOT inventing a game. It was describing a game people were already playing. DnD did not create roleplaying, it simply catalogued roleplaying. Even more, roleplaying at the time was not what we tend to think of it today. It was much more like a miniatures war game where the object was to simulate dungeon combat, slaying a dragon, or an encounter between armed foes. The authors just assumed anyone who played the game would have this sort of background knowledge on wargaming and that explanatory text would be redundant (and more expensive to print). Therefore, it did not PRE-scribe play, it only DE-scribed play.

1975 saw the release of Boot Hill, a Western themed RPG. Props go to them for being original with their setting right off the bat. It was non-fantasy, leveless, and made the player-characters the focal point of the design, but the game was heavily geared towards the showdown and accurately simulating a gun fight. The game even touted itself as based on western miniatures. So the same basic assumptions were made- people playing Boot Hill knew how to play miniatures and just needed some extra rules for “roleplaying.”

Also, Tunnels and Trolls was released that year. It was the first in a long line of “Lord of the Rings except not because we can’t get the license” game. It did many of the things that D&D did, but it also held over the mass combat rules of miniatures and tried to be as realistic as it could be.

What DnD and these other games that were like it did accomplish in the 70’s was to make hundreds and then thousands of more people aware of what was going on. That awareness turned into participation. That participation turned into creation. But as time rolled on, the way people played these games started to change. Suddenly, people who had no background in miniature wargaming were picking up D&D, T&T, and Boot Hill and trying to play it based on their background in writing, storytelling, boardgames, make-believe, acting, imrpov, or whatever else. The core market for early RPGs suddenly expanded to whole new demographics.

DnD and these other RPGs were later supplemented by magazines such as TSR’s Dragon and RPGA’s Polyhedron published adventure modules meant to be used in a tournament format at conventions. For some people, the object of playing became to win. For others, it became a place to create stories in the English 101 sense where you have protagonists, rising action, climax, and theme. For others, it meant being true to the vision of whatever gaming background or literary background they came to the table with.

By the late 70’s it was clear that people were using RPGs to do all sorts of things that the texts did not support. In fact, it could be argued that from the very get-go, the texts did not support the play since they weren’t inventing anything, but simply describing pre-existing behaviors.

The results were threefold. The first effect was that the game texts at hand were all incomplete. They didn’t tell you how to play or what to do, they just had a bunch of text that provided resources people already familiar with how to play could use to supplement their gaming. For people who heard about this game and picked up trying to figure out how to play it, there was nothing to really grab on to. Instead, the players had to improvise and make up a lot of stuff and ignore a lot of other stuff. Imagine trying to play D&D 3.5 if the only book you had was Castle Ravenloft. That’s about what it was like. You had people all over the country playing the same title without playing the same game (make sense?). Thus, a tradition was established in RPG publishing where communicating exactly what was expected during play and providing rules that supported that play was a non-essential thing. It really didn’t matter, the thinking went, just so long as you provided really evocative tools for the players. They’ll figure it out eventually, publishers supposed.

The second effect was when publishers figured out that there were large segments of the audience who weren’t playing the game like they had envisioned, they changed their texts to try to suit everyone. A game like Bushido (1979), for instance, tried to downplay the role of miniatures-style combat and stress the importance of the people at the table and what things like honor, duty, and heroism really meant to them. But at the same time, they included plenty of combat rules, magic, and ways to introduce supernatural monsters into play even though the game wasn’t really even about that stuff. They figured that if they didn’t have it, no one would want to buy the game. This was only exacerbated in the 1980’s where we saw an explosion of RPGs trying to cater to everyone and everything all at the same time.

The third effect was that social conflict amongst the players became the norm. The tales of dysfunctional groups, incoherence, and arguments over what was the “right way” to play a game are well documented, and I don’t need to go into them here. Tournaments and conventions (especially GenCon) brought people from all over together in one place. This was great, in that ideas could be exchanged, but at the same time it brought people into conflict because they weren’t interpreting the vague rules and guidelines the same way. This problem increased in the 1990’s when GenCon, Origins, and DragonCon really started taking off. Then the Internet hit and everyone started talking to each other. This talking often consisted of a lot of arguing and belittling people for not playing “right” or whatever.

During this time, derogatory words entered the lexicon that labeled people and play styles who went against the grain. Powergamer, Grandstander, Munchkin, Rules Lawyer, Monty Hall GM, Wussy, Hack ‘n Slash, Blast ‘n Burn, artsy-fartsy-story-telling-wannabes, and turtling were enshrined as the proper way to refer to non-conformist players in dozens of advice books such as the AD&D 2e Guide to Creative Campaigning (1993).

So what was the end result? Well, people did try to come up with solutions. First was the so called, “Rule Zero.” Basically, that rule stated, “any rule you don’t like, get rid of it.” Other variations include, “Make up rules if something happens that this book doesn’t account for,” “Not everything that happens during play can be accounted for in the rules, so improvise as needed,” “It’s the GM’s call” or even worse, “The GM is God!” Sometimes they’d dress it up as much as they could such as in the AD&D1e DMG: "It is the spirit of the game not the letter of the rules, which is important. Never hold to the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rulebook on you if it goes against the obvious intent of the game." Thus, game texts continued to be vague and lack focus on making rules that actually worked and actually told people how to play.

The other solution that was widely practiced was more insidious and brings us closer to the original point of this entry. During the 90’s when the first Goth wave hit, White Wolf ditched games like Ars Magica and switched to the World of Darkness titles like Vampire: The Masquerade and Mage: The Ascension. In these books, they presented the idea that the GM just needs to write out a plotline that the characters follow, using the rules only when necessary. Thus, a lot of the conflict in a group would be solved and everyone could have a nice story at the end to be proud of. The catch was, in order to get this to work right, the GM had to force the players into following the story. Since human being tend to be individualists (especially in America), this was a real problem. So instead, these games encouraged GMs to do this covertly, i.e. behind the veil. Play became based on deception and manipulation. The better a GM could hide how he was making all the choices for the players, the better a GM he/she was said to be. The problem is, all this subversive manipulation is just not a recipe for long-term success.

To communicate this style of gaming without totally turning everyone off from the get-go, a phrase was developed and presented in game texts as the proper way to play. It goes something like this, “The GM writes the story and the players decide what the characters do.”

Now, if you’ve been playing RPGs for a long time, that phrase probably makes sense to you. If you haven’t played many RPGs, that sentence probably makes absolutely no sense at all. If it does make sense, read it again. I’ll break it down.

The GM writes the story. The players decide what the characters do. If you have one, you can’t have the other. If the GM has written the story, the decisions of the characters must already be known. If the players decide what the characters are going to do, the GM could not possibly have written out the story since none of the characters had taken any actions prior to play. Those two sentences are totally and utterly incompatible. Yet that phrase, or a variation of it, is presented in numerous roleplaying texts across the spectrum as the way things are supposed to be done during roleplaying. That, right there, is “The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast.” TITB4B. Also, sometimes called “illusionism” or “railroading.”

So why is this bad?

Well, let’s look at what TITB4B causes. First, the GM has to force the players to do something. Not only that, he has to do in covert ways, basically conning them to go along with his plan without ever communicating that plan in a truthful and upfront way. That’s certainly not a sound foundational basis for a functional social group. And, as a result, it didn’t solve the problem it was trying to solve.

If the players became bored with the GM’s story, they would often try to veer off course. This caused conflict with the GM because his well thought-out and beautiful stories were being ruined by people daring to express their free will. Not only that, the GM would be caught totally off-guard and unprepared to deal with these new developments. Consequences included heated arguments, long and boring pauses in play while the GM figured out what to do, sessions cut short so the GM could prep for what was going on (usually, just more machinations to get the characters back to the original plot), or some players being left out of the game completely while those who did choose to follow the GM’s premade plans were rewarded with screen time. This can and often does lead to other social and in-game conflicts amongst the participants. Most bad experiences with RPGs can be tied to this phenomena right here.

So what can be done about TITB4B?

There have been some failed attempts to fix this. GUMSHOE (2007) for example touted itself as solving this problem for mystery games by having not only a Fortune based mechanic for clue finding but also a Karma based resolution. “Although it came up in playtest, I confess to being a little surprised by the idea that The Esoterrorists, by creating a mechanism to ensure that PCs in investigative games always get all the clues they need to start piecing the mystery together, encourages railroading. The GUMSHOE system doesn’t in fact change the inherent structure of investigative games at all. They are no more or less linear in GUMSHOE, on a structural level, than in a traditional procedural campaign using the roll-to-get-a-clue model,” wrote Robin Laws on his blog.

I have to admit I was a little surprised that he was a little surprised that his game received the same criticism previous mystery games had received since GUMSHOE does nothing to “change the inherent structure of investigative games.” I wondered it Mr. Laws had played Inspectres (2002)- a game that does change the inherent structure of mystery games and makes them non-linear, but in the comments section of his entry, he reveals that he had not.

The old paradigm was still alive: the GM writes the story (in this case a mystery) and the players play along finding the pre-arranged clues and breadcrumbs left by the GM. The fact that they could spend points to get the clues instead of whiffing endlessly on their rolls did, as Robin states, nothing to change heavy-handed, GM-centric nature of play despite being presented as a game that liberated the players from the traditional travails associated with mystery games.

However, there are several viable solutions to TITB4B. As with many things, it seems, in RPG theory, there are names for them: Trailblazing, Participationism, and Bass Play/Sandbox Play. I’ll get to these in another article which, I have a feeling, will be more pertinent to design. For now, the main thing that I hope people come away with from this article is that “the GM makes the story and the players decide what the characters do” is a nonsensical statement that should be avoided in gaming texts.

Peace,

-Troy

What is The Neighborhood?

2010-12-14T16:33:00.000-08:00

Heya,

The Neighborhod is a new website dedicated to linking all the disperate parts of the indie-rpg movement into one place for mutual benefit. There are several key parts of this site:

1. Forums- The Forge once hosted forums for many different independent gaming companies. Now that it's in its winter stage, those forums are being phased out. I wanted to give those companies a place to go. The Neighborhood is that place.

2. News/Reviews/Editorials- Story Games, The Ogre Cave, Planet Story Games, and RPGnet have some great content, but not everyone is aware of it. I pulled in feeds from all four of these sites at The Neighborhood. I want to help promote those sites as well as add some convenience for Neighborhood users. You can keep up on all the happenings with just a few simple clicks at the Neighborhood, then when you find something you like, you're whisked off directly to the topic that interests you. It saves a lot of time and makes surveying these gaming sites a lot easier. .

3. Radio/TV- There are some terrific RPG podcasts and YouTube Channels out there. I've collected many of their feeds at the Neighborhood. I want to promote these multi-media resources and give Neighborhood users more reasons to come and interact with the publishers. I hope the Radio and TV pages will be mutually beneficial. There's probably a lot on these two pages you don't know about.

4. Links- These are a collection of publisher websites, store sites, and forums/resources for RPG players and publishers. These are really useful for finding companies and products.

If you get a chance, take a stroll through The Neighborhood. If you're a creator-owned RPG publisher, drop me a line in the Forums there and we'll get you set up with a forum all your own.

Peace,

-Troy

Is there a New Blasted Sands Available?

2010-12-09T07:12:00.000-08:00

Heya,

Why, yes there is! For those not aware, way back in 2006-almost four years ago to the day-I posted a RTF file of a campaign setting to use as an object lesson for my thoughts on Setting. I recently re-read that file and was appalled. The amazing thing is, I get a notice in my email about once a month that someone has downloaded that file! To me, that’s amazing.

So, obviously, there is some demand for it. What I’ve done is totally reworked most of it, cleaned it up, and tried to eliminate the typos (although I’m sure there’s still a ton). It is over twice as large as it was and full of more Color and detail. At last, I have a file I can be at least a little more proud of. If you’ve downloaded the first version or are looking for a Dark Sun-inspired setting in which to play, may I introduce:

Blasted Sands (Revised Edition) at box.net
Blasted Sands (Revised Edition) at Scribd

I hope those who downloaded the older version will check this one out too. And for those who have never read my Blasted Sands setting, I hope that it inspires you. All feedback is very welcomed.

Peace,

-Troy

What Is/Was The Forge All About?

2010-11-05T05:57:00.001-07:00

What was the Forge about? Why did it exist?

First, read this:

http://indie-rpgs.com/articles/12/

And this:

http://indie-rpgs.com/articles/13/

Then, read these:

http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=17809.0

http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=17810.0

http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=17811.0

Then, read all of that:

http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=9782.0

Finally, read this:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?topic=30635.0

Then you will know.

Peace,

-Troy

What is Stance Theory? Part1

2010-11-04T11:41:00.001-07:00

Heya,

Today I’m taking on another older topic- Stance Theory. This is part 1 of a two part article. In this one, I’m basically just going to define and describe Stance Theory. In the second part, I’ll try to explain how it might be useful. But honestly I think for the most part, we have left this behind as game designers. None-the-less, I am endeavoring to bring up the old ideas (old in this case meaning from the late 90’s and early 2000’s) so that fresh eyes can look at them, dissect them, and bring forth new ideas.

When it comes to Stance Theory, first and foremost, you must understand that it is describing play, not design. I think that all too often, people talk past each other when it comes to RPG theory because one person is thinking “play” and the other is thinking “design.” Play should inform design, of course, but they are not the same thing.

So what is it anyway? Well, Stance Theory is a way of describing how players (including the GM) affect the in-game events, setting, and characters (aka The Shared Imagined Space). There are four Stances that have been identified. The Provisional Glossary defines them as such:

Actor Stance: The person playing a character determines the character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have. This stance does not necessarily include identifying with the character and feeling what he or she "feels," nor does it require in-character dialogue.

Author Stance: The person playing a character determines the character's decisions and actions based on the person's priorities, independently of the character’s knowledge and perceptions. Author Stance may or may not include a retroactive "motivation" of the character to perform the actions.

Pawn Stance: A subset of Author Stance which lacks the retroactive "motivation" of the character to perform the actions.

Director Stance: The person playing a character determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events. Therefore the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions, or even features of the world separate from the characters.

Okay, that’s nice. But let’s break them down some.

Director Stance is sometimes treated as synonymous with players narrating in-game events, or worse, people think that’s the only thing Director Stance does. Director Stance *can* do those things, but players using Director Stance don’t *have* to. A player can say, “There’s some brush next to the wall, my character hides there and is unseen.” That’s Director Stance. He could also say, “Gunther looks left, then right, and finally above to make sure he isn’t being watched. He carefully creeps over to a thick patch of shrubbery next to the castle wall in the dim twilight of the evening. None of the guards atop the wall were looking in his direction.” Both are examples of Director Stance.

In Director’s Stance, the player is not regarding what the character is thinking or feeling or what the character has the power to change in the Shared Imagined Space. The Player is capable of changing the environment and circumstances around the character. If the player wants a guard on top of the wall and he is operating in Director’s Stance, he can put a guard there. If he wants bushes, there are bushes. But that’s the player’s desires, not the character’s. Those two may coincide, but that’s entirely beside the point. In Director Stance, the player is disregarding character motivation.

A player operating in Director’s Stance can basically manipulate anything in the imaginary game world. It can be characters, objects, places, the weather, or whatever. Nothing is off-limits; the power is quite broad. Additionally, the Director Stance player can base these changes off of in-game considerations or meta-game (stuff outside the imaginary world) considerations WITH OR WITHOUT offering in-game justifications for these changes. In other words, what he’s doing doesn’t necessarily have to make “sense” in the imaginary world, it just has to be acceptable at the Social Contract level. Think about the space alien scene in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian.” That doesn’t make any sense in the imaginary world of that movie, but it is acceptable given the nature of the crew who made that film.

Pawn Stance is sometimes seen as the default stance for Gamists. This is one thing I hardly have to spend any time on. If you’ve ever watched people play D&D using the alignment system, you’ve probably seen Gamists operating in a stance other than Pawn. Pawn Stance *can* be used by Gamists, but doesn’t *have* to be. In Pawn Stance, the player is limiting him/herself to just deciding what the character does without any special relationship to the character. It’s just a game piece in this context. The typical GM use of Palace Guards and Barmaids or other static characters is often Pawn Stance in traditional fantasy roleplay.

Author Stance is the hardest one for me to fully grasp. It seems to lie somewhere past Actor Stance but before Director Stance. It’s sort of in the middle, lacking the buy-in that Actor demands and the power that Director gives. When in Author Stance, the player is making decisions just for a character- not for the environment, circumstances, or non-character items in the imaginary game world. That’s the biggest difference from Director’s Stance: The Author cannot affect anything except a character.

Second, a player engaging in Author Stance makes his or her decisions about a character based on the meta-game. In-game/in-character motivations and conditions can be (but don't have to be) ignored at the player's choice under Author Stance. However, that doesn’t mean a player using Author Stance can go willy-nilly all over the place, making decisions for a character as he or she pleases. These decisions must make sense in-game. So, even though the player is using knowledge from outside the imaginary world as the basis for decision making, he/she must justify those decisions using logical fiction inside the Shared Imagined Space. This is another break with Director Stance. The spaceship from the Monty Python example above can only happen under Author Stance if it had been previously established that aliens existed in the Setting and were watching over the main character.

Last, but not least, is Actor Stance. It’s been my experience that Actor Stance is occasionally and wrongly associated with Simulationist Play. As if, Actor Stance was the only “right way” to play using the Simulationist Creative Agenda. It is also sometimes treated as the same thing as talking in-character or “Immersion.” But Actor Stance is SO much more.

First, Actor Stance does not care what Creative Agenda you are using. In fact, none of the stances do. One can use Actor stance as the situation demands. Second, Actor Stance prioritizes the character much more than Director and Author Stance do. Decisions made using Actor Stance are made in accordance with what the character’s motivations are AND take into consideration in-game knowledge, conditions, and events. The player is not manipulating the scenery or objects in the imaginary world, just the character from the character’s own perspective.

It is in Actor’s Stance that motivation is brought to the forefront. Actor’s Stance pursues this motivation and tries to carry it out. This is where character knowledge and player knowledge are split, and meta-game considerations are disregarded. It requires the player buy into the character as a living, breathing, free-thinking individual. The character is not a game pieces or a means to an end, but it becomes the focus of attention. Actor Stance is the expression of an intimate relationship between the real life player and the imaginary person that is being portrayed by that player. GMs often play significant NPCs (for lack of a better term) this way. That’s the most common example I can think of.

Some people define Immersion by saying it’s engaging in Actor’s Stance as often and as much as possible. I don’t really have a good definition for Immersion. A lot of talk about has gone on over the years. I don’t think Actor’s Stance is a handy synonym for it, but you should be aware that some (not all) people think of it that way.

Over the years, several problems associated with Stance Theory have arisen.

One common error that was made in the early days of hashing out Stance Theory was that it related only to “your” character. It doesn’t. It relates to any character. You can be an Author, Actor, Pawn, or Director anyone’s character or characters. The emphasis is not on the character, but on the player- i.e. what stance the player is taking toward the fiction being created in the imaginary world. Some people mistake Stance Theory as character-centric. It isn't. It's player-centric.

Another error that was made was that Stance Theory didn’t apply to GMs, or that all GMs were, necessarily, by default operating in Director Stance. This is, of course, totally untrue and can be observed in actual play. Any time the GM operates the NPCs (for lack of a better term) based solely on that NPC’s knowledge- and not his (The GM’s) knowledge- that GM is operating in Actor Stance. This happens all the time and is usually seamless during play.

Third, some believe that all roleplaying is stance. Meaning, that everything said at the table comes from one of the four stances. That’s not true. When talking about Stance Theory, we are talking about character actions and the way the imaginary world reacts to the characters, nothing else. The damage from a sword thrust is not stance. The death of a character is not stance. The effects of drowning are not stance. A majority of the things said at the table are said from a stance but not everything. When examining a piece of roleplaying for stance, look for player decisions, character decisions, and changes in the imaginary world. Don't get hung up on mechanics.

Finally, the last common mistake I want to highlight is the assumption that people do or at least should maintain a consistent stance throughout play. As if idealized play is when everyone is operating in Actor Stance or in Director Stance. This is rubbish. Players are constantly moving from one stance to another as the needs of the situation arise, and I can see no benefit (or at least, very little) from rigidly maintaining only a single stance. I’ve played in campaigns where the Social Contract strictly enforced Actor Stance (talking in character, using only character knowledge, following the character’s alignment to a T). Anyone who broke Actor Stance was immediately penalized socially if not mechanically. Play devolved into a game of “Gotchya!” and those sorts of campaigns never lasted long for me.

Well, that’s all for Part 1. In Part 2, I’ll delve into how this is relevant to RPG design (Hint: it’s really not so much anymore). Until then, take care of each other.

Peace,

-Troy

Is Publishing Really That Painful?

2010-08-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

Heya,

The answer is yes. Over and over on podcasts and forums, you can see experienced independant RPG publishers talking about how painful the process of publishing really is. This post in an anecdote.

I was midway through my first series of DL-Quarterly. I had sent the PDF files of "Standoff!" to my printer, RapidPOD. RapidPOD was local for me. It is headquartered in Brandenburgh Kentucky, which is only a few minutes drive from where I live. I want to help the entreprenuers in my state, so I decided to work with them. The first two books, Cutthroat and Hierarchy came back fine. Shipping seemed a little slow, but I was ahead of my deadlines which made everything work out okay.

The PDF for Standoff! was a little complicated. I had very narrow margins, the book cover was mainly a big red rectangle, and I used some pretty wierd fonts. It wasn't anything a print on demand printer couldn't handle, though.

I submitted my book in April, expecing to get it back in June at the latest- plenty of time to get it before GenCon. I got a confirmation email when I uploaded the file to their site, and I thought everything was cool. I was just starting on my Master's degree and the end of the school year was coming up, so I was focussed on creating my final exams and finalizing my students' grades. You know, teacher stuff.

Anyway, June rolls by before I know it. I give the printer a call, and it turns out my file has been lost. So I upload it again, somewhat worried about getting to GenCon this year with my games. A couple more weeks pass, and I call again. RapidPod was going through some sort of management change and it might be a while before I got my books, but I was assured they'd arrive prior to GenCon which was toward the middle of August that year.

August comes. I get a box on my porch. I now what it is, and I'm relieved. I take it inside and open it up with my wife to find that all of the books are horribly miscut. The covers are nearly diagonal. Words are chopped off on half the pages and a bunch of the icons didn't print. I call up RapidPod (now Vixen Printing) and complain. They offer to resend my order, but state that from now on I'd have to order a minimum of 100 books. I was irate.

I didn't go to GenCon that year. My books arrived four weeks later. I switched printers for The Holmes and Watson Committee and finished up the first series for DL Quarterly. Then I just shut the whole thing down. The experience really turned me off from publishing for a long time. I know many have had to go through the same thing.

Don't go into this thinking it's easy. I'm proud of the work I did with Divine Legacy and my earlier work with Twilight Press. In the end, it was all worth it. I'd do it all over again without a second though. But that doesn't mean it wasn't painful. It was.

Peace,

-Troy

When Do I Abandon A Game?

2010-07-30T16:18:00.001-07:00

Heya,

Let's deal with a heavy topic today: abandoning an RPG design. Abandoning a game can mean different things for different people. I know some designers that never commit to a design unless they know how and when they will finish it. In fact, they don't even begin designing a "game" until they have spent months designing potential mechanics and/or examining the themes they might want to consider for their design. They almost never quit on a project. Those kinds of people are rare.

I'm more in the second group. I'm willing to bet most people are. Right now, I have a Word document with over 85 sketched-out RPGs. What I mean by sketched-out is: the rudiments of Chargen, Resolution, Setting, and Advancement are planned out. There's a title and a targeted demographic. But of those 85+, I've only ever brought 1 to print: The Holmes and Watson Committee. Many designers probably have similar stories. There's a ton of games they've sketched out, written about, outlined, and dreamt of, but ultimately let it go for whatever reason. Sometimes, before the games really got off the ground.

But I want to talk about abandoning a game that is further down the line in development. This is a game where the designer has spent hours and hours writing it down. Spent hours and hours playtesting it. Spent hours and hours talking about it to friends, players, and Internet junkies. Maybe he has even published an Ashcan. This is a game that is well developed and has seen functional play at some level, BUT (and it's a big BUT) isn't achieving the kind of sustained, fun, and effectual play the designer wants.

Actually, most games that get published end up in that situation at some point. Playtesting will hum along fine, but there will be something missing or there will be some part of the mechanics that don't seem to work the right way. At this point, one of three things will happen. First, the designer will solve the problem. Perhaps he'll get some help form online forums or a blog. Perhaps one of the players will suggest a change that works out. Perhaps it will come in his sleep. Hey, it happens. However it comes, a solution presents itself and the designer jumps on it and development continues on its merry way.

Second, the designer will just publish it anyway. This is not all that desireable and is frequently the reason why the first edition of a game is quickly followed by a second.

The third eventuality is the most painful. The game is abandoned. It dies. But how does a designer make the choice to leave it and move on? It's an intensely personal thing and the designer has to take a hard look at himself in the process.

Designers are under development as much as their games are. I don't care if this is your first RPG or your thirtieth. Each game teaches you something about roleplaying and something about yourself. Publishing a game is a grueling, grueling process. Designers aren't joking when they say that. It's a personal expression of creativity, determination, and heart. The process changes you- usually for the best. And that's the important part: The Process Changes You.

When we start designing games, we have a certain skill set. Most of the first games we design are a lot like the games we enjoyed growing up. That's a good thing. But after the first one, our skill sets change, we add some new ones, and the next time around, the game is quite different from the last. Our taste, vision, and perspective change. This is a continual evolution for as long as the designer designs.

The decision to abandon a game comes when you aren't willing or you aren't able to change to suit the needs of the design. If you get to a point in your design where you are totally at a loss, where designing the game doesn't even make sense to you anymore, where you aren't willing to give up what you currently believe and currently enjoy to get it finished, it's time to leave the game behind. It can be painful because you know that the design is right there, just out of reach. But the skill set you currently possess is lacking to complete it, and there's no reconciling that.

It happens to the best of designers. Three high profile designs I can think of are Robots and Rapiers by Ralph Maza, Acts of Evil by Paul Czege, and Dragon Killer by Vincent Baker. Ralph, Paul, and Vincent know how to make games, but they got to a point in the designs of these games where they just couldn't take them any further. They had to abandon them and move on to other things. I don't presume for a moment to know what that meant to them personally. I'm sure it was difficult to some degree. But they made the choice, and as a result we have games like Apocalypse World and Blood Red Sands. So abandoning a game is not a bad thing. If it happens, it happens because it's a necessary thing.

So is that the end? No. Just because you abandon a game doesn't mean it's gone forever. Take the three examples from above. I spoke to Ralph about Robots and Rapiers about a year ago. He's filed the game away and plans to start over with it and publish it one day in the future. Vincent is returning to work on Dragon Killer after taking several years off. He learned a lot from publishing Apocalypse World and now feels he's ready to tackle the design problems for his former game. Paul has opened up Acts of Evil for anyone to develop. So it's very possible that someone, some day could publish a finished version of the game.

If you get to a point where your design requires something of you that you can't or don't want to give it, then it's okay to put it away and leave it behind. Maybe some day you'll be able to return to it. Maybe you won't. But if you chose to leave it behind, leave it behind. Abandon it. Don't let it hang over you. Move on to something else- it doesn't even have to be RPG design.

It's okay to abandon a game. And if making RPGs is really your passion, a new design that better matches your skills and interests will be just around the corner.

Peace,

-Troy

What is DFK?

2010-06-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

Heya,

First in my retroactivist articles is DKF. DFK stands for "Drama, Fortune, Karma." In itself, that probably doesn't mean much. It was, to the best of my knowledge, originally cointed by Johnathan Tweet around 1995. The exact usage has changed some since Johnathan invented it for his game Everway. However, it was very instructional at the time and formed the basis for a lot of innovation in the years to come.

Drama, Fortune, and Karma refer to the three major types of resolution systems typically used in RPG design. Think of them as the Genuses in the Family of Resolution Systems. Each Genus has multiple species that are radically different from each other and impossible to recount in any detail here in this blog post. Each Genus has its own characteristics that help the players decide what happens and how.

What is Drama Resolution?

The Provisional Glossary defines Drama as: "Resolving imaginary events based on stated outcomes without reference to numerical values or (in some cases) statements that have been previously established (e.g. written on a character sheet)."

A definition is a good place to start but not really complete enough for understanding. Drama resolution systems are about forcing human-to-human negotiation and contact during play. In fact, negotiation becomes the centerpiece of any climactic situation, conflict of interest, or crisis. The players are expected to actively and verbally extend ideas for action within the game to advance the plot. The players must interact with each other.

This is usually accomplished through several, rather formulaic, methods. I really want to examine all the different ways these different resolution systems tackle resolving tasks and/or conflicts in their own isolated articles, so I'm just briefly going to describe what can go on during Drama Resolution here.

Most of the tinkering with Drama Resolution systems goes on in the area of assent. Just because a player states something happens, doesn't automatically make it so. Sometimes the group as a whole has to agree, sometimes just the GM, sometimes it's another player with whom the first player was interacting. It can be something as simple as Player A stating he leaps down the firepoll and Player B saying, "Okay, that's fine." Or it can require the use of currencies where Player A has to offer X number of tokens in the pot, then if anyone trumps his tokens with more tokens, that player gains narration rights unless someone trumps him and so on. Or the rules could require Player A to give all the other plays a certain number of his XP points in order to earn the right to narrate the action. However it works, the end result is that one (or more) players decides and then verbally describes how the situation resolves to the rest of the group.

What is Fortune Resolution?

This is the resolution system most of us are familiar with. The Provisional Glossary defines it as, "A method of resolution employing unpredictable non-behavioral elements, usually based on physical objects such as dice, cards, or similar."

Again, the definition is okay to start with, but needs to be unpacked some more. Let's get the obvious and boring out of the way first. Fortune mechanics can use any sort of randomizer like dice, spinners, cards, chicken bones, coins, or whatever to achieve some type of result. The key is, the result is unknown before the resolution system is put into action. There should be some mystery (i.e. unpredictability) to how the conflict, task, crisis, or action will be resolved. If there isn't, it might be Karma Resolution instead. But I think most everybody already knew that.

The key is the "non-behavioral" elements. The randomizer or whatever must be apart from the players. It can be something that they interact with, but must be something that acts or thinks impartially and independantly of the players' desires. There can be PLENTY of shenanegans that alter the result before or after the randomizer is used. In fact, those are often the most fun parts of the Fortune resolution system. But the randomizer must still remain an independant negotiator apart from the players themselves. It's almost the "invisible extra guy" at the table that mediates conflicts of interest.

There are a lot of abreviations associated with Fortune mechanics. You've probably seen things like FatB, FatE, FitM, FitMw/T or something along those lines. I'll give you a quick run-down of what they stand for but hold off on really going into detail about them until I can do an article just dedicated to Fortune Resolution.

FatB: Fortune at the Beginning

FatE: Fortune at the End

FitM: Fortune in the Middle

FitMw/T: Fortune in the Middle with Teeth

These types or "Species" of resolution systems also exist for Drama and Karma, but they aren't talked about very much. The terms above were developed by many authors over the years and discussed at length at the Forge. All this ties into IIEE, and I'll get into them more at a later date.
The thing that makes Fortune mechanics unique from the other is that it allows players to advance the action without necessarily interacting with anyone else. A roll of the die can decide if one charcter hits another and kills him, if one character successfully disarms a trap, or if the charasmatic rake woos the slutty bardmaid all without any input from the players other than the controler of the character. Fortune doesn't have to work that way, but it can work that way. Some see this as the key feature of the Genus; others see it as a drawback.

What is Karma Resolution?

Karma resolution is, "Resolution based on comparison of Effectiveness values alone." That's a very brief definition compared to Drama and Fortune. The reason is somewhat obvious- Karma is the simplest of the three. The character has a value, the conflict/task/situation has another value, and if the character's is higher, he or she succeeds.

The key feature of this method of resolution is who sets the values. Like Drama, this value is often arrived at using negotiaton among the participants. Often, it takes at least two people to make this thing work. The person playing the protagonist can't also play the opposition or the contests of the game fall flat and no one has any fun. Therefore there must be a GM or some other player/arbiter who chooses a target number for the conflict, scene, task, etc. How that number is chosen can be dealt with in a myriad of ways. The rules may suggest default values. The number could be arrived at using group consensus. It could be the result of various mathematical calculations.

Karma can seem somewhat rigid at times. Values can be strictly defined, and players can feel stymied by the fact that they can't do things at certain times. But that is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Karma Resolution is. Karma is there to inspire you to achieve greatness. Your character may not be able to scale that mountain right now, so go on some quests, build up your strength and your allies and THEN come back and see if you make it to the summit to see the Guru. Karma can be used to put more emphasis on the journey of a character instead of the destination. That's a little trite, but that's been my experience.

So is this Still Relevant to Design?

I think it certainly is. Fortune is the most developed of the three resolution systems. I think designers who want to break some new ground could really do some cool innovations with Drama and Karma. Aside from that, knowing what types of resolution systems are out there makes you a better designer. Each game calls for a different set of skills, or at the very least, a refinement of the skills you already have. You need a large toolkit to maximize your skills. DFK is one of the tools. Get to know it well, and your designs will improve.

Peace,

-Troy

So What's the Future of SD?

2010-06-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

Heya,

What's the future here? That's a very interesting question. I'll tell ya where I've been for the last few months. I'm a Gamist at heart. That doesn't mean that's the only type of roleplaying I like, but I am what I am. And honestly, to get my Gamist itch scratched the best, I've found that Magic: The Gathering does better than any RPG I've played. Ew, the enemy, I know, but I love that game. I'm fairly decent at it too. I've won a few tournaments here and there, earned a few rewards from WotC's player's network. Overall, I've had a great time with it.

However, Magic requires more money and more time than RPGs. I think it was originally intended to take less of both, but that's just not the case. With a wonderful wife getting her Master's degree and a beautiful baby daughter added to my life, I just don't have time to be heavy into Magic anymore.

But writing about RPGs is a whole 'nother matter. I've been looking over the anthologies of Socratic Design, and I've found that some of the best articles I did examined the basic principals of RPG design and play. I meant this blog to be an introductory resource for RPG theory and design, and when I've focussed on that, things have turned out best.

So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going back over the early days of RPG design theory on the 'net and the indie rpg movement in general. Over the next few months, I'm going to the best of my limited ability examine some things that were discussed, disected, and diseminated years ago that we sort of take for granted now. RPG design has come a long way in the last 10 years, but I feel that designers new to the scene have missed out on a lot of the discussion. The foundational stuff like areas of exploration and resolution systems have been so integrated into people's thinking that they just don't come up on message boards anymore. With the Winter of the Forge recently announced, I feel it is an appropriate time.

Many of these concepts are automatic and understood, or at least partially understood. And that's where I feel the loss is. Newbies to the Forge or Story Games Praxis lack familiarity with the foundational conversations that took place seven to ten years ago. The inspiration provided by those conversations rolled out a string of seminal games like Dogs in the Vineyard, My Life with Master, The Mountain Witch, Polaris, Dust Devils, and Prime Time Adventures. I feel like something has been lost since then, and I want to provide a place for those who want to re-explore or re-familiarize themselves with those concepts to do just that.

Let me say in advance, I'm no expert on these. I'm merely relating what other- more brilliant- people have said and how it applies to game design. I'm not going to take any credit for creating these concepts. I'm just bringing them up again after years of dormancy.

Expect to see new articles here soon. They'll be on topics that you likely won't see at the Forge or Story Games anymore. If you're new or maybe lost in RPG design, I hope they will prove useful to you.

Peace,

-Troy

Socratic Design Anthology #5

2009-12-14T05:20:00.000-08:00

Heya,

It's been a long time since I've done an Anthology, and I figure it's a good way to end the year. I don't always put my entries in chronological order. I prefer to arrange them more thematically. But first, I always list my previous anthologies for anyone new to Socratic Design. If you want to know what this blog is all about, here it is (please report any dead links):

Socratic Design Anthology #1
Socratic Design Anthology #2
Socratic Design Anthology #3
Socratic Design Anthology #4

Socratic Design Anthology #5:

-What Should I design?
-What Are Some Common Pitfalls?
-Another Pitfall
-What is Resolution?
-What Are Narration Rights?
-Is Character Advancement Necessary?
-What is the Mathematician Syndrome?
-What Do I Do if I Get Stuck?
-Whatever Happened to the Power 19?

Feel free to respond to any of those entries here. There's nothing wrong with replying to an Anthology post :)

Peace,

-Troy

What is the 'Mathematician Syndrome' ?

2009-12-10T05:27:00.000-08:00

Heya,

Today I’m talking about a design problem that might be a little more personal rather than something more broad ranging.

What is it?

The Mathematician Syndrome is a term I came up with to describe a problem I sometimes have when designing a game. I envision how a player might play the game, and like it so much, that it becomes the only way to play the game. This issue can be very subtle, and I sometimes don’t realize I’m doing it at first. However, the further and further I get into the design and play, the more apparent it is.

A game is the victim of the Mathematician Syndrome when there is a single line of play or a single method of character creation (chargen) that is clearly optimal. So optimal, in fact, than any player who chooses another line of play or character generation is squeezed out or marginalized during actual play. To try to put it more clearly: The Mathematician Syndrome, in essence, is where the designer’s vision of the game unintentionally causes there to be only one possible way to “solve” the game, and once the game is solved, playing it in any other fashion becomes fruitless and uninteresting.

This design flaw (for my own purposes, I call it a flaw) is, I think, more particular to designs intended to support Gamist or Narrativist-oriented decision making during play, rather than any other creative agenda. I say that mainly because those are the types of games I prefer to write and play. I think that since we Gamists love to figure out the optimal settings for various characters, powers, and so on. It’s in our nature to try to “solve” the mathematics of a game to gain the upper hand. At the same time, though, we find any game that allows for a perfect solution, i.e. a single best way to play, lacking enough of a challenge to keep us interested. Narrativist designers can, at times, fall into the trap of creating a game where there is only one way to address the Premise. If the players don’t take certain actions, make specific decisions at specific times, or use a currency in just a precise way, then the entire point of the game is lost. Players are channeled into playing the game like they were the designer.

How is it applied?

The best way to illustrate this is with an example, I think. I once designed a game called: Lichdom. The game begins with players creating a relationship map, goals, and needs for their character. Characters are on a quest to become liches- this is presupposed. To get there, they have to sacrifice the people and things they hold dear to achieve immortality. However, if they sacrifice too much, the character loses his or her sanity, and the player loses the game (note: I think losing in RPGs is perfectly fine, but that is a topic for another time).

There are plenty of currencies and resources for the players to draw upon. However, after playtesting, it became apparent that there is magical number of relationships that you can sacrifice to gain lichdom without going insane. I think it turned out to be 8 exactly. Six or seven with a few bad rolls were often too few to assure undead-ness and nine or ten put the character at too much risk. Especially if the dice turned on their owner. After several attempts to tweak the currencies, character generation, and reward systems, it turned out that the premise of the game made it all too easy to just figure out the optimum number of resources one had to sacrifice and then drive toward that.

The result was a game that lacked any sort of challenge or mystery. Players knew exactly what they had to do, when they had to do it, and how much it would cost them. It undercut any sense of real “sacrifice” and eliminated any emotional attachment to the shared imagined space. The game felt “dead,” which is almost ironic since it’s about liches. But that wasn’t the feeling I was going for. To fix the problem would require an entire redesign. Which I did. But didn’t solve the problem. *sigh*

Instead, I discovered Mathematician Syndrome Lite. Mathematician Syndrome Lite is when there may be two or three lines of play that are clearly optimal but they do not interfere or compete with one another. I decided that there wasn’t enough conflict in the game and since everyone had the same goal (even the GM really) which was to attain lichdom, gaming the numbers was the only challenge left. So I changed the name of the game to “Liches vs. Paladins.” Players could choose to play a warlock attempting to become a lich OR a knight trying to become a paladin by trying to stop such things. I thought this was great! Players will be actively intriguing against one another, and the GM- if I end up needing one- can just be a referee.

I kept most of the rules for making liches and created similar rules for making a paladin. Since there were two, equal and opposite paths to success, I wasn’t concerned about the math so much. I should have been. I had hoped that the players would be devising ways to thwart each other from gaining resources and achieving goals. For instance, if a warlock needed to sacrifice his apprentice upon an altar, the knight could come and resurrect the lad and turn him into a squire. Or the lich could kidnap a paladin’s squire and sacrifice him for essence. I’m not going to bore you with the details of the game, but that’s sort of how play was envisioned.

It didn’t work out that way. The liches had their own relationships and resources that were separate from the Paladins’. The paladins’ paths to advancement were separate entirely from the liches’. As a result, the players hardly interacted at all until a climactic battle at the end when all characters had reached their highest power ratings. It ended up coming down to the results of a single dice roll. Wow. Sheer luck decides the outcome. I’m sure you can guess that no one really enjoyed it.

Why is it bad?

Despite the fact that there were two optimal choices in the second iteration of the game, the net affect was basically the same. The outcome was pretty much known from the beginning. Players’ decisions were almost entirely made for them by the rules. One just had to figure out the math properly. This made it really unfun. Game play and character generation became rote and stale. We could almost predict a player’s next move. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that the two optimum paths never had to cross. They could be played concurrently without balancing each other out. Balance, in this case, meaning “proper support for the type of play you envision for your game.”

Once the proper mathematics of this type of game are discovered, the game is demystified. It’s like, “oh, so that’s how it ends.” This likely limits re-playability, and also runs the risk of de-legitimizing all the player decisions that led up to that point. It wasn’t the role-playing that mattered, it was the calculations in one’s head that made the difference. The interaction among the participants was entirely irrelevant to the game’s outcome. To me, that’s not fun. For a RPG, interaction among the participants is the essence of play- it’s why we do it. A good game will make that the most important feature of play.

Some players find it unfun if a game can be “solved.” In fact, I would venture to say that most do. Mystery, choice, challenge, and significant impact of player decisions are the key to a good roleplaying game, IMHO. The Mathematician Syndrome undercuts all of that.

How can it be avoided?

The best way to avoid the Mathematician Syndrome is playtesting. I know that’s probably the last thing you want to hear. Playtesting is one of the hardest parts of RPG design, but it is also the most necessary. In games with a significant amount of currencies and values, playtesting is the ONLY way to make sure you get the balance right. (see previous definition for balance).
First, I recommend you focus on idealized play, not mechanics. Decide what you want a session of your game to look like. Don’t worry just yet about numbers and equations. Think about actual play. What’s the pacing of your game like? How quickly do you want to move from scene to scene? How quickly should the game reach its climax? Consider those questions before you get really bogged down in the fiddly bits of your game. Once you have an idea of what play would look like around the table, you can go to setting your preliminary numbers. Those numbers- almost certainly- will be revised after your first few sessions of running the game.

Is it Always Bad?

With human beings in the realm of arts and creativity, it’s rare for something to always be bad. So, obviously, the answer is: “No.” If you want to create something, oh, like a one shot game that really packs a punch or makes a statement, then this is not a problem. In fact, it’s probably exactly what you want. There’s nothing wrong with a game that can be “solved” if that’s the exact effect you’re going for. The problem only arises when the Mathematician Syndrome shows up unintentionally in a design. If you want your game to have some longevity or re-playability, then the Mathematician Syndrome most likely is best stamped out if at all possible. Otherwise it can just kill players’ drive to stick with the game.

Peace,

-Troy

What Are Narration Rights?

2009-11-30T05:12:00.000-08:00

Heya,

This might be one of the most important issues I ever take up on Socratic Design. I hope I can do it justice. In fact, if I’m not happy with the way this article turns out, I’ll probably do a part 2 later some time.

Defined simply, Narration Rights are the ability to describe what happens during play with the credibility that makes what was described established as fact in the game’s fiction. Okay, so maybe that’s not so simply. Let me try to rephrase. Narration Rights basically dictate who can say what matters when.

Narration Rights pass around quite frequently in all games. There are two main instances when Narration Rights and who has them are important- In-Resolution and Plot-development. Plot development is narration designed to move the characters through parts of the game where there aren’t any conflicts or challenges. Examples might be traveling on a road, describing the interior of a bar, an exposition on the history of a place/item/person, or just general description. I’m not going to talk a lot about this type of narration. Vincent does an excellent job explaining it in his Roleplaying Theory Hardcore article entitled, “Roleplaying’s Fundamental Act.” I highly recommend that article. Usually one person is designated as having Narration Rights when it comes do framing scenes or describing items/locations.

The other type of narration, the in-resolution narration, is more important and interesting to what I’m doing here at Socratic Design. If you haven’t read my post on Resolution systems previously, I recommend it. I’ll be basing a lot of what I say in this article on what I wrote there.

In-Resolution Narration Rights can exist at any of the stages in IIEE. In the beginning… Narration Rights for resolution systems were strictly allocated. In most games the non-GM players were given rights to describe what their characters did during the Intent and Initiation phases of resolution while the GM was given the right to describe what happened in the Execution and Effect parts of resolution. For instance, in AD&D you could say that your character was swinging his sword. However, if you fumbled, it was up to the GM to describe why and what the consequences were. In other games, the EE might have been left up to “non-partial” rules and sourcebooks. A good example would be Rolemaster. The players could narrate that their characters were swinging their swords, but upon rolling, the players or GM would consult a weapons table that would describe (in detail) the amount of damage, injuries, bleeding, and consequences of each strike. However, it was never left up to the players in these games to describe what came after the roll. At least not according to the rules.

Games that followed this tradition were molded in the image of Dungeons and Dragons which invented that dichotomy of Narration Rights. The dominance of that method of delineation of narration existed for decades, and really, one could even say that today most mainstream games follow it. This method is also more a feature of Task Resolution systems rather than Conflict Resolution systems, but that’s not absolute.

While giving the GM control of the final two or even the final one step of resolution has been the traditionally accepted method of allotting Narration Rights, I have a significant problem with it. First, it denies the players the ability to really see his/her character through a challenge or conflict. They have to let someone else describe what their character does or suffers. Second, it stymies group creativity when so much of the narration burden is placed on one person’s shoulders. GM burn-out is a real thing and can really poison a group’s social contract. Finally, and most importantly, strict separation of narration rights very easily can neuter the importance of success or failure. Let me explain what I mean.

Let’s take an old standby RPG example- sneaking past some guards. Specifically, let’s say the situation is that the player-character wants to get by the guards to gain entrance to a building. First, let’s take an Actual Play experience I had in a game I played once called Mechwarrior:

Player: I want to sneak past the guard to the door on the other side of the room. (Intent)

GM: That’s fine, modifier is 2. Go ahead (Initiation).

Player: Here I go! [He rolls against his character’s Sneak ability. It’s a success.] (Execution)

GM: You get past that guard, but on the other side of the divider is another guard taking a coffee break. He notices your character, what do you do? (Effect)

In this instance, the GM totally negated the roll by the player. The GM controlled both the setting and the Effects of the rolls, so he wasn’t breaking the rules. He was just simulating the break room for the guards at a military installation. The Player’s ambitions and goals were secondary to the whim of the GM or perhaps the information provided by the adventure module we were using. The roll became meaningless because no matter the outcome, a guard would have discovered the player character. One has to ask, what was the point of rolling, then? It’s a good question.

Let’s review that same situation but instead, the Player has Narration Rights over the Effect of the resolution mechanics.

Player: I want to sneak past the guard to the door on the other side of the room. (Intent)

GM: That’s fine, modifier is 2. Go ahead (Initiation).

Player: Here I go! [He rolls against his character’s Sneak ability. It’s a success.] (Execution) Sweet! My character slips past the guard and makes it through the door to the server room unnoticed. (Effect)

OR, let’s have him fail:

Player: Here I go! [He rolls against his character’s Sneak ability. It’s a failure.] (Execution) Ack! The guard notices me when I bump into a table. (Effect) I draw my taser and try to hit him before he can sound the alarm.

In both of those instances, the player’s actions, rolls, and goals are front and center in play. The GM helps facilitate the action without dictating success or failure. The dice rolls matter. They affect the play in a permanent and meaningful way.

Let’s take another- searching a room a clue in a mystery game. My experience from Call of Cthullu:

Player1: I want to pick the lock on this roll-top desk.

GM: That’s fine, roll for it.

Player1: My skill is 65. [Rolls a 75. Failure]

Player2: I look under in the wastepaper basket for anything useful.

GM: Roll a spot check.

Player 2: [Rolls an 88. Failure] Drat!

Player 3: Let me have a try at the desk. [Skill is 43. Roll is 55. Another failure]

GM: Okay. You fail to get the desk open, but on top of the desk is an open envelope. There’s an old parchment inside and…

In this instance, the GM has negated the effect of a failure. One might not think that this is as bad as the guard example, but really it almost is. There were no consequences for the failures. However, the GM had to make up something to keep the action going. Otherwise the game would have stopped. If the players had the Narration Rights to describe the outcomes and consequences of a failure, the action might not be stymied. For instance, it could turn out this way:

Player1: I want to pick the lock on this roll-top desk.

GM: That’s fine, roll for it.

Player1: Player1: My skill is 65. [Rolls a 75. Failure] Okay, I break the lockpick in the lock and suffer 2 damage but manage to get the thing open. Inside I find documents that link the businessman to the cult we discovered…

That’s not an easy thing to do in a game design. I know this from personal experience. It took me a long time to get the mechanics of The Holmes and Watson Committee right. And then it took my play group a while to get used to them. However, I have found it is much more satisfying for players (and the GM too honestly) if they get to describe what happens to their characters. The action and the fiction of the game center much more around what all the participants want to do rather than preconceived plans by one player.

Even if your game breaks down the Narration Rights to the Player gets to narrate all successes, the GM gets to narrate all failures is better than the GM gets to narrate all Executions and Effects. But even then, I feel that’s not very challenging both as a designer and a player.

Do you HAVE to do it that way? Of course not! Your vision for your game may require a more traditional method of allocating narration rights. But don’t let that be your default position because it’s easier. Challenge yourself and your play group.

Peace,

-Troy

What is Resolution?

2009-11-09T07:18:00.000-08:00

Heya,

I’m going to tackle a rather large topic today- Resolution. This is one of the most necessary parts of a RPG and also one of the most thorny. It seems that almost every game has a different one. There’s been some attempts at OGL’s and Creative Commons like D20, The Shadow of Yesterday, and maybe a few others. If they fit for your game, I encourage you to use them. However, from my own experience, I’ve found that independent RPG designers really like to create their own Resolution system.

Resolution is a part of System, but not the whole of it. It is one method that can be used to decide what happens in-game. I’ve divided this entry up into three main parts: IIEE, Task Resolution, and Conflict Resolution. Hopefully by the end of it, you’ll understand Resolution a little bit more and be in a better position to evaluate the resolution system you have in your RPG or need for your RPG.

Generally, most resolution systems follow a particular order of operations called IIEE, or Intent-Initiation-Execution-Effect. You are probably already familiar with these even if you’ve never been exposed to that term before. Sometimes each step in IIEE is very formalized within a game’s mechanics, and other times they’re left up to the players to hash out during play. I’ll give you a brief overview of each term before delving into the two main types of resolution systems.

IIEE

Intent- Intent is all about real-world announcement of what the players want the characters to do in-game. Shooting an arrow, hacking a computer system, talking down two strangers in a gun fight, romancing the femme fatale, are all examples of a character’s intent. As I’m sure you well know, announcing something doesn’t mean it actually happens.

Initiation- At this point the characters have moved into action. This is not to be confused with another game term “initiative.” Some games allow players to roll (or use some other method) to see in what order their characters will act. Sometimes that method precedes the Intent phase of Resolution, sometimes it precedes Initiation. Be careful not to confuse the two. Initiation is where the character is doing something. No more announcements about the particular character who is in action may be made.

Execution- In this phase, the action is completed. We know whether or not the character has succeeded or failed. None of the consequences of that action are dealt with here. This is purely the phase where success, failure, or something in between is decided.

Effect- This is where the ramifications of the action are adjudicated. Damage to one’s hit points are counted, death checks are made, fallout is decided, modifications to areas of the Exploration like Setting, Character, or System are incorporated into the game, and so on. Here is where the tangible changes to the in-game narrative happen.

The important thing, from a design standpoint, is to realize that at each step currencies can be spent, bargaining between players can take place, and modifiers can be added. Typically, games focus just on developing currencies for one area- usually Initiation or Effect. However, there is plenty of design space at each one. Open up the possibilities in your mind as you consider your design. You might decide that only one or two steps should be affected by currency or modifiers in your game. That’s cool. But don’t let that be your default position.

RESOLUTION SYSTEMS

There are two main types of Resolution systems used in modern RPGs I’m going to talk about: task and conflict. For a long time, really, only task resolution existed. I remember the early days of the Indie RPG movement when designers started experimenting with conflict resolution. The wars that had to be fought on billboard forums to establish its legitimacy were vicious. I don’t think that designers who come to RPG creation now-a-days really have a grasp at how hard guys like Ron Edwards, Jared Sorenson, John Wick, and Clinton Nixon had to fight to fend off attacks on what they were doing. See Vincent Baker’s “Roleplaying Theory, Hardcore” if you want to taste a slice of what it was like. Anyway, that’s probably a story for another time. Brief definition of the two: Task Resolution looks at the component actions that must be taken to solve a conflict, while Conflict Resolution tackles the entire conflict in whole often without necessary regard to the minute methods or skills used.

TASK RESOLUTION:

Task resolution is fairly simple. A character is trying to perform some action and the player uses dice, cards, fate points, or some other mechanic/resource to see if it happens. Opposition is usually provided by some static difficulty factor or perhaps environmental obstacles that make performing the action more difficult. Famous games that have employed this type of resolution include Dungeons and Dragons, Rolemaster, Call of Cthullu, GURPS, Star Wars D6, and Palladium.

The arguments over which method to use like roll-under, roll-over, dice pools, fate points, poker cards, d100 vs. d20, taking a twenty, and so on are basically meaningless. Task resolution is about whether or not a character will be able to perform a single act or a series of actions successfully. It doesn’t deal with the player’s goal, long-term consequences of those actions, or anything beyond what’s happening immediately.

Task resolution is really great for “crunchy” games where the point of play is to pit your characters against challenges and see if your strategy as a player can overcome them. Gamists tend to like task resolution because it gives them a chance to step up and show off their strategies, equipment, and skills. It’s not an absolute must-have type thing for Gamists. They can enjoy games with conflict resolution as well, but in my experience, the advantages of using a task resolution system really shine when creating a game about facing physical challenges and obstacles.

Task resolution is also quite good for capturing the “essence” of a Setting or System in order to reinforce that Setting or System. For instance, I played a lot of Mechwarrior RPG back in the 90’s (I am getting so freaking old!). It used task resolution to simulate the decisions a mech pilot has to make during combat. Why I was fighting my opponent in the mech or my character’s long-term goals were irrelevant to the mechanics. It was all about reinforcing the sense of decision making under pressure. That’s not engrossment or immersion as some may be tempted to call it. The task resolution system was implemented to strictly reinforce the expectation that the goal of play was to experience (as best as possible) what it would be like to be a mech pilot.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION:

Conflict resolution on the other hand takes a look at a bigger picture. Rather than concern itself with a blow-by-blow account of what happens like task resolution does, it instead focuses on character or player intent. Some of the better-known games that have used this form of resolution include Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, Universalis, The Shadow of Yesterday, Polaris, and Spirit of the Century. There are two main methods I’ve seen for handling conflict resolution: setting stakes and stating intentions.

Setting stakes has fallen out of favor somewhat as the years have gone by. It’s easy to see why. When setting stakes, players will negotiate the outcome of a contest before any dice are rolled (or whatever mechanic is used to see who wins). Each player describes what will happen if they win the contest, and then tradeoffs and qualifications are added as necessary. This continues until all players involved in the contest are satisfied, then they roll (or whatever). Whoever wins gets to narrate what happens and fill in any details that were left out during the stakes setting portion of the resolution.

The potential problem with this type of conflict resolution is that the stakes can get out of hand. “If I win, I get to rule the world!” is what it can degenerate into if one is not careful. This method can sometimes put the “Effect” part of Resolution before the “Initiation” part. That can lead to a great deal of confusion and an anti-climactic (and thus less satisfying) ending for a long, drawn out conflict. A game designer may have to incorporate rules for backing down on stakes and starting over if they get too high for the players to agree on like in Polaris. A strong Social Contract is needed in order to keep things from spiraling too far out of control. A good example of how this is done right can be found in Vincent Baker’s Dogs in the Vineyard. A good example of how this can be done totally wrong is in my game, Hierarchy.

The other type of conflict resolution- and probably the one much easier to work with as a designer- is stating intentions. For instance, when two players come into conflict, i.e. characters they are playing have opposing goals, each will state his or her character’s intended action. One player might say, “My ranger intends to leap across the table, disarm his foe, and back him into a corner for interrogation.” The GM then might say, “The villain intends to dodge your lunge, grab the jewels, and escape out the second story window.” Players then take their dice and roll (or use cards or whatever) to see whose intentions get to be implemented. The winning player then narrates how it actually happens.

While those two systems may seem similar there is a big difference. Most games are more complex than my simple example between the ranger and the villain. There’s a lot that can happen before, during, and after players roll dice. Lots of currency and resources can be spent to alter the outcome, and unlike with task resolution, partial success can actually mean something here. A partial success for the ranger might be disarming the villain. While a partial success for the villain might be to escape without grabbing the jewels. It’s all up to the narration of the players once the dice are done.

And I think that’s the important facet of conflict resolution, or one of the important facets anyway. With task resolution, the outcomes are dictated by the rules. If you fail your lock picking skill check, the lock stays shut (and often a second attempt is forbidden). You can always add in narration if you want, but it has no way to mechanically affect the success/failure in the game according to the rules. Any effect it does have is decided at the Social Contract level among the players and then implemented into the System (big S) afterwards. With conflict resolution, the players (remember the GM counts as a player too) dictate the outcomes. Getting a bad roll while trying to pick a lock can mean all sorts of things. It could be that the lock is picked, but trapped. It could mean that the character is shot during the process. It could mean that the lock pick is now jammed in the door. These are very simplistic examples, and I hope they don’t make you think that conflict resolution is just task resolution with talking. It isn’t. Conflict resolution decides who gets narration rights to say what did and did not happen in-game, and more importantly, it decides if a character achieves his or her goal.

Conflict Resolution is, I feel, best suited for games that want to emphasize moving the narration and plot along rather than overcoming discrete challenges and physical obstacles. While those two things are certainly part of the conflict in games that employ conflict resolution, the physical movements of the players aren’t as important as the story that’s being told. The throw of the fist, the hurl of an insult, or the smile of a seductress are not seen as wholly different from each other in the way that task resolution might differentiate them. The key is not focusing on individual actions but instead on individual motivations. I hope that’s not too confusing or repetitive.

Let’s wrap this up. First, this is not a matter of scale. If you believe Task Resolution focuses on minute actions, you’re wrong. If you believe Conflict Resolution can’t be used to cover blow-by-blow combat, you’re wrong. The difference between the two methods can be described as “what’s at risk.” Take again the very common RPG motif: picking a lock. You find it in fantasy, sci-fi, westerns, whatever. Genre isn’t important. Let’s add some Color, though. Let’s say the character wants to pick the lock so he can successfully spy on people in the next room. Task Resolution puts the success of picking the lock at risk. Failure in that lone action negates (or potentially negates) any further actions taken to implement the character’s motivation. The roll (or whatever) only decides if the lock can be picked and will likely be modified by the physical construction and intricacy of the lock. That’s all.

Conflict Resolution on the other hand isn’t really concerned about the lock, or rather isn’t really concerned about just the lock. It’s concerned about the character’s motivation- to spy on the other people. The roll (or whatever) won’t be modified just by the lock’s physical properties, but the physical properties of the room, the determination of the “other people” not to be spied on, methods being employed by those who want to stop the character from spying, and so on. The lock is part of it, not the whole of it. What’s at risk (and this is the important part) is whether or not the character learns anything by spying on the other characters i.e. satisfies his motivation.

Is that then assuming he gets past the lock? No. If the results of the roll (or whatever) determine that the character fails to learn anything, it could be because of the lock. Or it could also be because the walls were too thick. It could be because the others were talking low. It could be that the character’s nemesis was hiding in the room and challenged him to a duel before he could eaves drop. It could also be that there was a woman and her baby crying in the other room, or something else more interesting in the room distracted him. The possibilities are limited just by the narration and players’ imaginations. A roll that does not grant the character’s desire is not a failure per se, it is instead an invitation to add complication. For task resolution, a failure means “stop, try something else.”

Task Resolution is exploring the challenge of performing a particular action; Conflict Resolution is exploring the challenge of gaining advantage over other characters.

A RPG necessarily has to have some type of Resolution system. There’s no getting around that because sooner or later, characters will come into conflict. If they don’t, then you really don’t have a narrative of any kind. Sometimes the conflicts are on a grand scale, like fighting for the immortal souls of a town full of people. Other times it’s fairly simple like cracking open a safety deposit box. Either system can, eventually, resolve the conflict. Decide which best suits the type of play you envision for your game and then begin developing in that direction.

Peace,

-Troy

Whatever Happened to the Power 19?

2009-10-26T11:35:00.001-07:00

Heya,

I think a good subtitle for this blog entry might be “4 Years = Forever.” Just last week, the Power 19 celebrated its fourth birthday. In human years that’s very little time. In RPG years, that was a metaphorical century ago. Each year the innovation and improvement in RPG design- especially Indie RPG design- is so great, that it almost represents a whole new generation. Each GenCon gives birth to an entirely new and improved breed of game. So it’s not surprising, really, that in the last four years the Power 19 has gone from “new-punk, anti-gaming-establishment design tool” to “old stodgy design crutch that is far too restrictive for modern design forums.”

So how did that happen? Well it may surprise you that, originally, the Power 19 was never meant to be used as a design tool per se. In fact, it was nothing more than a question bank intended to be used by Forge veterans to help newbie designers get started or get past a particular design hurdle.

I want to take you back to where it started: Troy’s Standard Rant #3. I modeled this after Mike Holmes’ Standard Rants which I encourage you to search for and read on the Forge at your earliest convenience. This is where I introduced the Power 19. I spent a ton of time slogging through hundreds of posts by Vincent Baker, Ralph Maza, Mike Holmes, and many others on the Forge. I looked for patterns- questions that came up over and over in design discussions. I collated them, studied them, and then condensed them. The list eventually grew as large as 21. But two of them I felt were rather redundant, and so meshed them with a couple others and bang! The Power 19 popped out. I posted them in my Standard Rant #3 and asked for feedback. I think the discussion in that thread was very good and helpful, and by the end of it I felt I had a pretty solid question bank for Forge veterans to use.

I think the key sentence in that thread is, “Be careful when using these in the Indie-Design forum, however. I don’t recommend asking all 19 questions at once to someone who just posted a brief sketch of their game. I’m pretty sure that would overwhelm them. Instead, walk them through 2-3 questions at a time- especially if they are a new designer. When those questions are resolved to satisfaction, move on to the next few.” That captures the initial intent of the Power 19.

For a brief time, the Power 19 was used as intended. It wasn’t specifically talked about much beyond the RPG Theory forum on the Forge. I never intended it to be; never guessed it would be. However, when I posted it on my blog (following the shut down of the Theory and GNS forums on the Forge) things began to change. I posted Part 1 on January 19, 2006. I wanted to explore the Power 19 some more and talk about the refinements and qualifications that had come up since I first compiled them. Since I knew it would be a lengthy post, Part 2 didn’t come until a week later.

I phrased Part 1 the way I did because I wanted my blog to be about helping new designers. I figured if someone was checking out my blog, A) they had to search pretty hard to find it, and B) if they did search that hard, they must have a game design waiting in the wings that they need help on. Those were probably not safe assumptions. Rather than try to accomplish that through the comments option on my blog post, I wanted the Power 19 to serve as a surrogate “Troy.” So, I encouraged people to take the Power 19 and run their game through it to see if there was any issues they had not addressed. Sort of like a conversation, even though I wasn’t present.

I don’t think people really started doing that until Ron recommended it to Christopher Peterson. This was at the height of the Ronny Award contests (which was probably my happiest time in the RPG design scene). Ron said of Socratic Design, “Just post responses to any of the topics he's posted already, and you'll see your own game design suddenly boom.” This was a couple weeks before I posted the Power 19 there. Everyone was big into the mutualism the Ronnies inspired, and so doubtless many nascent designers read that post and started using Socratic Design as a resource. Even though it preceded the Power 19 on SD, I think it raised awareness about the work I was doing here. When the P19 was posted, it had been-by extension- already legitimized by Ron as acceptable material to use in forum posts.

I think it was with Part 2 when things started to change. By then, three people had used the Power 19 explicitly to talk about their game on the Forge. I could see that the use of the Power 19 was changing before my eyes, so I wrote an entirely different post than I first planned. You can see from the third or fourth sentence that I didn’t care for the way the questions were just listed and then answered. “They don’t ask for specific feedback!” I wrote. I could tell, even then that it would be a problem if people started post the Power 19 and nothing else. In response, Clinton R. Nixon, Ben Lehman, and Tony LB posted three of the finest Power 19’s ever done IMHO. I still enjoy reading Clinton’s to this day.

At this point, though, I don’t really remember how popularized the Power 19 was. For the rest of January is was still relatively obscure IMO. That changed in February. Ross Winn highlighted the Power 19 in one of his articles entitled Close to the Edit #30: In Search of Heisenburg. There really wasn’t much follow up in the forum over it, but seeing the Power 19 on RPGnet was- I have to admit- gratifying for me and eye opening for many others. From there, the use of them began to really increase.

You could check the First Thoughts forum of the Forge and generally see two or three posts that included them. On Story Games or RPGnet, there would occasionally be a post that either referenced the Power 19 or used them explicitly to talk about a game (Andy eventually asked people to stop posting them on Story Games, I believe). Several people posted them on their blogs. Sadly, some of those blog posts have been lost. I honestly think that those are actually some of the most valuable examples of how the P19 could be used outside the conversation starter context. However, during this time the use of the Power 19 on forums stayed the same. People would often just post the questions and their answers without asking for specific feedback or prefacing their post with any kind of context for the reader. It was becoming cumbersome to read.

I think the first people to really speak out against posted on Story Games. It was in this thread that Shreyas expressed his concerns. Andy Kitkowsky and Jon Walton (for other reasons) jumped in as well. Some in the thread wanted to create another set of questions to answer in forum posts. I was against this at the time since the Power 19 had already showed what a bad idea that was. If ever there was going to be a set of questions or something along those lines to challenge the Power 19, I think it would have happened here. As a result of this thread, I think, the P19 was solidified as some kind of pre-eminent authority on how questionnaire templates for RPG design should look. You can almost see here how any vestiges of the Power 19’s role of being conversation starters in design forums was lost during this thread and instead replaced by the default mindset of “the Power 19 is something to be answered en masse in a public forum.” It was mainly my fault for not reminding people of my original intent with the P19. I was too focused on discouraging another overbearing set of questions being created and the foisted on newbie designers. Back then, I didn’t realize how important that thread would become in defining the role of the Power 19- especially for veterans of the Forge.

If there was a chance to get the Power 19 back to where they should have been, it was right there. But the allure of a template that helped you design a game was too much, I think. Even the person who started the thread to express concerns wrote directly to me in that thread and said, “Please, please put the P19 somewhere permanent, not a blog, but like a proper-style website or a print publication or something, and talk about how you arrived at it and what sort of design thinking it comes from and what it builds. This is stuff that needs to be...what's the word? Needs to be put into that kind of form, set in a story about its strengths and contests, preserved.” I maybe should have done that, but I think it would have made the Power 19 even more ensconced as the de facto method for discussing design.

Several more months passed and the Power 19 had been around about a year and a half. It was helping many designers refine their games, challenge their assumptions, and post their designs on the Forge and other places. Podcasting was becoming a larger and larger part of the Indie RPG scene. Paul Tevis had been doing it for quite some time and had a rather large following. His show opened the gates for many other podcasters to come through. One of those new podcasts (new at the time, that is) was Canon Puncture. They interviewed me in March or April about the Power 19. Looking back on that now, it seems like it was forever ago. I can tell I was really caught up in the excitement of it all, but I can also tell that the Power 19 was having a significant effect on game design. Many designers from all over were using it to help them orient themselves in relation to their design. For that purpose, I think the Power 19 is really good. I look back at this interview very fondly. I was proud of what the Power 19 was accomplishing outside the online forums.

By now the Forge Diaspora was fully matured and the old guard started returning to their cradle so to speak. In May 2007 Andy Kitkowski started a thread under Site Discussion at the Forge entitled, “Practical Things we can individually do to Revitalizing the Forge?” In that thread, Ralph Maza (Valamir) posted, “I suggest that all veteran Forge designers (current regulars or diasporized) post a Power 19 for their current and future designs to First Thoughts. These can then serve as a template, a supply of good examples to help make the Power 19s posted by new designers more useful.”

Actually, this was a really good idea. If long time veterans could find a way to make the Power 19 viable for forum discussion, that would go a long way making them more useful. Also, it would provide a series of models for new designers to look at and get ideas. I was fully behind this. Here are some examples of what people posted at that time:

Christian/Xenopulse’s P19
Ralph’s P19
Northerain’s P19
My P19

I followed this up with a blog post called, “Why should I post my Power 19?” I gave three reasons. I only agree with two of them now that I look back. I have to take issue with what I wrote here, “Phooey! Feedback, even misguided or lackadaisical can be useful to a designer as it help you reinforce and defend your ideas. At worst, the feedback will help you sharpen your edge.” While technically true I suppose, the problem is if such feedback becomes the norm, then the overall quality of the forum begins to decline. Forums like the First Thoughts forum for the Forge are about exploring new designs and helping nascent game designers overcome their hurdles. It’s not about glory-hogging for veteran designers nor about clogging it up with a particular design exercise. The Power 19 posts that came from this era were useful and instructive, in my mind, but they perpetuated the idea that the Power 19 was really the “right way” to talk about a game in First Thoughts.

For the next year use of the Power 19 grew both in online forums and in offline use for designers. It became very prevalent at the Forge. It was during this time, though, that my involvement with RPGs mostly came to a close. There were several reasons. First, my long time playgroup- one that lasted since 1996 finally dispersed. We got old, got careers, and started getting families. The distances between us finally became so great that they could not be overcome for the sake of roleplaying. It is really hard to talk about RPGs if one is not playing RPGs. Second, the games I was designing became more and more like the one that got me into adventure gaming in the first place- Magic: the Gathering. I decided to pick it up again after leaving it in ’99. To my surprise, I discovered I was actually decent at it and have won several tournaments since ’07. The Gamist in me was getting satisfied even though RPGs were no longer a large part of my entertainment. Third, I finished up my Master’s degree but began my National Board Certification for teaching. Thus my education ate even deeper into my free time. Three years running of writing for educational purposes was sapping my will to write for entertainment purposes.

The result was I was no longer able to shepherd designers using the Power 19. I had no problem conversing with people on the First Thoughts forum who posted P19’s, but it is apparent that was not the case for everyone. By 2008, some of the old concerns were resurfacing. Anders Larsen posted a topic in Site Discussion called, “Ideas for how to get better feedback in First Thoughts.” His main complaint was, “Where Power 19 is a good design tool, it is not a very good starting point for a discussion if you are looking for feedback/suggestions on your system. The problem is that Power 19 put a lot of focus on asking about mechanics, but not so much focus on the basic concepts of the game.”

The thread was short, and had Ralph posted a link to a really good thread for getting feedback. There was even some agreement with Anders when Ron said, “I especially agree with you that the Power 19 is a good tool for orienting oneself about a game in design (if that's needed), but is not as useful as a presentation tool.” However, nothing really came of that thread. The use of the Power 19 continued on First Thoughts. One can see from threads at the time from the Forge, Story Games, and RPGnet (I’m not going to bother to link them) that the Power 19 was a very helpful tool for game designers. But its use as a conversation tool was still stuck in the 2006 mode. No serious attempt had been made either to get people to stop using the Power 19 in design forums or develop a methodology for responding to the Power 19. This is partly my fault for not being around anymore, but each person involved with the “indie rpg scene” has the right to walk away at any time. I definitely feel regret that I wasn’t there for many new designers during this period, but I am pretty happy with the life choices I have made since walking away.

Finally, in mid July 2009, Luke Crane lashed out and the use of the Power 19. Though it is apparent he made no attempt to look back at the history of the Power 19 and its use, and despite the fact that his post is rife with misconceptions about the P19, he was right to bring up the topic. At times you could see a page on First Thoughts full of threads where two thirds or more of them had [Power 19] in the title. Most of them had maybe 2-5 responses. Designers just weren’t getting feedback. It was probably a combination of boredom with reading the Power 19 over and over for four years, my long absence, and a general shift in who was participating at the Forge that led up to that post. The Power 19- which had originally been designed to challenge the ideas of traditional game design concepts- had become a traditional game design concept itself. Just as Hit Points or GMs had become sacred cows of RPG design in the 90’s, the Power 19 had become a sacred cow of RPG design on the Forge. Sacred cows are meant to be sacrificed.

Just to speak a little bit about my involvement in that thread: I was not disagreeing with Luke that the Power 19 was horrible for conversation on the First Thoughts forum. I agreed whole heartily with that. I did, however, take issue with what he and Paul were suggesting- the Power 19 is completely worthless. There are four years of threads and personal accounts that state otherwise. Designers of all stripes used it, and to denigrate their designs is the antithesis of what I’ve experienced to be the Forge ethos. I was honestly appalled at some of what I read in that thread. A more reasoned approach was taken by Adam Dray a few days later.

Luke’s thread, though, prompted Ron to post new rules (the old ones had lasted for the first 3 years) for the First Thoughts forum. Specificaly, they addressed the Power 19: “In short, don't post 19 questions and answers. It's too much to read all at once. It puts people off. It's a long, one-way conversation that is too late to interrupt. Tell us what your game is about and who the characters are and what the characters do. That's a good start.”

I really like what Ron wrote in that entire section. I think it’s a good rule for the First Thoughts forum on the Forge, and it is my hope that now the Power 19 can have a chance to get back to what it was intended to be: probing questions to be used as conversation starters for new designers.

Where the Power 19 goes from here is hard to say. No doubt it will still be widely used offline as a good orienting tool and design strategy. I’m positive it will be passed on for years to come, and I’m glad that it has helped so many designers overcome the hurdles of RPG design. I’m proud to have contributed a verse.

I hope that this wasn’t too tedious or boring. I know it’s long. I hope to have something more substantive as far as design goes in the near future. However, I think this article is important in one way. It’s rare to get a look at the history of independent RPGs. Occasionally Ron will post something about it on the Forge, but very rarely. If you’re new to indie design, I hope that this article gives you a peek at a very small facet of that movement over the last four years. I believe it’s good to know where you’ve come from in order to have a good idea of where you’re going. Until next time!

Peace,

-Troy

Another Pitfall

2009-08-09T16:46:00.000-07:00

Heya,

This is an addendum to my last post. I forgot to mention this one:

#11: I’ve published six games since 2002, and I think there is one pitfall I’ve fallen into this one almost every single time. Don’t feel like your published game needs to fit some page number or word count. Your game doesn’t need to be any longer than it has to be so long as it produces coherent, enjoyable play experiences for your audience. Using fancy words and lengthy explanations will probably hurt your game more than help. It doesn’t have to be a certain number of pages to be considered good. Games aren’t judged on how good they are by their thickness. Bulk does not equal quality. Verbosity is not a virtue.

Okay, that's enough platitudes. This particular pitfall has been a personal albatross of mine, and I think some of my games if not all of my games have suffered as a result. Here's to you not following in my footsteps :)

Peace,

-Troy

What Are Some Common Pitfalls?

2009-07-29T15:42:00.001-07:00

Heya,

I’ve been going over several design threads. There are some common questions I see newer designers raise that in the end, really don’t matter all that much. I recall when I was working on my first RPG design and having many of the same concerns and fears as they do. I made a lot of mistakes back then because of stuff I was worrying about so much. I realize now that many of those mistakes and concerns were pointless of worry over. For the most part, I have overcome these fears and, in this post I hope to enumerate what they were and why they really don’t need to be worried about.

#1: Don’t include something extraneous in your game just to “please everybody.” Here’s why: you won’t ever please everybody, and you certainly won’t sell your game to everybody. Does your sci-fi game need psionics to make it more appealing? No! If something like that enhances your game, great. Put it in there. But it’s totally not necessary for the game to be complete, appealing, fun, marketable, or anything else along those lines (same goes for magic in a fantasy game). Don’t include something solely because you think it might increase your buying audience. Chances are, it won’t. Focus on what your game is really about and use your mechanics to enhance that.

#2: Don’t worry about creating a whole line of products based off your initial game. There’s no good reason to do that. You don’t know how your initial sales are going to do, let alone any supplements. Chances are you’ll end up saving some of the really cool stuff for some later supplemental manual. If that second (or third or fourth) book never comes out, people will miss out on all the fun they could have had with your game. Why would you not want to include the really fun stuff in your first RPG anyway? In addition, after your game has been on the market for a bit and some actual play has gone on, you may find that what you originally planned to expand isn’t nearly as interesting as something new that’s come up. The future is way too unpredictable to *plan* on a whole line of products. So don’t waste your energies designing supplements if your first book isn’t even out yet. Don’t hold out on the players.

#3: Speaking of books, don’t get caught up in thinking that your RPG isn’t a real RPG unless it’s in printed, book 8.5” x 11” format. PDF games are just as real, just as viable as printed games and cost a fraction of the start-up price. There are plenty of outlets now for online sales of PDF games like RPGNow, Drivethru RPG, Lulu, and many more. Don’t fall into the trap of believing in the “my game will be better if it’s hard bound with nifty color illustrations…” mentality. Do what makes best business sense for you. If it’s going strait to print, fine. If it’s starting out as a PDF first, then super!

#4: If this is your first RPG, don’t make what creative agenda your game supports the first thing you worry about. In fact, you probably shouldn’t worry about it at all. Creative Agenda will emerge from your design and the conversation process you have with folks on design boards and even more in Actual Play. To be sure, the CA is important, but look at the Big Model illustration in the Provisional Glossary on the Forge. The CA is only one part of what a game is. Don’t obsess about it first thing. Describe what kind of play you’d like to see for your game and go from there. Your playtesters will be invaluable in helping you hash all that out.

#5: Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. That is not what the design forums and blogs do. The only way you’re going to get useful feedback is if you divulge everything your game is about. The people interested in helping aren’t interested in stealing from you. They can’t do so with incomplete information. Also, bare in mind that only a game text can be copyrighted, not the mechanics. If people really do want to copy your design, there’s not much to stop them. And if your game really is so brilliant that everyone does want to emulate it, there can be no better advertising for you than that. Everyone will be talking about your game as they go to write their own. It’s a win-win situation for you.

#6: Don’t obsess over the name of your game. When it comes to sales, the name isn’t going to make all that much difference. Take “Sorcerer” for example. It’s a rather simple and plain title. Ron didn’t invent the word, and the idea of a guy summoning a demon has been around forever. So why do we think that name is so cool? It’s because of what’s between the covers. That’s what sells the book. It’s not a flashy or weird name, it’s the content. Now one may point out Vincent Baker’s brilliantly named “kill puppies for satan” RPG. It definitely has a name that grabs attention and one might thing that would lead to extra sales. I’m pretty sure Vincent would back me up on this when I say that he wouldn’t have sold half the copies he has if it weren’t for the content inside. If a game sucks, it won’t matter what the name is. If it’s great, the name will just be window dressing. If it’s mediocre, the name won’t save it.

#7: Have faith in your playtesters and by extension, your audience. Players will play your game with the objective of having fun. Trust them to do that. They will find a way to make the rules work for them. You don’t need to extensively and exhaustively explain every rule and possible permutation. Your job as the designer is to create an evocative setting, a compelling premise, a workable set of mechanics, and a satisfying reward system. The players will take care of the character, color, and situation. Use examples, but not a litany of do’s and don’ts. Your players can figure that out on their own.

#8: Don’t change something about your game unless you are positive how it works. One play session is not a large enough data set to truly understand whether or not mechanic is working. Give it several sessions and talk about it in Actual Play forums before deciding to change it. Sometimes you’ll find that a mechanic isn’t really broken, it’s just illuminating an aspect of the game you hadn’t considered before.

#9: Don’t feel intimidated by those who have gone before you. You are not expected to produce a Dogs in the Vineyard, Burning Empires, or Spirit of the Century. Vincent, Luke, and Fred are who they are. You are someone different, unique, and equally valuable. Your game can stand on its own. The only person you should compare your work to is yourself. Work until you’re happy with it, not until you think some RPG luminary would be impressed by it.

#10: The last thing I’m going to list is don’t worry about being made fun of or hated here at the because of what you design. More often than not, the hurtful kind of criticism stems from the criticizer’s own insecurities. Remember, the games you create should please you first and others second. As long as you are happy, you are successful. Everyone else can piss off. Be brave, put your design out there and let people play it.At some point I have tripped up on every one of these mistakes myself, and I’m sure plenty of others here have too. But I don’t anyone else to have to go through the crap I did. It took me a long time to come to an understanding that it’s okay to design the kind of game I like. I don’t have to be ruled by fear; instead, I can be ruled by courage. I hope that my meager words here have helped some. We’re all in this together. Mistakes are okay as long as you learn from them, and it is my hope that you can learn from mine. Nothing would make me happier.

Peace,

-Troy

What do I do if I get Stuck?

2008-04-15T06:03:00.000-07:00

Heya,

Sooner or later every designer gets blocked. His (or her) game reaches a point where the design problems have no visible solutions or the play produced by the game isn’t hitting the goals he set for it. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will. So what can a person do? I’ve got six ideas that I’ve used in the past to help me get past design difficulties. Hopefully some of them will resonate with you as well.

Suggestion #1:

The first thing I suggest you do is to let your game sit for a while. Take three to seven days off from working on it. Then come back to it with fresher eyes and see if a solution reveals itself. Sometimes you may need to let a game sit three to seven weeks or three to seven months. Or even longer! That’s okay. In fact, it’s great. Letting a game incubate in your mind is much more preferable to forcing it out under some arbitrary or non-existent deadline. There’s no rule that a game should take only one year or two years or however long to finish. If a game you're working on needs more time to get right, then take the time to get it right.

Suggestion #2:

One thing I’ve found very helpful over the years is asking for help in an online forum. The Forge and RPGnet and even Story Games all have forums dedicated to designers and have offered me direct help in the past. I wouldn’t start a thread on each of them all at the same time. Each site will give you a totally different flavor of help. I have found that doing them in succession really helps you develop a better train of thought and a more complete idea of how outsiders view your game. Taking the time to digest what one site says regarding your design prepares you better for the questions and suggestions that the next site will give. The insight of veteran designers is invaluable IMO. I have found it most helpful in overcoming my own design blocks.

Suggestion #3:

Sometimes, if you get stuck, the “stuckness” may be a sign that the game is ready for playtesting. If the game is already in closed playtesting, it may mean that your design is ready for outside and independent testing. All your best guesses, intuitions, and mat calculations must come to an end at some point. There is only so much you can design through your own imagination and experience. There really is no substitute for playtesting. If you get to a point in your design work where you feel this is the case, put together an organized and readable prototype of your design. Then, turn it over to other people and start playing. You’ll be surprised how much you learn after the first session of playtesting. I guarantee it will be an eye-opener if this is your first time writing a game.

Suggestion #4:

Sometimes, even if you have had some playtesting done on your game, you may still have several design problems that need fixing. If the game is in a playable format, you might consider publishing it in PDF form for free. There are several free PDF makers online if you don’t have that capability at home. My favorite for simple PDFs is PDFonline.com. And there are several hosting sites like 1km1kt.net that will put your game up for free. If you have a Myspace page, you could use that too. Make sure, if you do this, to put the URL of any Actual Play or Playtesting forums in the text of your PDF. You want those who download and play your game to have an avenue to talk about their experiences in public. That way you can benefit from their play and have illustrations for how the game works in actual use.

Suggestion #5:

It is still possible that after a good amount of playtesting and putting your game up on the net for free that you could still have some mechanical issues with your design. If you have done several playtests and received feedback from outsiders on how your game plays, you may be ready to pursue an Ashcan publication. This is usually the final step one takes to solve all the last few design problems a game has before its full on publication. Matt Snyder and Paul Czege have lead the way in recent years when it comes to Ashcans. You can check out their Ashcan Front site here. In essence, an Ashcan is a beta publication that explicitly highlights the design goals and problems with the game in the text in the text of the game itself. It is sold relatively cheap (say $5-$10) and often comes with some sort of promise that anyone who buys, plays, and reports their results in a public forum will receive some kind of payoff in return once the game is published professionally. Typically, that is some sort of discount on a published copy but not always. An Ashcan is a great way to get that last 5-10% of your design polished up before a full public release.

Suggestion #6:

There is one final suggestion I have, though I hesitate a bit to make it. If everything else I have suggested here fails you, then you may want to consider abandoning the game altogether. If playtests, ashcan publications, letting the game sit for weeks, months, or years, and receiving help in online design forums all fail to give you the result you want for your game, then perhaps there is a problem with it that can never be solved. It’s possible that the type of play you are wanting to create with the game can never be achieved with your rules in that form. Sometimes this happens. It is NOT a failure. It is an experience that your learn from and take with you to the next design. Getting a game to that point takes a lot of serious effort and a lot of problem solving. Those experiences will help you in any future project you choose to undertake. Abandoning a game when all options have been exhausted is not a black mark on your record. It is a badge of honor that shows you’ve been through the war and come out a more experienced designer on the other side. It is not a defeat, but a foundation for future success.

Peace,

-Troy

Is Character Advancement Necessary?

2008-03-11T09:39:00.000-07:00

Heya,

When I was looking back over my Anthologies for this blog I was surprised I hadn’t really taken the time to cover Character Advancement. I mentioned it, briefly, in the Power 19, but I never wrote a full article on it to my satisfaction. I am correcting that oversight now.

Character Advancement is something that comes up during just about every design process. There are two questions that deal with it directly in the Power 19 and I usually give a whole section to it in my Design Outlines. The problem is that the P19 and Design Outlines don’t really give the reader any guidance as to what Character Advancement actually is nor do they state whether it is necessary for a game or not. So is Character Advancement necessary? Well… that depends on how you want to define “Advancement.”

The Provisional Glossary does not have an entry for that term, and “Advancement” gets used in many ways in many places. For a game like DnD, it usually means bigger numbers and larger resource pools. For a game like Dogs in the Vineyard, it can sometimes mean that and sometimes not. For a game like Standoff, as characters get more of what they want (Truth), their resource pools diminish- the very antithesis of DnD. So what is needed before we talk about whether or not Character Advancement is necessary for a RPG design is a common and agreed upon definition for it.

Coming to a common and agreed upon definition for any term in a community full of people where many pride themselves on individuality or who enjoy endlessly debating semantics is nearly impossible without years of work and numerous examples of that definition in practice. That’s not something one can really accomplish on a blog. Therefore, I’m not even going to try. Instead, what I am going to do is come up with a working definition for the purposes of this blog and this article. Bearing that in mind, I submit that we define Character Advancement as, “changes that happen to a character over time.”

I like this definition for several reasons. First, it is open to broad interpretation for designers and thus is unrestrictive in its use. Designers won’t be limited to what other games have termed as “advancement.” Second, it is a very inclusive definition. It covers the most traditional methods of Character Advancement as well as cutting edge techniques found in many independent roleplaying games. Third, it would be hard to find a RPG in which the player-characters do not, in some way, form, or fashion, change. And finally, I like it because this definition lets us definitively address the question this article poses.

Given the definition above, should a RPG have Character Advancement? My feeling is that it certainly should. As a story progresses, characters change. On a small scale, they age, learn, add new acquaintances, and increase their sphere of experiences. On a larger scale, they can become injured, deformed, powerful, famous, loved, hated, and so on. Mechanically in a RPG, characters can increase or decrease their resources, gain or lose access to other game mechanics (such as skills or feats), and progress further and further through the range or possible mechanical options or outcomes the game and the actual play have in store for them.

IMO, a game designer should consider all three realms of possible advancement (small scale, large scale, and mechanical) even if he rejects putting some of them explicitly into his rules text. Considering how characters might advance and how their advancement will impact other areas of the game like Setting, System, and Color is vital to ensuring a smooth transition from beginning play to finishing play. It’s been my experience that failure to include some form of advancement in a design will only force players to construct methods of advancement on their own either in conjunction with or in complete disregard of the rules as written. To me, that would not be desirable both from the designer’s perspective and the players’ perspective.

So, to sum up, character change over time is a necessary part of a RPG’s design. I call that change “Character Advancement,” and I truly believe it is a useful thing for designers to consider and implement as they create their game.

Peace,

-Troy

What Should I Design?

2008-02-13T10:15:00.000-08:00

Heya,

The best answer, in fact the only answer, to that question is, “Something you want to play.” In my experience, the games I’ve had the most fun playing and talking about are the ones where the designer created the instructions for play that suited his own play style and preferences- games where his vision for what he found fun in play was brought to life. I’ve most enjoyed games where the designer was inviting me to take part in the fun he was already having. Essentially, I guess what I’m saying is that if you create a game that is rocked-out fun for you and your group, chances are good it will be rockin’ good fun for someone else.

Why is that? Well, there’s several reasons. One of them, I think, is sincerity. When you read some text, it can be from any medium, where the author has intimate knowledge of the subject and is really excited about the topic, it is reflected in the writing. That sense of knowledge and excitement passes from the words to the reader and gets him excited and knowledgeable about that topic too. A game that is fun for you and your group is something you will be knowledgeable about and be really excited to share. That means a lot to a reader and increases the likelihood he/she will try it. Excitement is viral. For RPGs, excitement comes from intimate knowledge on how fun that game is to play.

Another reason is focus. Let’s take the phrase, “fun for someone else” for a sec. I’ve seen several novice designers (myself included) on various game design forums make statements like, “I’m going to make a game that appeals to a broad range of gamers, so that other people will buy and enjoy my design.” Other people…a broad range of gamers…Who’s that? Seriously, anyone know what that is? These phrases speak of an undefined, nebulous group of people without discussing for one moment the types of things they find fun in RPGs. DnD sells more than any other RPG, but does that mean each group enjoys DnD the same way? Don’t believe that for a minute.

One thing that an author in any medium must do is be aware of his/her audience. You have no experience being “a broad range of gamers” or “other people.” You do have a lot of experience being yourself and gaming with your friends. And the cool thing is, that you aren’t alone in the world. There’s all kinds of players out there who enjoy the same sorts of things you do. By trying to appeal to a nebulous cloud of something as intangible as “the majority of the RPG player base” you will totally miss something that is very tangible: “people like me.” And trust me, there’s plenty of those out there.

Another thing is timidity. A lot of first time designers are a bit timid when doing their first game. That’s totally understandable. It’s a daunting, difficult, and very personal undertaking. Some people (and I am an example of this) start feeling that success is more important that communicating what they love about RPGs, and how their design can do it better than any game before. So they start making compromises. Thoughts in the back of their heads start sounding like this: “Oh, no one else would do it like that. No one will understand, better take that mechanic out. More people will like your game if you just simplify and cut out a big chunk of your design. That’s not popular!” I hate those thoughts. They make designers betray the wonderful thing they are in an honest but misguided attempt to increase the audience for their game. Ignore those fears in the back of your mind.

One more thing that I feel is tremendously important to remember is that if you and your playgroups are enjoying your design, then your design is creating FUN! Fun play is the whole purpose of designing a game. If yours can do that, then you don’t have to worry about “a large portion of the gamers out there.” If your game is fun, more than enough gamers will come and find you. They’ll hear about your excitement, and the excitement of those who first tried your game, and they’ll line up to buy what you’ve got.

You see, you don’t really want to chase down “other people” to play your game by designing something you *think* they might find fun. (There’s always a chance, a big chance actually, you will be wrong) You get them by designing a game you find fun and that you’re excited to talk about and post play reports about. You get them by inviting them to join in on the fun you’re already having, by sharing that wonderfulness you possess as a person who loves RPGs.

What you *think* might be fun is unproven. What you’ve had fun playing is definitively proven. Which would you rather take to the market?

Peace,

-Troy

A Long Way Back

2008-02-12T08:50:00.000-08:00

Hello there!

It has been a very long time since I have posted on this blog. The reasons are legion. If you want to read what I've been up to in the intervening time period between May 31 '07 and February 12 '08, you can read about it on my Design Blog.

This announcement is basically to serve notice that new articles for Socratic Design will be forthcoming. I'm looking forward to getting back to what I enjoy most.

As always, if you've got questions, ask 'em! See you soon! :)

Peace,

-Troy

Socratic Design Anthology #4

2007-05-31T18:18:00.000-07:00

Heya,

Every summer I take the month of June off to travel, enjoy nature, and recharge my emotional and mental batteries. I won't post here at Socratic Design again until some time in July. I may do some posting over on my design blog. Maybe.

Anyhow, before I sign off for a bit, I want to leave you with the latest SD Anthology. For those of you who are new, here are the first three anthologies:

Socratic Design Anthology #1
Socratic Design Anthology #2
Socratic Design Anthology #3

I do these every so often just to keep a running history of my work and make it esier for newer readers to catch up. I think it's important to see how a person's views change over time and to understand the context for a person's entire body of work. I hope you enjoy them. :)

The following articles are part of the Socratic Design Anthology #4:

What is Character?
What is Color?
What Else Besides Dice?
What is a 'Sacred Cow' ?
Why Do People Do RPGs?
Why Should I post my Power 19?
Are There any Design Outlines?
How Can My Game Teach Mechanics?
What is it Like to Publish a RPG?
What is a Fulfillment Service?
What is the Future of RPGs?

As always, please report any links that don't work. See you guys in July!

Peace,

-Troy

What is 'Character' ?

2007-05-29T13:44:00.000-07:00

Heya,

I'm finishing up my essays here on the five aspects of Exploration. This one is about "Character." The provisional glossary defines it as "A fictional person or entity which may perform actions in the imaginary situation."

So let's break that down a bit. First, let's begin with "fictional." The Character is the insubstantial person (or entity) in the game. He is the imagined personality, the dream given realization but not form. This means that the Character is a wholly separate object from the Player. Some games like to entwine these two. They have phrases like, "your character knows only what you (the player) knows." Other games demand that they be kept separate, hence the infamous division between "player knowledge" and "character knowledge."

From a design perspective, it is important to note that the fictitious Character and the real Player are separate beings. What the character does and what the player does can, and often will, be two different things. Phrases like, "the players go on an adventure" in a game book bug me a bit. The players don't go anywhere. They portray characters that go on an adventure, and vicariously through them experience that adventure. It is not the same thing.

Next in the definition we have "person or entity." This definition here is broad because a character doesn't have to be a person. In the RPG Cats the characters are cats! Also, I could imagine an RPG where the characters are aspects of a person's psychology- say the Id, Ego, and Superego for instance. The key is that the character is the player's interface with the exploration going on during play. He, she, or it is a tool that the player uses explore whatever interests him during play.

Which brings us to the last part of the definition, "which may perform actions in the imaginary situation." Characters, of whatever type, perform actions. They are dynamic. They must do something. A character that is inert is not a character at all, he is no more interesting than a piece of furniture for all intents and purposes. When designing, make sure that the characters, especially the player-characters, can do things in the imagined world that are fun, interesting, and provoking. Give the players tools to portray their characters and put them in situations that challenge the players to explore your game's potential. That is what a Character really does- facilitates the exploration of your wonderful creation. Keep that in mind at all times and your game will improve.

I may revisit this aspect of Exploration again in the future. There is much to talk about here. Immersion, flags, bangs, and so on are keys to creating dynamic and fun characters. However, this will serve as a brief definition of Character and provide a future context for my essays. :)

Peace,

-Troy

Last Chance!

2007-05-26T10:26:00.001-07:00

Heya,

If you have independantly published your own RPG, then the Forge Booth for GenCon is still accepting buy-ins until June 1st. If you've never done the Forge Booth before, it'll just cost ya $100 plus the cost of a badge. This is a great deal. If you've never been to GenCon before, it is a convention in Indianapolis Indiana that brings in thousands and thousands of gamers. If you have a new game you want to show off, this is the place. You can get more information about the Forge Booth -Here-

Peace,

-Troy

What is Color?

2007-05-23T12:26:00.000-07:00

Heya

Color is identified by the Forge as one of the five main areas of Exploration. It is defined in the Provisional Glossary as, “Imagined details about any or all of System, Character, Setting, or Situation, added in such a way that does not change aspects of action or resolution in the imagined scene. One of the Components of Exploration.”

Okay….so what does that mean? Think of Color as synonymous with Detail. Any description or item that adds detail to the game’s SYSTEM, Characters, Setting, or Situation, is considered to be Color. How about some examples?

-SYSTEM with no Color:
The character kills the other character.

-SYSTEM with Color:
The Warrior uses his mighty great sword to lop off the head of King Moligant on the roll of a critical 20.

-Setting with no Color:
A town.

-Setting with Color:
1602 in the year of our Lord., near the village of Malbork, nestled among the Frozen Mountains outside the Enchanted Forest.

-Character with no Color:
A man.

-Character with Color:
Drakh the level 20 Barbarian from the southern wastes of Hallowfell.

-Situation with no Color
A village in crisis

-Situation with Color
The small hamlet of Esteria is suffering from a malignant plague brought on by undead agents under the command of a local demagogue who is advocating rebellion against the town council.

When I think about Color, I divide it into two categories: Essential and Casual. Essential Color is something that the players need to know in order to correctly use and understand the item being described. For instance, knowing that a cleric is a dwarf in DnD is Essential Color. That designation brings with it a lot of consequences. You certainly would expect different things from the character if he were an elven cleric, or a Halfling cleric, or a drow cleric. Essential Color is used as a cue to the players as to how they should react to or use the item in question.

Casual Color, on the other hand, is pure description for aesthetic purposes. For instance, saying that the same cleric is bald is unlikely to have any consequential effect on play. It could just as easily be ignored and play would continue on just fine. However, Casual Color is important because it adds detail to play and can help players immerse themselves in the world. Casual Color piques interest and gives players a chance to express their creativity while they play.

However, both kinds of Color can run amok if over used. When it comes to Essential Color, imagine if you put all the weapon tables for DnD together or compiled all the damage tables for Rolemaster that have ever been printed. It would be overwhelming! And what good would it do? Many of the weapons/tables are redundant and would just get in the way of players trying to have fun by increasing the handling time greatly. Likewise, Casual color (whether in a textual Setting description or description that comes from the mouth of a GM) can be overdone to the point where it wastes time rather than increases interest.

When designing your game, balancing the amount of Color you include won’t be all that tricky. Read what you have written for yourself. Do you get tired of reading about the same thing for three pages? If you do, chances are someone else will also. Similarly, when you read over your writing, is there something that jumps out at you that makes you wish you had written more about it? If so, then write more about it! However, the best test for the right mixture of Color is to have someone other than yourself read it. Get some outside feedback, and see what they find interesting, boring, or inconsequential. Use that as your guidepost.

Peace,

-Troy

What is a 'Sacred Cow' ?

2007-05-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

Heya,

Every now and then on game design boards or blogs you hear people talk about "shooting a sacred cow." While I applaud this, the phrase is rarely ever explained nor are examples amply given. This post tries to do both of those things. Basically, a "Sacred Cow" in RPGs is a design mechanic or motif that seems inextricably part of RPG design. In other words, if you don't have this "thing", whatever it is, your game is not an RPG. Well this is, of course, absurd. In every field of art, science, and culture the envelope has been pushed and definitions of what a thing is or isn't has been stretched. RPGs are no different. In the last 7 to 10 years, many Sacred Cows have been shot dead and the definition of what a role-playing game is has been stretched a great deal.

But what are a few examples “Sacred Cows?” Here's a few off the top of my head:

Sacred Cow #1: Every game needs a GM
---Shooters: Universalis, Capes, Cutthroat
Sacred Cow #2: RPGs shouldn't deal mechanically with the idea of romance
---Shooters: Breaking the Ice, It was a Mutual Decision, Blue Rose
Sacred Cow #3: You must use dice for resolution
---Shooters: Amber Diceless, Castle Faulkenstein, Dust Devils
Sacred Cow #4: Each player should have only one character
---Shooters: Ars Magica
Sacred Cow #5: Characters who lose in combat should die
---Shooters: Dogs in the Vinyard, Toon, Hierarchy
Sacred Cow #6: All characters should be "people"
---Shooters: Cats, The Secret Lives of Gingerbreadmen, Puppetland

There are plenty of others. And sometimes, a design might require one or more Sacred Cows. There's nothing wrong with taking advantage of design patterns that have worked in the past. They've worked for a reason! However, there is also nothing wrong with taking a step out of what has been done and looking for something that hasn't. Don't be afraid to shoot some of those Sacred Cows. They could be the very thing holding back your design.

Peace,

-Troy

Why Do People Do RPGs?

2007-05-09T06:55:00.000-07:00

Heya,

A while back I posted a series of 5 questions on Game Craft in the spirit of Socratic Design. I wanted to share the answers here on this blog partly as research. The responses are non-scientific, but are never-the-less useful. Designers should know how other people passionate about RPGs feel and what/why they play. Perhaps some of the answers posted to the questions on Game Craft will inspire you to write something.

Why Do You Design?
Why Do You Play?
What Do You Play?
What Do You Play With?
What Are You?

Like I said, the answers are just data if you're doing some non-scientific research for a project. But I feel we can all learn from each other as we share our views, experiences, and preferences. If you like, feel free to add to these answers by replying here on Socratic Design. You will only add to the tapestry those respondants started.

Peace,

-Troy

Why Should I Post My Power 19?

2007-05-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

Heya,

For a while it was a really hip thing to post your Power 19 at the Forge or Story Games. Over time, it slightly fell out of favor. Andy discourages people from posting them at SG and the new guys at the Forge are now far removed from the post I made back in 2005. But recently Ralph Maza suggested that we start posting our Power 19’s again, and I couldn’t agree more. There are several good reasons for doing this, but I’ll just give your three.

Reason #1: New designers can learn from the answers of veteran designers. If you are a published game designer and are working on a new game, post your Power 19 on the Forge or on GameCraft. There are so many designers out there who can benefit just from reading the responses you created when meeting the challenges outlined in the Power 19. The questions on character creation, rewards, resolution, and target audience are all key questions IMO that stump newbie designers. Seeing veterans post their solutions to those problems is an education in and of itself. A bank of Power 19’s on the Forge or GameCraft would become like a library for newer designers to go, check out, and learn from.

Reason #2: You might (GASP!) get some useful feedback on something you had never thought of before. I have a feeling that some designers hesitate posting a Power 19 publicly because they are afraid of getting bad or useless advice that will either eat up too much of their time responding to or send them down a path that ruins the game. Phooey! Feedback, even misguided or lackadaisical can be useful to a designer as it help you reinforce and defend your ideas. At worst, the feedback will help you sharpen your edge. And who knows, someone might actually offer something insightful that helps your game way more than a playtesting session would have.

Reason #3: Speaking of playtesting, it is way easier to get outside playtesting if you have talked about your game in public. The Power 19 is an excellent hyping tool for a game. It lets the readers know all about your game, the key components, and what you plan to do with it in the future. If you are looking to get some people invested in your playtesting or ashcan release of your game, then publicly posting a Power 19 on it is a great way to get that ball rolling. Just try it. See what kind of response you get.

Posting your Power 19 is a win-win for everyone. The Forge and GameCraft get more traffic. You get useful feedback and promote interest in your design. Future designers get a resource they would, otherwise, have no contact with. I encourage you, if you’ve gotten to the point in your game where you can answer most of the questions in the Power 19, go for it!

Peace,

-Troy

How Can My Game Better Teach Mechanics?

2007-04-30T04:11:00.000-07:00

Heya,

One of the largest barriers, if not the largest barrier, to playing an RPG is learning the mechanics. Human beings are so unpredictable in the way they use words, understand words, and act upon words. For instance, back in the 90's I played ADnD with three different groups. Each group interpreted the text differently. Everything from the number of spells wizards got per level to how to roll initiative was slightly different- not because of house rules, but because people just read the official rules differently. IMO, this sort of thing is not all that desirable. So how can we avoid it?

First, examples play a key role in helping people understand new content. Giving players a model to follow offers them a template for their own experiences with your game. There are three types of examples I'd like to talk about for a moment: Generic, Faux-play, and Actual Play.

Generic examples are quick bites of information just to make an abstract idea concrete. For instance, if you were to give an example for Stats, you might say "John's character has a Strength of 5, an Agility of 4, a Logic of 10, and a Charisma of 8." That's a Generic example. Usually, you are not recounting anything that actually happened while someone was playing the game. It doesn't matter what the numbers were or who the players were, and the example will have no further bearing on the text beyond the section where it is included.

Faux-play examples are very common in RPGs. They often appear at the beginning (like my own Ember Twilight), during the resolution chapter, or at the ending of a book. They are usually written as a script where players are sitting around a table talking through their play. Sometimes, they include an over use of words like "Awesome" or have lots of exclamation points. Such an example might go something like this:

GM (rolls and 18): Okay, the orc swings and hits you with his club. 5 Damage. Your turn, Jake.

Jake: Ouch that hurts. I'm going to swing back. (rolls a 17). I hit!

GM: Nice hit, Jake! He takes 8 damage and dies.

Jake: Awesome!

I call this a Faux-play because it's totally manufactured. This is hardly how people play an RPG, but it is how play is commonly portrayed in an RPG text. However, these kinds of examples are still useful. They can demonstrate the order of mechanics and how various parts of the system work in concert with each other.

An Actual Play example is when a writer uses an Actual Play report, either one posted on the Internet or one he wrote for his own reflection, and includes that in the text. This isn't done too often. However, an Actual Play example provides the reader with an authentic model for play. By reading an Actual Play report within the text of a game, the reader will gain much more insight as to how the game truly works with real people in the real world. This can be invaluable especially if the game has a lot of complex mechanics.

There is room for all three kinds of examples in an RPG. A writer should be aware of each and use them appropriately.

A second way an RPG can teach its mechanics is to be aware of how learning takes place. Over on Story Games, Doyce Testerman wrote a series of posts talking about adult learning styles. Rather than replicate his work, I'll link them here for you:

[Teaching Your Game] Rules for Teaching Adults
[Teaching Your Game] Teaching Specific Tasks
[Teaching Your Game] Attention Span and Effective Use of Time
[Teaching Your Game] Readability – The Fog Index
[Teaching Your Game] Using Adult Learning Techniques to Deliver Game Content

Finally, a game can teach its mechanics through a tutorial. Some games turn themselves into graphic novels that visually and literarily teach the mechanics to the readers. Sometimes a game will offer a step by step procedure for the players to follow to create and use their characters for the first time. This is most common on CRPGs or MMORPGs, but tabletop games can do the same. It becomes a matter of writer's choice.

It is very important to be aware that a game must do its best to teach the mechanics it contains to the reader. Failure to provide clear examples or failure to understand how people read and learn will cause real problems when people sit down to play your game. If you would like to test the "learnability" of your game, give it to someone who's never seen it before and ask them to make a character and tell you how they will use that character in play. It might just surprise you.

Peace,

-Troy

What Else Besides Dice?

2007-04-25T04:25:00.001-07:00

Heya,

I’m going to talk just a little bit about resolution systems today- specifically using things other than dice. Nothing too deep. I just got back from Forge Midwest and grad school is still swamping me with work. But anyway, I haven’t made a real post in a while, and I thought I it’s about time I did.

First, let me say that not using dice in your resolution system does not automatically make your game cool or awesome. Nor does it instantly garner you some kind of “indie cred” with other designers if that’s the sort of thing you’re after. Choosing not to use dice will not make your game any better if all the other mechanics don’t hold up on their own. Do not interpret this as a call for more diceless games or an article extolling the virtues of non-traditional resolution systems. This is simply an informational post about a certain portion of resolution mechanics I’ve either used, toyed with, or played with in some way. Also, do not mistake this as an exhaustive list of how to use non-dice resolutions mechanics. These are just the ones I’ve considered at some point. Maybe you’ll find them useful too :)

Cards: A deck of cards can be a useful set of randomizers to use instead of dice. Without the jokers, you have 52 possibilities. That’s quite a few, and may give you the range of possibilities you want for your game if a d20 is too few and a d100 is too much. You can also organize cards into various groups. You have 4 suits, 2 colors, 12 face cards (not counting aces, 16 if you do), evens and odds. Depending on how often you want a certain result to come up, you can look at card groupings to get percentages and probabilities. If you decide to include jokers, you have the opportunity to throw in really rare or powerful effects when the jokers do get played that won’t come up so often that they break the game, but often enough that they get noticed. Also, don’t overlook the fact that there are already many games out there that use a standard 52 deck of cards. Games like poker, blackjack, and euchre can all be employed by an RPG designer to act as the resolution system itself. They become a game within a game.

Coins: Coin flipping is a game almost everyone has played as a child. It usually involves very low stakes gambling, and provides binary results (heads or tales). However, coins can be expanded in an RPG to where players are flipping multiple coins and checking the results either against another player’s flip, a table of some kind, or a difficulty rating. Coins are fairly accessible, but can be a pain to keep up with if the numbers coins getting flipped gets too high. But the fact that they are quick, easy to find, and can serve double as tokens or currency markers, makes coins a viable choice for RPG resolution.

Dominos: Dominos are seldom used by RPG designers, but they are just as legitimate as anything else. There are several different sets you can get on the market. Some sets go from double zero (a blank domino) to double 6 (six dots on both sides). There are others that go from double zero all the way to double 18! And, of course, there’s everything in between. Dominos can be used in several ways for resolution, and I’m sure there’s some that I won’t list here. First, you can use random draws w/ a comparison of the totals on the dominos to see who wins. A domino that is 6/8 would beet a domino that is 1/2. You could actually build a train of dominos on the table, and if a player want’s his character to do something, but can’t play a tile, then he is unable to act. The dominos would serve as gate keepers in this sense. Players could also possible build their own trains, then spend the dominos as currency throughout the game to gain the effects they want. And there’s plenty more creative uses for dominos in an RPG. The key to this, however, is to take advantage of the properties of the domino. That is, they are physical object, they have two values, probably have varying colors, and rules for a game that uses them already exists.

Tokens: Tokens can be anything from glass beads to plastic disks to rose petals. Tokens keep track of some resource a player has access to or can serve as a countdown to some endgame scenario. They are physical objects and thus, everyone at the table is probably going to know who has how many tokens everyone has available to them. In resolution, tokens can be used in bidding wars, comparisons, gambling, and spending. In a bidding war, players would go back and forth bidding tokens until one person gives up or they both run out. Comparisons between token pools would put an emphasis only on accumulating large numbers of tokens in order to defeat enemies. The more tokens you have, the stronger the foe you can overcome. Gambling is like a bidding war, but instead the winner would receive some amount of tokens back. The loser would lose all of his. Gambling puts an emphasis on resource management and risk-taking. Finally, spending tokens is the simplest way to use them. A player would simply need to spend X number of tokens to generate Y effect. There is no real randomness in that system unless the X is somehow variable and constantly changing.

Point Pools: Point pools are a lot like tokens, however they are easier to keep secret. Typically, there is a spot on a character sheet to track them. They can be used in much the same way tokens can, but don’t require the players to have physical objects at the table to manipulate during the resolution phase of the game. In fact, this is they system I’m using with one of my games that I’ll link over on my design blog once I get the chance. One nice thing about point pools vs. tokens is that trading points between different pools is quite easy. Shift points from your “Power Pool” to your “Relationship Pool” involves just an eraser and a couple pencil marks. This can be done quickly and easily. Counting out tokens, sorting different colors of beads or chips from each other, and stacking them all in a neat pile can be tedious and time consuming.

Talk: Finally, the last non-dice resolution mechanic I’m going to cover is talking. Of all the gimmicky things I mentioned, talking is probably the most basic. In fact, you probably do this all the time in your group. The GM might say, “Okay, you walk into the bar…” and another player replies, “No wait, I want to get something out of the trunk of my car first…” That right there is an example of talk resolving a conflict. An entire game can work like that, however, there has to be a significant “buy-in” by all the players. You, as the designer, are counting on them not to just run wild and describe themselves conquering the world in a single instance of resolution. You’re also not giving the players much to work with. IMO, people generally do feel more comfortable with some “objective” item telling them what happens. Dice, cards, and points are all popular for a reason. Talk can be tricky to incorporate into the actual mechanics of a game. Use it with caution.

Like I said earlier, nothing profound here. Just a simple catalog of a few non-traditional mechanics. I am neither encouraging nor discouraging their use, but I definitely wanted to get this up on my blog for future reference. It’s good to be aware of the wide variety of possibilities out there when it comes to resolution systems. Take care all! :)

Peace,

-Troy

Interview Part 2

2007-04-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

Heya,

The guys over at Cannon Puncture have posted the second part of my interview with them. It's my first podcast interview and I'll have to say it was intimidating at first. But I got to talk about two things I really love: playing and designing games. Oh, and I got to plug my two favorite OOP CCGs, too! That rocks. Anyway, hope you enjoy :)

Peace,

-Troy

Game Chef Update

2007-04-02T18:46:00.000-07:00

Heya,

Life has gotten really busy for me lately. Between participating in the Game Chef competition and grad school, I haven't had must time for blogging. So I'll point you towards some other guys who are talking about the competition. Over on Canon Puncture, several designers (including myself) are doing some interviews about their games and the competition in general. Andy Kitkowski gives a really good description about the contest and what he hopes comes from it. Give it a listen if you get a chance :)

Peace,

-Troy

Want to Win a Contest?

2007-03-13T11:48:00.000-07:00

Heya,

The best way to get better at game design is to practice game design. I firmly believe every nascent designer should give it a go in the public eye so they can get some feedback on their ideas and though processes. So here's your chance. Right now the Iron Game Chef is going on sponsored by Andy Kitkowski (of Story Games and 1KM1KT fame). This is a contest where random "game ingredients" (which are really just game terms used to inspire design) are passed out to the contest participants. Everyone has two weeks to create a design and post it for general feedback. It's a lot of fun and a great learning opportunity.

If you are reading this, then you need to do it. No, don't blow it off. Go to THIS THREAD right now and sign up! I've done it and as a result I've got The Holmes and Watson Committee RPG coming out this year. Other people have done it and produced games like Polaris, The Mountain Witch, and Crime and Punishment. So this is your opportunity to strike gold. Please, please join in and feel free to use the resources I've posted at Socratic Design to help you gain an edge. Trust me, you won't regret the decision to enter.

Peace,

-Troy

Are There Any Design Outlines?

2007-03-05T17:05:00.000-08:00

Heya,

Why yes there are! So glad you asked. Actually you didn't, I just needed a way to set up this article. heh heh

Anyway, this blog is suposed to be about practical design theory and useful design tools. I've gotten away from that for a little bit, but I hope to get back to that in earnest. So, in that vein, I'm going to share something personal with you. Ever since I wrote Cutthroat, I've been thinking about what it takes to make a complete game. As in, what components have to be there in order for a game to be considered playtest-able. I noticed that when I wrote Cutthroat, I made sure certain things were present. When I wrote Hierarchy, I noticed a lot of those same things were again purposely added to the game. Mainly these are subsystems like, character creation, resolution, reward systems, the endgame, and so on. That's nothing new.

But what I decided to do was take careful note of the mechanics I unconsciously included and then from those notes, I developed an outline. Then I wrote Standoff! And the outline didn't fit, so I modified it. Then I wrote Holmes and Watson, and the outline needed further redrafting. Since Cutthroat I have written seven games. Each time I refined my outline more and more. This is what I give to you:

Outline for Design #1
Outline for Design #2
Outline for Design #3
Outline for Design #4
Outline for Design #5
Outline for Design #6
Outline for Design #7
Outline for Design #8
Outline for Design #9

As you can see, each one is a refined copy of the one that precedes it. Game design is a process that never ends. I imagine that I'll continure to refine this outline, and I will likely edit this article to include future editions.

Here's the thing you need to keep in mind, though. These aren't the only outlines you can use for designing a game. These are just the ones I've used. Plenty of designers use different ones, or don't use one at all. What they do is help me organize my thoughts and signal me when I've finished enough for a playtestable draft. They help me know when I've met the minimum requirements for a finished design.

Also, even if you do like them, not every outline will be right for you. You might find #3 suits you better than #5. Or you could find that none of them suit you. Or it could be that #7 is the very thing you've been looking for. Take these outlines for what they are: one potential tool out of many. If this kick-starts your design, then awesome! If not, that's cool too. These are just here to help those who need it :)

Peace,

-Troy

PS: Please feel free to report any non-functioning links. Appreciate it! :)

Not Ready for GenCon? Yes you are!

2007-03-04T08:07:00.000-08:00

Heya,

Let's say you've got a game you've been working on for a while now. You have playtested it many times with your buddies and maybe even had an outside playtest or two. The game is fun, but you know it's not ready for full scale publication and sale in stores or at IPR. You would like to have your game ready for GenCon, but you're wise enough to know that if you could just get some more playtesting and feedback, your game would be a thousand times better. Enter Paul Czege.

He has a proposal for you. Paul knows what he's doing with it comes to self-publication. My Life With Master has been a hit since the day he released it. But now he wants to turn his attention to regular Joe's that need just a little more help getting their game ready for the big time. His offer is extremely generous, and guys, if you have a game that can fit his criteria I HIGHLY recomend you take him up on his offer. There's a discussion going on about the details and sign ups at the Forge. Post there if you have questions or concerns. This is something that could benefit a whole lotta designers, and help you "get your foot in the door."

Peace,

-Troy

RPG Design Contest

2007-02-27T14:47:00.000-08:00

Heya,

If you haven't heard, Story Games is down. On another blog Andy (the guy who runs the site) and another guy (Mark) mentioned that you could write an RPG in the time that SG takes to get back up. What a great idea! So I started a contest on the Forge. The rules are this:

-Get it finished before SG is back up
-Use the basic rules of 24 Hour RPG (except the time limit)
-Encorperate the theme BLACKOUT in some way, shape or form.

Okay, get to work guys! Let's see what you got!

Peace,

-Troy

A Rare Chance

2007-02-27T02:40:00.000-08:00

Heya,

One of the biggest influences on me as a young game designer was John Wick. Back in 2000 he wrote a series of game design articles about a game called Orkworld. This was one of the first games that could truly be considered an "Independant RPG." I think Ron Edward's Sorcerer came out just a year ahead of Orkworld. Anyway, John is making a great offer (click here). Until 12pm (noon) on Wednesday, February 28th, you can get eight of his games on PDF (normally $55) for only $25. That's a great deal, IMO. You do have to have a PayPal account, but if you contact him personally, you might be able to make some other kind of arangement. I don't know. But if you are new to RPG design, I highly recomend this. If you like John Wick games, I highly recomend this. Heck, if you just like RPGs I highly recomend this :)

Peace,

-Troy

What is the Future of RPGs?

2007-02-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

Heya,

I promise to get to more practical design focused articles very soon, but this is a question that comes up a lot. I thought it could be a useful discussion to have from a design perspective rather than an industry perspective as it is usually done. Sometimes as engineers (and game designers can look at themselves as a “kind” of engineer) it is good to examine where one’s products may need to evolve without regarding current restraints or lack of technology. It is a thinking exercise that may (or may not) pay huge dividends in the future. Imagine if you could create a tabletop RPG without any constraints on mechanics, technology, or delivery formats. That’s what I plan to do here. So, if I gaze into my crystal d20 I may see RPGs in the future that incorporate these following design elements:

=The MySpace/YouTube Culture: This isn’t about MySpace or YouTube per se. There has been a trend in the trendy “new thing of the week” department over the last 5 years or so. Look at the names of the following products or services: MySpace, YouTube, iPod, iPhone, Windows ME. Notice a common theme? Bingo! And on the first try, too. Each of these products glorifies “self.” Our culture, especially American culture, is becoming more and more radically individualist. The newest things are all about “me me me!” Social commentary on this phenomenon is meant for another place, but as RPG designers we should take note of this grown self-obsession in our world.

In the future, I believe that successful RPGs will need to include facets of the players’ real lives into the actual mechanics of the game. I have to stop and give Ron Edwards and his game Zero at the Bone some credit for first suggesting this. But it is something I am increasingly coming to believe. Players in the future will want to display themselves in front of their fellow players and be recognized socially for their own merits, flaws, and experiences. Games that incorporate a player’s real life interests, flaws, fears, aspirations, relationships, indulgences and so on will strike a cord with the MySpace Generation.

Want to appeal to new players? Give them ownership of the mechanics of the game. Make the game about them, and they will buy it.

=A Return to the Box (and Board): Role-playing games are games, right? (I do not wish to debate what “game” means, take it to another board) However, most RPGs are sold in the textbook, user manual or comic book style. In the future, I can see RPGs returning to the old fashioned “boxed game” model. RPGs will need to package themselves more like board games, which are hugely successful and getting more diverse all the time, to attract new customers.

In the last two decades, boxed RPGs have fallen out of favor for a number of reasons. Expense and the fact that book sellers find it easier to stock books rather than boxes are two of the big ones. In the future, the boxing of an RPG with helpful maps, graphic organizers, character sheets, tips sheets, miniatures, a physical game space (like a board or grid), quick start manuals, and a letter from the designer will be much cheaper and just as available as POD printing is today. Or at least for RPGs to successfully go back to the Box Model, it will have to get cheaper and more readily available. I can picture a company like Lulu pioneering this return.

Anyway, with a return to the Box, RPGs can position themselves more in competition with board games- which is a much wider audience. Imagine walking down the game aisle at Wal-mart or Toy-R-Us and seeing next to stacks of Monopoly and Scrabble The Shadow of Yesterday, Buring Empires, My Life With Master, and The Mountain Witch all in shiny boxes with maps, tips sheets, actual play examples, and letters from Luke, Clinton, and Tim. Pretty cool, huh?

= Next Gen Customization: GURPS and D20 are examples of games that are customizable. However, they are HUMONGOUS! Sifting through the rhemes of material these two systems provide can take days if not weeks. Then, you have to get everyone to agree what books are in and what books are out. It’s cumbersome and time consuming. But this isn’t meant to be a complain session about GURPS or d20. Let’s think about customization in the future.

First, the core system would have to be both free and available for purchase. A good looking PDF could be put up for free on the Internet and at the same time the company could sell a low cost and adequate print version for those who prefer a manual to hold in their hands. The system would be a bare minimum. It might even be as simple as just the Resolution system of the game with a few examples. Everything else would be up to the players- literally. The designer(s) would add components to the game based on orders from the players. Each person who paid a certain fee would have whatever he wanted for the game designed, printed, and mailed directly to him (or if he preferred PDF, sent through email). If he wanted a character creation system that was just for elves, he’d pay the $20 fee and the designer would write a character creation book about elves for him. If he wanted rules for using laser blasters, he’d pay the $20 fee and get a book on lasers.

This is very similar to what Greg Stolze does on his site with the Ransom model. However, this is totally customer driven. The designer would lean on a few design motifs to keep things consistent, but each book would be unique and personalized for the customer and his needs. Come to think of this, I believe Jonathan Walton mentioned doing something sort of along these lines around GenCon last year. But this is on a much gander and focused scale. Every customer would get his own version of the game based on his vision and play preferences.

=Serial RPGs (aka the Metaplot Reborn): Eeeeeeeeew, metaplots! Get over it. The “metaplot” isn’t such a bad idea in and of itself. The problem lies in customers getting overwhelmed by dozens and dozens of splat books that move it along before they are ready. A Serial RPG would be a game that starts characters in a small location with a gripping story. The book would be small itself. Containing only the first “chapter” of the plot. At the fastest, a new book would be released every 3-4 months. More likely, a new book each every 6-12 months would open up a larger and larger section of the plot/game-world/story-arc.

They main thing with this kind of Serial RPG that a designer would have to keep in mind would be that he could not tell the players how to play their characters or exactly how they should participate in the evolving plot. That would a difficult balance to maintain and at present I have no idea how it could be done. That’s for a future designer to discover and implement ;)

Anyone who does implement a Serial RPG in this manner would also need to release Anthologies every now and then. These Anthologies would include all the books previously released for the story-arc. This way new players could be brought into the game line. A Serial style of RPG design has the advantage of creating a loyal and constant audience and therefore a high likelihood of repeat buyers.

=Hybrid RPGs: The main competition, as far as adventure games go, for RPGs are video games. This includes everything from computer games to console games to MMORPGs. Once upon a time video games were just part of a geek culture when only a few people had Ataris or Nintendos. Now electronic gaming (thanks to the Internet, Microsoft, Wii, and Madden Football) has gone mainstream. Tabletop role-playing games in the future will need to capitalize on the prevalence of electronics in our society.

Role-playing games will eventually incorporate MP3’s or Podcasts into their design. A company’s blog will add game content and features to the core rules of the games themselves. Videos on places like MySpace or YouTube or Flickr will be readily accessible to gaming groups and offer examples of play or new content. Interactive Maps, artwork, puzzles, dice rollers, riddles, and even sound bites posted on the Internet would be the type of features a game designer will have at his fingertips to weave right into the mechanics of his game. These things could be downloaded into an iPod, PDA, or Laptop for use at the gaming table. These features would either be pay-for-play items with a free core rule book or a set of free features that enhance a core rule book that is available for purchase.

In the future, technology will be seamless integrated into a game’s mechanics.

=The eBook: I’m not sure how this sort of thing will impact RPGs (here is an example made by Sony). It could be a lot, it could be zilch. The basic idea of this thing is that you can download electronic books on to it and read them like a regular book. This would take PDF publishing to the next level. In the future, it may even be possible to add three dimensional objects to such a book or incorporate movies or animations of some kind that demonstrate how to play the game. Being able to quickly and tangibly flip from page to page to reference charts, tables, and rules could be a real advantage for RPGs. I could even see voice activated eBooks that will respond to commands like, “Show me a picture of a vampire…” or “Turn to page 83…” Games that figure out how to maximize the potential of a product like this will have a leg up in finding a new audience.

Of course, all of this is cloud talk. It may happen; it may not. But the object of this article is to provoke thought in the area of RPG design. We need to look beyond the current mechanics and delivery formats we use to what might be over the next horizon. Independent RPG designers are especially nimble enough to maximize the potential use of new formats and technology. So this post is mainly meant to say, “Where we are is good. Where we will be is better. Let’s start thinking about how we can change everything.”

Peace,

-Troy

What is a Fulfillment Service?

2007-02-07T14:12:00.000-08:00

Heya,

I’m really heavy into the publication and sales side of game design right now, so my articles are germane to that. Today, I’m just briefly going to talk about fulfillment services. I am not currently using any of them for my own reasons, but I highly recommend them to any new author. There are several companies that can handle and have experience in handling the distribution and sale of independent RPGs.

IPR (Indie Press Revolution): IPR is run by Brennan Taylor and Simon Rogers. This company has burst on the scene and really changed things for independent RPG publishers. I have heard nothing but positive reports about them, and they even have their OWN PODCAST where they talk about their company with Paul Tevis. Personally, I believe IPR is one of the most significant developments for independent publishers to come along in a long time. They do have a certain standard RPGs have to meet in order to be carried there, but for the most part all independent RPG publishers are welcome.

Key20: Key20 has been around longer than IPR and has some long time relationships with small press publishers like Ron Edwards and Luke Crane. They usually run a booth at conventions like GenCon and have established relationships with distributors and game stores alike. They do a good job of catering to the small publisher and do a very good job of promoting the products of the companies they represent.

Lulu: Lulu is both a POD (print on demand) printer and a fulfillment service. You can take care of both needs at once through this company. They have their own storefront where both PDFs and books can be bought and sold. For a newer publisher looking to simplify things, Lulu is not a bad choice. Their printing prices are a little higher than some other POD printers, but if you go with their fulfillment service, it may be well worth it to save on the headaches.

With all three organizations, you need to really research them. Only one may be right for you, or all three may fit your needs. To my knowledge, none of them have any kind of exclusivity requirements, so you can go with as many as you like. Just carefully read over the terms of agreement and be sure you will get what you want out of it.

Peace,

-Troy

What's it like to publish a RPG?

2007-01-25T09:36:00.000-08:00

Heya,

So I finally got DL-Quarterly out the door and under way. Cutthroat is in customers’ hands right now and hopefully is getting played. It’s an awesome feeling, and it’s at this point I reflect on the publishing process as a whole. I thought I’d share those reflections with you.

For the most part, I talk about Design on this blog. But Publishing (in this case I’m talking about full-on book printing) is part of the process too. The first thing you should know about it, is that publishing is hard- real hard. If you are not emotionally and mentally prepared for a horrendously grueling process, then upload your PDF for free to a website and leave it at that. If you aren’t ready for this, it’s best to hold off until you are.

I’m going to break my reflections on Publishing down into two parts: Stuff you have to do before you submit you game to the printer, and stuff you have to do after.

Before: (Art, Layout, Editing)

Artwork can be a major boon to you game, or it can totally kill your game. For designers who are doing things on the cheap, I recommend looking over my Previous Article on artwork. I especially recommend Ed Heil’s Illo Trove. I can’t believe more people aren’t taking advantage of that. But anyway, here are my thoughts on art, layout, and editing:

Thought #1: No art is better than bad art. After getting my copies of Cutthroat, I really started to rethink how I used art in the game. The pictures I used do fit the themes of the sections in which they appear, but in the end I think they detract a little from the game. They do look cheap and amateurish (I am an armature after all, but still). If I had it to do all over, I would have commissioned 5-7 pieces of decent art (perhaps from Ed) and used them.

Thought #2: Art should enhance the understanding or the experience of your game. Artwork can be very important in communicating your thoughts to the reader. Imagine someone new to RPGs picking up DnD 3.5 that had no illustrations in it. How hard would it be for them to really conceptualize the difference between a half-orc and a dwarf? The pictures help form the mental pictures that the players of your game will use during play. You want those pictures to communicate your intent for the game and make the experience better. If they can’t do that, why have them? And in this case, “art” can include things like charts, graphs, and models for what you want actual play to be like. Use art that tells the reader exactly what your game is about, don’t use art just to take up space. Trust me, people will notice.

Thought #3: Organization is really important. One of the biggest obstacles to understanding any piece of writing is poor organization. For RPGs this includes both the order of information and the arrangement of that information. When I say “order” I’m talking what information you tell them first, then second, then third, and so on. I developed an outline early on that really helped me get organized. I highly recommend creating an outline. It makes the writing process easier and shows YOU where breakdowns in understand could occur. When I say “arrangement” I’m talking about layout elements. This is everything from chapter headings, to sub headings, to page number locations, and so on. Are you consistent throughout the book? How do you highlight things that are important? Is the text you use for examples differentiated from the normal text of your game? Things like this must be considered well before you go to press.

Thought #4: Spelling errors are lame. Cutthroat has ‘em. Every game does, but it’s something we can all work on. Spell-check was a great invention, but it doesn’t catch everything. Never assume all the errors are taken care of in the word processor. I’ve been burned by them many times.

Thought #5: You can’t edit your own work. Seriously. Whenever I read my own writing I get caught up in the emotions and thoughts I was having at the time I wrote it. I start finishing the sentences in my mind before I actually finish reading them. When that starts to happen, I miss every error on the page. You really can’t check your own writing for mistakes. Give the final draft of your game to someone else to read, preferably someone with a little background in writing and/or editing. A teacher or college professor (if you are on close enough terms with them) is also a good choice. I also recommend letting someone familiar with RPGs but not familiar with your game give it a look. If they are familiar with RPGs, then they will know basically what you are asking them to do. However, they will also spot areas where you aren’t explaining it well enough. A recommendation: at least 3 people outside yourself should read your game before you go to print. (please note: that’s just a recommendation, not a requirement).

After: (Follow-ups, Promotion, Supplies)

Dealing with printers, webmasters, and postal workers can be a real pain. It’s a lot coordination, and a lot of things have to go right for you to get your game into customers’ hands. It’s not easy coordinating all of that, especially if you have promised your customers they’d have their books by some sort of deadline. I’ve learned this the hard way twice now, so I’ll share might thoughts on it with you:

Thought #1: Printers have a hard life. Chances are whatever printer you go with, POD or not, their core business is not RPGs. RPGs make up a small, small part of a much larger printing market that you can’t blame a company for going after large orders. In America, we like to think all customers are important- and they are- but some are more important than others. If you’re ordering 50, 100, 200 books your order is miniscule compared to orders that printer probably receives on a regular basis. And things that are small can get lost. I don’t blame the printer so much as I blame technology and large companies submitting urgent, lat minute orders. Therefore I highly highly highly highly (that’s four highlies if you’re keeping count) recommend that you follow up with your printer every WEEK! Each week I would call to make sure they got the order, to make sure there are no problems with the files, to make sure your payment was received, to make sure the shipping address is right, to make sure proofs are coming, and so on and so on. There are a dozen or more things that can go wrong on a printing job. A printer with hundreds of orders can’t keep track of them all. Therefore it is up to YOU to make sure your job gets done right and gets done on time. Don’t be afraid to call them. And especially don’t be afraid to call them often. I promise, you’ll regret it if you just let things slide and hope for the best.

Thought #2: Get proofs! How things look on your computer screen and how things look on their printer will be different. Promise. It might sound crazy at first, but everyone’s system is slightly different. The print job on Cutthroat was very different from what I expected. I asked for proofs, but didn’t get them. I let it slide. I wish I hadn’t. Always get proofs. Look them over. It’s your last chance to fix any mistakes and make your product the best it can be. Don’t pass it up.

Thought #3: Pre-orders are good. Of all the ways to promote your game going in, taking pre-orders is one of the best IMO. You get to brag about your game a little bit (which is okay as long as it’s not taken to an extreme), you get to brag about how many people are ordering your game, and you get to show off you own excitement about your game. Pre-orders tell people that you are confident in your game’s ability to provide fun play. They will see your excitement and get caught up in it. Start a blog, post on Internet forums, and talk up your game at your local FLGS and get some pre-orders.

Thought #4: A lot of money can be sunk in shipping and handling. Investigate the costs of shipping your game to your customers. This is very important. Getting padded envelopes, postage, and whatever else you need to package with your game can be expensive. Shop around both in stores and on the Internet for good prices on the supplies you need. Talk to your local postmaster about what the best and most economical way to ship a book is. Make sure you have budgeted enough for supplies and double check your shipping and handling fees (if you charge any) to make sure it’s an adequate amount. Look for sales on the stuff you need (incidentally, I think Walgreen’s has a sale on envelopes every now and then), and then stock up on it.

For now, that’s the best advice I can give you when it comes to printing your RPGs. It is a lot more complicated than it seems at a first glance. There are many things that can go wrong, and you’ve gotta stay on top of them all. Despite some of the negativity in this article, I do have to say that publishing an RPG is a very rewarding process. It’s just also very hard and not for someone who isn’t fully dedicated to the project. Remember that, “Fully Dedicated”

Peace,

-Troy

A Rare Opportunity

2007-01-10T10:58:00.000-08:00

Heya,

This goes out to all your self-published RPG designers out there. The Forge is doing its booth once again at GenCon Indy this year. You can read up on it HERE. If you've never been, this is a golden opportunity. The $100 buy in is a steal. A regular booth all by yourself will run ya close to $1,100. So, if you think you might be interested (regardless of what you think about the Forge as an entity) you should consider signing up.

Peace,

-Troy

Socratic Design Anthology #3

2006-12-27T05:16:00.000-08:00

Heya,

For those of you new to Socratic Design, every now and then I compile the articles I’ve written that I believe have the most bearing on RPG design. These aren’t all the articles I’ve written recently; just the ones I feel are most relevant to the mission of this site. They also do not appear in the order that I have written them. Instead I arrange them in the order I feel they will have the greatest affect and make the most sense. I have already done two anthologies, and if you are new here I recommend reading the articles in the order I have written them. This blog is an evolution of thought. It is not a Bible or infallible step-by-step guide to designing games. What I said when starting out may change as my understanding of game design also changes. But it is important to see where those initial ideas started and how my current line of thinking evolved. Below are the links to the first two Anthologies and below them are the articles of Anthology Number Thee.

Socratic Design Anthology #1
Socratic Design Anthology #2

Here are the articles for Socratic Design Anthology #3:

What is Strength of Emphasis?
When is a Concept Ready to be a Draft?
What is System?
What is Setting? part 1
What is Setting? part 2
What is Setting? part 3
What is Setting? part 4
What is a GM?
Is Min-Maxing Bad?

Peace,

-Troy

PS: Please report any links that aren't working. I'd appreciate it.

What is Setting? part 4

2006-12-18T12:15:00.000-08:00

Heya,

I believe this will be the final installment of this series for the time being. For this article, I used the Setting Design Jumpstart to go back and redesign the Awesom-o-fied setting from the origonal Story Games thread HERE that started this series. You are welcome to download the setting and use it as you please for Actual Play. I might suggest the Shadows of Yesterday as a good system to use with it.

Here is the file: Blasted Sands

It's a RTF document. Let me know if you can't download it.

Upon reflection, the Jumpstart seems to do what I want it to for now. The one thing I fear is that it may encourage people to make "DnD-like" Settings. However, that is only one use for the Jumpstart. If you choose to use this design tool, open up your mind to other possiblities. Broaden your own definitions of what things like Geography, History, Authority, and Inhabitants might mean. There are lots more possiblities out there than what has been traditionally held up as a RPG Setting. And most of all, keep in mind that a good Setting gives the players and GMs tools to use during Actual Play.

Peace,

-Troy

What is Setting? part 3

2006-12-08T11:51:00.000-08:00

Heya,

Alright! We’re on to part three of my examination of Setting (here are One and Two). In this article I am mainly talking to RPG designers, however I can see how players who create Setting during play could also benefit from what is below. As always, I am very open to feedback and constructive criticism. What follows is what I call a “Setting Design Jumpstart”

The Setting Design Jumpstart is not the be-all end-all of Setting design. Far from it. It is just a first step (among many others) in creating a Setting for your game. What follows below is the list of Setting Aspects from my two previous articles along with guiding questions that support the creation of each in your game. Each aspect has 3-5 questions listed. These questions get you **started** on creating your Setting. They don’t get you to the finished product. That takes a whole lot of work and determination on your own.

The Setting Design Jumpstart:

Lesser Aspects:

-History
1. What were the key watershed events in the past of your Setting’s fictional history?
2. Why were they significant?
3. How do theses past events directly affect the Present of your Setting and its people? How do they affect the Future?

-Geography
1. What are the significant land features or man-made structures of your Setting?
2. How do or how can these features be used by the players during the game to help them play?
3. How do these structures or features affect the Inhabitants and Dynamic Forces of your Setting?

-Authority
1. What/Where are the seats of power in your Setting?
2. How is that power used, delegated, and organized by the people of your Setting?
3. How does authority (those with power) affect the average person?
4. What threats exist to that authority?

-Social Situation
1. What is the plight of the common Inhabitant in your Setting?
2. How do those with Authority relate to those without it?
3. What are the significant needs and dangers the Inhabitants face?
4. Is society trying to achieve a particular goal? If so, what is it?
5. How can players and their characters use and be affected by the Social Situation during play?

-Mythology/Religion
1. Do the Inhabitants have a creation belief? If so, what is it? If not, why not?
2. To what extent are Faith or Belief in the supernatural a part of the average life in your Setting? What about the PCs’ lives?
3. How active are Supernatural Forces or divine powers in your Setting?
4. How have myth and religion affected History?

-Resources
1. Describe the technological advancement society has made in your Setting?
2. Is there magic/psionics/super powers in your Setting? If so, are they a tool to be used, a force to be feared, or something else entirely?
3. How have technology and mystical powers affected History?
4. How do they affect daily life for a common person in your Setting?

-Enhancements
1. What parts of your Setting might be confusing or too abstract for a reader?
2. What types of graphic organizers (maps, charts, cards, graphs, illustrations, diagrams, etc) can you add to help give the reader/player a better understanding of the Setting you created?
3. Where can the items mentioned above be used to add color, interest, and emphasis in your Setting?

Greater Aspects:

-Inhabitants
1. What are the main groups of peoples (or other living things) exist in your Setting (including the supernatural/divine)?
2. How do all these different groups interact with each other?
3. How did those groups get to be the way they are in your Setting?
4. What makes each group special or interesting?
5. What sorts of beliefs, customs, resources, and powers should the players know about with respect to each group? Which parts about their culture can you leave out?

-Where the PCs Fit In
1. Are the PCs part of any group covered in the Inhabitants Aspect? Is so, which ones? Ifnot, why?
2. How do people outside the PC’s group view people like the PCs? How do people in the PC’s group view themselves?
3. What have people like the PC’s achieved in the past? What might they achieve in the future?
4. How do the PCs relate to the Social Situation?

-Dynamic Forces
1. From all the other Aspects of Setting, what/which might directly oppose the PCs? Which might directly aid them?
2. From all the other Aspects of Setting, what/which might indirectly oppose the PCs? Which might indirectly aid them?
3. How do the common people (or other) of your Setting view these Dynamic Forces?
4. How have these Dynamic Forces affected History (or other Aspects)?
5. What tools do you give the PCs to help them use these Dynamic Forces during play?

-Mutables
1. What can the PCs permanently change in your Setting? Why?
2. What can they not permanently change in your Setting? Why?
3. Is there something you want them to focus on changing? What and why?
4. How will any change made by the PCs affect the Setting as a whole?

Hurray, you made it to the end. Now before moving on to use this, remember what I said in Part 2. Sometimes, various Aspects of Setting will be totally irrelevant to your game. That’s fine. Whole sections of this article may be totally useful to your current project. It’s okay to cross them out or come back to them later once you’ve playtested a little more. What I’ve suggested is a thorough design of Setting. Your goal for your game may be to not be so thorough. This is only one way of creating a Setting. There many others, some even used by professional authors. If the Setting Design Jumpstart is not for you, I encourage you to research others until you do find one that suits your style and needs.

Peace,

-Troy

What is Setting? part 2

2006-12-01T11:56:00.000-08:00

Heya,

This is the second part of a running series on Setting. If you have not read Part One, it might be a good idea to go back and do that.

Okay, since my last post on Setting I have learned a few things. First, I learned (or really, re-learned) that each Aspect has two dials (say from 1 to 10). When the first dial (call it Strength of Emphasis) dial is turned to zero, it means that the Aspect in question is probably not mentioned in the game text. When turned to 10, it receives a great deal of text devoted to it. If the second dial, call it Strength of Relevance, is turned to zero, that means that Aspect is just not critical to playing the game. If it is turned up to 10, then that Aspect is the focus of play. And of course, there is all sorts of settings in between.

The second thing I learned was that I had left out a couple Aspects that could be potentially important. The first covers things like technology, infrastructure, and magic/psionics in a setting. I have decided to call that Aspect category “Resources.” The second Aspect I feel I left out was aids to players and GM who are using a Setting. Things like maps, illustrations, graphics, hints, and so on would fall into the Enhancement category. I’ll elaborate on these more later in this article. But I anticipate more adding and combining these aspects as we continue on. So, provisionally, here is the list of Setting Aspects:

Setting Aspect List:

(Lesser Aspects)
-History
-Geography
-Authority (as in Government/Rulers/etc.)
-Social Situation
-Mythology/Religion
-Resources
-Enhancements

(Greater Aspects)
-Inhabitants
-Where the PCs Fit In
-Dynamic Forces
-The Mutables

With today’s article, I only want to explain how I define each aspect. You may use a different definition, and that’s fine. Please share it! I do not claim to be any expert on this. At the end of this article, I plan on talking about Short Cuts designers can use to get around using these Aspects the way I describe.

Lesser Aspects:

History: History, simply, is the accurate or inaccurate account of major events in a world’s, city’s, local’s past and potentially future. I say both accurate and inaccurate because misinformation is a tool designers can use to create mystery in their Setting. For instance, if the official history of Terra in 2259 is that humans first made contact with aliens in 2150 but in truth, the governments were in contact with them much earlier, this would be an instance of inaccurate History and a potential point of exploration for the characters. If the elves claim they once ruled the world, but in truth it was the orcs, then the origin of the false belief and its ramification are up for grabs as campaign hooks. I also suggest that History can include the future. I think Hero Wars is an excellent example. The world is going to end in the Hero Wars. That much is certain. But what do you do to preserve what you have for now? Another potential example of a History including the future could be a game based on Norse mythology that made a big deal about Ragnarok. http://www.pantheon.org/articles/r/ragnarok.html

Geography: Geography is the physical make up of the world/city/local. If it is a city, then Geography is buildings, streets, sewers, alleys, and so forth. If it is a planet, then Geography include mountains, oceans, rivers, cities, swamps, etc. I’m going to call Geography different from the *map* because a map is a tool that can be used by the players. Geography can be described with a map or without a map. The two are not dependant upon each other.

Authority: Authority in a Setting does not refer to who gets the right to say what about what among the participants. For this Aspect, I am referring to governmental authority. What person or groups are in charge of the laws, enforcement of the laws, and keeping the peace? This also covers their motivation for making and keeping these laws as it might affect the player-characters. Authority can include anything from an intricately detailed account of elections, voting procedures, representations, and judicial recourse. Or it could be something as simple as, “There’s a king!”

Social Situation: Social Situation can be called “The daily living conditions of the people.” This may include impending social upheaval such as a war, plague, invasion, election, etc. It may include economic status of the world/city/local or the interpersonal relationships impacting that local. The Social Situation is an intersection of the characters in the game (PC and NPC) and “What’s happening right now?”

Mythology/Religion: In some games, the way the world was created, the god or gods of the heavens, the role of faith and belief is just not important. In other games, the role of religion is central to the theme of play. Myth and religion can cover everything from the cosmology of the world to the spirituality of the world to the great heroic legends of yore. It almost always involves the supernatural, and its role in affecting the natural world. It is important to focus on how the myths and religions of a Setting impact the common person. How does it affect what they do, how they react, and how they think the world works?

Resources: For the purposes for this article series, “resources” refers to the advancements and discoveries that the world has made so far. This includes things like technology, architecture, science, magic, psionics, etc. For some games, this is totally a moot point (Cutthroat for example) for others it is central to the game’s Setting (Ars Magica for example). I’m open to a different name for this component. I don’t feel Resources fits it very well.

Enhancements: Enhancements are not really part of the Setting per se, but they may be part of the text. Enhancements include things like maps, character sketches, symbols, handouts, cards, graphs, and tables that help add detail and imagery to the other aspects of Setting. Think of Enhancements as the seasoning for Setting, but not the meal itself. Whatever you, as the designer, can add in a physical way to the game’s text to improve your communication to the reader about various aspects of the Setting can be considered an Enhancement.

Greater Aspects:

Inhabitants: These are the people, creatures, and plants that dwell in your Setting. This component is necessary in every sense. However, that doesn’t mean it is the most important aspect of a Setting. Think of the Inhabitants as the pool from which player-character can be drawn. Are there heroes? Villains? Various species? Mutants? The Inhabitants aspect covers not only what lives but also where it all lives. Are certain Inhabitants limited to one geographical area? Why? All of this goes together to make up the Inhabitants of a world/city/local.

Where the PCs Fit In: Okay, you have who and what lives in your Setting all sorted out. Great. Now how do the PCs fit into all of this? What is their role in society and how does society look at them? The PCs are special…in some way, shape or form. Whatever makes them special gives them a unique place in the world. This isn’t always a good thing. Their uniqueness may make them outcasts. It could be harmful to those around them. Or conversely, it could turn them into idols. Their “something special” makes them the wonder and envy of the world. Or anything in between. Part of deciding a Setting is deciding how the PCs fit into everything. They aren’t just shoehorned in at the last minute or glued to the side somehow. A good Setting will have their “specialness” integrated right into this aspect and all the others as well.

Dynamic Forces: Okay, you got who lives in Setting and what makes those PCs so darn special, now what about conflict? Oh yeah, every game needs conflict. Dynamic Forces are elements in the Setting that directly or indirectly oppose the player-characters. Dynamic forces could be anything from an army, to an invasion fleet, to a dragon, to orcs, to secret police, etc. It could also be things like inclement weather, a plague, a natural disaster, radiation, and so on. Dynamic Forces includes both Inhabitants that can oppose the characters and Environments that can oppose the characters. Some games will define these explicitly (Middle-earth Roleplaying for example) and some won’t (Prime Time Adventures).

The Mutables: Okay, Mutables are aspects of your Setting that the player-characters (and players) can change. Can they overthrow Sauron in Middle-earth or is he untouchable? Can they bring water to Arrakis or does it have to stay a desert? Stating what is mutable and what isn’t is often tacit. That means, a designer doesn’t come right out and say, “Nope, the Dark Lord is off limits!” It requires more finesse than that. First look at the Dynamic Forces. If they are world-spanning mega coalitions, then it’s probably not something the PCs can change. If, however, it is something local (say a band of thieves outside a village) then it’s quite probable the PCs can change it. It is good to have both mutable and non-mutable things in a Setting. The Mutables give PCs directions to go. The Immutables give them helpful constraints that prevent the game from spinning out of control.

Okay, this has gotten pretty long, but there is one more thing I want to talk about: Shortcuts. There are a lot of ways to get around having to address each one of these aspects in your game. One is to have your game set in a real-world time and location. For instance: “New York City, 2007” or “London in the 1870’s.” That right there will knock out most of the aspects of setting for you. Another way some people do it is to (legally) use some other intellectual property or license. Middle-earth, Star Wars, Sherlock Holmes, Lovecraft, Dragonball, etc. all draw on prior knowledge for a Setting. If you can draw on that prior knowledge, then creating a Setting is simplified. Not everyone needs to do it that way, but people can.

Well, I think that’s enough for now. It’s a lot to absorb all at once. Thanks for reading!!!

Peace,

-Troy

What is Setting? part 1

2006-11-13T07:05:00.000-08:00

Heya,

This was inspired by a great thread on revising the Dark Sun Setting.

Today I’m going to start a multi-part series of articles on Setting. I don’t know how many parts it will have, but I fully expect by the end of it to have my views on Setting change significantly, and at the same time I expect my views to change those of others’. But to make sure this happens without a lot of arguing and sniping, I’m going to set some ground rules. I want to invite feedback and debate, but I don’t want it to get out of hand. First, as always I expect responses to be meted out with common sense and common courtesy. Debate and learning break down in a hostile environment. So no attacking, and back up your statements with actual play or actual designs. Second, I won’t go back and change anything in the original articles. Don’t expect me to. I will, however, post a revised article sometime distant and down the road or make a note in the next article. Third, I am very open to your ideas. I hope you will be open to mine and others’. Fourth, expect me to play the Devil’s advocate and challenge you to prove anything you assert. I want to agree with you, but I won’t until I feel completely convinced. Fifth, I may add more ground rules at any time.

Alright, enough of that crap. Let me really begin by saying first that I’m not a big fan of Setting Exploration, especially if I already know a lot about the Setting. However, I am VERY interested in Setting as one of the major elements of an RPG. The sad thing is though, that the methods and tools for Setting Design have (IMHO) lagged waaaaay behind those for System and Character design. So what I want to do with this series of articles is create some tools for Setting-generation for myself and anyone who finds this blog useful.

The Provisional Glossary defines setting as: “Elements described about a fictitious game world including period, locations, cultures, historical events, and characters, usually at a large scale relative to the presence of the player-characters. A Component of Exploration.” That’s helpful to some degree. It gives us a starting point for components of a Setting and its purpose in-game. One thing it doesn’t mention, that I feel is important, is that every game has a Setting. Even so called setting-agnostic games like GURPS, Universalis, or Rolemaster have Settings. Sometimes those settings are created by the players in-game (Universalis) or sometimes those settings are implicit based on genre tropes like elves, swords, and magic (Rolemaster). But to really get any use out of a definition of Setting, we must understand what makes up Setting.

At the moment, I have identified nine aspects of Setting. They are:

-History
-Geography
-Authority (as in Government/Rulers/etc.)
-Social Situation
-Mythology/Religion
-Inhabitants
-Where the PCs Fit In
-Dynamic Forces
-The Mutables

ALL of these are important to a Setting, but not all of them are always present. The first five aspects I call Lesser Aspects. Not because they are unimportant (remember I said all aspects have importance) but because if they are absent, the game can still be quite functional. If you never read the reams of history that comes with Forgotten Realms, you could still quite easily play in the setting. Not knowing the exact geography of New York City does not necessarily stop you from playing Vampire in that local. Knowing what form of government Ptolus has will probably not be essential to a dungeon crawl in that city. Skipping reading the mythology or religion section of Middle-earth (while it is really cool) doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy playing in that setting. These five are important but are not necessary for a design.

The bottom four aspects I call Greater Aspects of Setting. Not because they are more important than the others, but because they are requisites for a Setting to be functional. A Setting must have inhabitants (Characters) in order for it to be useful in an RPG. Who lives in the world? What’s the diversity like? Knowing where the PCs fit in is vital. What is their place in the world? How does the world see them? Dynamic Forces are forces that directly impact the characters. It can be anything from orcs to secret police to a terrorist organization. Where does the conflict in the Setting come from? What do the players play against? Finally, the mutables. These are things the PCs can change in the world. What can the player-characters impact? How do their actions matter in the context of the Setting?

In the next part of this series, I’ll go into greater detail for each aspect. This article is merely to get my ideas down and get some feedback. Hopefully, by the end of this I’ll have something akin to the Power 19 for Setting Design.

Peace,

-Troy

It Lives!!!!!!!!!

2006-10-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

Heya,

A couple of landmarks here. First, this is my 50th post with Socratic Design. I'm proud to have it announce the following: The new Divine Legacy website is up: http://www.divine-games.org/index.htm

This is one of several steps that bring my games closer to productions. I'll keep udates going here as things get closer to the release. Feedback is welcome! :)

Peace,

-Troy

What is Strength of Emphasis?

2006-10-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

Heya,

At the moment, I’m in the midst of finishing up the final layout retouches on one RPG and starting to design a new one. One thing I’m finding as I do both is that I want to draw more of the reader’s attention to some aspects of the game and less of it to others. I believe that every word in a game’s text should be important. If it is not important, why is it in there? Fluff and Filler text can be spotted a mile away by experienced roleplayers, and it serves only to confuse new ones. If I find a piece of text that is unimportant to how the game should be played, I should just take it out.

That’s a piece of good advice I got from another game designer a while back. But I’ve also come to realize that while yes, everything in a game’s text should be important to the game, there are different levels of importance.

Take combat and magic, for instance, in DnD- any edition. Look at how much of the PHB those two things take up! It’s close to two-thirds of the book when you include weapon lists and spells. Those two things are vital to play in DnD and therefore are strongly emphasized in the text.

Look at Town Creation in DitV. It’s a big deal. The author even says so. It has a lot of description, and if you look at the game’s website you will find sample towns available. Town Creation receives a great deal of “strength of emphasis” from its creator because it is so important to play.

But should the important stuff always be so strongly emphasized? The answer is no.

One of my favorite examples of a game that purposely did not strongly emphasize its key feature is (was) The Riddle of Steel by Jake Norwood. (Jake, if you read this say hi. It’s been a while) The key feature, IMO, to TRoS is a character’s Spiritual Attribute. But instead of going on page after page about it, it’s just thrown in with all the other character creation items. On the other hand, the book has all kinds of stuff about combat. It probably has the most realistic combat system ever implemented in an RPG. And Jake used that as a major selling point. However, talk to anyone who’s ever played the game, really played it, for an extended period of time. See which of the two they though was more important to play. The importance of Spiritual Attributes is to be discovered during play, not hammered home in the initial reading.

I have run into this sort of thing with one of my own games I am designing. It has a “Walk Away” mechanic. The game is filled with violence, tough choices, and sacrifice. That’s the point of it. But I wanted to offer the ultimate tough choice to the players: giving up. Now it’s not something I want them to choose often, but I do want it to be there. So while other game features get bold print, examples, and lots of description, the Walk Away mechanic does not. Perhaps it will only get a couple lines. But it is something I want them to discover later in play, just not necessarily in the first reading.

So what are some ways to show strength of emphasis? Below are some suggestions:

-Layout Features
-Graphics
-Warnings
-Verbiage
-Capitalization
-Illustrations
-Repetition
-Promotion
-The Blurb

What can a heavy strength of emphasis accomplish for a game? It can draw attention to a mechanic. It can encourage the use of a portion of the text during play. And it will help discourage indifference towards that mechanic/rule/text. Basically, strong emphasis can alert a reader to something’s prominence in the game. What is strongly emphasized in the text will likely be strongly emphasized in play.

What can a light strength of emphasis accomplish for a game? It can hide surprises that come up in play. It can make the use of a particular rule or mechanic more rare. It can present options to players without making them a requirement. Finally, it can be used as contrast to help emphasize the portions of the text that are important.

At lot of this is self-evident, I realize, but this is a topic that was pertinent to what I am doing with my games. Both strong and weak emphasis are necessary to a game’s text. Used appropriately, they can greatly enhance the depth of understanding and play of a game. Used wrongly, and a game could end up an incoherent mess. It’s somewhat obvious, I know, but that does not make it any less important to design.

Peace,

-Troy

What's the Worst Part of Moving?

2006-10-04T09:58:00.000-07:00

Heya,

For various reasons, none of which I am happy about, my wife and I have moved to a new city. It is much clearner and nicer than our old one and I know we will be much happier here. However, it's a real pain. I hit a mailbox with the UHaul. Our cat got lost outside during a rainstorm. Our landlords are never around so we can't even sign the lease yet. And we have 87 empty cardboard boxes to deal with now (no exageration). But you know what? None of that is what's bothering me. What's really bothering me is our lack of Internet access right now.

You see, in our new town Cable TV/Internet is run by the city as a utility. None of the major companies (Comcast, Insight, Time Warner) are allowed to compete. So when you move in, the city government is in charge of hooking you up. As with anything the government is in charge of, it's never done right, never done on time, and not nearly as effective as it should be. So, I'm at work on my Fall Break (I'm a teacher) using the Internet to catch up on online stuff and enter grades into the school's network. It's lame, but I got no choice. Worse, it's delaying the release of Cutthroat. It will take at least 10 more days for them to get around to hooking us up. You know, if the paperwork isn't lost or a committee doesn't have to vote on it or something else governmentalish.

Whatever. Anyway, I hope you are enjoying the changing of the seasons. Nature is SO beautiful this time of year. You should get out and enjoy the fresh air in a park or nature preserve or something. October is my favorite month.

Peace,

-Troy

Is Min-Maxing Bad?

2006-09-28T07:13:00.000-07:00

Heya,

For a while now, there’s been talk goin’ round that Min-Maxing isn’t a bad thing; that players are just choosing the optimal strategy and finding a niche for their characters. Those that say this do have a point. You can’t hardly blame a person for wanting their character to rock! They’re just doing what the rules allow. However, the full-on supporters of Min-Maxing might have a narrow point of view. In truth, I see three legitimate PoV’s on this: Min-Maxing isn’t bad, Min-Maxing might be bad, and Min-Maxing is bad. I’ll explain.

Let’s take “it isn’t bad” first. Min-Maxing is a strategy. Period. In fact, I’d say it’s a very obvious and natural strategy. Minimizing resources allocated to character components (skills, stats, advantages, whatever) that will seldom see use and/or character components that have drawbacks or flaws of some kind is sensible. Likewise, maximizing resources allocated to components that will see a great deal of use and/or components that provide advantages and bonuses is very logical. It’s almost a kind of “Duh!” moment, if you will. Whether it is during character creation (Chargen) or advancement, Min-Maxing is indeed a legitimate and probably beneficial strategy. Thankfully, those that decry it as a bad way to play are dwindling, however they are not gone completely. Which brings me to why Min-Maxing might be bad.

There are people and play groups that feel that Min-Maxing is bad play or that it’s not very sporting. They feel that the strategy undermines both the spirit of the game and the spirit of the group. It is in this circumstance that Min-Maxing might be bad. More important than good strategy is the Social Contract a group has set up (consciously or unconsciously). If Min-Maxing violates that contract, then if becomes bad play.

So what does one do in this situation? As I see it, there are three options. First, is to open a dialogue and work out a mutual compromise everyone can agree to. Come up with a solution that makes the entire group comfortable, so play and enjoyment can resume. Second, is to conform to the group’s Social Contract. Sometimes one has to sacrifice one’s own preferred style of play for the good of the group and the opportunity for having fun. Finally, one can simply leave the group. If a compromise cannot be found and there is no willingness to conform to each other’s style in either party, then perhaps it is a good time to bid farewell and find a group that better matches that style. Staying in a contentious situation ruins everyone’s fun. Each person will have to decide on their own.

Now for an instance where Min-Maxing is bad (IMHO). I submit that any game where Min-Maxing is the dominant strategy either during Chargen or Character Advancement, that game needs revision. Min-Maxing is one legitimate strategy in play, not the only legitimate strategy. If a design funnels characters into tight Min-Maxed boxes, then I believe the designer has come up short. He has left open a lot of room where he can design far more interesting strategies in his game. Especially if a game focuses on strategic use of character components, Min-Maxing as the dominate strategy is horrible. That’s not really strategic at all. It’s just following the only real path presented by the rules. Others may disagree, that’s fine. But I honestly don’t believe those kinds of game have the potential to produce as much fun as games with multiple and varied strategies. There’s a lot more out there than Min-Maxing.

So to sum up, Min-Maxing is a legitimate strategy. However, players should be mindful of the Social Contract of their group and designers should be mindful of incorporating other strategies in their games. Just because it is legitimate, doesn’t automatically make it good.

Peace,

-Troy

Design Journal: Saviours

2006-09-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

Heya,

As mentioned back HERE, I am working on a new RPG for my quarterly release called Saviours. I’ve written of Big Three on them and added in answers that respond to two questions raised by Ron and Vincent in THESE videos.

What this Game is About:

Saviours is about superheroes with super flaws. It’s about being powerful and being tragic. Though you save the populous of Ultraopolis time after time, they will turn on you in a second. Though you defeat your nemesis time and time again, there’s always another to take his place. You are powerful, no doubt. You have saved thousands, for sure. But the constant demands of the desperate citizens and the pressures from your enemies lean hard on your back and the temptation to turn against those who support you can look so gleaming at times. Society is doomed anyway, why hold on?

What the Characters Do:

Player-characters in Saviours are divided into two types: Heroes and Sidekicks. Heroes are faced with three main situations: Fight a Nemesis, Rescue your Beloved, or Avert a Disaster. Each of these carries potential benefits or costs to resolve. While doing nothing will certainly earn you the ire of your fans and your colleagues, doing something thrusts the temptation to abuse the great power bestowed upon the PCs. The Heroes must constantly balance gaining power with keeping control of themselves. Sidekicks are helpers to their mentor. They use their powers to augment that of the Hero’s. However, they are often the first to suffer the brunt of the Hero’s frustration and are sometimes forced to sacrifice themselves to save their leader.

What the Players Do:

Players in this game are charged with creating a Crises, how much help they will ask for while facing those Crises, and how much help they will give. They will have to closely manage the resources of their character(s) in order to defeat the obstacles that lay before them and to be sure none of them betray the Organization.

The Game Master in Saviours will provide the opposition to the players. He’ll take on the roles of the Nemeses, Henchmen, and Disasters the characters will fight. He will also provide Temptations for the characters to stumble and Hazards that the characters will have to overcome. His job will be multi-faceted as each player will have his own character with perhaps a sidekick and then choose which crisis to take on. It’s a lot to keep track of, but very rewarding to see how the players deal with the high stakes situations.

Why do I want to make a Superhero Game?

Well, first, I’ve never written a Superhero game. I’ve played plenty of heroes, but never with any real satisfaction. The Superhero genre is one many of us can relate to. Many of us got comics as youngsters that stirred our imaginations. I remember my first Spiderman comic. It was the one where the Scorpion is invented. I wish I still had it. It was awesome to me to see how a person with power could be tempted to use it for his own selfish purposes and how another person could use his power for the benefit of others. It was from that initial, childhood impression that Saviours would some day be born.

Why do I want to make a new Superhero Game?

I like games with strategic choice and tactical encounters. I like games that pose a challenge to me, that I had a part in creating, and ask me to figure out a way to overcome that challenge. I also like to narrate. I’m not very good at it, but I like to do it anyway. From these desires came several ideas for a game. None of the other Superhero games, I felt, gave me the kind of play experience I wanted or that others who are inclined like me want. I want strategic fights that are heavy in narration with consequences that matter (i.e. mechanically represented explicitly) at the end. I wanted a game where I got to make both the hero and the villain he faces. I wanted a game where I had the option of making a sidekick, but didn’t have to play him too. I wanted a game where people had to care about and support my character and where I had to care about and support their characters too. So basically, in the words of the Durham 3, I want others to make me look awesome, and I want the chance to make everyone else look awesome too!

So what’s next?

Well, I need to finish my first draft. It’s mostly done, but there’s a couple issues I need to hammer out. I have some tough choices to make. I’m sharing this here on my blog because I talk about design a lot, and I felt that I had better start showing my words in practice. So with Saviours, I’ll try to show how I implement my own design ideas. Today it was the Big Three. Of course, feedback is always welcome! :)

Peace,

-Troy

Memory Lane

2006-09-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

Heya,

Good ole, good ole times. If you're into the Forge at all, check out this link: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=21464.0 Bringing back some old memories- good and bad. I'm sure by the time it's all done, there will be a lot to learn from what's posted there.

Peace,

-Troy

What is 'System' ?

2006-09-13T05:20:00.000-07:00

Heya,

In previous articles I have touched on Situation and Setting. Today I’m going to tackle another key component of RPGs: System. First off, you should know that I do subscribe to the “lumpley principle.” So if you have serious issues with that, then I’m afraid that this article won’t help you very much.

But anyway, the lumpley principle states: “System (including but not limited to 'the rules') is defined as the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play.” The first time I read that I went, “Huh?!?!?” Then, through the years, I read a lot of explanations to it and the definition finally clicked.

Basically, System is big. Real big. In fact, we should really write it in all caps like this: SYSTEM instead of just capitalizing the first letter. Writing it like that, I think, might clear up a lot of confusion, because when someone (especially if they are new to RPG theory or design) sees “System”, they might think of something like the D20 System and say, “Well the whole system is just the SRD, right?” Well, not exactly.

To really help me understand what SYSTEM (the lumpley principle) meant, I had to brake it up into two parts: Rules and Procedures. For my purposes, Rules are the games text. They are the printed words on the page, unmodified in any way by the participants. Rules are the author’s expression of the game objectively observed in black and white on the page. Everything in the book, from cover to cover, is Rules. Anything that is not in the book that affects play is Procedures.

EXAMPLE OF A RULE (A): “Roll three d6 seven times to generate the seven stats for your character. Arrange them any way you like on your character sheet.”

EXAMPLE OF A RULE (B): “Choose one of eight races included in this book for your character. This will be his/her heritage and background.

Procedures can include modified Rules (often called “House Rules”), dialogue between participants, deciding who the “leader” of the party will be, who gets to roll dice first, narration of events/actions by characters, negotiating conflicts between players and/or characters in a fashion not provided for in the Rules, and so on. Procedures are essentially the talking around the table and the actions/agreements made by the participants that are unique to the group. It’s anything the participants agree to do or establish that affects the in-game events. Sometimes Procedures are based off Rules; sometimes they are not.

EXAMPLE OF A PROCEDURE (A): “Hey guys, instead of rolling 3d6 for your character’s stats, roll 4d6 instead and drop the lowest one. Arrange them in any order you like.”

EXAMPLE OF A PROCEDURE (B): “Guys, there are no elves left alive in this world we’re going to play in. So when you choose a race, you can’t choose to be an elf.”

So if you look at it like that, you can see that SYSTEM really is big. It includes everything that goes on at the table no matter how closely or loosely it adheres to the written rules of the game. It even includes stuff that people term as “meta-game.” Anything that affects the in-game events is part of SYSTEM.

So what does that mean for a designer? A designer must be aware that the SYSTEM of his game will, no matter what, include two parts: The Rules and The Procedures. It’s been said that the only part of SYSTEM a designer really has control over is The Rules- the words he writes in his game. But this isn’t entirely true. A designer can encourage players to develop Procedures for the game. In fact, many games are enhanced by players making up the bulk of SYSTEM and only referring to the Rules when there is a dispute. A designer must signal to the players (using the text) when it’s probably okay to use a Procedure to handle something and when it is advisable to use a Rule instead. You have to decide, will your game be Rules Strict (i.e. encouraging players to play as closely to the rules as much as possible) or Rules Relaxed (i.e. encouraging players to improvise and customize the rules as much as needed)?

This is quite important. No group will ever play the game strictly by the Rules as written. Human communication and understanding is far too limited to allow for that as a possibility. However, no group will ever completely toss out the Rules either. People sit down to play a game because the game text inspires and intrigues them. Therefore it is vital that the Rules give the participants guidance, explicit and thorough guidance. A designer must ask himself these two questions constantly as he writes his game:

“When do I want them to use my Rules as written to help advance play?”

“When is it okay for them to take ownership of the game and use Procedures of their own?”

Peace,

-Troy

New Business Plan

2006-09-05T06:13:00.000-07:00

Heya,

((This is also cross-posted HERE at the Forge))

What a trip my path towards game publishing has been lately. Recently I read This Post by Ron. There’s a road of no return that people walk when they get fed up with RPGs and never want to come back; I almost went down that. Just for some quick background two of my games Cutthroat and Hierarchy won Ronny awards last year. I was pumped about getting them tested and published. Well, I got that done, finished the layouts scooped up all the art I could for them on my budget and had it all ready to go. Then several things that I wanted to go my way didn’t. I was disappointed, very disapointed. When my cousin Stacey scheduled her wedding on the weekend of GenCon, I just swore the whole thing off. I thought I was done. But, after several encouraging conversations with my wife and a really awesome trip to the Western United States this summer, I came back with a new perspective. I knew I still wanted to publish my games, but releasing all four (adding Standoff and Holmes ‘n Watson to the list) at once didn’t seem right. I had an opportunity to do something unique, but I didn’t know what. Then I listened to Paul Tevis’s interview with Ken Hite on Have Games will Travel.

The idea struck me like a bolt of lightning. Ken said the gaming industry, specifically the distributors and shop owners, were increasingly looking at RPGs as periodicals rather than books. His words also jived with what I’m learning in my masters classes about children: attention spans are getting shorter and new stimulation is required *often* to keep their minds focused on something. So I thought, “Hey! Why don’t I turn my games into a periodical rather than just dumping them on the market all at once!” It was crazy. And I liked it. So here it is, my new business model:

I am going to offer customers the opportunity to purchase a subscription to my games rather than purchase each new game as it comes out. A subscription would include four books that would come out quarterly (every three months) and be complete, self-contained games. This is not a model where I create one “Core Rules” and release supplements every quarter. Each game is a unique individual and very fun to play. As of right now, I plan to offer three different kinds of subscriptions.

The first kind would be a PDF subscription. This would be the cheapest. I would just send the customer the pdf over email the day the game is “released” and they would have it waiting for them when they got home. PDFs are getting increasingly popular and if someone wants to test the water this way, it’s good for both them and me.

The second kind would be a Book subscription. This is kind of the “normal” subscription. At no additional cost for shipping and handling, they would receive a new book (paperback, perfect bound) sent to their address every three months. International orders would probably cost a little more and take a little longer to ship.

The third would be a Lifetime Book subscription. While it would cost more, it would guarantee them a copy of every book I release under the periodical model I’m talking about for as long as I can keep it up. They would never again have to pay another fee for the books, shipping, or handling even if the costs of my other subscriptions go up. Once that fee is paid, you get one of everything I make. Period.

I think I would probably also offer to sell “back issues” if people wanted those. I wouldn’t make them available, however, until the next “issue” came out. But if someone gets a subscription in the second year of this and wants Cutthroat let’s say, then he’d have a chance to get it. Of course ordering four back issues would be more expensive than ordering a subscription. Subscriptions are what I’m really interested in selling.

Now I know this sounds a little crazy. A book every three months!?!?! That’s nutz! But hey, I’ve got the first four already written and tested. That’s the first year at least. I’ve got two more games in the draft stage and will start testing them after a couple more revisions. So for the first year and a half I’m already set. Plus, if you’ve followed my Blog at all, you know that I’ve created a good number of tools to help me write these games. I now know what it takes to make a complete game and I’ve got a whole wad of ideas just waiting to be realized.

And you know, honestly, the games I write are pretty simple. They aren’t designed on the same level of depth as say Dogs in the Vineyard or the Mountain Witch. Character creation in each of them is fast and easy. 5-15 minutes for most of the games. And they are really designed to give the players a complete game experience in one sitting. Kinda like a short story rather than a novel. So imagine a customer gets his book. It’s 50-70 pages long and takes less than a half-hour to set up and only 2 to 5 hours to get a complete game. If he and his friends play twice a month, then by the time my next game comes out they’ve had 6 play experiences with it. They’ll be ready for something new. And that’s the idea. I will provide customers with frequent, new gaming experiences at regular intervals that won’t take up a lot of their time with things like set-up and prep. At least, that’s the hope.

I will be a little bit before I get this in motion, though. I’ve got to redesign my website. I need to figure out PayPal a little better so I can set up a storefront on my site. I need to revise the covers and touch up the layout on a couple games. So no sooner than the 4th quarter of 2006 would I be able to get this out the door. That sounds about right.

Anyway, here is what I want from you guys. I’m not really interested in comments on why this model won’t work, why the games will suck, or how I can’t possibly keep up the pace. I am very interested in comments that suggest way to HELP make it work. I’ve discussed this privately with a couple other people. Interestingly, they had opinions on the opposite ends of the spectrum. But I am very interested in what do you think I need to do to make this happen and happen well, and even more interested in anyone’s publishing experiences that might be helpful. How can I avoid potential pitfalls? What are the good points of selling games in this fashion?

I do appreciate you reading this far and all the feedback you will offer.

Peace,

-Troy

When is a Concept Ready to be a Draft?

2006-08-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

Heya,

As I get ready to make an official announcement about how I’m going to sell my games, I’ve been wanting to stockpile a lot of different game concepts. Of all the steps in RPG Design, this is BY FAR the easiest. So let me preface this article by saying that having a game concept doesn’t really mean all that much. Practically everyone who plays RPGs has a game concept of some kind.

Okay, so what is the article really about then? Well it’s about knowing when your concept is fleshed out enough to move on to actually writing down a coherent version your game. Everyone is a little different, but for me I have a checklist. I call it my “Systems Design Checklist.” What I do is break my game concept up into seven distinct parts (or systems). Think of it like the systems checks that NASA does before they clear a space shuttle for liftoff. If I don’t have each of these systems in place, the concept stays in my notebook. If I do, it’s off to my keyboard. So what are these ‘systems’ I’m talking about? I have a checklist provided below if you’d like to copy and paste that, but for now I would like to describe each individual system in some detail.

System #1- The Play System: This system basically answers the question “What do the players do?” It covers items like scene framing, narration rights, procedures for entering ideas and actions to the shared imagined space where in-game events take place, stakes setting, and stuff like that. In essence, it’s the rules for talking. The play system spells out who gets to say what about what things, when they get to say it, and how far that power goes. This tends to be fairly free form in a lot of games, and that’s totally fine. However, some games ritualize this a great deal (e.g. Polaris).

System #2- The Character System: The character system covers two aspects of character. That is both the creation of characters and their components. This system answers the questions, “What does it take to make a character?” “What resources does the character provide its main player?” and “What resources does it provide all the other players/GM?” Character is one half of the components that go into Situation. So the character system should include arenas of conflict (since conflict is what drives the Situation). Usually arenas of conflict will be tied to a characters stats, personal history, or abilities. When designing my character systems, I make sure I have plenty of built-in arenas of conflict for the player to explore. However, it’s not just the character’s primary player that matters. All the other players, especially the GM if there is one, will be interacting with that character. So the arenas of conflict need to be made available to them as well in order to facilitate collaborative storytelling. When creating your character system, think about what parts of the character can other players (including the GM) use to springboard action? If you want to break it down, I believe the character system consists of three main parts:
1. Process of Creation
2. Main/Primary Player Resources
3. Other Player/GM Resources

System #3- The Resolution System: There are two main types of resolution: Task and Conflict. Each one of those can be broken down into styles: Drama, Fortune, and Karma. I’m not going into any sort of detail about those right now. Check the Provisional Glossary if you’d like to learn more about them. What I am going to talk about is what a resolution system accomplishes for a game. Mainly, it answers the questions, “Where is the element of chance?” “How can disputes between characters be mediated?” and “How are the outcomes of task or conflicts decided?” This can bleed over a little bit into the Play System. But that’s fine! All parts of a game should be related to each other in some form or fashion. When should a Resolution system be engaged? Answer: any time there is a dispute or conflict of interests between characters and/or players in the game that cannot be resolved by talking it out. Vincent’s, “Say yes or roll dice” seems a very appropriate answer to that question.

System #4- The Endgame System: An endgame system is very optional in an RPG design. A majority of games don’t have them, but some do. It answers the questions, “What is the final objective of the game?” “How does the character’s story end?” or “When does play stop?” Not every game needs and endgame. I happen to like designing with them because it helps me conceive of what a session or campaign (for lack of a better word) should look like, what I want the players to do, and the product I want the game to produce. For me, it is a device that helps drive the action to a climax. You may find that you don’t need one, but I encourage anyone working on an RPG to consider just how the game will end and if there is a way to mechanically support that ending that would enhance the experience.

System #5- The Reward System: Or really, the “Reinforcement System.” This system answers the questions, “How do I encourage the kind of actions and behaviors I want and discourage the kinds of actions and behaviors I believe are detrimental to play?” “What mechanical rewards do the characters receive?” and/or “What mechanical rewards do the players receive?” The best way, IMO, to break up rewards is to split them into two- Character Rewards and Player Rewards. It’s very important to understand the difference between the two. Heh, that’s probably a whole ‘nother article in and of itself. But anyway, examples of player rewards would be things like narration rights, plot tokens, or spotlight time. Examples of character rewards include experience points, relationships, and improved proficiencies. Not every RPG will have both kinds, but it is important to consider whether or not your game should. Remember the reinforcement system is the main tool you, the designer, have at your disposal to help the people playing the game to get as much out of it as possible. A weak rewards system will likely result in a weak play experience.

System #6- The Setting System: Setting is the second component of Situation. Where the action takes place has a great bearing on what sorts of conflicts (and by extension Situations) you can have. Creating your game’s setting is therefore, critical. The setting system answers “Where & when does the action take place.” “What is the geographical context and and/or social context for the game?” or “What parts of the fictional world do the players *not* have to worry about?” My games tend to be setting lite, but that’s not necessarily the way to go. Each game will be different. You’ll have to decide. In any case, the “setting system” can be represented in several ways. First, the setting can be predetermined. For instance, White Wolf has World of Darkness. Second, a setting can be hinted at in the text and then left up to the players to fill in as they go. Example: InSpectres. Finally, a game’s setting can be generated on the spot through play and discussion among the players like in Prime Time Adventures or Unversalis. It is important to know how your Setting System influences the Situation of your game. Providing a context for the conflict and action of the game is the main job of setting.

System #7- The Responsibility System: This system is the one you’d probably think about the least. It is the system that decides who does what in the game. For instance, it doles out whose job it is to decide when the Resolution System kicks in or when the Reward System kicks in. It decides which and how many characters each player will be in charge of. The Responsibility system is basically the job list of your game and procedures for deciding who is going to be in charge of what. Does your game have a GM? Does your game allow anyone to introduce conflicts? Does your game force each participant to portray a character? Basically, the responsibility system answers the questions, “What is everyone’s job?” or “What is each participant in charge of?” Sometimes various responsibilities will overlap. Sometimes they wont. Sometimes this will overlap with the Play System. Sometimes it won't. But whatever you decide, your game concept needs to make it clear who is going to be doing what during the game and what tools/mechanics/game pieces they will be able to use to accomplish their charge.

It doesn’t matter in what order you tackle these systems. I just sketch them out as the inspiration arrives. I put them in this order for this article as I found them in my notebook. So don’t feel like I’m prescribing a certain order of conceptualizing. I’m not. All I am doing is suggesting something to you that might be helpful since I have found it helpful to me.

So in conclusion, basically this is the method I use to determine whether or not a concept is worth taking to the next level: the drafting level. Drafting is probably another article for the future, but I feel that if I can have something - some idea - to drop into each of these seven slots, then I feel I have a game worth transferring from the scribbles in my notebook to a coherent document on my computer. You may have more systems or you may have fewer. But I would say that having some kind of method that determines when a concept is worth pursuing and when a concept is wasting your time is a valuable and time saving device.

::System Design Checklist::

O The Play System
O The Character System
O The Resolution System
O The Endgame System
O The Reward System
O The Setting System
O The Responsibility System

Peace,

-Troy

Which is Better: Hit Points or DPS?

2006-08-21T12:47:00.000-07:00

Heya,

Like last week’s, this post may actually be more applicable to playing RPGs than Designing, but I feel there is something to learn on both fronts here. Anyway, I was thinking about RPGs and the RPG market the other day. Depending on who you ask, the market ranges from “Never better!” to “A nuclear wasteland littered with the corpses of dead companies.” Either way you believe, there can be no doubt that RPGs are facing some competition. But this competition comes not from CCGs or Minatures or Boardgames. It comes from MMORPGs (Massive-mulitplayer Online Roleplaying Games). Games like EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and DnD Online. I know Mike Mearls has talked about these things once or twice, but I thought I would add my observations.

To me, there is something very important MMORPGs can teach us. First, people don’t need to be sitting in the same room to enjoy an RPG. I salute Code of Unaris for recognizing this and making that a centerpiece in its design. Second, is that games with a Gamist slant (which include MMOGs), hit points are a character’s key feature. They are far more important than DPS (damage per second or how much damage characters can do per round) and the breadth of his repertoire of spells or abilities. This is true for both online games and for tabletop games.

I generally prefer Gamist style games and really look for the best strategy in situations, especially combat. When I examined all the resources available to me during combat in Gamist-leaning games, I came to a conclusion: Hit Points are the most key resource. Not to my surprise, this was backed up by Jonathan Tweet in this article.

In essence, you can really boil combat down to this statement: “You run out of hit points, you lose; your opponent runs out, you win.” Speaking in absolute terms (ignore retreat, capture, etc) that’s the bottom line for victory in combat- the winner is the guy who ends up not running out of hit points.

Victory does not go to who deals out the most damage. That may seem odd, but you have to take the victory conditions into account. You can dose out insane amounts of damage each round in a game, but if you can’t get your opponent’s hit points to zero, you will lose. If your opponent starts out with more hit points than you, can heal himself, pick up extra hit points, or reduce your net damage, then your DPS won’t matter. He has ways to counter it.

So what does that mean? Well, if you’re designing a game where combat is strategic, violent death is a likely outcome, and hit points or something equivalent is involved, be mindful of how you design other aspects of your game. A lot of things that typically go along with hit points such as healing, damage spells, character enhancements (buffs and enchantments), and equipment can inadvertently and radically affect how victory is decided.

Take for instance healing spells. In my mind, these are very powerful spells. They prolong a fight, in fact they can prove the clincher. Even if you only got 1d8 hit points per spell like back in DnD, it made a major impact on the game. If your opponent doesn’t have access to the same spells, the impact is even greater. This is why, if you ask anyone who has played a game like oh say EverQuest 1, clerics are the most vital class to have. They are not the ones who kill the bad guy, they are just the ones who make sure the good guys don’t lose.

So now what? Heh, if you are playing a game where combat and hit points are important, look for feats, skills, and rules that help you not lose hit points. Things like cover, armor, spells and so forth that grant additional defense or hit points should be high on your tactics list. Things like weapon enhancements, fireball, criticals, and so on should be farther down. From my experience, it is better to have strategies to not lose a fight than it is to have strategies to win a fight.

From a design standpoint, designers should think carefully about how you want combat to begin and end and how long you want it to last. The more hit points (or wounds or whatever) a character can amass, the longer an instance of combat will take. Especially if the characters have access to hit point saving strategies like healing, buffs, armor, etc.

Peace,

-Troy

Was the Forge Booth Successful This Year?

2006-08-18T08:34:00.000-07:00

Heya,

Check it out for yourself:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=20938.0

Peace,

-Troy

What is a GM?

2006-08-14T11:46:00.000-07:00

Heya,

What’s a GM??? Even for Socratic Design, isn’t that a little basic? Heh, maybe. This article might be more useful for players rather than designers. We’ll have to see. But over the years I’ve been roleplaying, I have heard the GM defined as many things. The GM is God. The GM is a moderator for the action. The GM is the one who tells the story. The GM is a game referee. The GM is the final authority. The GM is the opponent. All these things have been said and applied in games at one time or another, but from a design perspective, they aren’t all that helpful. So let’s look at what I believe a GM really is.

First and foremost, the GM is still a player. He is a participant in the game just like everyone else. I think this concept is sometimes lost on people, especially new designers. The guy behind the DM screen still wants essentially the same thing as the guy portraying the half-orc barbarian. He’s there to have fun and use the system to kick ass. So one thing designers need to keep in mind, if they plan to include a GM in their game, is that the GM really is on equal footing as all the other participants. He’s there to explore the game elements, have fun, portray characters, and socialize with his friends. He’s not a mystical entity behind a curtain with smoke and thunder surrounding him.

Second, the role of the GM boils down to responsibility, specifically the degree of responsibility a game thrusts upon him. All participants in a game have certain responsibilities dictated to them by the game. For players it is generally their job to portray one or more characters. GMs, however, are usually responsible for handling everything else. That’s a lot. But in recent years, this has started to change somewhat.

Imagine, if you will, a spectrum. On one side you have a game like Dungeons and Dragons. Players play one character that is strictly defined by class and race. The GM creates the setting, NPCs (both enemies and allies), and challenges the player-characters will face. The players have a very limited amount of responsibility, while the GM has a very expansive amount of responsibility. Moving over slightly you have a game like Ars Magica. In this game, players might portray many characters- especially allies of their main character. The GM still creates a lot of the setting, NPCs, and challenges, but player input in much more encouraged and even supported somewhat with mechanics. Next over you might have a game like Dogs in the Vineyard. Here, the GM is responsible for creating a town, its people, and a Situation. However, it is then up to the players to decide how all that relates to each other. It is the players that tend to drive the action while the GM rolls dice in opposition. At this point, the responsibility of the players and the responsibility of the GM are about equal, IMO. Finally at the opposite end of the spectrum is InSpectres. In this game, it is almost totally up to the players to decide what parts of the setting will be explored, who/what the monsters are, and how the whole thing ends up. The GMs role is pretty much just to react to what the players do. Most of the responsibility is lifted from his shoulders as the players are most definitely in charge. There’s a million games in between and beyond even those, but when you envision what a session of your game will be like (if your game has a GM) think about how much you want the GM to be responsible for.

Third, the GM is the pace setter for the game. Often, it is the GM who starts a scene and who declares a scene over. This is often called “Scene Framing.” It’s up to the GM how fast or slow a particular set events take. This is where a GM has to be very responsive to the players. He has to gage what the players want to get out of a particular scene and how much they are enjoying it. Sometimes a scene will last a few minutes in real time but encompass hours or days in the game’s imaginary time and vice-versa. Designers need to consider this role of the GM. What tools do you give a GM to create, explore, and end a scene? Is it his sole discretion? Is that authority shared with the players in any way?

So in the end, what have we got? The GM is a player first, he’s endowed with certain and specific responsibilities, and he is the pace setter for the game. Every GM in every game will be slightly different. Examine the GMs you’ve had in the past. What made them great? What made them suck? For your game, what would the ideal GM do? How much responsibility and credibility are you going to give him (or deny him)? What tools and aids are you going to create so he can do his job? Finally, what makes your game fun for him?

Peace,

-Troy

Socratic Design Anthology #2

2006-08-08T14:57:00.000-07:00

Heya,

So I’m working getting back to a regular posting schedule. Things are coming along well now, and soon the hectic pressure of school starting up again will be behind me. Anyway, to tide everyone over I’m releasing the second anthology of posts on this blog. If you haven’t read the First Anthology, go back and look it over. It’ll give you good context for this one. Anyway, expect a new, original post in the next week or two.

Anthology #2

What is the ‘Alt 3’ ?
When Should a Character Die?
What is a Death Spiral?
Does Setting Still Matter?
How Can Magic Be Used in an RPG?
Where Can I get Art for My Game?
What is Troy’s 12 Step Process?
Another Process.
Yet Another Process.

Peace,

-Troy

So Where are Troy's Games?

2006-07-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

Heya,

This is sort of another update as to what I’m doing personally. I’d like to update you as to where I am with my upcoming RPGs. I can proudly say that Cutthroat, Hierarchy, Standoff! and The Holmes and Watson Committee are all revised, laid out, and ready to go. So what’s the hold up? Well, I’ve been doing some thinking. I’ve taken a look at how the gaming industry is set up right now. Have a look at what Ken Hite says in this pod cast. This has really resonated with me. Couple that with the fact I'm unable to attend GenCon this year, I’m going to hold off on these products for a few more months. I apologize, but you’ll just have to wait a weeeeeee bit longer. What I’ve got in mind is really cool and I can’t wait to share it with you. But first I need to get to work on my next two projects: Saviours and Ballin’. I’ll give an update on those in a few more weeks and probably work on them openly at The Forge once it’s back up and running. Thanks for your indulgence and I can’t wait to discuss design topics with all of you in the very near future.

Peace,

-Troy

So Where Have I Been?

2006-07-22T13:26:00.000-07:00

Heya,

Good question. Well, for the last month and a half, I've been on a long road trip out west with my wife. She has vamily in Utah and so we decided to go on a road trip to see all the sites out west and visit her folks. We got to see everything from Yellowstone National Park to the Great Salt Lake to Las Vegas to Old Town Albaquerque. It was a great trip and really recharged my batteries.

I appologize for not responding to anyone's post in a while. I really just needed to get away from Gaming in general for a bit. I'll do my best to catch up on what's been going on and post a bit more regularly. Thanks for sticking with me :)

Peace,

-Troy

Does Setting Still Matter?

2006-05-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

Heya,

The quick answer is Yes, of course Setting still matters. I won’t deny for a moment that when I’m working on a design, I feel the System > the Setting, but they are both necessary for good play and good design. Okay, so why does Setting matter?

Well, first off the PCs need to BE somewhere. So in the very basic sense, there must be a Setting in which they exist. But that’s a non-helpful answer. Setting matters because it is the material the participants build conflict out of. Yes, the resolution systems detail how you resolve those conflicts, but the mechanics themselves don’t spell out where the conflicts come from. The Setting provides the context for the conflicts. It helps the conflicts make sense.

For instance, my game Cutthroat is VERY light on Setting. I barely mention it at all (basically I can sum it all up with “Biker gangs in the 1970’s”). But even though I just barely touch on it, that is enough to give the players all the context they need to create hilarious stories and rivalries among the characters. Take that small bit of Setting away, and everything from the Challenge to the Status Rolls to the Top Dog stop making any kind of sense. Dogs in the Vineyard’s setting focuses heavily on religion. And it is out of the religion that the characters follow that the conflicts in each town arise. Strip out the setting, and you just have a nifty way to roll dice, IMO.

So what about Setting Agnostic/Generic RPGs? Good question. I’m going to divide these two kinds of games into two camps for the purposes of this essay. The first kind is the type of game that gives you procedures for creating your own Setting. Universalis and Prime Time Adventures are examples of this sort of game. The games do not contain an exact Setting, but provide explicit rules for making your own. In fact, it’s part of the fun! The other kind of game is where Setting is implicit. For instance, the core books of ADnD2e had no official “setting”, yet it was very clear that you would be playing in some kind of fantasy world. People often point to GURPS as a game with no Setting. But I would in turn point to the insane amount of supplemental books that’s come out of SJG that deal directly with Setting elements. To say GURPS as a whole doesn’t deal with setting is absurd. It most certainly does. And each group that plays GURPS will have to deal with it in some way also.

So what’s the best use for Setting? That’s another long essay. The main thing to keep in mind when creating the Setting for your game is to make the setting elements drive the conflicts. If your Setting isn’t involved in what the characters are fighting for, then it’s time to redesign it.

Peace,

-Troy

PS: On the topic of Settings, the grandaddy of all settings is coming out soon: Ptolus! I've seen a few previews and from what I read and seen, I give it a preliminary thumbs up! If you're into D20, you really should check this thing out.

Just So Ya Know...

2006-05-15T05:58:00.000-07:00

Heya,

Just throwing out a little FYI here. I am officially signed up to be at the Forge booth at GenCon this year! It runs August 10-13ish I believe. If you regularly read this blog and will be there, drop by the Forge booth. I'd love to shake hands and meet ya! :)

Peace,

-Troy

When should a Character Die?

2006-05-09T06:07:00.000-07:00

Heya,

When designing an RPG, the issue of character death always comes up. Some people feel it is a necessary part of design (untrue), while others feel it should be avoided because it is un-fun play (also untrue). It can be hard sometimes to know when to include and when to leave out character death. To my way of thinking, there are only four reasons to include it in your design: 1) it adds to the atmosphere, 2) it increases the stakes, 3) it fulfills the player’s goal, and 4) it escalates the overall conflict/scenario all players are participating in. Let me break them down one by one.

1. It adds to the atmosphere
It certain games, mainly those that explore the setting or situation, character death can be an integral part of play. In fact, character death is expected, and the lack of it will diminish the fun. I am reminded of many Call of Cthullu games I have participated in and read actual play reports about. There was even a really hilarious thread on RPGnet many years back where people posted the most outlandish and fun way their characters died. For this game, at least the way I’ve seen it played, character death is well accepted, and honestly it’s anticipated. The thing that really makes it work, IMO, is the speed of Chargen. I know many CoC players who can draw up a brand new character in 5 to 10 minutes. So when their character dies, they jump right back in during the next scene no biggie. To me, that’s the key for using character death in this way. If your game has a time-intensive character creation and advancement process (imagine recreating a level 15 character in DnD 3.5 from scratch) then I would counsel against using character death to add atmosphere to your game. Three things to remember for this use of death: Frequent, Fast Chargen, Expected.

2. It increases the stakes
In my game, The Holmes and Watson Committee, players have the option to put their character’s life on the line. Choosing to do so grants them an additional bonus, but also makes the situation a lot more crucial. This is an example of character death increasing the Stakes. Sometimes it’s important to put everything you have on the line to accomplish something important. In RPGs, that can mean everything from nabbing the bad guy (like in Holmes and Watson) or saving a town from corruption (like in Dogs in the Vineyard). For designers, using death to increase the stakes means limiting the conditions where a character death is possible. Usually, that means making it a player option of some kind. Choosing that option ought to grant the player beneficial but dangerous bonuses of some kind. Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, and The Holmes and Watson Committee are the best examples I can give you of games that do this. Three things to remember for this use of death: Optional, Bonus, and Lethal.

3. Fulfills a Player’s Goal
Some games have players create a destiny or goal for their character to achieve by the end of play. The death of a beloved character can be a very moving experience. I can easily envision a game that incorporates that fact into the mechanics. The payoff would be the character dies with *something*. For instance, a character could die in redeeming himself. He could die with dignity in a war. He could die saving another person. Or he could die in order to allow another character ascend to a great position. The point of using character death in this way is to allow the player to choose the outcomes, but not necessarily the means of the character’s death. I can see a functional design that allows another player to choose the way a character dies so long as the character’s player gets to choose the conditions leading to and the consequences of that death. Three things to remember: Resolves the Character’s Story, Player Controlled, Consequences.

4. It Escalates the Conflict
Escalating the conflict means that the death of one PC impacts all the other PCs and their enemies in a way that makes the conflict more meaningful. Using character death in this way requires that all players be invested in everyone’s characters in some way or fashion. A dungeon crawl where everyone is out for himself to grab as much loot as possible and then skedaddle is not an effective atmosphere for character death that will escalate the conflict. A game where characters are dependant upon each other or where characters are related to each other in some way (blood, sex, loyalty, duty, etc) is the type of game where the death of one will add meaning to the final victory. In cases like this, character death IMO should still be at the option of the players playing the characters. However, the conditions that the game puts the characters in can make and should make death an attractive option. For instance, if I sacrifice my character, everyone else gains two bonus die and has enough time to rescue the princess from the evil sorcerer. Without my character’s death, the mission might fail. Of course now the sorcerer is really pissed and will take his vengeance out on the whole kingdom. Three things to remember: Sacrifice, Relationship, Meaningful.

In any of the four examples, character death needs to be explicitly mechanically supported by your game. Just including a rule like “When your hit points equal zero, your character dies” is not good enough. What does that death mean? Why might a player want his character to die? What does the character’s player get in return for putting his character’s life on the line? What does everyone else get if he does die? Answering these questions will add a lot of depth and meaning to the death mechanics of your game. Consider them carefully as you design.

Peace,

-Troy

Yet Another Process

2006-05-04T04:24:00.000-07:00

Heya,

I have found a third Game Design Process I thought I’d share with you. If you haven’t checked out Ron Edward’s thread on The Forge (Click Here) about his new game “It Was a Mutual Decision” then go check it out. He has a very thorough run-down of the process he used to bring that game from concept to finished product. Also, other people chime in with their own experiences. This thread is a treasure trove of helpful hints, models, and suggestions for designers who intend to write and publish a RPG. Troy’s Rating: two thumbs up! Enjoy :)

Peace,

-Troy

Another Process

2006-04-27T05:23:00.000-07:00

Heya,

This is a follow-up to Troy’s 12 Step Process. Another game author responded to my article and gave his design process. It’s a good read, IMO. You can check it out here: Mike Miller’s Blog Talk.

I’ll give you a brief outline of what he says his process is like. Before he begins, he divides the process into two distinct activities: Designing and Writing.

1st he designs his game at the genre level. He brainstorms about tropes, issues, conflicts, fun, etc. Generally, he accumulates a pool of ideas and emotions he associates with the initial game concept.

2nd he focuses on player interactions and behaviors. Followed closely by mechanical enforcement and reinforcement of those behaviors.

3rd he does some self-testing of various and potential resolution mechanics, all the while keeping the main themes of the genre in mind.

4th he takes it to trusted advisors. He does not even have a complete draft at this point. It is, essentially, an oral game, not a written game yet.

5th Notes from the closed playtest with his friends become the basis for the rules of the game.

After explaining the game in a verbal a sufficient number of times, he converts it to written form. The writing process is also broken down into stages.

1st is the outline stage, giving himself a template to follow.

2nd is the draft stage, where he creates the first complete written version of the game.

3rd, interestingly, he gets his artists working on graphics for the game.

4th he sends the game to an external reader who makes notes, suggestions, and edits.

5th the test-revision-test-revision process begins until he is satisfied that he has a complete and playable game ready to go.

It’s very interesting and very good to get multiple viewpoints on the RPG design process. Note that Mike relies very heavily on trusted friends. Relationships with people who think and play in ways similar to him are the key to his design process. He has built these relationships over years, I would assume, and uses them to help build his games. If you have friends like Mike, I encourage you to think about using this process or hybridizing it with the 12 step process I gave earlier. It will take practice and experimentation to find the process that works best for you. Good luck!

Peace,

-Troy

Where can I get Art for my Game?

2006-04-22T05:00:00.000-07:00

Heya,

One of the things I’m working on right now is getting art together for the games I’m about to release. I’m on a pretty tight budget at the moment, so economical art is really what I’m after. I imagine you are too. So to help out, here’s a list of links I’ve been using to fill in the spaces for my games:

Ed Heil’s Art Trove:
Ed has done the RPG world a favor here. He’s got a collection very good art and an equally generous offer. You get access to all the drawings on this website for only 25 bucks! Not only that, he’ll draw another picture for you according to your specifications. If you’re new to RPG design, let me let you in on something- this is a steal! Take Ed up on it.

Dover Art:
For years Dover Publishing has been releasing “clip art” type books. You can use up to 10 images per book without violating any copyright laws. If you want to use more, just write them and ask. You can find books on almost any subject here. I own over twenty at the moment. This is another high recommend. Oh, and I recommend that you order the books that come with CDs if you can. They’re a little more expensive, but scanning art is a pain and can have certain complications as far as fuzziness and resolution scale of the images.

MSN Clip Art:
Clip art can serve a purpose to help break up a page or add in small designs for stuff like page numbers and backgrounds. I don’t recommend making a whole book out of clip art, but you should be able to find some useful images here. They are free to download, so help yourself!

Wikimedia:
As much as I loathe and despise Wikipedia for academic reasons, I hail Wikimedia as a gift from heaven. There are tons of free pictures here that are very applicable to RPG designs. Make sure you read the warnings at the bottom of each picture. Some require accreditation and some aren’t actually free. But if you’re working on your game setting, especially if it’s based on a real place (like London or New York for instance), then this website is an answer to your prayers.

RPGNow Stock Art:
RPGNow has several pieces and collections of Stock Art for sale. It can really vary in price and usefulness, but if you’re in a pinch, you might be able to find something here. Of all the options I’m mentioning, this will be the most expensive. But remember, these guys are just trying to make a buck just like you. They should charge whatever they feel they can get for their product.

So anyway, I hope that helps some of you out. I know from experience how much of a pain getting art can be. Good luck to you guys :)

Peace,

-Troy