Tabletop Manifesto

Featured in Fenix

2012-02-14T17:14:00.002+10:00

After the hiatus around here, it's time for a return to blogging with a pointer to Fenix. It's a Swedish gaming magazine that has recently published an article by Nathan Russell about the Australian gaming scene. Nathan interviewed me for the article and from what I can tell, I had a little feature corner in the print edition with a review of Siege.

25% off Siege this month only

2012-01-10T11:14:00.002+10:00

Until January 31 2012, Lulu is funding 25% off the price of the Siege booklet. When you buy, use the following details.

Coupon Code: LULUBOOKAU305
Coupon expires 31 January 2012
$50 Max Savings

Buy here.

Eight Hundred Pounds Makes A Noise When It Moves

2012-01-10T08:22:00.000+10:00

WOTC has made the announcement that confirms the rumours: they're working on a 5th edition for D&D. Few people are surprised, but that's not why I'm writing. When I heard the announcement of an announcement, I figured it would be 5e, but I wasn't prepared for my gut reaction.

What's 5e about?
How will it do that?

Yep. That was my reaction. Not, "Yeah yeah, another version of a fighting game" or "wow, another version of a game I won't ever play" or anything else cynical like that. I'm genuinely interested to know what it's about and how it's going to do that better than any other game that professes to be about the same thing, including previous editions of D&D.

We're back and we're going

2012-01-05T05:00:00.000+10:00

Depending on how you consume your Andrew Smith news, you might be aware that I live in Brisbane now and am about to move to Perth. If you weren't aware, now you are.

And if you're not particularly aware of Australian geography, here are some driving directions from Brisbane to Perth for you, just to get a sense of scale.

View Larger Map

I'm not going to drive it. Wow. That's an adventure for another time. This adventure will take me far, far away to a place where I can meet other gamers and encounter new play styles. I've already started nosing around on some local Perth forums and when I'm settled in, there should be some time for gaming.

And developing those other two game designs I have in the notebook.

Yes. Two.

Space Rat Instant Character Generator

2011-12-15T12:22:00.000+10:00

Are you about to play a game of Space Rat but have no idea for a character? Then I have the answer for you. Run a google image search for "sexy halloween costume" and you'll have all the inspiration you need.

You might also get distracted, so focus.

Focus! Jack Cosmos wants your attention.

Although, he's just as distracted by that search result as you are.

the puppies, they are dead

2011-12-12T12:06:00.000+10:00

it feels like a rite of passage, the gamer's hajj. "you must play kill puppies for satan at least once in your life." it was a bit of a joke, just to see if i'd run it, and i did.

it's a funny little game, with some clever ideas shamelessly stolen from other games (it says so in the text). as we played we made comparisons to other games and genres. we definitely took the game in the direction of drug addled reprobates and fiasco style incompetence. a kpfs fiasco playset might be hilarious.

as the gm, i had the usual struggles to get the characters moving along. providing npcs who hate them isn't bad, but that's never the same as when the players have their own goals. poison'd has ambitions that fill this role nicely. kpfs seems like the ancestor to poison'd in a few ways. the characters are horrible and deal with devils, spirits and gods, they sin and sin and this keeps satan happy, and so on. the addition of ambitions is a good move from parody game to playable game or multi-session game.

but really, there's just one goal here: kill puppies for satan. he rewards by making them powerful. when the action slows down, the characters need to kill cute animals. deliberately. with absolute antipathy. and in doing so, they make enemies. more enemies just forces the characters to become more powerful, so they need to kill more puppies. if the players just treat puppy killing as a fun thing to do on a lazy afternoon, the game has more than enough momentum.

the listlessness of the game is its chaotic core. there's no larger goal here, just the immediacy of killing puppies and the promise of power for doing that. this is a contender for best nietzschean game ever. play it at least once.

First Print of Siege

2011-12-08T12:06:00.001+10:00

So, this just arrived. It's a thing now.

Episode 9 of Unlit Match

2011-12-06T12:09:00.000+10:00

Some more play from our Burning Wheel game. We only made it to Episode 13, so I hope you can sense a crescendo in the story.

On his journey back to Foxglen, Bram met a farmer called Sigbert who he uncovered to be a cultist. Sigbert has offered the powers of the cult to help determine the origin and nature of the mark on Bram's forehead. Bram remembers nothing about it, except flashes of memories about a trial and searing pain. He and Sigbert arrive in the village the day before Darwin is due to marry his second wife Clare.

Sophie has returned to Foxglen in the middle of scandal and gossip. Rumours are flying that Bram has taken her as a lover as well as a disciple. Sophie has an argument with another lady of the village, Paltis* and loses the argument, forced to admit that she craves her independence from Darwin. He's crushed by the revelation and Sophie leaves the argument and the house.

Bram finds Sophie and shows her the brand* on his forehead. She rushes him to the temple where Fier the Priestess recoils in horror at the sight. She brings Elric the High Priest and they discuss earnestly how to save Bram from the curse. Sophie decides to have Bram blessed in order to break the curse and arranges for it to happen before the wedding.

While they wait, Bram goes to visit the cultists, Sigbert and Simon, and takes a walk to the woods with them. They take him to meet the cult leader, Unwin. Bram and Unwin are half-brothers and haven't seen each other in years. After a brief brotherly reunion, Unwin begins to prepare a ritual to uncover the secrets of the brand.

Sophie has gone home and has another argument with Darwin about Bram. Darwin is angry that Bram has displeased the gods and will bring their judgement on Foxglen.

Meanwhile, the ritual has prepared a potion for Bram to drink. He tips the foul steaming brew into his mouth and fades into a world of shifting shadows and savage spirits.

Siege is now available

2011-11-29T23:41:00.000+10:00

Two years after I announced that I was going to do it, Siege is finally available to you. You can get it as a free PDF download, or if you'd like a snazzy printed booklet you can buy one through Lulu. Details are on the Siege page.

I was going to tell a story about those two years, but really, that's guff for another time. Buy me a tea and I'll tell you about it.

Instead, you should get your copy and play it. Then tell me about it.

Siege cover art

2011-11-29T05:30:00.000+10:00

Oh my. It's the front cover art for Siege.

That worked out better than I'd hoped. Now, to make it print like it looks on the screen.

Week of Pain Relief

2011-11-29T05:00:00.000+10:00

The weekend of pain went OK, but not brilliantly. I hit a snag when it came to art. This is my first game, though, and it's really supposed to be about the game rather than the document.

I want a pretty document, for sure, but not for this edition of this game. Either I learn it, or I pay someone to do it. That'll be a production decision for another game.

Speaking of which, I have two in my notebook for when Siege is done.

Weekend of Pain

2011-11-25T19:00:00.000+10:00

To be honest, it won't actually be painful. It will be, however, the final push to get Siege out the door. My plan is to have the last tweaks tweaked (they're mostly grammatical and stylistic) and a PDF created for upload to Lulu.

I'm going to make it available as print-on-demand, just in case someone wants a neat little booklet. I like the booklet format. For me, I want to convey a simple game that can fit snugly in a bag without causing spinal problems for gamers. Some of my favourite games are booklets, or would make sense as booklets.

And also, I have no skilz with graphics or layout, so I'm not going to betray my game with a woeful attempt at sexy packaging. One default Lulu-wizard cover for me.

New facebook group for Australian game designers

2011-11-24T12:32:00.001+10:00

With the recent closure of The Stockade, I see another group has appeared to fill that niche. If you're on facebook, go see Australian Game Designers.

This is good news, and not just because there is something rather than nothing, but also because it has people involved that I've never encountered before. That can only be a good thing for the Australian game design scene.

Session 8

2011-11-08T07:30:00.000+10:00

Bram awakens in the refuse pits outside Liguelen to find himself scorned and feared by the people of the town. Refused entry into Liguelen because he is "Ithnel's Cursed" he staggers his way back towards Foxglen. His travel is marked by a pause at a creek where he bathes and sees, for the first time, the curse of Ithnel branded into his forehead. Desperately in need of sustenance and care, he eventually finds refuge with some peasant farmers. After some small talk and banter, Bram uncovers that the peasant and his wife are cultists of the nameless Dark Lord. They examine the mark on his forehead and offer to take him to their powerful priest, hidden in the nearby village of Foxglen.

Sophie has safely returned to the village and makes two key decisions. First, she drives her workers to continue making goods for the upcoming war, despite the cashflow problems that this causes. Second, she diverts her faith away from Bram as the true prophet and towards Cambruach himself. Intent on becoming a disciple of the gods of Foxglen, she presses closer with High Priest Elric and Priestess Fier. Sophie is also a hostess of mixed results as she and Darwin begin the rituals of welcoming the new wife into the family. Claire, niece of the village chief, is to be married to Darwin as his second wife within a week.

Dark lords and gods of nature are set to be honoured in Foxglen at the same time. Religious fervour is set to reach new heights as these deities and their followers embark on faithful endeavours of worship.

Session 6 to 7

2011-11-07T19:30:00.000+10:00

This version of the story has a little overlap with my previous post, so bear with me. My memory about it is a little hazy and is reconstructed from Peter's notes. As always, Peter and David can fill in some blanks that I left out.

Sophie had discovered terrible conspiracy and unfaithfulness among the leaders of Liguelen scant hours before the pilgrimage was due to leave. Upon returning to the caravan to tell the Prophet Bram, she learned that he had not been seen for several hours. A search of the city failed to find him and served instead to spread rumours about his disappearance.

Disillusioned but still hopeful, Sophie returned with her husband to Foxglen, stopping often to ask others if they'd seen Bram. When back in Foxglen, the stark reminders of life - running the leatherwork business and a new wife coming to the family - collided with her religious zeal. Her contemplations at the temple led her towards a vital decision, a decision she must now make.

And what of Bram? After retiring to his meditations and then disappearing? What has become of him? He's fled; he's defrauded the gullible; he's been taken by the gods; he's been abducted by the prince... the rumours are many and wild, and they're out there. And somewhere, so is Bram.

Sessions 4 to 6

2011-11-07T12:27:00.001+10:00

Our protagonists made their way to the large city of Liguelen, along with Sophie's husband (Darwin) and his trade caravan. Bram looked to gain legitimacy from the priests here, in the seat of power. Sophie wanted to help sell her new military-style leathergoods to the generals, along with Darwin's other commodities. What they found was trouble and complication.

Bram's encounter with the local authorities, religious and political, was less than helpful. His brash demeanour and fervent devotion to building unity and faithfulness led him into arguments with the generals and priests. One general in particular was Sohpie's brother-in-law, married to Sophie's sister Gloriana. Gloriana was, we learned, the favourite child who was even more elegant and graceful than Sophie. She was married into nobility (the general) to help further the family name. This time around, it didn't help matters much that she invited Darwin, Sophie and Bram to stay with her without her husband's knowledge.

The tension in the house is palpable. Darwin and the general are engaged in trade talks in the palace while Bram and Sophie are pursuing the holy task given by Cambruach. After failing to contact Ithnel in the local temples, they decide to make pilgrimage to him in the nearby mountains. The day of the pilgrimage, however, Bram goes missing. Sophie searches the city for him and hears all kinds of rumours: Bram has been taken by the gods, has fled with people's money, has been imprisoned by the prince... Whatever's happened to him, the pilgrimage is cancelled. Sophie continues to search for him at the temple and discovers, to her astonishment, that the priests and sorcerers are researching all kinds of magic - magic that does not align with how people are born, magic that is dark and forbidden - in order to win the coming war. The holy men and wizards believe they are obedient to Ithnel's divine command to be industrious, learning about new magics and creating weapons of war from that new knowledge. Sophie talks with a young curate, learning that Ithnel is quite hostile to some of the schools of magic being used in this research. The two of them pray for forgiveness and receive a sign from the heavens, a powerful wind that swirls around the temple.

There is no sign of Bram, the city is unfaithful even to their own god, and Darwin's business has concluded. Sophie has had some good times with her sister, punctuated by tension over her religious devotion to Cambruach and being Bram's disciple. Now it is time to leave. Darwin has no time to wait for Bram, and the caravan sets off, leaving Bram to his uncertain fate.

Editorial: I hope Peter and David will embellish this in the comments with their own notes.

Neo-scrabble

2011-11-05T14:50:00.002+10:00

In the middle of a game of Words With Friends, I looked at some of the two-letter words that the in-game dictionary allows and realised that I don't know what they all mean. It's just a two-letter word to make up some points. So I made up a Scrabble variant.

Use and receive letter tiles in the same way as normal Scrabble, and generate scores the same as in normal Scrabble.
When you play a word, it must be a completely new word that doesn't exist in English (or the language of your choice). To complete the neologism, you must write in secret the definition of that word and then announce to the table a sentence with the word in it, without giving away the definition.
Everyone else at the table writes in secret a single guess as to the meaning of the word, announced only when everyone has written their guess. Anyone who correctly guesses the meaning of your new word also gets the points for the word. For each other player who correctly guesses the meaning of your new word, you also get those points again.
If your turn produces more than one word, you must write a definition for each word, and each player can guess each of the new words. Repeat the guess-scoring for each word.
If you explicitly state the definition in your sentence, you immediately lose the points you earned from the word.

Here's an example. I play the word NIRF without any score modifiers like Double Letter. A quick dictionary check reveals that it isn't extant in English. That scores me 2+1+1+4 (if my points memory is working correctly). I write down that nirf is "(noun), the outer edge of a feathered nest" and say to the group, "I saw a lovely nirf while bird-watching the other day." Three other people are playing, and one of them guesses something similar to my definition. That other person gets an additional 8 points for the correct guess, and so do I for making a word that can be deduced from its use, giving me 16 points in total.

Try it out sometime. Let me know how it goes, or if you come up with any other variations to the rules.

Imposing Imprint Impressions

2011-11-04T14:15:00.000+10:00

I'm often amused by the names that game companies adopt for themselves. Serious, amusing, esoteric, in-jokes... Since I'm about to publish Siege (hooray!), I figured I should come up with something for myself.

Years ago I wanted to create a company, but only because of the name. It would explain so much. I never did anything with that, other than use it as a throwaway line. So I'm dragging it up from the past just for this. At the end of November, Siege will be published by Them, They and Those Guys.

Feel free to attribute lots of things to us. Every time "they did a study" or "they've shown that penguins make you fat" or whatever else was done by someone you've forgotten, it might just have been us. We neither confirm nor deny it.

Steve Jackson Games adds social anxiety to your game

2011-11-01T12:14:00.000+10:00

Steve Jackson Games appears to be taking a leaf from the pages of smaller press games like Burning Wheel. The idea that in the real world, combat is over quickly and seduction can take hours has rarely been reflected in games. Typically, combat occupies a whole evening and seduction is done in a single die roll.

I hope that's not a metaphor for the, uh "seduction" performance of some gamers.

Anyway, here's what SJGames has to say in its new announcement.

Let's look at an analogy. You know how the GURPS Basic Set has rules for combat, right? Well, gamers who love combat options have helped make GURPS Martial Arts, GURPS Tactical Shooting, and GURPS Gun Fu some of our most popular releases. Each one of those supplements augments the core combat systems with expanded info and new possibilities.

GURPS Social Engineering works the same way, adding options and rule systems for various interpersonal interactions. Think of it as "Martial Arts for the social arts."

This is great news for gamers, especially GURPS gamers. To me, the GURPS line looks a bit like the rim of Burning Wheel, spread out over several books rather than chapters.

Probabilities and Decision Points

2011-10-31T12:06:00.000+10:00

One thing I've learned from Apocalypse World is that dice don't have to be complicated. It's a 2d6 system. More accurately, it's a 2d6 system with interesting results that point the players back to the fiction. When I first encountered small press games about five or six years ago, there seemed to be a trend of creating kooky rules for conflict resolution, combining dice with cards and the phase of the moon. The more esoteric, the better. Apocalypse World reminds us that the dice (and the rules in general, for that matter) should be as unobtrusive as possible.

It's little wonder, then, that I've felt the need to again streamline my rules for decision points in Siege. I've had a little fun working out the probabilities for the dice pools so that the player experience is simplified without affecting the probabilities significantly. In other words, you probably won't notice the difference between what the previous methods provided and this revised version.

Early Start to NaGaDeMon

2011-10-30T15:06:00.001+10:00

I'm getting an early start to NaGaDeMon. Writing has already started.

Well, technically, the writing started about two years ago. I'm just promising myself to finish Siege and it's a good warmup to the rest of the month of writing. Today's task is an editorial passthrough and a simplification of the relationship rules.

Sessions 1 to 3

2011-10-24T21:30:00.000+10:00

The first three sessions of Unlit Match were based in the home village of Foxglen. Hooray! The location stuck. Those sessions were a great opportunity for us to hone our knowledge of the system and also to start understanding the characters. We'd planned to watch them for a while, and watch them we did.

For Bram, the failed acolyte, there was some banter amongst the impoverished and against the established religious order. Bram, quite bitter in his heart, would do whatever he could to find dirt on them and expose them. In amongst all this, however, came a vision from Cambruach. Bram was visited by Cambruach directly and told that the only hope for the people of the land to survive the oncoming war was to return to faithfulness. Cambruach charged Bram with the message and sent him on the mission to bring the people back to their gods. Bram then decided to take the message to the prince's city: Liguelen. That was the epicentre of the war effort, after all.

At the same time, Sophie struggled to keep her business afloat. It was a small leather working enterprise, much overshadowed by the extensive ealings managed by her husband Darwin. Nevertheless, when the prince's officers came to the village to demand involvement in the war effort from Foxglen (your men or your merchandise!), Sophie saw an opportunity to revive her flagging profits: convert her business to making leather goods for the war effort. She did this and worked with Darwin to go to Liguelen to sell samples of the product to the military there. Alongside all that, arrangements are being made for Darwin to take a second wife. Sophie (taking the parallel role of Aestra in the marriage) has not borne him any children and his family hopes that by taking a second wife, he will honour the gods and through his Ferroan, he will have children.

Star Wars Prequels

2011-10-20T12:02:00.000+10:00

I'm pretty sure I'm one of the few people in the world who enjoyed the Star Wars prequels, with some annoyances. The key annoyance was the script. Some of the dialogue is terrible. However, I like the setting and the characters and some of the major plot features. This might just be confirmation bias at work, but that doesn't actually detract from my enjoyment.

However, this isn't a defense of my taste in movies. It's supposed to be a blog post about another way the prequels could have been done. Something that helps here is that Lucas is happy to leave big steps in the story arc to the scrolling text at the start of movies. When I read those texts, I see entire movies in them all by themselves.

The way the prequels work now are a bit like this:

Episode I: Find the child of the prophecy and start laying pipe beats for later.
Episode II: Anakin is tempted to the dark side through love and other emotional attachment
Episode III: Anakin turns to the dark side, destroys the Jedi and becomes Darth Vader

It hits several steps that are required to get the audience to the starting place of Episode IV. In doing so, it labours a few points and condenses others. The labouring is laboured (midichlorins, pod racing, shouting "Yippeee!"). If I could reboot it, I'd suggest these:

Episode I: Find the child of the prophecy in the temple, follow his training through until he is out in the field. Let him age within the film.
Episode II: Anakin is tempted to the dark side through love and other emotional attachment, turns against the Jedi and becomes Darth Vader at the end of the film.
Episode III: Anakin hunts down the Jedi, and the Jedi desperately try to put the Skywalker newborns into hiding.

To put it another way, condense the current prequels into two movies, and embellish the chase into hiding while establishing Vader as the Dark Lord of the Sith. We'd see more of Vader as a villain and see the Jedi retreat, perhaps leaving the audience with the same feeling we have at the end of Episode V.

Religion in Unlit Match

2011-10-13T12:22:00.000+10:00

Religion was never meant to be a significant feature of the campaign when I was creating, but was always meant to be part of the landscape. When I laid eyes on the character sheet for Bram, this all had to change. He's a failed acolyte. We've added lots of details to religion as we've gone along, and this is the full picture of what we've seen in the story.

Religion of Foxglen
Aestra, goddess of the heavens
Her realm is above the clouds and reaches up beyond the stars. She brings the sun, the night, and the stars. To worship her is to remember all that is lofty and beautiful. People pay homage to her through the arts; sculpture, poetry, dance and song.

Cambruach, god of the air
Dwelling amongst men and animals, Cambruach rules from earth to clouds. His work is to create the space for all creatures to live in, even the birds and the fish. He is worshipped as the one who brings the order of nature in all its beauty and violence. His rites include feasting, learning and contests.

Ferroan, goddess of the earth
Beneath the surface, and down to the depths of depths, is Ferroan. She is the source of all fertility, bringing crops from soil and seed, children from adults. She is worshipped in growth, nakedness and burial. Rituals to Ferroan centre around the cycle of birth, life, death and renewal; in childbirth, lovemaking and mourning.

Cambruach is married to both Aestra and Ferroan, and sets the example of polygamy practised in the region. Men like to joke that he keeps his two brides far apart, and are thereby superstitious about high mountains which reach above the clouds. Waters are implicitly sexual in this religion, as in most religions. Rain, snow and storms are the symbols of his love for Aestra, and rivers, lakes and oceans the symbols of his love for Ferroan. The waters bring life and support life. Between the three of them, the whole of nature has an order. Believers aren't fatalists, however, and hold a strong sense of struggle against life's obstacles in order to gain self-realisation. Overall, this is a nature religion, looking to nature to teach and guide.

Temples of this religion tend to be complexes of buildings with open air areas in between. Some activities take place indoors and some take place barefoot outdoors. Temples have areas for contemplation, for liturgy, for theological research, for training and also for accommodating the clergy.

Religion of Liguelen
Liguelen, the nearby major city, is overseen by a single god: Ithnell. He is a god of storms and thunder and favours people who are industrious. Unlike other gods, Ithnell is also reclusive, preferring the mountains around Liguelen rather than the town itself. Worship of Ithnell revolves around hard work and labours. Priests are often large men, and also often blacksmiths. The forge is a sacred fire for Ithnell. Three is a religiously significant number. A triple lightning strike signifies Ithnell's presence, either now or very soon. Ithnell also has a cursing mark that he places upon the most apostate mortals. It's rarely used, but invokes a sense of fear, hatred, derision and anathema amongst his loyal followers.

The Dark Lord
This is a strange and foreign god, from the lands to the south. He's known only as the Dark Lord to the people around Foxglen and Liguelen. There are rumours that he has some followers in this area, but they'd be considered heretics and exist only in secret cult structures. Any worshippers encountered so far in the story are quite secretive and use a number of secret signals to identify themselves to each other.

My Burning Wheel Campaign Is Fascinating

2011-10-12T12:36:00.000+10:00

My Burning Wheel campaign is fascinating to me, and also to my players. It might be interesting to you, so I'm going to blog about it. We're eleven sessions in at the moment, so I'm not going to attempt a detailed account of everything we've done. In this post I'll write about the general setup that we developed before making characters.

Our story takes place in Foxglen, a village of about a thousand people - mostly human. There is a nearby larger city of Liguelen (pop. ~50,000) which is the seat of power for the prince.

Starting characters were only two lifepaths, and the second lifepath had to be from the Village list. I proposed this to the players, not to make it difficult, but to give us all an opportunity to shape our characters quickly in play. None of us had played a campaign of Burning Wheel and I dreaded the thought of anyone being stuck with a character they didn't like, unable to make changes to skills and traits for a long time. The shorter lifepath characters allowed us to play as newbies.

We allowed various types of magic, with a limitation. The kind of magic that a person could have depended entirely on their Born lifepath. I hope that Peter will chime in here with the full list, but we used this to make class distinctions obvious and geared along geography. I didn't think about it at the time, but that also connected it to religion.

Long time readers of this blog will have seen my posts on religion in gaming. One idea that we took from actual human history (gasp!) is the connection of geography to religion. A locale will have its own gods. One town will have a god or gods, as will another. If those towns are in conflict, the conflict will resolve in the real world only because it first resolved that way in the heavenlies. This explains why a smaller army can defeat a larger army - the god of the smaller army defeated the god of the larger army. I'll write about the religion of Foxglen and the religion of Liguelen in a later post.

We also wanted a larger stage for our story; some kind of broad conflict in which the characters were immersed. We decided that there was a threat from the south: a horde or invading army. There would be plenty of other activities going on around this, but it would also take place beyond the characters. They would be affected by it and could, if they played it in that direction, affect it in return. As it happens, we still wanted the focus to be on the characters and less on the threat of invasion. This is probably why I called the campaign Unlit Match.

Finally, let me introduce our two characters. Bram is played by David Pidgeon. He began the campaign as a failed acolyte, living in a shack in Foxglen, embittered at the temple and with organised religion. Sophie Marquand is played by Peter Blake. She began as a village wife, raised in Liguelen but married off to Darwin Marquand, a prosperous merchant in Foxglen.

There's more to write about, of course. Look out for a post on the religions in the campaign, a spotlight on Bram, a spotlight on Sophie, a broad story arc encompassing the first ten sessions, and then some other updates as they come to mind. Peter and David will make comments, I'm sure, to embellish and correct. I hope you find it as fascinating as we do.

Prequels

2011-10-11T12:20:00.000+10:00

I've been thinking about prequels this week. It started as some thoughts about the Star Wars prequels, and I might blog about them another time. Where it ended, though was this thought:

Space Rat is the prequel to My Life With Master

The femme babes are all vying to be in Jack's orbit (so to speak, ahem!) and to do so they need to undergo a series of challenges. The reward is the attention of Jack Cosmos - a rat who turns out to really be a rat. Once the femme babes realise this, it's too late! They're caught continually running demeaning little errands for Jack. It's no wonder they end up with an amount of weariness and self loathing. All that effort for a rat? Eventually, one of them will recover enough self esteem to rise up and kill Jack.

The shift from Space Rat to My Life With Master is a bit like the tilt in Fiasco. "You find out the truth about Jack: he's a shallow rat. Now play!"

If I ever play this campaign, I think I'll spread it across six episodes. Three for Space Rat and three for My Life With Master - just like Star Wars.

Auscon off the starboard bow!

2011-09-28T12:19:00.000+10:00

WOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After months and months of planning, Allan Carey and Mark Edwards are on the brink of making Auscon II real. In just two short days time it all starts. I'll be there early on Saturday morning, getting all the good things ready for RPGs and RPG seminars. Come along! Play some games. Play some demos. Most of all, have fun playing games!

See you there.

Lego Agonica

2011-09-18T21:54:00.000+10:00

I bought the Lego Heroica Fortaan set last weekend. It's a bit of fun as a dungeon crawl. I'm experimenting with it to see what can be done with various map arrangements and campaign play. Maybe it'll turn into a Fighting Fantasy kind of game for me.

But while I was messing around with it, I had to turn it into an Agon range strip simply because it seemed so natural to do with all those tiles and microfigs. Behold, Lego Agonica!

To find out what happens

2011-09-12T12:30:00.000+10:00

There's a sterling piece of advice by Vincent Baker in Apocalypse World. He's recently repeated it on his blog.

Play to find out what happens.

This is great advice. Really really good advice. For me, it unfolds in two ways.

First, it triggers the GM to present situations to the players which are more than pass or fail, because a pass or fail situation isn't a choice at all. When I'm running a game and I'm playing to find out what happens, I give them choices like this.

Second, when we all keep that advice in mind at the table, we're not so concerned about a fixed destination for the story. It allows all the players (including the GM) the freedom to meet complications with determination to accomplish the character goals. If the character really wants to achieve something, no amount of complications should get in the way, but should actually make for a good story of triumph.

Auscon Link Roundup

2011-09-09T12:25:00.000+10:00

Looking for links for Auscon? Well, here they are!

A couple of people have asked me for these, and now you have them too. Enjoy!

And get your games booked now. Some of them are already fully booked.

Auscon Loometh

2011-08-30T12:29:00.000+10:00

Wow. It's only four weeks until Auscon II starts. I'm still in a spin about it all. The RPG schedule is up (hooray!) and there are seminars and contests as well.

And although it's not been officially announced, I'm sneaking into the wild that there will be an RPG demo booth running in the RPG area. There'll be demos of various games and the opportunity to spend 20 minutes learning how to play RPGs in general.

Only four weeks. Eek!

Whale Tales to be told

2011-08-07T14:52:00.000+10:00

My copy of Do arrived the other week. Here it is, posing in front of the shelf that will be its new home.

This is one classy book. I read the PDF when it was released to the KickStarter backers, but decided to read it in the print-friendly format so that my iPad could handle it. Now having the book in my hands, I'm just delighted to have bought a print copy. My bibliophile urges are satisfied. This is a gorgeous artefact.

And now to organise a game of it.

Legend of Auscon

2011-08-03T12:01:00.002+10:00

I'm running this. You should enter it, either as a player or as a GM.

Where did all the blog posts go?

2011-08-02T12:03:00.001+10:00

I haven't blogged much this month. Partial credit goes to work and partial credit goes to Auscon. I've been organising the RPG events for the weekend and that's supplanted my blogging time.

The good news is that the event schedule is up and ready along with all the other events. Yes, Auscon has things other than RPGs. Go check it out.

Coveting the Fat Miniatures

2011-07-08T00:07:00.004+10:00

In The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter had a great exchange with Clarice Starling about Buffalo Bill.

Hannibal Lecter: First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?
Clarice Starling: He kills women...
Hannibal Lecter: No. That is incidental. What is the first and principal thing he does? What needs does he serve by killing?
Clarice Starling: Anger, um, social acceptance, and, huh, sexual frustrations, sir...
Hannibal Lecter: No! He covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer now.
Clarice Starling: No. We just...
Hannibal Lecter: No. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice? And don't your eyes seek out the things you want?

My trouble is that every couple of days I see an ad for Fat Dragon Games products appear in my inbox. Those little photos look amazing. If I were a miniatures gamer, I'd be all over them, I think.

All those ads are starting to make me covet, Doctor Lecter. They make me covet.

Fiasco from the Floating Vagabond

2011-07-07T11:48:00.000+10:00

A game I bought many years ago was Tales From The Floating Vagabond. It was a funny little game; perhaps more funny to read than to play at the time. While at RPGNow today (buying some Greeks paper miniatures from Arion Games) I searched for it whimsically - and found it! Jubilant news! It's available in PDF!

I only searched for it because this morning I listened to The Walking Eye recording of Fiasco and thought, "This would be a great game system for Vagabond."

Have you seen it anywhere? Fiasco At The Floating Vagabond? Oh lordy, I'd play that this weekend if I had it.

Make Failure Ironic

2011-07-06T15:06:00.000+10:00

I've heard the GM advice to make failure interesting. I've even given that advice to people. It's good advice and worth adding to your game. I'd like to refine it, though, based on the most interesting failure stories I've heard. Sorry, I won't recount them now. You don't get my raw data, just my conclusions.

So, the old dictionary on my shelf says that irony is the expression of meaning using words which normally have the opposite meaning. I've also seen it defined as something that comes from an opposite or extremely unlikely source.

And that's what the most interesting play examples of "make failure interesting" are. A failed Circles test actually finds the contact, but they're hostile to you. The expectation is a good and useful contact, but it turns out to be a bad and (potentially) useful contact. A failed lockpick roll unlocks the door to - not the treasure - a room full of guards! The expectation is opposite to what happens.

There are plenty of examples outside these, some are ironic. Another substitute for interesting is complicating. Make failure complicating. Failed detective rolls succeed in identifying the villain, but at the cost of revealing your sister's identity to the villain. (FYI: Don't call around the crime world from her phone.)

"Interesting" is a broad term. I think it's more fun to make it complicating, and even more fun to make it ironic. It might wear thin after a while, so don't be a one-trick-pony about it. But try and make failure ironic.

Auscon GMs request

2011-06-27T10:57:00.000+10:00

This is the quiet announcement. The loud announcement is at the Auscon blog.

I'm helping coordinate the RPG section of Auscon II and I'm looking for GMs to run games.

Send an email to games@auscongames.com.au if you're interested.

Poison'd Props

2011-06-16T20:03:00.000+10:00

I ran a game of Poison'd the other day, fulfilling several wishes in one go. I had a group of great players who threw themselves into the story. It's always nice to have players who go along with the conventions of the game. Poison'd isn't just about pirates, it's about filthy pirates and that's how the game went.

The group wasn't a regular group of mine, I was a guest GM! A couple of years ago, that was something I really wanted to do. I like running one-shots and dropping in on other groups is a great way to do this while giving the regular GM a break from their role.

I played Poison'd. 'nuff said.

Channeling my inner Nittner, I used props, mostly to create a sense of place. I had a wooden chest filled with my gaming dice (mostly gem finish) and Campaign Coins, left open on the table. There was a small whiteboard flat on the table for dice rolling, notes and Cruel Fortunes. I placed a flintlock-esque pistol and a parrying dagger on either border of the whiteboard. At one point, just about everybody picked one of them up to toy with. I even used the pistol as a pointer when asking, "And what are you doing about that?"

All good. All happy. Wishes granted.

Mobile formatting is go!

2011-06-15T08:26:00.002+10:00

I just turned on the mobile formatting for this blog. If you view it on a mobile device and have troubles with it, leave me a comment so I know whether to persist with the option.

Creating religion

2011-05-12T21:18:00.000+10:00

As it happens, one of my Burning Wheel players has brought religion into the game. It's quite a pleasant surprise. As GM, now I should fill it out with some details.

And I have. Especially in light of the Religion in Gaming posts I wrote this year, creating it has been a pleasure. I might even post my notes on it, if you're interested.

Unlit Match

2011-05-09T12:25:00.000+10:00

For want of a better name, tonight is the first play session for Unlit Match, my new Burning Wheel game. I've only played BW once, and am looking forward to running it.

To keep it simple, we're only running with the Hub and the Spokes for now. I'm not fond of labouring my game with the plentiful subsystems, and as it turns out my players are coming to that party. Neither character seems largely interested in fighting, so the Fight! rules won't really be required.

I'm currently sketching up my campaign plans, finding ways to tie these two characters into the setting and each other. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to do all of that.

My Auscon Experience

2011-05-02T16:34:00.000+10:00

The day after RPG Sunday is worth a little time and reflection on my experience of it.

I had the best start to the day because the shirt I'd ordered for the day arrived just in time. Wow. It grabbed attention, and was only a matter of minutes before someone said, "That's an awesome shirt. Where can I get one?"

To get your own, go see Daniel Solis' Cafepress site. Kudos to Daniel for making a version with ~~correct~~ Commonwealth spelling.

I was only at Auscon for the Sunday, but it was a very full day. Starting the RPGs at 9am on a Sunday was something of a challenge. Who's awake and keen to play story games at 9am on Sunday?!? Apparently, about fifteen people. And even though that meant I didn't get to run FU, it did mean that I could be part of a play test for Behind The Screens. Peter's got a great little game idea going there, and I'm keen to see it develop and evolve into a polished game. Seriously, people, watch for that game.

Between that and the 2pm session, I had a chance to wander the floor and see the vendors, the miniatures tables, and get a chai. The venue was exactly the right size for the con, and laid out so very well. Gaming tables in the middle completely dominated the space, but didn't overpower the trade stalls that lined the walls. Most of the product was miniatures-based, but that's not surprising, since Auscon was originally going to only cater for minis games. Ace Comics came through with the goods for RPGs (even including some Dresden Files), and I think that was in proportion to the attendees. And kudos for the staff too. There seemed to be the right number of them for the activities, spread around in the right amount.

After lunch I had the great chance to run Agon. Yes! Finally! I've offered this game at cons before and never had takers. Maybe my elevator pitch was poor, or perhaps I should also stop offering it on the same game menu as Spirit of the Century. Regardless, I had five heroes complete a quest for Hera. As far as my GM effort went, they all seemed pleased with it. I managed to test every ability, except for Music. Maybe next time for that one. I'm sure I also fudged a couple of rules, but everything seemed to flow OK and the story didn't get bogged down or lopsided because of it. Best of all, I have the feeling that even playing the game is something of an Agon, an effort. I say that, not because it's hard going, but because the characters are always getting beaten down by something in order to succeed at something else. The frustration of the characters showed on the players' faces, and that seemed like a good thing.

And in the last session, I ran the best game of Poison'd I've ever run. I was going to say that I'd redeemed Poison'd, but that just seems antithetical. The story flowed smoothly. The characters lunged for their ambitions and were frustrated by the Cruel Fortunes. There were a few things I did in this game that I'll gladly repeat next time, to help make the story work. Special thanks go to the players, for embracing the depravity of being pirates.

My only regret was not remembering that I wanted to try Sagefight. Looking back, we would have had to go outside for it. There certainly wasn't enough space inside for those kinds of shenanigans.

Overall, my experience of one-third of Auscon was positive. Allan and Mark did a marvellous job. Watch out for their next project, whatever it is. I do know, though, that the first weekend in October is going to be another gaming convention. Mark your diaries now.

My games at Auscon

2011-04-28T16:37:00.000+10:00

I'm offering three games at Auscon this weekend. This is what I have in mind.

9am - FU
FU looks like a genuine pickup game, so that's what I'm going to do with it. I have no preconceived notions of a setting at all, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the players come up with. I've played in these kinds of games before and will steal a technique from Steve D to set it up. Everyone has two scraps of paper and writes a single idea on each one. We draw two (or three?) at random and start from there.

2pm - Agon
I've owned this game for ages and have hardly played it at all, despite my ongoing wish to do so. This needs the most preparation, so I'm most nervous about it. It's been a while since I really prepared something with this much detail.

7pm - Poison'd
The game of depraved sailors, desperately trying to avoid the governor's gallows and their shipmates' shivs. I've run this badly before, and then I got better at it. And now I cackle at the very thought of it.

Apocalypse World by The Walking Eye

2011-04-15T08:58:00.000+10:00

I don't often listen to actual play recordings. Last week, though, I started plugging my way through the sessions of Apocalypse World recorded by The Walking Eye. I was just curious about how Apocalypse World plays out and my curiosity was rewarded with this.

Their holy water is burning and it's awesome and it's terrifying and it's bad.

I know it's possible to say this in just about every game, and say it in context, but it made so much sense right where it was. So maybe actual play recordings aren't all bad, and maybe Apocalypse World is good. I'll have to acquire it and play it to know for sure.

Sucker Punch as Apocalyptic

2011-04-11T12:34:00.000+10:00

There isn't usually any good reason for me to cross-post between this blog and Divine Trauma. So today is unusual. I posted a brief analysis on Sucker Punch as Apocalyptic over there and it's probably worth a read for my gaming audience too.

Auscon Story Game Announcement

2011-03-28T14:34:00.002+10:00

The Auscon blog has a larger announcement about the RPG section of the weekend. Go check it out sometime.

Don't Rest Your GM Head

2011-03-23T08:49:00.000+10:00

I'm working out which games to personally run at Auscon next month and am considering my beloved Don't Rest Your Head. While listening to Narrative Control episode 61, I realised that when I GM that game, I have an unarticulated goal to drive one of the characters to lose all Discipline.

To do that, I need to force them to use Madness as often as possible and this goes against some advice I'd used from Fred Hicks about running DRYH at a convention. He suggested that characters should start with a couple of points of Exhaustion. I've done this a few times but what I find is that it's then harder to convince players to bring the Madness, without a succession of high Pain challenges. It does, however, bring them to Crash much sooner and that takes the game in a different direction.

So, dear reader, I want some more advice from you about how you run DRYH. What's your GM tip for the game, especially for convention play?

Siege Blind Playtesting Has Stopped

2011-03-22T12:20:00.001+10:00

Well, it's past the end of February, and according to my development plan I've finished the blind playtesting part of the project. I had some good feedback from this phase and am now reviewing all the comments to make my game text better.

I'm so very grateful for all the people who helped me with that. Much appreciated.

Auscon Story Games

2011-03-18T12:31:00.000+10:00

I met with the organisers of Auscon last weekend and agreed to help coordinate the story games component of Auscon. They've got some great ideas about running conventions and building community amongst gamers of various kinds and I'm looking forward to the Auscon weekend itself.

Story games will be run on Sunday May 1 and only on that day. It's a deliberate taster event for a larger convention in September or October this year. Watch out for details of the latter one as we draw nearer.

For Auscon, though, I'm putting out the call for people to run games. Any system. Any setting. I want to see D&D alongside Fiasco, if possible. There will be ten tables available at the 9am, 2pm and 7pm sessions. That's 30 GM-slots I want to fill.

If you volunteer to run a game, there'll even be a sweetener for you - a weekend pass to Auscon. That's free entry to the whole weekend for anyone who signs up to run a game in at least one of the 30 GM-slots available. Send me an email at ((andrew)) (dot) ((mg)) (dot) ((smith)) at ((gmail)) (dot) ((com)) and let me know what you'd like to run and at which session. Slots will be filled based on who grabs them first.

Star Wars Agony

2011-02-21T12:24:00.000+10:00

It's no secret that I like Star Wars. I've never played any of the RPGs, though, but I've played the WOTC minis game a few times and have several minis. But as I was thinking about what to do with all those minis this morning, I figured that I could use Agon rules to play a good Clone Wars campaign. Substitute the Jedi Council for the gods, the Jedi for the heroes, various Force powers for the weapons, and several other cosmetic changes and it'll work nicely.

Interestingly, I'd like to change the Oaths to Doctrines in some way. Oaths bind one character to another as a debt of obligation in Agon. The only obligation that a Jedi has is to the doctrine of the Jedi council. It'd be great to see a Jedi compelled to move this way or that in combat as a result of necessarily obedience to the Jedi code.

That's today's Star Wars mashup, at least. Enjoy!

No Gen Con Oz in 2011

2011-02-18T11:44:00.000+10:00

...but I'm sure you didn't read that here first.

In an announcement overnight, the Eventions team told the world that they will not run Gen Con Oz in 2011, having also cancelled it in 2010. This has made a lot of people upset and started calls for replacement events. I saw one levelled at Here Be Gamers to "just run the alternative events again."

I confess to being a little surprised at the announcement. After two years of running it, and then a year of not, there was a great deal of interest in bringing it back in 2011. Maybe I'm a bit optimistic. I'd like to think that we learn from the failures and find a way around them for the next challenge. At least this time Eventions hadn't committed so much as to accept registrations and payments, so that's evidence of a lesson learned.

Even though gamers are quite loud on the internet, I don't know whether that's actually a reflection of the total sentiment or the actual market size associated with Gen Con Oz. I'm leaning towards the former.

In the absence of Gen Con Oz, what will attendees do? The cosplayers are an enthusiastic bunch, and have lots of other opportunities for their hobby. They have events like Supanova, places like the Mana Bar, the everpresent photoshoot-on-the-internet, and plenty of meetups around the place. The computer gamers have everything from solo play at home, to online play at home, to private networks, to events like Supanova (again!). Board gamers? It's a similar story. Card gamers? Ditto. Miniatures gamers? Ditto again. And on top of all that is the upcoming Auscon. So who's missing? Story gamers (ok, ok. roleplayers). It's the most complicated of all the participation events typically seen at conventions, and the one that requires the greatest input from retailers.

My point with all this is that the Australian geek crowd has outlets in a dozen other places. So why are so many upset or disappointed? I think we love the name of Gen Con. It's a revered brand, made even more "sacred" because it's so far away. It's a kind of Mecca, or Shangri-la. Many of us know someone who slapped down the cash to fly across the Pacific to get to Gen Con. It's such a pilgrimage and shows a devotion. To have Shangri-la come down from heaven and land in Australia was such a treat. With projected expectations like that, it's no surprise that the disappointement is so strong. We love the brand, and that's what draws the crowd and what costs people like Eventions some extra money. Licensing brands isn't cheap or easy. The brand owners want to make sure that they put the brand into safe hands, so they make it too expensive for backyard operators.

The hard work will be to create something as beloved by Australian gamers (et al) to meet a similar recreational need. There are plenty of smaller conventions out there that currently do it for their cities or regions. Perhaps Australia cannot sustain a large convention like Gen Con Oz at all.

Religious Identities in Your Game

2011-02-16T15:23:00.000+10:00

Religion often gets the blame for violence and war in human history, and it's fair to say that it should accept responsibility for some of that. I think, though, that in the West we isolate religion too much and try to assign blame on that single factor, whereas religion doesn't stand alone at any point or for any person. Or to put it another way, religion can't be added-in or subtracted-from in the same way that a sport or hobby can. So what does a religion do?

Religion gives identity, and in most cases it adds to identity.

Throughout human history, identity has been a combination of three factors: religion, land and ethnicity. Even though we can break down these into smaller categories, the big three are religion, land and ethnicity. When we read about any population, we always read about these three. The key to understanding how religion fits is to first understand that these three factors can't easily be pulled apart. For example, the Babylonian people (ethnicity) lived in and around Babylon (land) and worshipped Babylonian gods (religion). They understood that the people in the nearby country were a different people, lived in a different land, and had local gods.

The three elements together provide the binding features for the society and if any of those factors are threatened or removed, it causes a problem. And in story games, problems make story.

In your game, you can use religion to give your characters identity by tying it to the land and the people. Lore checks can reveal that the Lothir people in the Handar Valley worship Ahud the sun god, for example.

Individual characters can also gain identity from the religion. In Christianity, St Paul was Saul before he became a Christian. The conversion moment was enough to warrant a name change. Even today, converts in some countries change their names to one more suited to the new religion. Furthermore, children born into a religion are often given names of religious heroes, named by parents to honour the antecedent and perhaps as a hope for the life of the child.

Identity can also come through religious observances. A religion might have a systematic marking system in either clothing or tattoos. Conversely, they might abstain from tattoos altogether, or engage in some other flesh alteration like circumcision or ritual piercings. Consider also how hair is worn or shaped. Is there a religious significance to it? What happens to the Samson character who has long hair as religious devotion, and then has it forcibly cut off?

Religious symbols also provide identity markers for peoples and characters. It might be incorporated into the battle standard for the people, or on the currency ("In God We Trust").

The dark side of any such symbols is the obvious definition of who is an insider and who is an outsider. In Nazi Germany, homosexuals were forced to wear pink triangles on their clothes, and Jews had to wear a yellow star of David. The presence or absence of symbols in a society can be telling for prejudices or honour, and compounded further if those symbols have social and religious meaning.

Religion provides identity in many ways. In your game, you can use this as background: descriptions of architecture or idioms. You could use it as deeply felt personhood, in which a people group believe they are chosen by the gods for a special purpose. You could run a story about the ostracism associated with conversion and apostasy. Religion and identity are tightly woven together, and can give depth to your characters, and in turn provide plenty of drive for stories.

Siege Blind Playtesting Has Results

2011-02-14T12:51:00.000+10:00

Despite my earlier remarks, it seems that people have been playing Siege. I've started to receive a couple of play test reports and am quite pleased with what I've read. Not everything went smoothly, and it's obvious that I need to change the text in a couple of places to make sure that it's more clear to the reader, but not everywhere. At the end of February I'll take all the play test reports and revise the text.

A bit of progress goes a long way to making a happy Andrew.

Counter-factual Play

2011-02-04T12:11:00.000+10:00

I like to listen to the Philosophers Zone as a podcast and in a recent episode the topic was the Philosophical Baby. Slightly out of context was this comment by the guest (Alison Gopnik) about imagining counter-factual realities. Although this quote is about babies, it's worth reading it substituting "babies" with "gamers" or "story makers" to give it the context for this blog. I hope you see what grabbed my attention.

Well in fact, what we discovered is that babies and young children are extremely good at imagining counter-factual alternatives, other ways that the world could be, other than they way that they are now. That's what children do when they are involved in pretend play, which is one of the most characteristic things for 3 and 4 year olds to do. 3 and 4 year olds will spend 24/7 often as crazed world princesses and ninjas and who knows what else.

One of the great puzzles has always been why do they do that, why are they often in these alternative universes? And one thought is that if what babies and young children are doing is figuring out the causal structure of the world, an old philosophical idea is that understanding causation is a good idea because it lets you construct counter-factual, it lets you imagine other ways that the world could be. And what we think is that just as in their exploratory play, children are finding out all about the world around them in an uninhibited way. In their pretend way, children are exploring possibilities, but they're doing it in an uninhibited way.

(emphasis is mine)

I think this is a great way to think about our story games, as an exploration of other ways the world could be. Mind you, I wouldn't want to live in some of the worlds my games have created, but there are others that would be pure delight.

Religious Taboos in Your Game

2011-01-18T12:38:00.000+10:00

I wrote previously about religious institutions and how they can feature in your game. This post on religion in gaming is all about taboos. Many religions impose prohibitions on people, from the seemingly-trivial to the serious matters of life and death. To the eyes of a typical Western observer some taboos seems strange and petty, perhaps archaic colour of no practical use. As long as we remember that those same Western eyes are observing across the gulfs of time, space, culture and language, we can start to explore the role of the taboo and find ways to apply it to games.

Taboos are sometimes symbolic code for something quite practical. Looking at Dreamtime stories as an example, some prohibitions relate to poisonous plants or animals that the hearer will remember and use to survive. Disguised survival lessons also work in the positive, weaving the location of a billabong into the events, using geographical markers found in the local area. In your game, you could use this to show plants or locations that the locals avoid, and then open an adventure to discover why they avoid it, and perhaps have the players face that danger. They could unwittingly consume a poisonous substance, or bravely face the demon. Be sure to have the locals show fear, perhaps superstition, about the taboo. Mothers will snap at their children for mentioning it.

Sometimes taboos exist to manage procreation. Aborigines in central Australia have a complex system of totems showing which people can have children together without the risk of birth defects. Use this in your game to start a story of forbidden love, or a story of devotion to a child born from forbidden love and now living with some kind of genetic defect. It could be as fantastical as a quest to find a magic cure, or as dark as a secret that should not be exposed (Perhaps the prince has a forbidden lover, and the child is proof of breaking the taboo, costing him the throne...)

Dietary taboos are prevalent in some religions. Don't eat pork of shellfish. Don't drink alcohol. These dietary restrictions can be signs of devotion or cultural markers. As devotion, they are personally important to characters, but can cause problems. Supposing a non-drinker wants to do business in a culture that prizes bargains over drinks. Devotion and cultural markers can turn bad and become a source of condescension or disgust. After all, if that food isn't sanctioned by the gods for human consumption, then we can question the humanity of anyone who does eat it.

The last one for today is misogyny or misandry. In our own history, taboos about women have been used to enforce patriarchal structures of power in society. Are men and women treated differently by the religion? Use this to establish etiquette in the game, and then conflict by breaking those traditions.

In general, religious taboos can be a source of story in your game in a number of ways. Think about what the taboo is and how it marks out the people who hold it to be forbidden. Consider what happens when they are in contact with the "unclean" neighbouring peoples. Consider what happens when people break taboos. Taboos might be arbitrary, or practical, or just something that a petty deity despises. The addition of a taboo to your game setting immediately acts as a creative constraint that can generate plenty of story for your characters.

Religious Institutions in Your Game

2011-01-07T13:54:00.000+10:00

I'm a student of religion and I'm a gamer. I've seen religion used as a plot device in a few different ways in games, but I can't help feel that it's always a tired cliche rather than a vibrant element to the story. Religion is still an important feature in the lives of most people on the planet, and for the sake of fiction it adds flavour and depth to a character and a story.

Perhaps the most obvious use of religion is the religion as institution. When you're thinking about how to establish a religious institution in your game, you need to acknowledge that it is an institution in society, for better or worse, like all other institutions. It's a socially-acknowledged organisation with legal status, authority, responsibility, symbols, finances, people, buildings, rituals and goals. The religious institution almost certainly has political aspirations, preferring one kind of government or ruler over another, whether overtly or covertly expressed. Think about who the secular powers are in your game and decide whether the established religion supports them or not. Are they working to undermine the ruler or to strengthen the dominion? Perhaps they are trying to subvert an unjust king without being discovered.

As an institution, the inner workings are hidden from the view of outsiders. Consider the tax department as a secular parallel to get my point. And where things can be hidden, someone will find a way to hide their evils in amongst it all. *cough* *Enron* *cough* Contemporary examples of this in Christian institutions include pedophilia, embezzlement, adultery, and so on. In short, everything that the religion opposes has probably been hidden in the institution. Which evils are hiding in the institution in your game? Who is hiding them? Who is committing them? In this way, the religious institution is no different to a corporation or government department, and it makes for lots of plot opportunities.

Also, an institution is something that people can't disbelieve in. It's there, and is an agent in the society. Regular people will interact with it somehow, perhaps through temple attendances or street parades. They almost certainly will touch on certain festivals or holy days, either as historical remnants or as a living and vibrant day. Holy days can be solemn, reflective, relaxing, celebratory, ecstatic or even orgiastic. Which kinds of holy days are included on the sacred calendar of the religions institution in your game? What do they celebrate?

The last thing I'll say about religious institutions in your game is the role of religion as ideological enforcers for the established order. Historically, we've seen this in Europe as the Inquisition. Today, this is the actually existing condition in Iran, as applied by the Guardian Council. In fiction, I especially like the Jedi Council as an example. The religious institution interprets the ideology and has authority to interpret and enforce it. In your game, you would need to think about the tenets of the religion, the interpretive structures of scholars and clerics, the powers (legal or supernatural) of the enforcers. Remember that they all believe they are safeguarding the One True Way. You might also need to think about what could happen if they don't safeguard the community or nation. Will the deity bring calamity because of unfaithfulness? Or is the deity a little patient?

These are just four ways - an organised entity in society, a haven for corruption, an agent in society, enforcers of ideology - for you to bring a religion as an institution into your game.

After writing this post, I find myself brimming with ideas about how other aspects of religion can contribute to your game. And that means more posts on the subject. Watch this space.

Go Play Brisbane

2011-01-05T14:49:00.000+10:00

I'm starting to think about when to run Go Play Brisbane in 2011. Twice in 2011 is good, roughly equidistant from Gen Con Oz. The last I heard, Gen Con Oz is likely to be in July, so that places Go Play nicely in March or April, and October or November.

Watch this space for more.

Siege Blind Playtesting Has (Re)started

2011-01-04T14:16:00.000+10:00

I'm always impressed by the willingness of people to lend a hand. It happened again. In my last post I mentioned that I hadn't had any volunteers for blind playtesting, and that I was close to stopping the project.

And then three people volunteered to run blind playtests for me.

Thank you, three people.

Siege is running out of Patience

2010-12-21T12:17:00.000+10:00

Siege, my game about a hostage situation, is running out of Patience. By the rules of the game I'll only be able to take physical actions soon. If you'd played the game or read the rules, you'd know what I mean. In the real world, I've set myself a project trigger point of the end of 2010. That would mark the end of a three month period for blind playtesting. The sad news is that no one has volunteered for this necessary part of game design.

Like any good project, there are certain conditions that tell us whether to proceed to the next point, revise and check again, or to cancel it. The end of 2010 is my deadline for this decision. So I'm on the final countdown to that point.

Gaming Bag

2010-12-16T12:34:00.000+10:00

I'm seriously considering buying a dAPRO Digital Artist Backpack as my gaming bag. It's perfect for an iPad (where nearly all my game books are), a couple of books, character sheets, some dice and writing implements. I don't use props or minis very often, so I don't need to worry about lugging them around.

A new game design idea

2010-12-13T15:09:00.000+10:00

I was struck with inspiration for a game project the other day. As usual, I've been looking around for existing systems which do something similar, or the same, rather than creating something new. The more I looked, though, the more I realised that it would have to be a new project.

So I started sketching some notes and this led me to my next conclusion. This project appeals to a single person: Me. I've tried explaining it to a couple of people and failed to generate enthusiasm. Either my pitch is poor, or the concept itself is unappealing as a game, or both!

The concept is a bit high, to be sure. Much like a lecture on the aesthetic philosophy of Kierkegaard, it will have its devotees but it will never draw the crowds of a U2 concert. I'll probably do it anyway, but only because it interests me.

Version Wars

2010-11-15T10:46:00.000+10:00

One possible explanation of the version wars in games.

"Is there a schism between the folks who love color tattoos and those that like black & white ones? Or the fans of the original Star Trek who hate the folks who like the far inferior newer Star Trek models?" - Seth Godin, the bright line of small differences

The significant message from this is in the last paragraph: "The really good news is that the tribe cares."

When you're organising games, or writing games, or playing games, remember that the people you're playing with actually care about the game. They like the activity, and specifically this activity. That's an encouragement for any of the organisers in the gaming world out there.

Blind playtesting for Siege is still open

2010-11-08T12:43:00.000+10:00

The blind playtesting phase of my Siege project is still open. I'm looking for people who will take the rules text and run the game with their group, and then to answer some questions for me about the game experience and the rules text.

All the details are available at the project page.

What I said on ZedGames

2010-11-04T16:34:00.000+10:00

As it turns out, 4ZzZ was having troubles with their podcast and live streaming but didn't discover this until the show was almost over. This is some of what I said.

Print-on-demand makes it easier to publish in smaller volumes, even though the production cost is higher per unit. This facilitates more innovation and more product choice.

Printed self-publishing isn't new, but POD allows people to print small volumes in sizes other than Letter and A4. Games discussed here included Don't Rest Your Head and Braunstein.

Publishing through PDF is a zero-cost production method, once development costs are recovered. I wish I'd mentioned the Free RPG Blog here.

Pricing for PDFs is wide and varied, from the expensive to the free. Games discussed: Houses of the Blooded, Dresden Files.

Bundles of book-plus-PDF are a great marketing exercise. Games discussed: A Penny For My Thoughts, and a plug for the Bits & Mortar Alliance.

PDF technology offers more than just a non-printed document. Linked text throughout the document is just one example. Games discussed: Happy Birthday Robot

Digital publishing is not limited to PDF. D&D Insider is an example of a specific application for the digital distribution of game rules and character creation. WOTC's move away from PDF to DDI is a way to guide people to WOTC content, without actually blocking third-party materials from being used in D&D. Games discussed: D&D.

The future of digital publishing is anyone's guess, but the untapped area is probably the realm of the app, especially the app that integrates rules, character generation, note taking and dice rolling. I couldn't remember the name of the iPad app at the time, but it's Dicebook.

Despite the availability of digital publishing, digital dice-rollers and apps for your smart-device-of-choice (including my confession as an Apple Hipster), the gameplay experience at the table isn't significantly altered. Minor changes are seen in the books we carry to the table, and perhaps the realisation that some players might be on twitter rather than checking a rule or engaging with the game. It's vital that in any RPG, the point is to engage in the social activity of story-making with the others at the table. Games discussed: None, but a big shoutout to Vincent Baker and his model of dice & clouds.

There you have it. We covered a lot, and thankfully it was more than print-vs-PDF.

Print and Digital Publishing on ZedGames

2010-11-03T12:01:00.000+10:00

I'm to be a guest on ZedGames tonight, talking about the print and digital publishing avenues for games. Ostensibly it could be little more than another "print vs PDF" discussion, but I'm reasonably convinced that there's more to this than those two options.

Wow. Look at that alliteration.

Anyway, if you can tune in to TripleZ from 6pm (GMT+10), you'll hear my dulcet tones echoing out over the airwaves or via live stream.

Neoncon CreativeU

2010-11-02T14:23:00.000+10:00

I've been watching the Neoncon CreativeU schedule build. It makes me both happy and jealous. Happy because I like to see conventions do more than just play games, and jealous because it's bigger and better than what we mustered together for Uprising.

So if you're able to get to Neoncon, you should go. It's bigger and better than what we did in Uprising. My jealousy is a recommendation.

Second Generation Gamer

2010-10-27T09:05:00.000+10:00

Courtesy of Narrative Control and Theory from the Closet, I've discovered something about myself. Sean spoke about someone he'd gamed with as being a second generation gamer - the gamer child of a gamer parent. More of this happens with each passing year, as the generations who grew up with original D&D become parents and pass on the hobby to their kids.

Now, I've never thought of myself as a second generation gamer because I picked up the hobby from my older brother and he picked it up from his school friends. Put like that, it sounds like a virus, but that's just how it appeared in my life.

Or so I thought. The notion of a second generation gamer made me think of my father, the retired major, and then the penny dropped. It was another military man who had created Braunstein as a hobby offshoot from genuine military training exercises - wargames. And now let me tell you a little about my father.

He joined the British Territorial Army as a young man and served with them until he migrated to Australia, whereupon he immediately enlisted in the Australian Citizen Military Forces (later, the Australian Army Reserves). He continued in the service until forced retirement, and then spent an additional few years as an officer supervising the Australian Army Cadets. All told, that's fifty years in the civilian military forces. During his time in the Australian Reserves, he spent many years training officers, with specialisations in military history and wargames. He would set up the situation for the trainees, including terrain and mission objectives, and then provide them with responses to the actions that they took. Sometimes he would take a non-referee role and take control of the enemy forces, commanding them from a separate war room, set up in another tent or room of the barracks.

In gaming parlance, my father was a GM. Suddenly, all those years of making plastic models of battleships, WWII aircraft and miniature armies with him fall into sharp relief. When I look at him through gamer lenses, he's not only a GM, he's a support GM who looks after NPCs, he's a miniatures gamer, and leans quite heavily on the side of realism in his preferred rules[1].

I've always known this about Dad, and always thought his military interest sparked something in me too, but I've never appropriated the tag of "gamer" to describe him. When I do, it makes me a second generation gamer - a gamer who is now on a mission to find a game to play with his father.

1. Indulge me as I tell another story to support this. An area of special interest for him was the American civil war. He had studied it and used it in officer training, even down to the contour maps of the battlefields. About a decade ago, he made his first visit to Gettysburg and from his memory of the contour maps found General Lee's command post, pointed to another point short distance away, and remarked, "You know, if he'd stood over there, he would have won this."

First Skype Game

2010-10-25T13:12:00.000+10:00

I played my first game over Skype the other day. Seemed to work well, and brings trust to the table like never before.

Free Nobles for Everyone

2010-10-07T20:38:00.000+10:00

Now that I've finally caught up with the Blogger Pages, I've decided to put the rules for Nobles up on the web. It's free, free, free!

For those who came in late, Nobles is a card game about civil war. I made some posts about it while I put it together, but I haven't touched the rules since just before Gencon Oz 2009. I hope you can find the time to play and enjoy it.

Social Contract Theory

2010-10-05T12:22:00.003+10:00

I keep hearing, from various podcasts and so forth, about the "social contract" at the game table. It's unfortunate that it's such a common comment, because it's actually a poor model for the activity of playing games. The good news is that I'm not going to bore you with my reasons. It's enough to say that it's a bad choice and that I wish it would go away from talk about playing games.

For further reading, please see the relevant article at the SEP.

Relationship Maps

2010-10-04T11:59:00.001+10:00

I'm going to quote Steve D here, because this remark sums up the rest of the post.

Lots of games tell you to create a relationship map, but Smallville tells you how to do it.

So very true. I played Smallville at Uprising last weekend, and the very next day I ran a game of Don't Rest Your Head. I usually try to scribble my own kind of relationship map when people are crafting characters in DRYH but it's never quite been the most useful diagram. I could glean bits and pieces from it but not quite enough. When I used the Smallville conventions for relationship maps, my DRYH game had a shot in the arm. Things were much clearer for me.
And now I see on Story Games a short thread about the very same thing. The technique is trivial and easy to learn. If you're not already doing something like this, it's worth your time to investigate and learn it. I think your game will be better because of it.

Now blind playtesting for Siege

2010-10-03T15:28:00.002+10:00

At Uprising I was reminded that I ought to do some blind playtesting for Siege. It's true. I've been slack about it because I wasn't confident that it was ready to share around. But now I'm ready to share it and find out how it plays in the hands of others.

So if you're interested, download the playtest guideline and then organise a game of Siege. Let me know how it goes.

Sagefight as Madness Talent

2010-10-02T22:34:00.001+10:00

This is my tongue-in-cheek mashup of Don't Rest Your Head and Sagefight. Enjoy, or even critique.

It began as a fun pasttime with friends. "Hai! Hai! Hai!" Each beat an opportunity to vanquish your opponent. Each pause the intersection of instinct and intent. And then, the strike! Touch their palm and they simply walk away.

But you played the game every day in your mind. As you walked down the street you could hear the beats of the movement all around you. The train. The joggers. The stock market. And now, even the universe itself has opened up its beat to you. That constant driving rhythm, like a drum in your mind, synchronising everything that exists like some great clockwork machine.

What can I do?
(1-2 dice) Synchronise yourself into the rhythm of machines and computers around you, able to see their patterns and predict their movement. Your chaos is one step ahead of their order. Not only do you know the machine, but you know the right place to tap and make the machine simply spin down to a quiet halt.

(3-4 dice) The ebb and flow of biological systems, as complex as they are, is as machine to you. From heartbeats to cell division, the interplay of these finely-tuned systems spins and loops according to fundamental chemical interactions, and you can dance to that beat. A double-step here and there and you can switch that bio-machine around. Stop a man's heartbeat or accelerate his cell division. Interrupt cancerous growths in their onslaught. Predict the flow of electrons throughout the neurons in her brain, and stay one step ahead.

(5-6 dice) Everything is part of the cosmic machine now. God wound up the spring and let all those untold trillions of wheels turn, and you can see them turning together. With the right tap you can bump the moon off its orbit, see the change in the stock market before it happens, or reach into a man's soul and tap so that he simply walks away from life itself. And no matter how far away you are when you do it, it's enough to disturb Officer Tock from his duties.

How does it break me?
Fight - Tap, tap, tap everything. Too many things are happening around you and the sounds of all those systems is like a thousand drummers playing a thousand different beats. You've got to make them stop, and you slide into a well-practised kata that makes anything near you stop and run.

Flight - A little error of judgment and the world has tapped you as adroitly as you normally tap it. The frenzy and flurry come to an abrupt stop, and quite calmly - perhaps mindlessly - you turn and walk away, far away.

How do I change?
Your sense of the spontaneous is slowly eroded by the relentless ticking. Everything is now a matter of watching for the pattern and then reaching into it to make it simply give up. The constant synchronisation of your body with the world around you has made your movements less and less fluid. Your movement becomes caught in the rhythm of Sagefight.

What am I becoming?
You erode the things around you by their capitulation, depriving them of their resolve and persistence. With no one around you to rage against the dying of the light, your own will to persevere collapses as well and as it falters, you can no longer tolerate determination or purpose in anything else. The feedback loop drains you of your self-discipline, and it is replaced by the instinctive drive to expose the fragility and futility of striving. You have become Damn Soulless.

Uprising

2010-09-28T16:51:00.001+10:00

It really was the best three days of gaming in 2010. I know that sounds like a big call, but it's true. If I consider the quality of the gaming, the social aspects of the three days, and the depth of content from seminars and workshops, it tops the charts across the board. And if I throw in the amount of fun we all had? The charts just won't be good enough to handle the score.

I ran games of Siege and Don't Rest Your Head, and even managed to play in a game of Smallville, run by Steve D. With Nathan Russell, I finished the first Stockade project and launched new games into the wild. With the assembled game designer crowd, we started four more game design projects in the Game Design Roundtable. And I was even witness to the first ever Iron Chef Board Game Challenge, in which four board games were designed from nothing in just two hours - with the privilege of being one of the judges alongside guys from Monty Haul.

And best of all, I met new gamers and we made stories together.

Yep. It really was the best three days of gaming in 2010.

Siege is ready for Uprising

2010-09-20T12:15:00.000+10:00

Siege is ready for Uprising. O lordy! Like most people who've worked on something, there are always parts that I want to fine-tune, but I need to leave them alone.

So if you're one of the lucky folks who are registered for my game of Siege on Friday afternoon, you get the play this puppy. Looking forward to it!

Vocal Preparation for a Con

2010-09-14T12:46:00.000+10:00

During the approach to GenCon Indy, I listened to a few podcast episodes that dispensed advice for the con-goer. With GenCon Indy in the rearview mirror, and Uprising straight ahead, I wanted to hand out some advice of my own.

Gaming is a vocal exercise for most of us. I've not yet met a gamer who played in sign-language, but if you do then you can probably disregard this post. For the rest of us, it's all about talking and listening. After a day or two of talking, your voice can be worn down quite a bit. Typically, the solution has been to reach for the lozenges. As Michael Franti lamented, that's the pop-a-pill culture shining through.

An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, right? So here's the prevention in a few easy steps.

Warm up your voice on your way to the con.
Singers do it. Professional trainers and presenters do it. If you've ever heard John Farnham speak, you'll be able to hear the sound of a voice that's been taken care of for a decades-long singing career. The last time I heard him, he didn't sound like a 60 year old man. You can do this with a few simple exercises. YouTube has videos to demonstrate it. Wikipedia has articles (with a bit of musical jingo) about how to do it. Get your voice ready before your start and you'll survive the hours of gaming talk, with all your silly voices and laughter and sound effects, depending on your gaming style.

Warm up your talking muscles on your way to the con.
The same people who warm up their voices often warm up their other talking muscles too. Think about the muscles in your cheeks, your lips, your jaw and your tongue. Now read any sentence aloud. Did you notice how many muscles moved in that time? You're going to use them a lot, and if you want to make sure they last the con, give them a chance to warm up. YouTube is again quite a useful for exercises like these. Here's a search on YouTube just for lip warm up. You might feel like a clown while you're doing these, but even if you have just five minutes alone (perhaps in the car, perhaps in the morning shower... wherever!) you'll have enough time to run through a few of them.

Rest your voice. I know, I know. It's a con full of geeks. Every geek wants to be the alpha geek by showing off what they know, Simpsons references, arguments about Star Wars and Star Trek, blah blah blah. You'll be talking a lot. But if you give your voice a chance to rest, it'll last longer. And by not talking, you get to listen to other gamers. They like to contribute to the game too.

Lubricate your voice on your way to the con and throughout the day. Your body has natural lubrication systems. Don't think about it too hard. But where does the body get this from? A lozenge? Not at all. Drink water. Drink plenty of water and let your body turn that water into the right stuff for your voice. And of course, after you've peed it all out, you'll need more water. This is the oil in the engine of your voice. Don't be stingy.

These are simple tips to make sure your voice lasts the con. And they don't cost you a thing, so they're cheaper than lozenges as well as more effective. Happy talking!

Theory from the Closet

2010-09-01T12:33:00.000+10:00

If you're not listening to this podcast regularly, you're missing out on some great gaming discussion. Clyde records it and refuses to edit it, so you get the conversation in all its glory. He's had some very interesting people on lately, with good things to say - even if you disagree with them, the mere fact of the disagreement is validity enough to give them worth.

So go there now and start listening - especially to the interview with Vincent Baker.

Abney Park RPG

2010-08-20T19:18:00.001+10:00

Whether you think steampunk is the coolest thing ever, or it's just what happens when goths discover brown, this is some interesting news for RPG as a medium. Abney Park is working with Cubicle 7 on an Abney Park RPG. The announcement has a mockup of a book cover for you to enjoy.

My first thought (and comment on the site) was that it would make for a great supplement to Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, but that might not be true. I haven't finished reading S7S yet but the swashbuckling might not quite be the right fit for Abney Park. As long as the rules for the new system make stories which are different to S7S, it's a good choice.

More interesting than this, though, is the crossover between a band that occupies an alternate reality and an RPG. There have been musicians like this before. Gorillaz do it nicely. Queen did it with their Queen II album. David Bowie did it again and again. You could argue that Flight of the Conchords do it. I think this is an interesting foray by RPGs into another kind of intellectual property. Books, film and TV have been done, successfully and dismally. The choice of the fictional world of a band is not such a stretch.

And that's the new challenge for you budding designers. Make the RPG for Gorillaz, Queen, David Bowie or Flight of the Conchords.

What Swords Do

2010-08-19T12:28:00.000+10:00

In the world of gaming, most stories are action or adventure stories. Add some more story games like Kagematsu and the situation changes. Still, most RPGs pay attention to fighting rules and no matter how much we argue about it, most of these rules don't exist to present realism, they exist to prolong your character while you make him do something foolhardy.

I was reminded of this the other day when I saw this clip. Behold, a two-handed sword in demonstration (especially watch the boots at 2:55). Note that this clip deliberately shows off the lethality of the weapon.

Swords are terrifying things. In the games I run (supposing they have swords), I've forgotten this and I shouldn't. A single swing of a sword is the difference between life and death and I want to try a game where this is a significant element.

Roleplaying advice from Victor Wooten

2010-08-17T10:53:00.000+10:00

It's not often that I get the opportunity to bring music and gaming together, so I'm going to relish this moment.

Ahhhhh.

And here it is. I want you to watch this youtube clip of Mark Peric (friend of mine) and Victor Wooten (mentor and friend of Mark's) during a bass workshop. Mark's on the left and Victor's on the right. The sound quality isn't great, but that doesn't change a thing about their astonishing talent.

The RPG advice starts at around the 5:00 point. Skip through to it if you like, or listen through it. You won't be disappointed.

Victor has been Mark's hero for a number of years, and Mark helped organise the master class with Victor. And yet watch what Victor does. He identifies that Mark is a talent in his own right; he points out that his job as a bass player is to make the other musicians sound even better; and then he gives all the spotlight to Mark.

Now Victor has earned the right to show off. He's really that good. But he does better than that by working with Mark to create something bigger than either of them. He puts aside the individual goal for the sake of the audience and for the sake of Mark's participation in the performance. Victor's humility has turned a good performance into a great performance. These guys were making it up on the spot, performing for the audience, and enjoying the result for themselves. And when they inject humility into the activity, the end result is even better.

As gamers, we can learn from this. A gamer is a fusion of creator, performer and audience in much the same way as Victor in that clip. And here are the key points to learn from Victor Wooten.
1. Remember it's a group activity.
2. Step back from the spotlight and let other players take a solo.
3. Bring a crescendo to someone else's performance without taking it over. Add details to make them look good, rather than making you look good.
4. Enjoy the performance.

Sounds simple. And with Mark and Victor playing the background, it sounds good too.

Confessions of an Evil Hat Fanboy

2010-08-11T09:49:00.000+10:00

On the weekend I bought a copy of Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies. It had been sitting on the shelf of my FLGS for a month, ever since they got in an order of some other indie games - including my copy of A Penny for My Thoughts. So I put it on my gaming shelf, in the indie section, and then paused at what was blatantly obvious from the spines.

I'm an Evil Hat Fanboy.

I don't know if someone has come up with a nickname for it (I shudder at the thought. Fan-group nicknames make me cringe: I'm looking at you, Duranees!) but it's increasingly true, with one very important and perhaps stunning exception.

I don't have the Dresden Files RPG, and I probably won't buy it.

It's not that the game is bad. It's a FATE game, and I really enjoy Spirit of the Century. In fact, Spirit is my most-requested game for Games On Demand. Based entirely on that, I expect Dresden to be a great game, with good design, good play, and good writing.

It's not that the game is expensive, especially with shipping to Australia. Like many gamers, I've bought game books that I've not used very much. The replacement dollar value of my library is embarrassing. Dresden would look great on the shelf and great inside, from what I hear about it in reviews.

It's just that I've never read any Dresden Files books. I bought a comic mini-series once and thought it was OK, but it didn't grab me enough to buy the novels and then the game. So I confess my sin against Evil Hat!

I, Andrew Smith, Evil Hat Fanboy, do not have the Dresden Files RPG and have no plans to buy it. Give me Penny, give me Swashbucklers, give me Spirit, and best of all give me Don't Rest Your Head, and I will play them as penance. May it rescue my gamer soul from purgatory.

Bits and Mortar

2010-08-10T10:36:00.000+10:00

Today's excellent news is the announcement of Bits and Mortar.

From the announcement:

"The past several years have seen growth in consumer acceptance of PDFs and eBooks. With an eye on using this to drive customers to their friendly local game stores, a coalition of publishers have formed Bits and Mortar, a pro-retailer, pro-brick-and-mortar, pro-PDF, pro-eBook initiative."

I'm pleased to see an alliance forming around this policy. The idea is simple and the effects are great for the game-buying public. Up until this point it was only in the hands of individual publishers, but at the time I write this I see six publishers listed. The named object (policy, alliance, website, thing) becomes a rallying point, a point which is outside any of the individual participants and around which others can gather.

Best of all, this is a strategy to keep cash flowing through the friendly local game stores rather than letting it migrate online. Although I have no problem with online shopping, game books are different from novels in that they require other people in order to get the most from that product. The game store is a great place to meet those other people, so it's useful for the hobby overall that publishers support the development of networking within that community.

So yes, yes and yes. Congratulations to them all for this move. And you, dear reader, should tell your local game shop owner about it. Send them this link (http://www.bits-and-mortar.com) with a couple of very excited sentences about it, and then show your support in action by going to them to buy your next game.

Uprising on the web

2010-08-06T16:44:00.000+10:00

Yes yes yes! Uprising has its website ready for you. Go check it out, and register your game to be played.

From the Ashes of GenConOz 2010

2010-07-30T15:56:00.000+10:00

Australian gamers were dealt a terrible blow a fortnight ago when Ian Houlihan regretfully announced the cancellation of GenConOz 2010. This was widely regarded as a Very Sad Thing.

Several smaller groups started working on their own activities to fill the void, and after a week started talking to each other about working together. And that's how it is that from September 24-26 in Brisbane Australia there will be Uprising. If we can't have the Best Four Days of Australian Gaming, we'll cut it down to three instead.

Alongside Warmachine, L5R and Magic there will be seminars on GMing, seminars on game design and workshops on game design, featuring some of Australia's finest freelancers and indie game designers.

Watch for updates at The Stockade.

Siege game rules done

2010-07-28T14:08:00.000+10:00

I think my game rules for Siege are done. It works. It plays. People can engage with it.

I'm still a little worried about the Hostage character. What happens if they escape so successfully that they leave the game? Does the game stop being fun for them? I also want to know what happens if a Hostage character takes actions to wear down the resolve of the Captor, or if they force the relationship with the Captor in a non-adversarial direction.

My next step is to package up the game rules into a PDF for others to try. It won't be pretty, but it'll be playable. Well, as long as I explain the rules in a clear and interesting way. No problem, right?

Kuang Hong Illustrations

2010-07-26T13:25:00.000+10:00

My go-to game is Don't Rest Your Head. I'll run it anytime. It's satisfying to me in every way. So when I saw these illustrations from Kuang Hong, my heart skipped a mad beat. It's part of a toy series that he's working on. Can't wait to see what's next.

A dream about jealousy by *noah-kh on deviant ART

His own caption is, "I'm a little toy in a big world,i love my mistress so much,and i just can't bear other toys share the love with me.One day i have a sweet dream,OMG, my dearest mistress killed all the other toys in the room,haha'."

Hell yes.

The call by *noah-kh on deviant ART

The dinner by *noah-kh on deviant ART

Don't. Rest. Your. Head.

The Beast of Limfjord

2010-07-26T12:23:00.000+10:00

So apparently I ran a session of The Beast of Limfjord. That much is true. And here are some other true things about the experience.

I ran it with an hilarious and enthusiastic group. Peter Blake played Signy, Timothy Ferguson played Hrofgar (and how! It was a joy to behold), and Fridrik Bjarnason played Erlend. They were keen to try it out and gave a good effort to break it. This was, as I have failed to mention, a playtest. Breakage was possible. Perhaps I should have mentioned the "you break it, you bought it" policy.

So here are some true things that didn't go well.
I didn't make the challenges challenging enough, or give enough challenges. TBOL is all about the challenges. If you run this game, hand them out like they expire tomorrow.
Players like to defeat things in a single roll. This game has options to make failure interesting by adding complexity without actually stopping the heroes. Show this a few times and the urge to succeed in a single roll should fade.
The players made a good attempt to break the rules about Edges, by stacking them and stacking them. It felt like a D&D game, with bonuses coming from everywhere. This was a specific topic for the playtest, so I imagine that Nathan will take the feedback (more detailed in an email) and tweak it.
Hrofgar is mighty. With Iron Hand, Curmudgeon and Glorious Death, he can be quite an epic hero. GMs beware.

And here are some true things that that worked well
It's epic. So epic. Play is larger than life, perhaps a little cartoony, but not too much. I can see how it could be tragedy too.
Easy dice rules. No difficulty to convey them or let them weave into play. They weren't distracting either, so the story flowed nicely.
Rumours are great source materials for the adventure. The nature of rumours in a story about myth is evocative. No one really knows facts about the beast, just legends. Great stuff.
Legends are great, I think. Even though I've not played D&D 4e, they seem to occupy the same function as D&D's Daily Powers, without explicitly saying so.

Overall, I had fun running it but I wish that I'd done a better job of it. It was epic and entertaining as it was, but I want to run it again and see if I can redline it. You should keep your eye on this game. Playtest it now.

Nature abhors a vacuum

2010-07-25T16:01:00.000+10:00

Let's not muck about here. GenConOz is gone for 2010 and that leaves a little void. So it's time for others to step up and do something with that opportunity.

I can't say much more than that for now, except that if you were planning to be in Brisbane for GenConOz, you should keep your tickets and accommodation bookings. Oh yes, you should definitely keep them.

Go Play Brisbane, Concluding Thoughts

2010-07-20T14:45:00.000+10:00

Go Play Brisbane is finished again. Without giving a blow-by-blow account of the day (there's a Story Games thread for that anyway) I want to make some quick remarks.

This was the fourth GPB mini-con, and for four cons in a row there were new people. And for four cons in a row there were regulars. I'm so pleased that (as Aik wrote on Story Games) there's a Brisbane indie community. That's the reason a GPB was created in the first place. Win. Win. Win. That community is the cradle of creation for indie games. I expect that there will be more and more games come from Australia and from Brisbane because of this little community.

And as if to support that claim, consider these two statistics: 60% of the games played on Saturday were Australian-designed games in development; and more than a third of the people who attended are working on their own games or freelance work.

It's a privilege to be involved with GPB. I'm glad to be part of it. All signs point to more GPB in 2011 and beyond. It's too much fun (and too rewarding) to put down.

Happy Parole, Joker!

2010-07-19T13:33:00.003+10:00

My beautiful copy of Happy Birthday, Robot! arrived last week. As an artifact, it's a treasure for my game shelf. I'm glad to have a PDF as well, to preserve the book. I mentioned before that it was Go Play Brisbane last Saturday and I might have been able to run it.

I was in luck's way and we could run it. But I wanted to change the key phrase, so we played Happy Parole, Joker! And this is the story we wrote.

Happy Parole, Joker!
Joker walks the streets, hunting for a laugh, but also for work.
Lowlifes flee in fear, but don't laugh.
Joker drives rapidly through a drive-through downtown, avoiding
Joker thought about impending mayhem, but thoughts were enough for him.
Joker found a petrol can, picked it up and cackled.
Joker found an oil rag and made it into a wick.
Joker danced merrily and chuckled and ignited twenty-one trashcans but Batman was watching.
The flames rose higher, threatening innocent children.
Joker danced away, gleefully singing and kicking puppies into the sewer.
Batman swooped down on Joker and tackled him, posing in his cape.
Joker mocked his foe, dropped his trousers, waved his rear at Batman.
"Happy parole, Joker," said Batman, looming from shadows as he punched him down, but Joker kept laughing.
Batman was infuriated and scowled as Joker broke free.
Joker ran down the shopping mall, pull down racks of goods and became trapped under Batman's electrified net.
Robin punched him repeatedly as they bundled him into the Batmobile's boot.
"Can we stop at McDonald's drivethrough on the way to Arkham, Batman?" said Robin.
Batman said nothing, his eyes toward Arkham.
In the boot Joker smiled, knowing his Ronald McDonald clones would soon awaken.

It was fun, for sure, and there were some aspects of our game which I want to tell you about.

We had four players. So of course the story was a bit longer than those in the book. Unfortunately, each person had nothing to do every fourth turn. If I was to change it, I would make that person the scribe. Not only would it give them something to do, but it would avoid the next feature as well.

When each person was adding words, they did it in silence, busily counting words on their fingers (or tapping on dice and coins). This is different to other story games experiences in which the game is near-constant verbal narration. So to fill in the silence, the other players started other conversations. Good? Bad? No, just distracting.

We didn't share coins early enough. You can see this early on in the short and simple sentences, and later on in the longer and complex sentences. When you play HBR, share coins early and widely. You'll get a shorter story, but the early sentences won't feel as clumsy as ours.

We let the innocent children burn. When the story was finished, I read it out and only when I got to, "The flames rose higher, threatening innocent children" did I realise that none of us had put out the fire. You have to pay attention to earlier sentences, and that's another reason why adding words in silence is bad. Don't let the children burn because you want Batman to catch Joker.

Just based on that single play session, I think this is a game worth playing and replaying, especially with other settings. There's a bit of fun to be had thinking of those other settings too, but I'll leave that to you.

Gen Con Gone

2010-07-16T21:47:00.000+10:00

Just in case you read this blog more than you pay attention to the Gen Con Oz sites (including facebook and twitter), you would have missed the announcement that Gen Con Oz 2010 has been cancelled. Read the announcement here.

This is a sad announcement, but one laden with the realities of commercial considerations. A convention needs to break even or make money, otherwise it won't be back. And for gaming, this is a real concern. I heard Fred Hicks remark that indie game publishing is "how to make dozens of dollars the hard way" and he's right. Gaming is not mainstream in Australia, so it doesn't attract cash like other activities. Console gaming is big, but Gen Con isn't only about that. Pen and paper games are even less popular, and indie games? Well now.

But is that the end of gaming conventions in Australia? Not by a long shot. Even though most tabletop gaming in Australia is Warhammer and other miniatures gaming, just having Gen Con around was a shot in the arm for roleplaying. It introduced me to other indie gamers in Australia; people I consider friends, and people who continue to write and play new and innovative games.

I, for one, will continue to run Go Play Brisbane events in the medium term future, as well as continue to be involved in the Stockade project. And I'm looking forward to seeing Gen Con Oz return sometime soon (2011 would be nice!). Our hobby needs conventions if it is to continue as a viable commercial endeavour, or even as a social endeavour. We need to continue to meet together, to cross-pollenate our ideas between gaming groups so that we can fend off stagnation. This has created a void in the 2010 gaming calendar, but I feel confident that there will be other opportunities arise.

Watch this space.

Go Play Brisbane

2010-07-15T21:25:00.002+10:00

Oh yeah. It's on in two days. I'm sorely tempted to change my game offering to include Happy Birthday Robot but that's being fickle.

Still, I want to play HBR sometime soon. I'll be in Melbourne next week. Maybe I can find some gamers there who want to try it.

And who want to convert it to Happy Parole, Joker!

ZedGames tonight

2010-07-07T16:59:00.000+10:00

So I'm off to the 4ZzZ studio tonight for Zedgames. I'll be tweeting my way through the evening. Check for #zgau to catch tweets from me, the hosts and the listeners too.

ZedGames

2010-07-01T09:43:00.000+10:00

Our friends over at ZedGames are having their first birthday bash - and they've invited me along. Tune in and check it out.

Dice Pools Are Awesome

2010-06-30T11:05:00.000+10:00

So as it turns out, once you start thinking about decision points in a story, they reveal themselves to be quite complex. I've been working on Siege and in particular have been wrestling with the interaction of decision points with the character stats. In Siege, a decision point has the potential to affect characters and relationships, as well as the story itself. So I have to ensure that the rule for decision points engages this interaction in the way I want.

As it stands now, I think I have a solution to the problem. The next step is to find a way to keep it simple. I would despise creating a game that distracts from the story with unnecessarily complicated rules. And as you can tell from the title of this post, I think the solution is a dice pool rule.

Asymmetry by Design

2010-06-21T12:01:00.000+10:00

I've reached a breakthrough point with Siege and am busily embellishing my rules with paragraphs. No more lists of bullet points for me. As I do this, I'm struck by the asymmetry of the design. It's only marginal, but it's there and it's deliberate. The Captor, the Police and the Hostage are not balanced against each other. They each have a different role in the fiction, so there are different conditions that apply to them right from the start. I'm looking forward to another playtest soon, and will be looking specifically at how the asymmetry plays out.

Go Play Brisbane

2010-06-16T12:38:00.000+10:00

Another Go Play Brisbane is soon upon us. In fact, it's almost exactly a month away. It looks like an exciting little day, with most of the games as playtests for games in development. Looks like there's a bit of a movement brewing.

If there is one thing I could wish for, though, it's more people to run games. Looks like we're going to have a delicate balance of games and spaces this time around, and no over-inflated gaming groups.

Penny and PDF

2010-06-09T13:34:00.000+10:00

I bought my copy of A Penny For My Thoughts yesterday. Nothing new there, I'm sure, except that I bought it at a brick and mortar store. For a little indie game that was written and published on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, this is good going.

The shop in question is a little hesitant about indie games, I feel. The best experiences they've had so far are Mouse Guard (sells well) and Dresden Files (good pre-orders). Their nervousness comes through in two areas: shelf space and PDF. The copy of Penny was high on the top shelf (almost at the roof), in front of the solitary copy of Spirit of the Century. It was the first time I'd seen either game there so I was excited enough by that. So, although it wasn't at eye level, it was still on the shelf and that's good progress. Of course I asked for a receipt so that I could claim my PDF from Evil Hat, and that launched a little chat about the Evil Hat PDF Guarantee. He was quite happy to facilitate it, even asking if I had a flash drive with me (I didn't), but was skeptical about Evil Hat's policy on trust. "Let's see how long it lasts," he remarked.

To be honest, I think he voiced what many people have thought[1]. Capitalism functions on self-interest, to be sure, but I think there's more to the PDF Guarantee than that. The fact remains that I could have easily bought the book from IPR with the PDF bundled together, but I made the choice to order it through brick and mortar. I wanted them to see how easy it can be to deal with small publishers, and also to get more indie games passing through the inventories of game shops.

Although I'm not a great game designer, I thoroughly enjoy the indie games that I own and I want to share that. Until now that's been limited to some games in my home, organising indie games events at Gen Con Oz and organising Go Play Brisbane. Buying Penny from a brick and mortar is the next step: evangelising to the game store owner and staff.

So I've bought a game from a store that didn't stock it, that is cautious about the PDF guarantee, and that lets me run indie games days in their store. If this isn't an Elton John "Circle of Life" moment, I don't know what is. And the conclusion to this whole story? Everyone wins.

1. And probably posted on lots of forums. I don't read many so I wouldn't know.

Artefacts of Fortuna

2010-06-03T11:10:00.002+10:00

We love and loathe our gaming dice. When they roll well they become lucky, almost sacred. We remember the time when they maxed out three times in a row and made the game into the stuff of legend. But when they roll poorly they are a curse, as though they were a millstone hung around our necks to drag us down into failure.

The ancient Romans believed in many deities, and one of them was Fortuna. She represented the fickleness of life. When she smiled on a mortal good things happened, but when she didn't... She was responsible for the fortunes of life. No matter how skillful or deserving the individual, Fortuna could still swing the result any which way.

In our games, the dice are the artefacts of Fortuna. We roll them when we realise that there is uncertainty in the story. The outcome is not guaranteed, regardless of what's written on the character sheet, so we turn our story over to Fortuna and her meddling. The uncertainty of the result adds to the highs and lows of our experience of the story, just as much as the Romans knew she was responsible for the highs and lows of their lives.

Machiavelli, in his much-maligned little book The Prince, wrote about the interference of Fortuna for an entire chapter. In language that betrays the misogyny of his time, finishing with,

"I conclude therefore that, fortune being changeful and mankind steadfast in their ways, so long as the two are in agreement men are successful, but unsuccessful when they fall out. For my part I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her." - Machiavelli, The Prince

In other words, Fortuna favours the bold. When faced with uncertainty, you must act! If we invoke Machiavelli over our games today, we could only say, "It is better to be adventurous than cautious. Take up your dice without caution, but with violence and audacity command them!"

Written for The Bones blog carnival.