More D&D

OK, so there's more to the story of Rheamah Farsighted. That first combat was interesting and it reminded me of how tactical you can be (and have to be) in D&D. If I'd fought the kobolds with the bill instead of the short sword then she'd still be alive.

So, with the power of GM fiat, I've resurrected her and swapped some things around. I'm in two minds about the sickle as a weapon. It's not great for fighting but it fits so well with the idea of the farmer who became a warrior. I think I'll keep it for a while.

And there's more to the story.

When I sat down to roll her up, my eldest son walked past and asked me what I was doing. Before you know it he's made his own character: Michaelangelo the Mage. He got a little bored after a while (that's how long character creation takes when it's been so long between drinks) and asked me to play his first adventure for him. I re-did the kobold encounter and this time we survived. Hooray for party balance!

Later, I told him about game sessions and campaigns. I told him that there didn't have to be miniatures but that we could just imagine the story. And now he wants to keep playing "the game."

The light has come on in his eyes. He wants to know about the creatures in the monster compendium. He wants to know how to go up levels. He wants to know everything about the game.

Well, all the fun bits, anyway.

Tonight we played another encounter. This time he brought my other son in as well. The three of us continued our walk through the forest, fighting off a pack of jackals and then continuing our search for the wizard in the cottage. We found him and said that all we wanted was shelter for the night. He invited us in, fed us, and talked the night away. In the morning he taught Michaelangelo some more spells.

But the best part was this.

"When can we play again, Dad?"

Hidden rules are the worst

You've probably noticed that I've been toying around with Mobile Frame Zero a little lately, especially with my two children. They're both young so they're into whatever I'm into. We kludge together a few mechs and then set them up on the floor to play.

The older one sometimes plays War! Showdown or Pirates! Showdown on my iPad so he grasps the point of a wargame. The abundance of dice around the house probably also helps him along a bit.

But as you might imagine, young children don't usually have an interest in understanding the rules before starting play. Instead, they like to make up rules as they go along. It's like play-storming but without anyone writing anything down. For my eldest, every turn is an opportunity to make up a new rule about something.

"I rolled a 3. If I roll another 3 now then that makes 6 and I get to capture that weapon tower."

"How many 6s did you roll in the game? If you rolled enough then you get to repair your robot without having to go back to the start."

"If you capture that tower, you can put it on your robot and move seven spaces instead."

You get the idea. It made me realise something I don't especially like in gameplay: the hidden rule. I played a game of Warhammer 40K with a more knowledgeable friend one day. Everything was going just fine until I made a move and he said, "And now I get to… " Follow this with the total destruction of my Tau army.

Oh. Do you think I would have made my move the way I did if I knew that?

You might say that I should have known the rules before I started playing. True! I should have absorbed that massive fifth edition of the WH40K rulebook before I even considered playing. OK, so I kid a bit. The point is that there were surprise rules. I didn't know them all and suddenly there were more of them.

In game design I think this requires a special audience, or perhaps a better game design. When I think of a game that avoids this neatly, I'm immediately drawn to Lady Blackbird. All the rules are on the character sheets. It's great because it's simple enough to fit on a single sheet without being crowded. It even has exception based rules on each sheet, but they're also few in number.

With all that I've just written, perhaps you think I'd hate the mother of all exception based games: Munchkin. But it's just the opposite. I like that game because the exceptions are the expectations. The game is specifically about those exceptions. Players don't have to memorise them all, just be able to play them as they come up. In games with hidden rules you have to memorise them all and that drains the fun out of the game for me.

So in short:
- Games with easily presented rules are good.
- Games that include exception-based rules are good.
- Games that punish players for not memorising the encyclopaedia of rules are bad.