Pocketmod Games

I have a couple of minor games (Nobles and other ideas in the works) that might never make it to full publication. They seem like the right size for Pocketmod publication, however.

Until now I've not really considered the format, despite Michael Wenman's enthusiasm for them. However, for small idea games they might be precisely what I need.

They don't need loads of competence in layout, they just need succinct rules. The real skill is in the writing, not in reducing the font size.

Watch out for a couple of them to become available for download in the coming months. I'll put them on my games page.

Free Nobles for Everyone

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.

Nobles Sent

I mentioned before that Nobles was ready to be published. This little study in game design helped me to appreciate more about games and gaming. Perhaps the best lesson I learnt from this is to know what the boundaries of a game are, and to make sure that the game owns that space.

It's like knowing that chess is a battlefield strategy game, and that it's not a game about building train routes. Chess has its focus and should stay there. Even one famous alteration to chess still ensures that it's a battlefield strategy game.

If you want to see Nobles in print, you'll have to wait for the next issue of Here Be Gamers Extra and then print it yourself. Sometime in the future I'll make it available as a standalone PDF too.

Nobles - Ready to be unveiled

In what's become something of a kata for me, my perennial project Nobles is about to be released. Details on the format will come in time, but it's on its way.

I say that it's become a kata because it's a little project that I maintained in order to understand how games work and how people and games interact. It's never been intended as a complex or rich RPG. Rather, it's the kind of exercise one engages in in order to perfect a single technique. Those techniques can be used at a later stage to produce something more complex and interesting, but that's a larger work which requires the basic technical components to be mastered first.

So, the little kata that I call Nobles will be ready and available soon for your tabletop gaming enjoyment.

Ack! Playtesting!

Well, now I'm in a bit of trouble. I've got my two games to a point where I need to test them some more. If I follow the example of other game designers I'd get together with some local gamers to run the games and get some feedback. So now I need to hear from you. Are you interested in doing some preliminary playtesting one or both of my games? You need to be in the Brisbane region and willing to provide useful feedback. Drop me a line at andrew (dot) mg (dot) smith (at) gmail (dot) com and let me know.

Success!

I mentioned in my last post that Nobles was to be split, and split it has been. Now I have two games about the ascent to power. They're both competitive games and both without a GM. Playtesting of Nobles 1 and Nobles 2 should take place in and around Go Play Brisbane.

Speaking of which, have you registered? If not, go there now and register!

Time for a Schism

I've arrived at the conclusion that Nobles cannot be beaten into the shape I wish for it. However, it can be sliced in twain, divided into two separate games. One of them will be a simple card game and the other will be a complicated card game.

And now I need to finalise the simple Nobles (or rename it and finish it) so that I can get started on the other one.

Rules Bandaids

I'm still working on the basic ruleset for Nobles. I keep getting good ideas to make it better, but then those good ideas present different problems. Nuts. It feels like I'm going to end up with a game of bandaids, rather than a well-constructed and intentional system.

Gah. Maybe this is just a case of designer's nerves.

Art for Nobles

I was speaking with a friend of mine the other day and I brought up Gencon. After a few "what's that?" type questions, I find myself with an artist for Nobles. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Mark Peric, bassist and graphic artist.

Stealing from Grey Ranks

A game mechanic that I've been toying with in the last couple of weeks is a grid that indicates the current status of the character. Since Nobles is a game about duplicity and public image, I decided to pursue this idea so that the duplicitous nature of the characters can be tracked. After all, a smooth-talking leader could be rotten to the core, or could be genuine. Presentation and actuality are not one and the same thing.

I'd heard that Grey Ranks, by Jason Morningstar, made use of a grid arrangement as well. So I've bought a copy of the game, albeit in PDF format, to find out what he's done with it. I already have the basic concepts of my grid, but there's always a chance that his could be better than mine. If so, I would need to figure out whether I should bother making a game, or whether I should simply write a supplement for Grey Ranks rules.

Why make a game?

I've been thinking more about Nobles of late and trying to answer the question, "Why am I making this game?" I could be spending my time making adventures and scenarios instead. I could be spending my time finding more players. So why make a game?

The first thing to say is that I have no intention of making money from this game. I'm toying with the idea of just giving it away as a free PDF, or perhaps as a low-cost PDF through IPR. Nobles is not (at the moment) a game of quality equal to something like Spirit of the Century, or Dogs in the Vineyard. I don't expect that it will ever get to be that good, because that's not why I'm doing it. Also, I quite like my current employment and don't really want to invest the time to promote my game and change careers to Game Designer.

Secondly, I'm designing this game to better understand how games work. I thought about trawling the Forge and reading all the threads on game theory and game design, but I would much rather learn this by doing. I want to try and design a game that includes various features, that does the thing I want it to do. By making a game, I get to learn it the hard way, but I will learn it the complete way. The end result should be better games for my players.

Ultimately, I don't expect to become a game designer (although the story of how Kill Puppies for Satan led to Dogs in the Vineyard plays with my mind a bit), but I want to become a better GM. Making a game is part of my plan. As Judd Karlman would say, this is hitting the heavy bag.

Nobles following Mythender

It seems that Ryan Macklin has found himself in a similar position to me. Unbeknownst to you, faithful reader, I have struck an impasse in my development of Nobles. Should I make it a fully fledged RPG or just a battle game? Ryan is asking himself the same question about Mythender.

As it turns out, I had planned to take the same path. Develop the components and build an RPG on top of them. It's taking its time (in and around some more philosophical commitments) but I still plan to have a small A5 staple version ready for GenCon Oz 2008.

Nobles - The Power 19

I started working on the Power 19 list for Nobles on the weekend. Nobles is in a state of flux at the moment. I had a core mechanic that I had playtested and it seemed to work just fine. And then I had an idea about how to expand it and now I need to go through a structured process in order to make sense of it all.

The key was that originally Nobles was a game played between Nobles who were warring to claim the title of High King. And then I saw yet another documentary about the victory of Henry V at Agincourt and everything was up for grabs again. The key detail was to do with how nobles were treated in battle. In that time, such people weren't executed in battle but were captured for a ransom. This single fact now insists on being part of Nobles and I'm thrown back to the start again, with a war mechanic that works well, but with several unanswered questions. So now I'm in the process of adding a number of features to the game, including (but not limited to) a scoring system, four paths to the throne, treaties and the discovery of assassins. The last one is causing me the most problems. I have some ideas about how to implement it, but have settled on none of them thus far.

More to come as Gencon Oz approaches.

Nobles? Chilvalry?

So I started thinking about Nobles the other day and realised that there is the possibility that I could do so much more with the game. As it stands, it's a simple card game that covers the battlefield, but the more I think about it, the more I see that I could actually make this into a game about the code of chivalry. It's time to hit the research pages and see whether that's really what I want to do.

And if all goes well, I'll have a version to playtest at GenCon.