What Makes A Good Player

Because I certainly don't seem to have it. Reading my friend/sister-in-law/occasional player at my table Morgan's post on being an ender of worlds in light of what happened in the disaster of the Vampire: The Masquerade game I'm a player in makes me wonder.

I have a habit of destroying games as a player. I killed off a Deadlands game by thwarting the Devil by shooting another PC. I killed off the Changeling game by shooting a child (whose dreams were manifesting in reality), the problem being that several of the other PCs were in the child's mind trying to find a more humane solution.

And then on Monday, I accidentally destroyed the Anarch population of the DC. I didn't think my willingness to go along (OOC) with the plot of another PC would kill them all off, I figured it would be a portion, but not enough. Of course, this combined with an Angel visitation, the release of a Mummy dead set (get it?) on destroying Vampires basically made DC untenable for unliving habitation.

Oops.

Discussing aftermath, a couple characters, including my current one, are being retired. Perhaps killed off, but definitely not participating in the next arc. Discussing what to do next, the ST mentioned, "I thought your characters would be great NPCs, but not PCs."

And I'm wondering if that's because I've done most of my gaming as GM since 2001, or if I'm just bad at being a good PC, i.e., one that fits in well with the table dynamic and increases the amount of fun at the table. I've certainly tried to do so - but apparently I'm falling flat.

Some of this may just be the game - for me Vampire is a game about stasis and stability, and trying to either maintain it or disrupt it. Unfortunately, maintaining it is generally reactive and not much fun for me as a player; and disrupting it is challenging in Vampire because so many parts of the game are gated off due to how the power level works. If you are 13th Gen, you are 13th Gen - and your only hope is that you are recently enough 13th Gen that you have a technological advantage, because you are going to be at every other disadvantage at disrupting the power system.

Yes, there's a reason why I'm continually tempted by Diablerie (i.e., sucking the soul from a more powerful vampire to gain more power) in Vampire games. Unfortunately, in the sort of game where there's minimal down time, the social downside (having your soul stained with your sin) makes that a non-viable option.

I have my suspicions of where I went wrong with the characters, with Oz, he didn't have any distinctive skills as I tried to make him competent at everything, as I'd forgotten how harshly cWOD treats bare competence most of the time. Better to be very good at a few things, and figure out how to use those skills elsewhere. But otherwise, mostly his great sin was going to ground after being attacked randomly, kidnapped as bait, and rescued. The rest of the party went off to Fredericksburg, my character wanted to know what the fuck had happened, who the attackers were, and what he could do to get revenge on them.

The other character was an isolated anti-social Tremere who was good at what he was supposed to be good at - figuring out stuff, and horrible at anything social. I figured it would make for a good play - too useful to ditch, but enough of a hindrance trying to be social to make things interesting. And I think he worked fairly well within the confines of the arc, but perhaps too many hindrances.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do for the next arc - I'm waiting to see what comes out from the ST and I'll probably stick with a more physical, dynamic character. May even play someone who isn't a blood drinking fiend of the night as that's been an option - but that makes it even harder to figure out how to mix well at the table.

I'll figure out something, I usually do.

Changing What I Skim To Review Later

I realized borrowing a copy of Edge of the Empire to take a look at, I realized that I've apparently gotten old - I would have used to read through the book cover to cover to get an idea of how the game ran, what it included and what it didn't include.

Not this time. This time? I quickly flipped to the skills section to read over the few skills I actually care about the resolution system resolves, then quickly checked the basics of the rules overview to confirm what I assumed the symbols meant. Then to combat, particularly vehicle combat to see how a Star Wars game handled that particular quirk.

And really? That's about it. The rest, I don't really care about. I mean if I was prepping for a game, sure I'd read everything and do the prep work, but my assumption is that the system is fairly solid as I haven't heard too much grumbling about it (other than the joys of reading a different set of coded dice) so I'll presume the system works, by and large, for what it needs to do.

So what's left? What's left is what I actually care about. How does it handle social interaction? How does it handle investigation? How does it handle shooting and getting shot?

One of my favorite players to game with is an amazing table top thespian. She handles just about any system or role, so I look for "how does it support her play style?" not because I always want her at my table gaming (though I do), but I want a system that supports that sort of character and does so in a way that I think she'd enjoy, plus most of the problems that the players will face at my table are generally social or intellectual, so I want the game to have the tools to help mechanically solve that.

Investigation is much the same - my games tend to a lot of "find some facts, figure out what to do about it," and I just want to know what I'm in for.

Finally combat - I like my combats to be no more than about 20 minutes, and everyone gets a few turns, so how does it flow, what sort of paralysis of choice sets in. I like there be at least a few interesting choices.

How did the game do?

The game as regards social resolution is does its job, it depends on the dice to provide the non-binary solution sets; however, I feel like I'd want to have the book open continually (or create a cheat sheet) for what you can spend the different results of the dice. But that may just be the price of one pays for having the dice provide complicated answers. There are a variety of social skills, so I can have characters who are variably good at a variety of skills, rather than having one member just be the face and be able to run off one or two skills.

The game as it handles investigation is funny - it has no investigation skill, which leads to some interesting choices - rather than defaulting to "Investigation", there are skills like "computer", "streetwise" as well as "perception" and "vigilance" for your more immediate needs. I could see this getting to be a headache if I wanted someone to do actual forensics, where we start defaulting to something else. I'd want to make a decision about what that something else was early, so people knew ahead of time.

Finally combat - combat seemed to be smooth enough. Initiative is a big quirky, but easy enough to handle. Limited number of actions, and taking unusual actions seems to be handled in a practical way of, "Well it isn't this, and it isn't that, so we'll call it this catch all." And reading the vehicular rules had me thinking of ways I could be starfighter pilot, so I'll call that a win.

So all in all the system looks like it does what I like - mechanically diverse and defined character creation, the oddball dice give me all of the "yes/no/sort of" results I'm looking for in my games these days, and it isn't modern horror or high fantasy so it would be a nice change of pace.

When Will My Daughter Receive Her First Rape Or Death Threat?

My wife says before she's a teen, I fear she's right. Even if I keep her off social media, someone might find a way to threaten her because of something I've said. There's enough of that going on.

And while the catalyst for my thoughts is GamersGate, this isn't about the primary first causes of debacle, per se.

Instead, it is about the ugly side, the trolling, doxxing (posting personal information, such as address/location), death and rape threats that seem to be present any time a woman posts anything that is remotely controversial.

In the past, I've passively supported some horrible people who have done some horrible things by not speaking out clearly enough. By not calling them on their shit. And that is done, I regret, on some level, it took looking at my daughter to motivate to change my stance, but so be it. So if you are a troll, whether for the lulz or great justice, I'm done with you in my social circles.

If you support the people who do these sorts of things, expect me to call you out, I'll do it privately because no one reacts well to being publicly called out.

If you associate with various forums online that generally promote/generate/originate these behaviors, I'm going to be wary of you.

The only way to eliminate activities is to make it socially unacceptable to engage in them.

That is my goal - to make this behavior online as socially unacceptable as casual racism - I don't believe I can stamp it out, but I can eliminate it from my social circles. And that will have to be enough.

I need to apologize for my part in assisting in that culture - and it is thanks to a post by Kathy Sierra who was apparently a target of Weev's tender ministrations. Yes, that Weev. Internet folk hero for his time in jail, and general internet asshole. I knew him before he was an internet darling, he went to the same college I once attended, and we were at the same gatherings. I socialized with him, not closely, but enough I knew what he was like online.

"Eh, he's just an asshole online," I used that to shrug off comments, plus I wasn't close to him.

And that enabled him to some degree. No, there's nothing I could have done to restrict him or stop him. My friends speak admirably of him in someways, but always with the caveats "well he is an asshole and a troll online." And you know what? While I am content that justice was done in case, in my opinion, but I'm done lauding him in whatever small fashion I did. No more posting articles where he shows up. No more commenting on other people doing the same. This may be a bit of closing the barn door after all the animals have fled, but it is what I can do at this time.

If someone is an asshole and troll online? They are an asshole and jerk. The extra caveats aren't needed. We spend enough of our time interacting online that there should be no difference in our expectations of our behaviors online and on the street.

Some of this is fighting rape culture. Some of this is fighting the culture of online anonymity. No, this won't come easily, it won't come quickly. But it can be done. It will take a lot of effort. It will take community action.

So this is my start. Keep me honest.

Why I Game Versus Doing Anything Else

So Kjatar on Twitter asked "Why DO you guys game? What is it you look for that makes a game memorable?" And I realized that there are three primary reasons why I game: Iconic moments, wish/power fulfillment fantasies, and hard choices.

Iconic Moments

Iconic moments are those moments in the game that just stand out months or years later. They are the ones that we tells stories about. Frequently, they are when things went wrong for the PCs and yet they pulled out a victory, and other times they are just high drama. But these moments are what I crave, I'm not huge on slice of life gaming, I want to be out interacting actively in the world.

My favorite moment is from my Exalted game, where one of the players set up a long game over several months, and until the last moment I wasn't sure whether his character was going to betray the party for his former incarnation's now-undead lover plans of world domination. He sold it so well, because apparently the player didn't know whether he was going to betray the party or not until his character couldn't convince the BBEG (Big Bad Evil Gal) to give up her vengeance and run away together.

And it was just beautifully sold, with the dramatic stabbing through the back in front of the rest of the party who had arrived to confront them, in what would probably have been a doomed attempt. The collective silence was amazing to behold.

There were a few moments like that as well in my Adventure! game, generally involving the same player, which probably means I should invite him more often.

Iconic moments can't be created intentionally, but I believe the circumstances can be set-up so that they are more often, the players have to have agency, they have to be allowed to try things. Limiting their options, limits their sense of agency and how badass and dramatic they are feeling. Yes, there's something to be said for accomplishing over adversity, but if every victory feels by the skin of their teeth, you get a different game where seeing the sun rise is the victory.
 

Power & Wish Fulfillment

I've said it before, I'm a systems guy. I like playing with the toys within a gaming system, and generally those "toys" are the cool gadgets and gewgaws that the game gives the players. I want to feel powerful and competent, not goofy and barely functional in the world.

And some of this is shallow. Plots plots that leave me stripped of my abilities, or don't give me shiny new toys, well, eventually leave me with a  "grass is greener". I occasionally wonder if this is a result of playing something close to "Zero to Hero" even in point buy games, I'd love to play a thought experiment of "Create the character you want to play" with no real guidelines on "balancing". No clue how that would affect my play style because so far I've generally only seen a single game that really allows for it, and that was Cortex Plus Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. I occasionally get tired of not playing the character that I want to play, but the character that might grow into the character I want to play.

Perhaps a touch shallow and not proper form for someone who loves telling the story, perhaps, but hey, I didn't ever say I was all about the story.

Hard Choices

I love the idea of having decisions to make - whether or not it is between two good things or two bad things. I love exploring what these ideas say about the characters we are playing at the table. I see that there are 3 general choices:

1. Good vs. Good - Good vs. Good is all about opportunity costs. You can't have both good things, so which one does your character (and you in that role) feel is the best good. A great way to cause drama and decisions that don't leave the table hating the GM.
2. Good vs. Bad - This set is generally harder to make interesting. Generally, it has to take the flavor of "Good For Others and Bad For Me" vs. "Bad for Others and Good for Me"; otherwise, the decision isn't hard to make. And even then, most players will optimize for the "Good for others", because I feel choosing the latter will get them unduly punished for selfishness.
3. Bad vs. Bad - The classic "Do you rescue your girlfriend or the school bus full of children?" And this choice is the easiest to create in the game, but over done it creates the greatest irritation because it is such an obvious heartstring ploy.

Secondary Reasons

In the same conversation, a friend raised two more points - being with friends, and having a good time.

For me, being with friends is secondary only because there are so many other ways that I can have fun and be with friends. Gaming with friends is definitely an enhancement for my gaming, and can generally make up for the some of the major reasons why I game not happening. However, ultimately, gaming is an easily substituted activity for being with friends - I can have dinner, gatherings, board gaming, play cards, bowl, shared chores/work, and have a great time with them.

As far as having a good time, this is a catch-all - that sort of falls into the other categories. There are so many different ways that I can have a good time, and that hitting my big three are why I have a good time with gaming.

I hate naming things.

So I suck at naming places, people, things. Absolutely horrible at it. Linguistics was never my strong point, and while onomastics was always a good way to write a quick five or ten page paper in undergrad, I think it may have broken my ability to come up with syllables that sound "acceptable" to each other.

So I'm never sure what to do - I can go with nearly purely descriptors for names, and keep everything fairly fairly straight forward, or if I want alien, I can open up a translator with a particular language and start translating terms until I find one I like. As long as I avoid common languages, I will probably be okay with anyone at my table saying, "Um, that's totally the wrong variant/intent behind that word," because my only defense is "It may be, but it is the one that I can pronounce the easiest!"

So folks who name characters, places, things something other than good English names, how do you go about doing it?

Closing Out A Game

I hate ending games improperly. I love my multi-year sagas that end with some form of closure. Unfortunately, my Dresden Files game isn't going to get one of those endings.

I realized after running Exalted and then trying to run a game of Reign that I needed to swap genres. I needed to tell different stories to cleanse the palate and recharge my creative juices.

But this time it would be different, right? I ended my Changeling game just before the birth of my daughter, and then took about six months off. That should have been enough to let me go whole hog into my Dresden Files game.

Should have. Would have. Could have. Wasn't.

So today, I sent an email to my players confessing that I'd hit burn out and that after the current arc, I was going to take a break. And of the four, one had to drop shortly to up her athletic training, and another had the opinion of "if it isn't fun, why do it?"

Because it is fun, I just wasn't inspired. I had NEAT ideas on what to do next, but I couldn't find the motivation to move from the opening sequence to the neat imagery I saw as key points (subject to change to player intervention).

So what's next? A short break, maybe some board game ideas, then something different. Right now the lead contenders are Marvel Heroic Roleplaying or 13th Age for some good casual fun. Only War is definitely an appealing thought, but I'm not sure I could get the right folks for what I'd want to do for it.

But first? A break from running, or thinking about running games for a bit.

What Do The Players Do?

I feel like I have trouble describing what is critical in my game for people to be able to do. The core of many games could be considered: 1) Fight; 2) Explore; and 3) Socialize. I think this came up most  with the D&D Next play test; however, I also saw it in reference to a Marvel Super Heroes hack where instead of "Solo/Buddy/Team," the split was along "Fight/Explore/Socialize" dynamic.

For my games, I'd probably alter the default list slightly and add a fourth category: 1) Fight; 2) Explore/Movement; 3) Investigate; and 4) Slice of Life. To break it down:

• Fight: Fighting is easy, doing harm and avoiding harm done to you. You can scale this up to size of the fight and range.
• Explore/Movement: Movement within spaces, as well as getting places in particular methods. Primarily for overcoming environmental obstacles, and the occasional chase scene.
• Investigate: Replaces social in my eyes, because generally people don't generally talk to just talk, or rather, they do, but dice don't hit the table then, they talk to find out stuff. Plus, the good ole "search the room for the clue" schtick.
• Slice of Life: My games seems to have a lot of the players just wanting to explore the world, set up merchant empires and other things that don't bring them into conflict with other people, but may generate plot lines that do so.

I think the problem with this set-up comes that Fight/Explore are what you do; Investigate is what you do; Social is how you do it, so if perhaps we added a fifth category of "Influence" that would make more sense for when I tell people what my games are generally about is the following, in order of game time used: Investigation, Influence/Fighting, Exploration, and Slice of Life. That seems a better representation of at least how my Changeling and Dresden Files games represent themselves.

Things I Need To Work On: Pacing and Scene Control

Despite primarily being a GM for the last decade and change, there are some things still I don't do all that well. For example, I suck at in-character voices/accents that aren't absurdly silly. I can do some wonderfully good insect demon, scary little demon girls, and the similar ilk. And at this point, I never going to be a Nicole and master those particular theatrical arts.

However, something, if I'm going to continue being a GM most of the time - I need to work more on my pacing. It showed up in my Exalted game, it showed up in my Changeling game, and it is showing up in my Dresden Files game (oddly enough my Adventure! game didn't have many of those moment, but some of that may be distant hindsight being rose filtered, or a bunch of really awesome players, this being my blog, I'll go with the latter).

So let's talk about what makes a scene. You can get advice all over the place, and admittedly fiction isn't always a good translation to gaming (because you only get one chance, generally to have the scene, and you don't get an editor to review and revise it to make the dialogue sing), the best summary I've seen is that a scene has three purposes:

1. Establish or reveal facts about a character;
2. Establish or reveal facts about the setting; or 
3. Move the plot forward.

It is the third purpose, moving the plot forward, that's my sticking point, as the first one is more dependent on the players as far as establishing facts goes, though certain situations may be engineered to bring that about; and the setting details, I think come out in play fairly clear. But my players are free to argue with me.

I think my problem comes down to the third one, where I'm stuck on how to encourage my players to move the plot forward. One the best examples of this was in my Exalted game, where there was a Big Bad Deathlord, nigh indestructible, though each had an Achilles Heel, through various hijinks it came out that this Big Bad's weakness was Love.

Now me as a ST figured this wouldn't be too difficult a solution. I was willing to go with just about (note that caveat) any solution that fit within the theme of Love, figure out what the Deathlord loved and lost (ala Rosebud), or social-fu her into loving something and using that to defeat her. A session or two pass, and the players are stumped, and I think had gotten to "Puppies are love, right, so let's just throw puppies at her." Shortly they bumped into a Fae, with a sword named "Love", which WAS the Fae's emotional of Love forged into a blade, and many sessions later, we had a PC fake betraying the party to be his love of a previous life, and then slide Love into her.

A bit hokey? Yes. But it seemed the only solution that worked.

Maybe it is just me being bad at figuring out what motivates my players - my Changeling game became synonymous in my head for doing it's best to negate Chandler's Law, every time I'd throw a direct threat with some loose ends for them to follow-up on, they'd negate the direct threat, but ignore the threads. Even when those threads would burn them in following sessions.

Maybe I'm just not blatant enough. Whatever the reason, this is something I'm going to need to focus on so my players stop getting bogged down in the beginning and middle of arcs - just not sure how to do that without it feeling too forced or like a trail bread crumbs for the players to follow.

Mission Based Gaming Fantasies

I'm getting fidgety with my gaming. I keep having thoughts of running something more episodic in nature, versus the saga-esque nature of my Dresden Files game. Basically, run a campaign where there's a more defined beginning, middle, and end, versus the shifting boundaries of how my current game is settling where there's rarely an easily defined path to success.

And I'd like to change that for another game, not that I have the time to run one. A game where there was an assumption of competence and success. Plus, some of this is gamer ADHD where there are all these neat systems out there that I want to try out. For example:

• Cortex+: either Leverage or Marvel Super Heroes. The latter is probably better suited for what's in my head which is more "beer and pretzels" of getting a few friends together and gaming without needing to remember every detail of what happened last session.
• Night's Black Agents: The temptation here is because my games keep being about investigation, investigation, and more investigation, and Gumshoe is supposed to be about the investigation - it is designed around it, and this iteration has a more robust combat system to back it up. Probably wouldn't use the setting precisely as written, but there'd definitely be something of the Weird™ at play.
• Home Brew Mercenaries: Inspired by listening to some actual play podcasts of a Mass Effect game involving a mercenary company, while I don't want to play the same system (modified nWOD), but the idea of playing a game with a group that has a mercenary company to control and build up, as well as playing the individual mercenary, appeals to me

Some of this is in reaction to something I was reading of FATE where it best supports when the players have a stronger vision, and the GM works within that framework, this would be within the notion of reversing that dynamic where the GM has a stronger vision of how the game goes (by controlling the missions with input from the players) so there will hopefully be less of the players "grasping around in the dark" trying to find a workable solution to the challenge.

Borderlands vs. Deadlands

I should love the Gunzerker in Borderlands 2. Abilities based around surviving and wielding two large rapid fire guns and laughing maniacally? Yeah, I should be all over that shit.

However, in reality? Nope, I'm all about playing the low-risk percentage game of sniping at a distance and ensuring that there's plenty of room between me and the bad guys. PLENTY of room. In the first Borderlands game my primary weapons were a sniper rifle and a rocket launcher - my special ability? Punch things repeatedly. Just a touch of a intended vs. actual play style mismatch there.

However, sit me at the table and I'm FAR more likely to do something reckless. Why? Because it is fun, because it livens up the story, because there's a motivation other than shoot and loot. There's a purpose to the recklessness.

All gets back to Robin D. Laws' player types - Borderlands 2 brings out my tactical side, "What's the lowest risk method to accomplishing my goals" despite the penalty for failure, death, being so minuscule; whereas gaming at a table, I'll do something foolish for a good story despite the penalty for failure, death and/or loss, being so very final.

In short, death/defeat in Borderlands is boring and annoying so I avoid it. The kind of death and defeat I get in gaming, if meaningful, can be dramatic and engaging so I'm willing to risk it. Just something that came up last night as I started on my third character in Borderlands 2 as none of them have really "gripped" me as fun.

Rules, Again.

I'm a rules guy. I love having the process defined, boundaries explained, and expectations explicit.

So yesterday on Twitter there was a brief exchange regarding rules and game balance:

@rdonoghue: Starting to suspect that the foundation of game balance is the assumption that your're kind of a jerk.
@byharryconnolly: Watching my son play his homebrew rpg w/ his buddy, it becomes clear that you only need rules to control ppl you cann't trust. [sic. -Editor.]
@rdonoghue: that'a the nut. [sic. -Editor.]

And I suppose it is correct for an overly broad usage of the term "trust" - I trust that everyone at this table interprets the same way that I do, I trust that everyone is willing to agree to the same expectations, I trust that we're all willing to work together to mediate differences - that sort usage of the word trust versus my initial read, which admittedly was "I trust you are not out to get me."

But here's the problem with all of that - good, well-meaning people can still disagree. Now you can centralize the authority in the GM (rulings), leave it to a table vote, or any other number of ways to determine what the appropriate solution to the conflict is going to be.

However, to make things fair and to save time, it is probably recommended that these rulings get written down so that in six months you can go "So how did we fix this LAST time we bumped into this situation?" And at that point you have a rule and thus a process.

That's all rules are folks, they aren't scary, they aren't the enemy, they are a formalized process for how situations are expected to be resolved. And folks are free to deviate from the process, it isn't like there's an external RPG Audit team that's going to swing by your home and go "And on the night of the 11th, did you follow the correct procedure for resolving Andrew's persuasion check again the king?"

Maybe I'm just a low trust individual. I know I have issues when the rules, and thus my expectations, get changed half way through anything, because that's how I figure out what I'm going to do, "Wait last time you said that this happened, and now it works this other way? Can I have some consistency?" Yeah, guess I AM a low trust individual. I just don't trust anyone to be fair and consistent without a formal structure over the long haul, as long as "fair and consistent" is defined as something beyond a de facto "of course the rulings are fair and consistent as decided."

Perfect System: Genre Matters

Yesterday's post stemmed from a friend asking me after I got done discussing the short coming in my current Dresden Files game, "So what IS your favorite gaming system?" My knee jerk response was "For what setting?"

Genre matters a great deal for me and the system. Even something as simple as the base dice mechanic, for me, changes how I perceive and internalize a game.

For example, a game that allows for "exploding" dice (such as Classic Deadlands, L5R/7th Sea, or World of Darkness) mean that every roll has a potential for extreme results. Other games, like the Cortex+ system, the results will be within a certain spectrum of results - one gets better results by adding more dice to the equation. And in D&D there's a 5% chance of rolling a 20 (the meaningfulness of which varies from rules set to rules set and table to table depending on in/formal house rules).

Similarly, a system should incorporate what it considers important into the rules. Unknown Armies has an entirely different feel to how it approaches madness than does Call of Cthulhu. Or for investigations, Gumshoe's system of spending currency to make declarations versus Wick's Houses of the Blooded where successes on a roll allow you to declare another fact to be true, even if you lost the conflict.

What does it boil down to - rules matter for creating the reality that the players create a narrative within. If the genre calls for over the top action, roof top chases, and "devil may care" antics, but the system penalizes any sort of risky maneuver with penalties, then there is a disconnect; or on the other side, if you are seeking to play grim, dark horror that leaves the players/characters feeling alone and in the dark; however, the dice allow for amazing swings of luck, or some other mechanic that allow them to pervert the threads of doom (chips from Deadlands) then you remove some of the horror because you provide a way out.

So why am I pondering all this? For the usual reasons - my life is slowing down enough so I'm playing with developing a game system. But I'll be honest - I'm more of a heavy adapter than a creator of new stuff. Take some stuff from this game, take some stuff from that game, take some of my own "What do I want" from my own attempts and piece it all together.

Right now there are two genre occupying my mental design space. The first is a more classical fantasy game that is designed around how I tend to run games - heavy on the every day, social activities, a fair bit of investigation, with violence not too common. Mostly, I want this game to be about using what drives a person for and against them. I want determining their motivations to be an important part, and figuring out how to use it against them to be even more critical in the success of plans. However, I want it to laid over a fairly traditional looking system of attributes and abilities. This game I'd want to support my more traditional longer running arcs and stories and allow for more growth and change in the characters. My current version is using Cortex+ as its inspiration. The core questions I'd want to ask here is "What drives you to succeed?"

The second one is far less developed, but it is all due to an actual play podcast of a Mass Effect game. The game itself uses the World of Darkness as a backbone, but I look at the idea of running short 2-3 session arcs that have clear mission format and want to play around with that concept. I'm still not sure what questions I want to ask here for the system, perhaps it is the home for my nascent idea of "What are you willing to risk to succeed?" I'd want something quick to generate pools of dice to roll to maintain the kinetic nature of the game, as well as something that allows for more differences in tools (i.e., weapons, armor, and other tools have more of an effect on the game play than I normally care about).

What is the "perfect" game system?

I've been trying to answer the question "what is my perfect game system" for years. And I keep failing to find one or develop one for myself. But I was asked again recently and figured I'd actually write it out. All thoughts, statements, what-have-you, discussed here can be assumed to be prefaced with a "for me" as there's no perfect for all people system.

This got long.

Gaming Podcasts?

I need more gaming podcasts.

Why? Because I've finally found a situation in which I'll listen to them - at work. For some reason, I don't get annoyed at them at work versus at home, or in the car.

Right now I'm listing to a U.K.'s gaming table play a home brew of Mass Effect campaign. And it has me itching to play in that world, enough that I'm being tempted to play the video games, which I've tried and failed at before.

So does anyone out there have any good gaming-focused podcasts? Less so rambling, and more focused on either playing at the table or focused discussions?

Rambling and Pondering on Stunts

Normally I'd apologize for two months of silence, but I've been busy with family (a couple of birthdays) and focusing on other areas of my life. Good stuff, but it has kept me busy.

But I have been gaming. The Deadlands game run by a good friend of mine is still going like gangbusters as we are coming closer to resolving a/the major storyline. My huckster is doing fine for all that he's grappling with what might be something beyond mere lust, and the fact that he may have a demon living inside of him.

The same friend is trying to start an Eclipse Phase (well the bare bones of the setting) game, set pre-Fall, and it is going to be a Leverage/Ocean's 11 style crime game; what should be folks used to living in the grey areas of the law doing good things for good people.

I'm looking forward to the game, now that character creation is over. It was painful. So many points to spend and variable rates of costs. Just so painful. I transferred to a spreadsheet generator and discovered I had another 100 points to spend. Whoops.

The other thing that struck me was how you differentiated characters - skills, advantages, flaws, and equipment. I just kept looking for "stunts" or something similar to change how I use "guns" versus how this other guy uses "guns".

And as I get settled into my job (gee only took almost 6 months), I find myself playing around with system creation more and the idea of modifying or creating something useful for my table. Something that works well with what I want to do, and encourages people to play in the way that I want them to play at my table. Something that rewards a character having motivations and connections to the world around them. I'm no Rob Donoghue, but luckily I'm more than willing to steal liberally.

Now I can see why Eclipse Phase creators decided to have the only variable on skill usage being "So what specialization do you get +10%" in. They have around 50 skills (and that's counting all the skills such as Piloting that specific focuses that must be taken as one skill), and coming up with all the variable usages would have been insane. And also, not what the game is about - it isn't about what you know, it is more about interacting with the world and the horror out there.

I'm going to try and be better about writing here, even if it is just small random gaming updates of what's going on inside my head. We'll see how long that lasts.

Yeah, I'm a Rules Guy

I'm a process guy. Even says that if you click my bio "process-oriented" - I speak words like repeatable, RACI, CMMI, ISO without batting an eye. So I find the discussion of "Rules vs. Rulings" interesting, because it is something that I fight with every day in my job, people going "Why do we have to define how we do it, we just do it!"

Much of this has kicked off with a post by Monte Cook, discussing how, in his mind it is better to give the GM the power to adjudicate within a broad context is the ideal. A friend of mine from college has frequently been on a kick of giving the GM more flexibility to adjudicate within the system, that the GM should have the ability to decide how things end.

Me? Not so much. I want a tighter, more robust rules set. Perhaps this makes me an immature gamer; so be it. I prefer to think about it as "What do I want to spend my time at the table doing - think what the most fair resolution is, while trying to maintain what I did last time and why OR doing what I actually enjoy.

And I can understand the preference for a rulings-based system. It moves a lot of the effort from the system designers to the GMs, where it can be tailored to the table that they are sitting at. Unfortunately, with what I have seen in my workplaces, depending on a strong project manager works wonderfully until that project manager goes away, and then there's nothing. Or what happens if the project manager has a bad day?

So why my preference for rules over rulings? Rules give everyone the same explicit understanding for how something is supposed to work. No, not everything can be codified into a rules set, but there should be some three major items that a system should try to codify:

1. How does a conflict start?
2. How does a conflict resolve?
3. How do we know when a conflict ends?

All rules/rulings should be to answer those three questions. My preference is just to have more done on the front end and not the back end. Why?

Because I'm mortal. I have my good days and my bad days. Because I can be very good at thinking on my feet and tying someone up in verbal knots.

But I don't want it to be my social abilities to whine, persuade, and convince the GM whether my character succeeds, I want my character's skills to be put to the test. I've quoted it before and I'll quote it again, "You can let the dice decide or let the GM decided, this goes for any type of resolution from social mechanics to hitting with a sword to finding a trap." And I just prefer to let the dice decide how the resolution of conflict goes.

Admittedly, that doesn't actually STOP anything from being dependent on the rulings or rules; because you could still have dice based resolution. The only question is where do you want the determinations to be made, on the front end, and codified within the text the rules, or left to the back end for each table to decide?

Frankly, I like knowing what I'm supposed to be doing before I get to the point where I need to make a decision.

Choose Your Poison: Gaming Group Size

Late last week, I was nodding along as I read this post on why a having a small group was great for gaming when you are older, and why three was a good base "ground floor" number.

It makes sense - fewer schedules to coordinate; and as noted in the article, three allows you to cover the three basic areas of competence in many games - hitting, magicing, and sneaking. With fewer players it is easier to give each more screen time and do more in-depth, character-focused arcs.

However, as my Dresden game demonstrates, going this small means that there's a minimum amount of room for schedule snafus. Sunday AM, one player had to cancel due to a small family emergency, and boom, there's a third of the regular folks at my table. Not his fault, but the arc is sort of starring him as well, so if he wasn't there, a lot of the hanging plot is focused around what his character brings to the table, so even MORE troublesome than normal. Then I lost my second player due to other unforeseen circumstance, and I was down to just a 1/3 of my table. So I called game.

If it had been a more stereotypical six player game and I'd lost two players, I probably could have continued with the arc. Plus with a larger group, the likelihood that the story arc would have been focused around a particular player versus a particular issue would have been less.

So what's better? As always, it is "It depends." What are your goals as a group, what stories are you interested in telling? There's no better or worse, just what works for your group.

I'd argue that if you want to tell heavily character driven arcs, where each player has a critical role then you either need to be okay with not playing every time you have something scheduled, or have an inordinately reliable group.

If you are willing to play with a larger table, and know that 1-2 people are going to be missing, then a plot that is more group focused versus character driven is probably wiser. That way if Sir McGuffin's player has to go into work, the game can still go on because the plot is not dependent on his particular relationships. Plus you'll have enough duplication of roles that a single missed person shouldn't provide a critical weakness.

Rolling the Bones

Steve D is reviewing Gumshoe over at his place, and his latest post raised a couple of interesting turns of phrase that I 1) wanted to share; and 2) I wanted to talk about.

What I Find Horrific

Wednesday was my usual Deadlands game and I had a great time there, but it did cause me to realize something - I'm a horrible player for horror games (consonance for fun and profit!).

A lot of horror is built around disempowering the protagonist. And that doesn't make me feel afraid or nervous, it irritates me, rather than causing me to want to escape my deep-seated reaction is to turn and charge.

For me, the horror in games is the consequences of choices made - having to make horrible choices versus having gruesome things happen to my character, especially if there's no control over it. "This horrible thing happens to you." "Do I get to try to avoid it?" "No, there's no escape." "Oh, well fine then."

It is probably why I don't like horror movies much - they aren't scary - they can be startling and cause me to jump and react; they can be gruesome and cause me flinch or become nauseated; but horror? Fear? Scared? Not really.

For me horror are those moments when someone looks around them and say, "My god, what have I done?" That's horror. Shock gruesomeness doesn't horrify me, nor do bad things happening to me that I have no control over. But something horrible happening that I could have prevented? Now that's horrifying because then I'm an agent of the awfulness that on some level - it is my fault. Remove agency and you don't have horror, you have life.

This isn't to say anything bad about the GM, I'm the one who can't do horror games. But I've should have realized that, even in Call of Cthulhu games I tend to be a fighter, and I tend to make choices that interact with the plot versus avoiding it in an attempt to save my life/sanity.

Plus it is a game where the fun for me comes from interacting in the world. Sitting somewhere safe makes for a an alive protagonist, but not much fun. Just some sleepy, pre-work thoughts on horror.

I have to be insane...

Because I'm contemplating running a game, basically seven months after I feeling I was burnt out.

I want to try out Dresden Files - one because I enjoy modern urban fantasy; and two, the Fate system appeals to my theoretical preferences. It would be my first choice.

Eclipse Phase could be a lot of fun, I just worry about finding a group who wants to do the number crunching for  character creation. It would probably be the easiest to do episodically.

Smallville looks interesting for the creation mechanics, but I'm not sure what to do with drama-centric superhero themed game as a GM. It can do more, but I don't have it in me to generate enough stuff to do some other genre.

Basically I want to run some small group 3-4 players games, where the players have a lot authorial privilege to do stuff beyond the straight forward plot. I've been in a couple small games where it seems the smallness allows there to be a different interchange as people play off each other.

I'll probably return to this later, but I really should be focusing on doing work.

We'll see how