Complilation of Short Thoughts

This is me trying to purge my file of "Oh, THIS is interesting, but I don't know that I have enough to write about on it." A lot of these thoughts are around getting closer to what I want out of a game, and cutting out a lot of the fluff.

Party Creation Session Template - I like having groups of adventurers linked by shared experiences at my table - it makes it easier to integrate the group. While the first attempt at Dresden Files didn't go perfectly smoothly, it did make for a convenient backdrop to how the PCs met and interacted.  As I get older and my time becomes more valuable, I'd like to get to a lot of the meat of group interaction versus having to waste a session or two on "why am I here with these insane people again?"

Table Balance of Drama and Levity and Playing Cards to Play Cards, or to Socialize; the latter is actually more interesting for me, because of a constant conflict I have with my wife. We both love to play games, table-top, board games, or your standard card games like hearts or spades. However, we frustrate each other because our intent is different - when I play hearts, for example, I want to play hearts; I'm not there to socialize while occasionally dropping cards on the table. Socializing/talking is fine, but it is secondary to the enjoyment of the game, for her, she generally would rather socialize than play cards, so we have an inherent conflict. And that gets at the heart of these two posts - finding the right balance of gaming as a social activity because we are all friends, and getting into the meat of the subject.

Frankly, for my next game, I'm seriously contemplating trying just a beer and pretzels social event because I'm frustrated with the distractions of life.

Which probably just means I'll get one of my more serious games.

The Currency of Time - I've often said that time is the most valuable resource, because it is the only one that you cannot make more of. I'd love the idea of making informational checks (knowledge/perception) cost something so that they are valuable. But the question is how to do that - one of those is to assume some form of "fail forward" where your failures are successes, but with complications.

Quest Generation -  A very rough draft of a question generation for a hip hop RPG system that I'm following for stealing for my own purposes. This gets back to the core of "not wasting time" of "okay let's jointly, PCs and GM, set out a framework of how we want the story to go" and then let the GM, i.e., me, throw in a few twists and challenges. How does this stop wasting time, because the players won't bobble around trying to figure out what the next, we all know and can move forward without wasting time at the table wandering aimlessly with either the players trying to figure out what the GM wants them to, or the GM trying to figure out how the hell  he's supposed to work this line of reasoning into storyline.

Stealing Beliefs and Instincts for D&D, while I'm not a huge fan of the Burning Wheel system as a whole, I do love stealing bits and pieces from it. In particular, with the idea of creating three driving beliefs for the character, one for what drove them to hit the road of adventure; the second for what ties them to the overarching campaign thread; and finally, a belief about the larger goal that they want. I could see tying them to some sort of XP system ala the Keys from Shadows of Yesterday, or milestones from Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. Once again, the goal is to make it easy on everyone to get invested with what is going on at the table.

Stepping Into Character and Tripping

So several weeks ago, I had to change characters due to an intense, intimate, albeit short-lived love affair with dynamite.

Unfortunately, I'm frustrated with Rex O'Malley - I can't find the right voice for him - there's no rhythm for where he fits into the group dynamics. Initially, I thought of him as a loud, boisterous man with a certain joie de vivre - live large, live fast, and probably die in hail of bullets, monster gore and a beautiful woman under one arm and a bottle of whiskey in his mouth.

I realized the problem last night as I talked to my wife, I, semi-inadvertently, created an adrenaline junkie - semi-inadvertently in that while I didn't say "Hmm, I wonder what a Weird West adrenaline junkie would look like?" But instead, I created a man who was seeking fame, fortune, and to keep himself distracted from certain unpleasant truths. Unfortunately, since he joined up with the group, it has been fairly quiet, first a funeral and some travel, then interacting with a Southern *cough* gentleman. Last night, we dealt with an angel and some bandits, the latter would have been the right moment, but apparently dealing with an intimidating bandaged priest (who played his part beautifully) and several more angry and irritated gunslingers was a bit much.

I knew I should have just started shooting.

So, erstwhile reader(s) - how do you find your voice, when there's nothing naturally flowing forth to inspire you? Give it time and be patient? Try to create situations in which it'll come out? Modify other aspects to try and "fit" in better.

I've got some plans for the potentially long train ride west, so we shall see what happens then. It can't be quiet all the time.

Modeling Conflict: The Role of Will

A little bit ago (as this was supposed to go up last week), Rob Donoghue posted bit on Why Anime Conflict is Hard. And while I responded there, it did get at something I've been looking for in games since I was introduced to the idea that something beyond mere skills and natural abilities might affect a conflict.

The earliest incident that I was introduced to was probably White Wolf's willpower. Where your drive to succeed, you will, could actually make you better at a skill. Heroquest for all that it is a horrible system for what I actually want out of a game, is wonderful in the conceptualization - where Death Ray at 16 is just as useful as Love for my Family at 16. Where what you might feel for a person, place, or thing might be as useful as what you know what to do, or what natural ability you were born with. Unknown Armies had the three passions - Fear, Anger, and Noble. So on and so forth.

But to bring this back to the post - how do you quantify Will? How do quantify someone wanting something more (and it still, maybe not being enough).

White Wolf probably has it best - Willpower gives you more dice to throw, which generally changes the odds. A trick might be to adjudicate how many willpower points you are willing to spend. Normally you can only spend 1 willpower; however, if something you care about (like your life) is threatened you can spend 2 willpower; and ultimately, if it is something that you are willing to die to protect, you can spend 4 willpower. 

Fate allows something similar, where you can always spend a fate point for a +1; but if you have an aspect related, you can get a +2 or a reroll.

The other alternative is "What are you willing to risk?" If a mechanic could somehow push the results up a notch, but let you keep trying to succeed. However, that gets back into conflict resolution on a scene level; where the conflict is resolved and you get to determine how you succeeded. And unfortunately, that's why a lot of books/anime/movies are best resolved at the scene resolution level rather than on a task by task basis, because it is so very hard to come up with a system that can do this sort of thing on a task level.

So what's my ideal? A system that factors in the why as much as the what. That normally, everyday things are just some roll of the dice. However, when things really, truly matter, then you can accomplish amazing feats. However, especially in the nature of fighting anime, I still want someone who is merely rolling base dice, if they are good enough, to be able counteract all that will; it should not be will alone.

White Wolf's Willpower allows for some of that; unfortunately, the pool refreshes too slowly/is to limited for much of what I want. Something to ponder as I continue working on things in my brain. Because yes, of course, I am trying to build the perfect system for me.

Greatest Hits: Goals, Motivations, and Conflicts

The following post is something that I wrote years ago after attending a conference at Dragon*Con.

* * *

Or other things every character needs. Nothing that I'm going to write about here is going to be shocking, or new to experienced writers or gamers, nor is it even going to be all that earth-shattering, the author and speaker, Debra Dixon, admits that readily. What she did was write it down. And occasionally, that's all it takes. The title of the book was the shocking and thrilling: Goal, Motivation, & Conflict: The Building Blocks of Good Fiction.

Please note that when I make statements about gaming, I am talking about my own insights, the ones regarding everything else are Dixon's.