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.
Showing posts with label Theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theory. Show all posts
Monday, January 9, 2012
Friday, January 6, 2012
Story Arc Design
This is continuation of my theft of John Adamus' piece on The Beat of Game Design. The first part dealt with Adamus' five questions of designing a game, i.e., what are the rules designed to accomplish. The second part deals with how is the game structure - what makes up the beginning, middle, and end of an arc, and how does it feed into the next cycle?
Stealing a page: Game Design
I'm going to steal a page from my friend Stu and start using this blog to save links to neat gaming articles I find on the web. I would have used Reader once upon a time for that; however, the share function is dead, so it is too much a pain to add a single article and then add to Facebook.
Fred Hicks (of Evil Hat) linked to article which I found useful for two different concepts. The first is game design. I am a system monkey and every so often, generally when work is slow, tinker with a concept or three. No real reason behind it, just for the joy of tinkering. I generally call this my Artemis project because it'll definitely me shooting the moon if it ever goes anywhere.
But I digress. As I do. Let's get into the actual piece.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
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.
* * *
Please note that when I make statements about gaming, I am talking about my own insights, the ones regarding everything else are Dixon's.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Riffing off a theme: Experience Points
I apologize if this is something jargon rich/disjointed. I'm trying to capture ideas off a post-it note before I forget entirely what the coded phrases meant.
Rob Donoghue discussed a week and change ago a method for handing out roleplay and exploration rewards. It was a neat concept of ways to quantify what rewards a PC/party gets for doing stuff outside of beating things/people/animals up and taking their loot. While it has a strong D&D focus, at the end he mentions White Wolf and "I'd forgo levels in favor of rating things from 1-5 dots and just be a little more stringy about how they level up.
Historically, most of my gaming has been White Wolf in one form or another. However, I've always had issues with XP rewards, mostly because they scale too fast, and as my Exalted game demonstrated, my players are more than capable of slow playing to get more XP.
For every major plot element important to a particular character, group, campaign, etc, you write it down; and then you rate it from 1 to 5:
The five phrases are (and each one can only be accomplished once):
As I look over this it looks like it would cause XP to given in large globs. The first 2-3 phrases can happen fairly quickly and grant anywhere from 6-30 experience points depending on how the session goes. However, one would presume that generally the Development phrase would last longer and be a bit of a dry spell for XP afterwards as they work through those phases.
Rob Donoghue discussed a week and change ago a method for handing out roleplay and exploration rewards. It was a neat concept of ways to quantify what rewards a PC/party gets for doing stuff outside of beating things/people/animals up and taking their loot. While it has a strong D&D focus, at the end he mentions White Wolf and "I'd forgo levels in favor of rating things from 1-5 dots and just be a little more stringy about how they level up.
Historically, most of my gaming has been White Wolf in one form or another. However, I've always had issues with XP rewards, mostly because they scale too fast, and as my Exalted game demonstrated, my players are more than capable of slow playing to get more XP.
For every major plot element important to a particular character, group, campaign, etc, you write it down; and then you rate it from 1 to 5:
1 - Plot element is only important to a particularly character
2 - Plot element is only important to the group
3 - Plot element is lightly important to the campaign
4 - Plot element is moderately important to the campaign
5 - Plot element is critically important to the campaign
The five phrases are (and each one can only be accomplished once):
Opening (1xp) - The Plot Element is introduced into the game.The key element here is that the plot element is not a person/place or thing; it is something to be resolved; it is a challenge, a conflict, a mystery to be solved. It needs to be an action, so that if players want the more XP cookie, then they need to be moving stuff towards resolution.
Trigger (2xp) - The Plot Element is afoot; first chance for the characters to delve into the plot.
Development (3xp) - Action is rising; further developments, investigations, and
Climax (4xp) - The decision is made to confront/vex/counter/fully engage the plot element
Resolution (5xp) - The plot element is brought to some sort of conclusion; for now.
As I look over this it looks like it would cause XP to given in large globs. The first 2-3 phrases can happen fairly quickly and grant anywhere from 6-30 experience points depending on how the session goes. However, one would presume that generally the Development phrase would last longer and be a bit of a dry spell for XP afterwards as they work through those phases.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
How to Run a Convention Game from Someone Who Sucks at Running Convention Games
The last bit of writing to squeeze out of the Eclipse Phase one shot. The title isn't an exaggeration, I suck at running convention games, I can never balance the time slot requirements to the amount of stuff to do with the plot seeming not too unreasonable and not crazy.
The two key items I'd say for running a convention game are to: 1) Know the rules; 2) Know the module/adventure you are running - everything else can be generalized to running any game. Note by convention game I mean a one or two shot game run in a specific time slot (usually 4 hours) with a group of people who probably don't know each other.
Key Item #1: Know the Rules
Now if I'm the DM in a long running campaign, I don't neeeeeed to know the rules. I should know the rules; but given a general set of players, I may be able to outsource detailed rules knowledge to one or more of the players, and/or trust them to each handle their own character specific rules themselves. You may not be able to, stories abound of DMs who have players that can't be bothered to learn the rules, but even through osmosis you'll pick something up.
With a convention game, you can't guarantee everyone is going to know the rules, or even if they know the basics, whether they will know the exceptions to the rules. This means you must be on top of the rules, and if you are modifying them to be easier to run in the module, you need to announce that up front.
The Eclipse Phase GM failed to do that - he didn't know and didn't like the combat rules for an adventure that was advertised as combat heavy. These things do not work well together.
Key Item #2: Know the Module/Adventure
Know what you are running. This is probably one of those that could be more universalized to any game, but there's more slack in a campaign, a single bad session is unlikely to deep six the game assuming a good group of gamers. But yeah, I had a poor time of it at the game because the module was poorly designed (it was apparently an unadvertised beta test) and the guy running it hadn't gotten it with enough lead time to know it properly. Now you can, sometimes, get away with either knowing the module, or having a well written module but not both, but having neither dooms you to failure.
As a side note - if you are going to be using pre-generated characters make sure they fit the theme of the game, nothing is worse than being the team of bio-engineered sex slaves in the middle of the fifteenth fire fight of the night or the grumpy mercenary cabal forced to deal with subtle politicians. Well it can be fun, but it requires lots of thought and planning to integrate properly.
Bonus Item #3: Sell your Adventure Correctly
I wrote an entire post on the taxonomy of adventures previously, so I won't go too heavily into this; however, ultimately, labeling the game provides certain expectations of themes and tropes that are going to be used. Now you can either play to the themes, which is highly suggested, by me, for a short 4 hour game, or you can try to be cute and play against type. But once again, if you are going to do the latter in a 4 hour game, you need to be very, very sure of what you are doing.
The two key items I'd say for running a convention game are to: 1) Know the rules; 2) Know the module/adventure you are running - everything else can be generalized to running any game. Note by convention game I mean a one or two shot game run in a specific time slot (usually 4 hours) with a group of people who probably don't know each other.
Key Item #1: Know the Rules
Now if I'm the DM in a long running campaign, I don't neeeeeed to know the rules. I should know the rules; but given a general set of players, I may be able to outsource detailed rules knowledge to one or more of the players, and/or trust them to each handle their own character specific rules themselves. You may not be able to, stories abound of DMs who have players that can't be bothered to learn the rules, but even through osmosis you'll pick something up.
With a convention game, you can't guarantee everyone is going to know the rules, or even if they know the basics, whether they will know the exceptions to the rules. This means you must be on top of the rules, and if you are modifying them to be easier to run in the module, you need to announce that up front.
The Eclipse Phase GM failed to do that - he didn't know and didn't like the combat rules for an adventure that was advertised as combat heavy. These things do not work well together.
Key Item #2: Know the Module/Adventure
Know what you are running. This is probably one of those that could be more universalized to any game, but there's more slack in a campaign, a single bad session is unlikely to deep six the game assuming a good group of gamers. But yeah, I had a poor time of it at the game because the module was poorly designed (it was apparently an unadvertised beta test) and the guy running it hadn't gotten it with enough lead time to know it properly. Now you can, sometimes, get away with either knowing the module, or having a well written module but not both, but having neither dooms you to failure.
As a side note - if you are going to be using pre-generated characters make sure they fit the theme of the game, nothing is worse than being the team of bio-engineered sex slaves in the middle of the fifteenth fire fight of the night or the grumpy mercenary cabal forced to deal with subtle politicians. Well it can be fun, but it requires lots of thought and planning to integrate properly.
Bonus Item #3: Sell your Adventure Correctly
I wrote an entire post on the taxonomy of adventures previously, so I won't go too heavily into this; however, ultimately, labeling the game provides certain expectations of themes and tropes that are going to be used. Now you can either play to the themes, which is highly suggested, by me, for a short 4 hour game, or you can try to be cute and play against type. But once again, if you are going to do the latter in a 4 hour game, you need to be very, very sure of what you are doing.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Types of Adventure!
Or my continuing series of learning more from poor examples of play than good examples, that is "Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." So the game last Sunday was billed at a political intrigue/combat game. The other choices were investigative/combat, horror, and then a "whatever folks want" type game.
So lets talk about what various types of games mean? Or at least if I use the phrase "Political" game to describe what I'm looking for, what I mean. Now, I'm not discussing something in the style of Rob Donoghue's Adventure Triad - that's more how the play is styled, than what it is about, what tropes can be expected, or if the DM is feeling cruel, intentionally thwarted.
None of these are styles are in isolation to each other, in fact, my favorite style games combine investigation, political intrigue, and combat; puzzles and exploration are not games I particularly enjoy playing, so tend not to show up often in my games.
Combat. When I say this is going to be a "Combat heavy" style game, that means dice are going to hit the table frequently. Or perhaps not - this is going to be a game that rewards the character's combat abilities, and the player's tactical abilities. Ideally, there will be chances to ambush and be ambushed, as well as more set-piece combat; hopefully with interesting terrain that changes up the usual strategies and provides new ones. Some games (particularly D&D 4th edition) can be extremely oriented towards location tactical combat; whereas some (like Exalted 2nd Edition) are oriented not so much where you are spatially, but "when" you are - that when you choose to attack, and how you choose to attack, is as important as where you are attacking from.
The key to a combat game is making the combat interesting and challenging - whether intrinsically from the combat itself, or what the combat means.
Investigation. Investigation games center around finding things out and piecing them together. Depending on the game system, this can be as simple as rolling investigation when at a scene and getting information, or be far more detailed out (Gumshoe, apparently, though I've never played and it does not seem to be a system that I'd enjoy intrinsically for itself). However, the key to investigation is the need to get facts, and then piece them together. Sometimes the act of looking for facts brings to light the facts as the "bad guys" get nervous and try to take out the investigator - I call this "poking the bear". In narrative, this seems to be about every paranormal detective story written - bumble around, bumble around, get attacked, survive being attacked, use who attacked you as the clue to get you the way in and piece together the facts. Mage, in both the Awakening and Ascension makes it really hard to do a "hide the facts from the players" routine, so almost the entire focus needs to be on making it interesting to piece the facts together and figuring out what to do with those facts.
The key to an investigation game is the idea of finding out facts and piecing them together. (Note: This is about as close as I get to a puzzle in my games.)
Political Intrigue. Political intrigue is about people who want something, and are prevented from doing so through overwhelming force (otherwise the superior organization would just kill those that stood in its way). It requires at least two factions, with the players forming a third faction. My preference, solidified after long discussions with someone I consider a master LARP writer, is to have at least three factions, maybe more. The shorter you want the game to go, the fewer factions you should have -- so in your standard Con game? Two factions. Long running LARP that you want to last a while, at least three, preferably five or six, with natural allies and enemies within each. That way there are numerous people to play off each other and band together. If there are only two, then as soon as one has enough force to just kill off the other side, they will do so.
And that's the key to a political intrigue game, binding various groups together in a common goal, and thwarting others who are doing the same.
Exploration/Environment. Exploration games are interesting in that they are really hard to do well in an open environment in a table top game. Why? Because most of exploration in popular media comes from the visual aspects, or covered with a montage and the challenges are the interesting part for the viewers. So Exploration may be deemed more about conflicts with the environment, from food and shelter to "how are we going to get across this chasm."
Puzzles. Puzzle games involve a lot of "engaging the player, not the character" type games. Translation/code breaking, piece together these items in the right order, that sort of thing. You can see a lot of these in video games with the visual elements engaged. As a rule, I hate them. I get bored with them. I'm going to end talking about them now. (No, this doesn't have ANYTHING to do with the fact that I'm horrible at them. No not at all. /sarcasm)
So lets talk about what various types of games mean? Or at least if I use the phrase "Political" game to describe what I'm looking for, what I mean. Now, I'm not discussing something in the style of Rob Donoghue's Adventure Triad - that's more how the play is styled, than what it is about, what tropes can be expected, or if the DM is feeling cruel, intentionally thwarted.
None of these are styles are in isolation to each other, in fact, my favorite style games combine investigation, political intrigue, and combat; puzzles and exploration are not games I particularly enjoy playing, so tend not to show up often in my games.
Combat. When I say this is going to be a "Combat heavy" style game, that means dice are going to hit the table frequently. Or perhaps not - this is going to be a game that rewards the character's combat abilities, and the player's tactical abilities. Ideally, there will be chances to ambush and be ambushed, as well as more set-piece combat; hopefully with interesting terrain that changes up the usual strategies and provides new ones. Some games (particularly D&D 4th edition) can be extremely oriented towards location tactical combat; whereas some (like Exalted 2nd Edition) are oriented not so much where you are spatially, but "when" you are - that when you choose to attack, and how you choose to attack, is as important as where you are attacking from.
The key to a combat game is making the combat interesting and challenging - whether intrinsically from the combat itself, or what the combat means.
Investigation. Investigation games center around finding things out and piecing them together. Depending on the game system, this can be as simple as rolling investigation when at a scene and getting information, or be far more detailed out (Gumshoe, apparently, though I've never played and it does not seem to be a system that I'd enjoy intrinsically for itself). However, the key to investigation is the need to get facts, and then piece them together. Sometimes the act of looking for facts brings to light the facts as the "bad guys" get nervous and try to take out the investigator - I call this "poking the bear". In narrative, this seems to be about every paranormal detective story written - bumble around, bumble around, get attacked, survive being attacked, use who attacked you as the clue to get you the way in and piece together the facts. Mage, in both the Awakening and Ascension makes it really hard to do a "hide the facts from the players" routine, so almost the entire focus needs to be on making it interesting to piece the facts together and figuring out what to do with those facts.
The key to an investigation game is the idea of finding out facts and piecing them together. (Note: This is about as close as I get to a puzzle in my games.)
Political Intrigue. Political intrigue is about people who want something, and are prevented from doing so through overwhelming force (otherwise the superior organization would just kill those that stood in its way). It requires at least two factions, with the players forming a third faction. My preference, solidified after long discussions with someone I consider a master LARP writer, is to have at least three factions, maybe more. The shorter you want the game to go, the fewer factions you should have -- so in your standard Con game? Two factions. Long running LARP that you want to last a while, at least three, preferably five or six, with natural allies and enemies within each. That way there are numerous people to play off each other and band together. If there are only two, then as soon as one has enough force to just kill off the other side, they will do so.
And that's the key to a political intrigue game, binding various groups together in a common goal, and thwarting others who are doing the same.
Exploration/Environment. Exploration games are interesting in that they are really hard to do well in an open environment in a table top game. Why? Because most of exploration in popular media comes from the visual aspects, or covered with a montage and the challenges are the interesting part for the viewers. So Exploration may be deemed more about conflicts with the environment, from food and shelter to "how are we going to get across this chasm."
Puzzles. Puzzle games involve a lot of "engaging the player, not the character" type games. Translation/code breaking, piece together these items in the right order, that sort of thing. You can see a lot of these in video games with the visual elements engaged. As a rule, I hate them. I get bored with them. I'm going to end talking about them now. (No, this doesn't have ANYTHING to do with the fact that I'm horrible at them. No not at all. /sarcasm)
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Board Gaming: Focus on the Tactical
I'm going to throw out a hypothesis that a good board game requires you to make decisions that you are going to regret later.
If you don't regret the decision later, then either everything can play out from the beginning with you knowing all the events that will happen, or there are some choices that are so optimal or so sub-optimal that you can continue to just follow the same path time and time again to succeed.
This is why I am still enjoying Race for the Galaxy because with the economic decisions it places on the players, you have to make meaningful choices from the very first hand. Okay, admittedly sometimes you can futz around for the first few rounds trying to figure out how to win, but really once everyone playing gets to a familiar level with the cards available if you aren't moving on your strategy by the second or third round you've lost.
I'm trying to figure out what it is that hits the sweet spot because I don't want to be limited to just one or two games every week. Okay, I've got several games on my shelf and can rotate through them with ease. But I'm always hungry for the next game, or a different feel. For example, I was introduced to Power Grid this past weekend and it reminded me how much I enjoyed auctioning mechanics, I like that sort of social back and forth with another player at the table to change the nature of the game.
The only trick is finding a game that scratches that itch without too much of the extraneous stuff that interferes with the enjoyment of the game.
If you don't regret the decision later, then either everything can play out from the beginning with you knowing all the events that will happen, or there are some choices that are so optimal or so sub-optimal that you can continue to just follow the same path time and time again to succeed.
This is why I am still enjoying Race for the Galaxy because with the economic decisions it places on the players, you have to make meaningful choices from the very first hand. Okay, admittedly sometimes you can futz around for the first few rounds trying to figure out how to win, but really once everyone playing gets to a familiar level with the cards available if you aren't moving on your strategy by the second or third round you've lost.
I'm trying to figure out what it is that hits the sweet spot because I don't want to be limited to just one or two games every week. Okay, I've got several games on my shelf and can rotate through them with ease. But I'm always hungry for the next game, or a different feel. For example, I was introduced to Power Grid this past weekend and it reminded me how much I enjoyed auctioning mechanics, I like that sort of social back and forth with another player at the table to change the nature of the game.
The only trick is finding a game that scratches that itch without too much of the extraneous stuff that interferes with the enjoyment of the game.
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