lategaming

Of course, it has to be from Cracked.com. Go look. Now.

When you’re lying awake in the night and dreaming new dreams about far off places and alien races, in science fiction and fantasy, and you think it might be easy to invent something new.

No.

A few years ago, some of us tried to write a science fiction background which included some elements from sci-fi we liked. It was, I suppose, meant to be a slightly more mature outlook on Star Trek, a series most of us watched and a game we generally liked playing (though convincing one ham actor that he couldn’t always be the captain was troublesome).

We only wanted 3-4 alien races to deal with but we wanted them to be very very alien. Some of the concepts were facinating. I loved the Swarm, the Snakes and the “human aliens” (colonies). I had some trouble with the molluscs but I blamed that more on myself. As a biologist I had a good grasp of the weird things out there on Earth and wanted to invent things that were really alien. Others without that background weren’t looking for the same criteria though they were instrumental in tightening the physics because that was their background!

But as an example, look at these beasties, the Water Bears.

Freeze them, boil them, dry them, expose them to open space & radiation - after 200 years they’ll still be alive!

How weird are they? Yet, blow them up a hundred times and instead of a millimetre-long creepie crawly you have a 10 centimetre freaky pet thing. Make it a metre long and, who knows, you’ve got the start of a primitive alien race. Give them money and digital watches and you’ve just invented Croydon.

If inventing new aliens, get a biologist on team. They’ll be able to tell you if the thing you’ve just invented is original or if you’ve just extrapolated the Moss Piglet from first principles (in a similar way to the way I once designed a nasty beastie for SLA Industries and discovered I’d invented spiders without referring to the copious documentation I had, book lungs and all!)

Just remember, if something is humanoid, there’d better be a good reason for it (like, for example, they’re humans and they’re from Earth) and that can open up an entire kettle of fish.

As for the game itself, it was shelved. The fun was in the creation.

In the comments on the previous post the almost anonymous Warlock (IP: 213.78.235.176 - 24/10/07 - Some Onetel subscriber in the UK who hides by putting false email addresses) writes:

Seriously, you’ve been hacking away at this hobby for donkey\’s years and never produced anything of note other than a blog which demostrates your total inability to GM let alone design a game system.

Why don’t you just give it up?

and

You download every PDF game going, and buy a shed-load of paper ones too, then mash them up and spin parts of them into candyfloss which can withstand the impact of real players for all of 10 minutes and then you’re off again.

Surely to goodness you’ve noticed by now that you never create anything with any staying power? Gee, perhaps a few minutes effort isn’t the way to produce something of high quality! Who’d have thunk it?

It’s a fair point. Other than a few fans, I’ve not made a significant impact in the world of RPG Design. I’m no Ron Edwards or John Snead. The books of yesteryear made a small impact a decade ago and I’ve not worked hard at it since. I’ve played.

The difference, Warlock, is that I’m not really in the market of producing RPGs these days. I’ve got a lot of spare time and part of the enjoyment I get out of gaming is in the creation of backgrounds. The rules aren’t important to me which, if you’d spent any time gaming with me, you’d know. Sure, I invented the ERIS system in 1996. But it was 1996. And a different faster system for SNCC and Zombi. And yes, a third one a few years later for the Testament/Creed games. That’s not really the same thing.

It’s not about the mechanics, Warlock, it never was. OK, it may be true I have no imagination compared to some of the luminaries out there but it’s a far cry from anonymously whining on someone else’s blog about their “BadWrongFun” I mean - what - were there no adverts on TV you felt the need to complain about tonight?

I write the blog and create games as a hobby. It offends you. Go figure.

It’s true. No-one needs rules to play roleplaying games at all. We did well enough without paper, pens and dice when we didn’t have them. But people write them anyway. And people like reading about them. Am I remotely bothered that the games I create are not in the top ten sellers category in Drivethrurpg.com? Not remotely. Because the creation of the game and the writing of the background material is a heap of fun for me. I’ve downloaded about ten RPG PDFs from DriveThruRPG (it’s a great site) as opposed to “every PDF going” though I do buy a lot of books (yes, even after all these years) and I only have one regular game going at the moment.

It’s not about self-justifying my position here. I don’t NEED to self-justify my hobby. End of the day, Warlock, you’re a gamer. You can’t really point fingers and declare one part of the gaming hobby to be much nerdier than another. We’re all nerds. Some people are rules nuts. Some people want “realism”. Some people want fantasy. Who are you to tell someone they’re not having fun properly?

I have fond memories of some of my games with people and strangely enough it’s not about whether the rules worked well or whether someone scored a critical hit with a natural 20. My blog is part of the cause of people flocking to RPGs? Oh come on. The RPG industry doesn’t need saving, least of all from me.

Are you defending the 10-year-system-design or attacking it. Or are you just attacking me?

Ah.

Did I kick your dog? Steal your ice cream? Spill your beer? Jealous?

Great Definition

badwrongfun: Playing “the wrong way”, but having fun anyway. You might be playing the wrong way by going against the expectations of the game (”You can’t run a hack-and-slash game using Vampire; you’re missing the entire point!”) or the expectations of gamers who have decided they are more evolved beings (”It’s not possible to properly role-play in Dungeons & Dragons.”). Primarily used humorously to show that the speaker doesn’t care that it’s “wrong” since it’s fun, or that the speaker feels a slight bit of guilt for enjoying something they feel they shouldn’t.

[Please tell me that everyone knows the D&D sucks rant is satire…trollbait…linkfodder that Aidan wrote for a laugh - I know it seems serious but JESUS it’s just a game. And it’s a game that we’ve enjoyed playing over the years. We’re fucking with you!]

…entirely because it was illustrated and designed exactly the way I want Q to be paid out.

I spent a few minutes leafing through it and in my minds eye transposed the text and art to that which I envision for Q. Looking over my Q notes the other day reminded me of the parts I still needed to write though, to be honest, most of it is down somewhere or other.

Some of the notes I look over were definitely penned by someone else. Sure, it’s my handwriting but it doesn’t read like my writing. I guess some of the text there must be 10 years old or so and I was a different person then - and my understanding of some things has matured and so it needs re-written.

I’m always wary of games systems which report on the cover that they took 10 years to develop. Systems take minutes to develop, maybe hours to refine. Not years. It takes years maybe to write prose of the quality you might want. When I hear of a game that took 10 years to create, I always think that it’s going to be 10 years out of date. I mean, a decade ago we were playing Ars Magica, SLA Industries and Mage. I would hope to some degree the world had moved on a little.

Likewise when someone claims to have developed their game system from watching real fights or, (even less impressive, from years of studying fighting in the SCA,) then I have to work hard to keep the bile down. Does anyone really want to see “realistic” fight sequences? Is there any evidence to suggest that SCA fighting is any more realistic? I’m not convinced - but then there are very few people in Western Europe who have witnessed a real fight using swords and armour. When you’re fighting for your life you’re bound to respond differently to when you’re fighting to try to demonstrate a point about fighting. So - 10 years development and based on “real world data” - load of bollocks.

I did read an article in a RPG magazine which took data from shootouts at the Texas border between immigrant, smugglers and the border guard. It made for interesting reading - seems shooting someone is as effective as throwing a handful of stones at them though if one stone hits, there’s a massive chance of instant death. Anyone know the article? I think it might have been in Pyramid?

Back to the book…

So I bought it (and some word flashcards for my daughter). I’ll no doubt get time to read it tonight and then maybe break out my design apps later this week.

(I’d attribute this but it was passed to me and no-one seems to know…)

James “JimJamJom Jimbo” Wallis writes about Heroics:

Of course, a lot depends on how the player views their avatar, whether they regard the game-character they’re controlling as ‘me’, as a companion who they care about, or as a disposable camera and weapon-wielding tool.
…
But basically players don’t like risk. They like the appearance of risk, the semblance of heroism, but they really hate it when you make them feel like failures or take stuff away from them. Try telling a player that because they screwed up they broke their magic sword, or they’re going to have to sell their plasma-armour to pay for their half-body med-regen. They want to progress on all fronts, not just story and accomplishment but stats, equipment and fortune. It goes back as far as traditional tabletop RPGs: D&D lets you heal away injury and even death with cheap spells and potions; while also-rans like Runequest, T&T and Traveller were far more stingy with their cures.

Apart from making a clear and present declaration on the shitness of D&D, it’s a point well made.

When playing computer games, I get a lot of immersion. My heart pumps loudly in my ears whether I’m delivering the team flag back to my base or trying to make the shot to kill the Commandant of the camp while shells are pinging round me. The Flood parts of Halo gave me the heebie-jeebies, Doom 3 made me jump out of my skin. I love that feeling. I seldom get it with movies where I am a passive observer (notable exception being Dark Water and Audition).

To keep my attention, games have to give me a chill or make my heart burst through my chest.

A Hindi community is being targetted by Warner Bros and the Rowling estate for infringement because they’re building a huge model of the Hogwarts school.

The finishing touches are being applied to thousands of similar structures, known as pandals, across Calcutta and elsewhere in India. Many of them touch on popular themes and the BBC’s Chris Morris in Delhi says copyright has never been an issue before.

Aha, but they didn’t reckon on Rowling. She who blocked the Wizards d20 Harry Potter RPG because “she would be the only one telling Harry Potter stories” and vociferously defends her copyright even though:

Many people have noticed similarities between Timothy Hunter — a bespectacled English teenager with family troubles, a scar on his forehead and who has a magical owl as a pet — and the later and more famous Harry Potter. Neil Gaiman has been quoted as saying that while there are similarities between the two they are largely superficial and most likely reflect the fact that both draw on common archetypes.Wikipedia Link

…which is Gaiman saying “She’s got shitloads more money than me”.

The official video for Q-CON XIV was posted today:

It’s good to see it running as I did all the research for the first Q-CON by visiting cons around the country when I was President of ‘Slayers the year before. I amended the constitution, got it ratified and and then pushed the idea of running a convention to the folk. The following year we had Q-CON. Alan, who died last year, was President of the society and did a good job motivating the rest of us to work hard. I ran half a dozen games that weekend and had previously set up the Star Trek Megagame to be run down in the Mandela Hall. I was ‘Slayer’s first convention director and ran Q-CON 2 and 3 which both turned out to be really profitable in the end. Heh, who could have guessed. It wasn’t all easy and I hadn’t been aware until recently how close to the wire it had been.

Before his untimely death, Alan asked me to run it again…but commitments (like running a business, having my kids on the weekend) were too much to consider it. And, of course, I’d no goodwill left in the society and you NEED goodwill from the folk to get things done.

Flight? Check…
Agility? Uh…
Strength? Um…
Energy Attack? Ah…
Reactions? Well, you see…

So we have Flight. Cool.