Gametime

If you just read new entries as they come, you might have missed some hefty and interesting discussion on a couple of recent Gametime posts:

Stephanie's post on roleplaying love
and
Luke's post on play by post techniques

Check 'em out...

I’m reviving another game.

Do other people do this? Do you? It isn’t something I hear much about, with the occasional exception of college-age D&D groups getting back together as adults to fight some bugbears again. I do revivals, though. Not just for games - it’s a bit of a thing, in fact, the same stubborn streak that means the comic I’m working is an idea from a decade ago, and the play I drafted last year was first written even further back than that. I don’t let go of things easy.

My last big game revival was Slayers East, a stakes-and-babysitters game I ran in 2000-2002 and again in 2006-2007. Slayers East is in my big three, the best games I ever ran. This revival is also from that top three, this time it’s small dreams, a Changeling: The Dreaming game I ran in 1998-1999, and again in 2001-2002.

( Why this madness )

Embedded below is the pdf I sent to the players to announce the revival. There’ll be more about this game, no doubt.

Anyone out there ever revived a game after years of hiatus?
And perhaps more important: anyone ever wished they hadn’t?

A couple of days ago, my (straight male) GM seduced one of my (straight male and married) co-players.  In-character, of course.  It was a very entertaining scene: a walk on a beach, and stars, that boggling moment when one character got sick of hinting and made an unmistakeable proposition and the other character had a brain freeze and gave the impression that he wasn't interested.  There was a brief slightly embarassed discussion about logistics, and there was a tasteful fade to black.

The thing is, that particular in-character relationship between a protagonist character and a GM character had been going on for months, in game and in the real world, of two people dancing around each other wondering what the other one is thinking.  It struck me as quite convincing in a real world, this is what people are like and how they deal with each other kind of way.  I was wondering, what are other people's experiences of roleplaying relationships, both as protagonists and observers?

Anyone reading my personal LJ will have noticed a somewhat alarming reversal of my opinion on the RPG Anima- from negative to positive. I have found myself alarmed at this, as this has happened to me only very rarely and I consider myself to be an astute and knowledgable about RPGs. So I decided to think about the matter some more and see when others have shared a similar experience.

3 RPG
Why should I care? I have had only 3 sudden reversals of opinions about RPGs before this one, in living memory (or at least in the time that I started to have solid opinions about RPGs). Those 3 reversals were on:

1. Exalted 1e,
2. Warhammer 2e, and
3. D&D 4e.

People may see the trend here, but I recently listed those 3 RPGs in my top 4 RPGs of all time. As such, a sudden reversal of opinion has normally indicated something pretty significant. I don't think I can identify the exact reasons but I have some ideas:

Expectations
As anyone will know, expectations can be a huge factor in one's reaction to something new, whether it be movies, books or RPGs. Going in with high expectations normally sets yourself up for disappoint and low expectations allow for pleasant surprises.

Going in with low expectations for all 3 of these RPGs meant that the sudden reversal of opinion was accentuated, heightening the enjoyment. Its not necessary to have such low expectations as my other 2 top RPGs show - Cthulhutech and Tribe 8. In fact, it is a testament to these RPGs to create such high expectations and live up to them, as this is an incredibly hard thing to acheive.

Hard Fought Victory
Going in with low expectations, I gave these 3 RPGs more than a once over. I looked for every flaw and weakness twice over. At the end of the day, these 3 RPGs withstood a difficult assault and persuaded me that they were as good as they were. This wasn't earned based on other opinions or on other merits.

Anima
I am not sure Anima will be a top 5 contender, despite the previous precedents. It differs from them in a number of ways in that my low expectations were actually created by my first reading of the RPG and not low expectations from before its release. I was even at the point of considering selling it. So I find myself in a strange position where all the bad things I said remain true but somehow, over time, I have managed to find that all the good things I hoped for are true too.

I do know that I originally picked up Anima to fulfil an spot in RPGs that I have been trying to fill forever and have been unable to. I was hoping that Eoris might do this but I remain sceptical. I am pleasantly surprised by Anima raising its head again, if a little confounded. Either way, it will be an interesting journey.

Question
So have you experienced sudden reversals of opinions about RPGs? If so, have they also indicated some kind of pattern like mine? Are you able to provide any insight into the matter?

I have been involved in a few Play by Post RPGs in recent times and I have found them to be an interesting medium. In general, the medium is inferior as the slow pace and distance between players makes many collapse prematurely. There are some things that I think PbPs are very good at though. Playing characters outside your norm and in depth character exploration are easier to do in PbP IMO. My good PbP experiences have been excellent yet different from tabletop.

However, I think I have discerned what is perhaps the biggest cause for PbP's failure.

( Read more... )

In any case, if you play or run a PbP, my number one suggesion is to make it clear that PC interaction is an essential part of the game, if you want to have any success.

As I said previously, I like Skill Challenges. They have a nice place for presenting transparent challenges for the PCs, where certain investment can be highlighted, and momentum can be maintained.

However, they are not without their limitations. Perhaps the main limitation is that Skill Challenges reduce the impact on player choices. Once the boundaries of the Skill Challenge is set, the simplicity of the Skill mechanics means that the only decision is what skill to use and that all desicions are effectively given equal weight. Though some may argue that this frees up choice to do whatever the players want, I tend to find it abstracts it to the point where the choice itself feels irrelevant. It is an effect that is felt in the likes of FATE as well with its use of Aspects.

That is not to say that players choice should always be given priority. To give a concrete example, whilst playing a Star Wars game recently, one player (Marcus) complained of the use of a Skill Challenge. He felt that it failed to give the PCs freedom to come up with a plan to deal with a certain problem. I think this issue was a valid one. However, as GM, I had balanced this against the need to keep the momentum up and to highlight one or two key action scenes in a specific way. The Skill Challenge proved an excellent tool for this limited role.

Instead, what I am saying is that I think it is important to know the limitations of Skill Challenges if they are to be used effectively.

I have recently been prepping for Episode 8 of Dawn of Defiance for Star Wars Saga. It is written by GM Sarli and it is one of the better episodes so far. The first half invovles a rather extensive series of interconnected social scenes, which the PCs must succeed at to meet a contact. GM Sarli uses a series of Skill Challenges to provide these social encounters with structure. However, this is an example where I think the use of Skill Challenges goes too far.

The problem becomes that the player choices for almost an entire session become pointless. Instead, the whole affair is determined by a long series of dice rolls, which IMO would be exceedingly dull. On saying that, I do think that providing the session with some transparent structure makes sense, as otherwise the session would simply devolve to "the PCs do some stuff for 4 hours until the GM decides to move the story on" which I have come to find very frustrating. However, the appropriate structure needs more thought IMO

( Spoilers for Dawn of Defiance players )

All round it feels to me to be a better structure for the session and more satisfying.

I have been thinking on how the presentation of Skill Challenges can make a difference to how they play out.

There are three broad ways to present a Skill Challenge:

1. Upfront: put all the mechanics on the table for the Players to see.
2. Default: alert Players that a Skill Challenge has commenced, its complexity and the success and failure conditions.
3. Hidden: do not alert players that a Skill Challenge has commenced.

It is my understanding that the second is the default way of presenting a Skill Challenge based on thr DMG but that all three are possible.

I have used the Upfront method quite a bit since starting to run D&D4e as I liked the extra level of transparency. It had a nice indie vibe in inviting the players into an open playing field, where there decisions were unfiltered by the GM. My hope was to increase creativity in a manner similar to Spirit of the Century by opening several avenues to success and allowing the players to choose whatever approach they thought best and narrate accordingly.

However, I have come to realise that this method is quite limited in its application. The real problem is that Skills are mechanically simple, being a linear bonus vs a static DC. As such, with transparency, players will naturally go for their highest skills only. This places the mechanics in front of the narrative. Not only does that effectively remove the concept of the players choosing the solution (as it is simply determined by math), it also means that the DCs must rise if any challenge is to be retained. By doing this, it prevents anyone but the PC that is best in a skill to make an attempt without something more (like a +5 DC for each repeated attempt by a PC).

I still think that there is a place for an Upfront Skill Challenge, i.e. where you the PCs facing a series of tests individually. But on the whole they should be used sparringly.

That leaves the Default method and the Hidden method.

The Hidden method really is nothing more that a DM tool to provide them with structure for Skill heavy encounters. It helps the DM create appropriate DCs, Skill choices, XP award and number of Skills. However, besides adding consistency, it does little to add to the game for the players IMO.

So, what about the default method? The default method is actually pretty good and resolves many of the basic issues of using Skill Challenges. I am not sure if its intentional, but I think the DMG got it right on this point. First, there is an increased level of transparency for the Players. This elevates the situation in the same way combat does but making the players aware that the stakes have increased.

However, it does this without moving the mechanics right to the forefront. The advantage of the DM not stating the Skills and DCs is that the Players will not be able to simply calculate their PCs chance of success. This way, though they may favour their best skills (which is natural), they must also account for the challenge at hand. This creates a style of play that is more what most are used to seeing both in terms of Skills and also it is similar in terms of D&D combat where the mechanics are elevated but, due to uncertainty, the players are left to judge what theior PCs should do based on their evaluation of the situation before them.

Deep down, the same issues as an Upfront Skill Challenge are there, but by adding in a level of uncertainty, the players judgement of a situation becomes a major factor in what the PCs do. This works well as this judgement allows players to focus on playing their PCs more and the math less. I have yet to test it fully but my guess is that with a few lessons learnt from Upfront Skill Challenges, such as penalty for repeat Skill uses by a PC to maintain a level of uncertainty, the DCs suggested by the DMG would actually be appropriate despite the mathematical analysis.

For those interested, here is the Skill Challenge in action: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?p=10477415&posted=1#post10477415

You need to be logged on to RPGnet. My favourite part so far:

"And with that word, everything disappears. The first sensation to return is touch. The five are surrounded by softness and warmth. Then comes back smell and with it comes memories of childhood. Next comes the sound of a mother gently cooing to her child.

"The five stand in a room draped with pillows, curtains and other fabric, creating a comforting cocoon. At the far end of the room sits a woman who, to each of the five, looks like their mother holding her suckling babe. The look of peace across her face is marked in sharp contrast by the vigorous swaying of the baby's head and the sick tearing sound of its maw. A thick column of blood pours into the luxurious carpet.

"The woman collapses and the babe turns to face you. Its mouth is gaping wide showing bllod drenched razor sharp teeth. Just as the five go to react, their mother sits up. Her own face is now twisted into a similar monstrosity that begs to be fed.

I have been waiting for almost a year and finally a 3rd party publisher has released something for 4e that I want to buy, being Alea Publishing's setting book entitled "Adventurer's Guide to Cthonia". Its essentially a setting and rules mod for a more real history western European style fantasy. It would be great for darker adventures of the likes of "Last Breaths of Ashenport":



( Thoughts on 3PP releases under the GSL to date )

Congrats Alea Publishing. Keep it coming.

This is cross posted from my LJ

I am about to running The Demon Queen's Enclave for a group of 14th level PCs. I am hoping to open with a combined dream sequence Skill Challenge. The PCs best skills are around +20. Their trained skills are roughly around +15 and untrained normally around +10.

Signs and Portents

Goal: The PCs receive a myriad of signs and portents of the future and a rising evil. However, these are not merely the stuff of dreams but the shockwave of the momentous events to come from the Realm of Dreams itself. The PCs must try and glean what information they can from the maelstrom with their sanity and courage intact.

Complexity: 3 (8 successes before 3 failures)

Encounter Level: 14

Initiative: The PCs act in the following order (being an Initiative based on Wisdom).

Aid Another: A PC may forego their turn to aid another PC instead. If this is done, then only the PC making the roll gains the success. Also, when that reroll is used the PC who aided is dazed (save ends) as their mind is jarred by a dreadful sense of déjà vu of what they saw.

Skills Used:
• Arcana (DC 20, maximum of one success): You know the stuff of dreams is dangerous, but also malleable. You can shape the raw elements of dream to your advantage. You also gain a +2 to all further rolls in this Skill Challenge.
• Athletics (DC 25, maximum of three successes): You meet the ferocity of the dream with a ferocity of your own, smashing your way through the tendrils that try to bond you.
• Endurance (DC 25, maximum of one success): Buffeted by the gruesome forces arrayed against you, you simply grit and endure it.
• Insight (DC 18, maximum of two successes): You see right through the obfuscating and confusing symbols and images that confront you into the truth of the matter.
• Intimidate (DC 22, maximum of one success): You face the sense of growing dread with a stalwart determination to vanquish it.
• Nature (DC 20, maximum of one success): Dreams are the stories on the primal forces of the world and are things to be respected but not feared. You let the images wash over you.
• Perception (DC 18, maximum of one success): You avoid distraction of the weird and wondrous around you and notice the one true image that tries to evade you like
• Religion (DC 20, maximum of one success): Contact from beyond this world is something you are familiar with, and you take comfort in your faith.
• Stealth (DC 25, maximum of one success): Surrounded by nightmare you become one with it, dancing out of sight like a mad god.

All other skills are available at DC 28. Each skill is maximum of one success.

Success: For each success, the PC who made the roll gains a reroll that can be used at any stage in the adventure. If the reroll is made then the results of the second roll must be kept.

Failure: For each failure, the DM may force a PC to make a reroll that can be used at any stage in the adventure. If the reroll is made then the results of the second roll must be kept.

No more than one reroll may be applied to any one roll.

At Day of Games I instigated two games of Zombie Cinema, which means I've played it 5? times now - the most exposure I've had to any indie game in terms of number of experiences.

I really like it. I like the simplicity of the mechanics, the flexibility of the setting while still constraining the story. I like the intra-party dynamic it creates. And I think it captures the Zombie feel very well.

But at the same time, to me it's the logical end-point of the Indie-game divergence from "role playing" as I knew it when young. Many Indie games provide an implicit or explicit story skeleton. Zombie Cinema has a board. Many indie games abstract the character, measuring their story weight rather than any personally identifiable characteristic. In Zombie Cinema your character is a plastic counter on a board - that's all.

It has the simplest dice mechanic I know of - the players divide themselves up over each conflict, and the side that rolls highest wins. Zombies win ties. There's no adding, subtracting, multiplying. Nothing.

So, as the apogee of the Indie-game movement, the game's progress is inexorable and utterly predictable. The zombies advance, PCs fight amongst themselves and get eaten or escape. This is the outcome no matter how lacklustre your group is: it is, as previously said, inexorable. The zombies advance. Period.

The downside to this is that your stories really don't have to make an awful lot of sense. Prior action does not constrain future action in any way whatsoever. The only real restriction on player narration is effectively their own sense of what constitutes cause-and-effect within the context of the story they're telling.

So this game is at once tightly constrained, and unlimited.

What you need, therefore, like with all Indie games, is a group who can all get rapidly onto the same page, riff off each other and bring drama to the table. Dead weight is a killer. All the players need to be able to confidently frame scenes, form a tight relationship web, and do a small but significant amount of mechanical judging.

If you love Zombies, you'll love this game.

That's all.

Yesterday, the weekly TV listing supplement in on of NZ's biggest newspapers ran a big profile of hunky NZ actor Robbie Magasiva. Halfway through they do the obligatory "where did he come from", and it runs like this:

His schooling was at St Patrick's, where he was not the least bit academic - "I wish" - although he did hang around with the gamers (Dungeons and Dragons). After that, it was theatresports and...

I'm fascinated by that little piece of writing.
* Treating "the gamers" as a group identity - presumably they followed Magasiva's lead here
* Specifying D&D to clarify what was meant by "the gamers" - again, this sounds like they followed Magasiva's lead
* The suggestion that "the gamers" was a group with permeable boundaries and a welcoming aspect
* The clear association of "gamers" and "academic" which doesn't even need to be mentioned or explained; it is just taken as common sense
* The suggested, perhaps uninentional, linking of RPGs and theatresports (for the o'seas readers, theatresports is an improv comedy style)

Most remarkably, look at what isn't there:
* The complete lack of judgement of gamers by either subject or interviewer
* The absence of anything that would suggest gaming is in any way remarkable or out of the ordinary

This feels like how I always wanted media coverage of RPGs to be. It is, as far as I can recall, the first time I've seen RPGs and D&D covered as something ordinary. Think back to the widespread coverage of Gygax's death and the way even then the game was exceptionalised and made to seem exotic and weird, often in the same sentence as acknowledging it gave birth to the very ordinary field of computer gaming.

Nice work, reporter Julie Jacobson.

[It was St Pats Kilbirnie, if any old boys are in the room...]

The least successful game I've run was probably Acid Nights, a Mage game about a young group living in Buffalo, NY. The game ran for about 25 sessions all told, broken in the middle by a 6-week holiday overseas.

The game never really managed to launch into anything much, which at the time seemed utterly bizarre, because all kinds of exciting things were happening in the game world at large. There were a number of things which any PC could have latched onto, from the Vampiric power struggle, to the presence in the city of a completely mad Obrimos who saw himself as God's tool for punishing the wicked. The PCs interacted with these events: they were forced to by the exigencies of their lives. But they never really took the leap into full involvement.

It was always a puzzlement to me, because the reputation and calibre of the group was very high. I won't lie: I have had better groups, but this one was certainly capable of a lot more drama than they actually had. It wasn't until running session 4 of my current game Dirty London, that I realized what had been going on.

The players all designed almost ordinary every-day characters who happened to be mages. They didn't create mages in the midst of having to also deal with their regular lives. The analogy here would be an x-men style super-hero game where the characters are periodically persecuted by people, but are otherwise happy to live out their ordinary lives. Xavier's X-men aren't differentiated from the mass of humanity solely by their powers, but by their willingness, nay, need, to use those powers on the wider stage.

The obvious point to make at this stage is that this is the opposite "problem" to your standard D&D fantasy quest. My experience with an awful lot of gaming is that characters deal with extra-normal stuff at the expense of having a normal life: I played my halfling psychopath Petal for nearly a full year of weekly adventures without one scene unrelated to destroying the tendrils of the Ooze god... a fun filled year, but not one I think on much.

So I theorize that there are basically two story urges that compete for time in most games. The Domestic, and the Adventure. Looking at Acid Nights in this light, it's more apparent that one of the major flaws was my disinterest in the domestic, compared to the players.

I have in previous times, thought of this as a character v. story conflict, but the revelation I had the other night is that in fact, what I had thought of as "character" on many previous occasions was in real terms just as much a story, just about something I hadn't expected to see. It's like picking up Jodi Picoult when you expected to pick up Stephen King: naturally you're confused at the end as to where the supernatural element was. Both have a story, one is just domestic in scale.

Thinking about this as a story focus, but a different kind of story, fills in a lot of blanks for me. It's allowed me to fill in some blanks in previous games: what worked and why. The prime example was Dale's WFRP game, which had a reasonably healthy dose of both kinds of story. There were little character scenes, relationships unrelated to adventuring, and a sense that the characters had more to them than simple adventuring automatons.

The game which it mostly helps explain though was Lace and Steel; a game I seem to still post about obsessively some 3 years on! My discussions with others have me very squarely painted on the "story" side of the character v. story divide; to which I've always responded: But what about Lace and Steel? A game without much of a story, but with great character moments. The insight is that all the ball planning and dinner outings, were stories, just not the kind I'd been used to.

Is there more we can extract from this?

The last thought along these lines which occurs is how you could divide up these kinds of stories. How can you recognize which is which? The best guideline I've got is that some stories, largely adventures, are most clearly about the character altering the world; other stories are about the world altering the characters.

I like this because it puts the emphasis on the outcomes, rather than the process. Often the process can be a bit deceptive. The best example I've been able to come up with is Back to the Future. At the end of the first movie, we think that the point has been to change the world: Marty's 1980s is different at the end than the beginning. But by the end of movie 3, all the important matters are returned to their original state, but the personality of Marty has undergone a change: he can walk away from being called a chicken. I think perhaps that's why the BTF trilogy stands up so well to poking at its gigantic plot holes: because the story we really care about doesn't have any.

This tidies, to my own satisfaction, my difficulties in a couple of recent convention games that have been very enjoyable, but squirmed away from my complete understanding. Principally Death on the Streets and Shelter Me. DotS is very much an adventure in overall construction, but I constructed the character hooks and details with an eye to having the characters' exposed and experience change. When writing it, it all seemed to mesh, but I see now that while the gross mechanisms of plot were all sufficient, I was pushing this way then that at the two kinds of outcome I discuss. Conversely, Shelter Me was intensively focused on character, with an unfortunate ending focused on defeating an external enemy as an expression of inner growth... which in the conception above is are orthogonal things.

I am presently writing the climactic end for my Noirish Dirty London: the "truth" revealed, the uncertainties resolved, fates determined. The game has vacillated between being about the mystery and being about the characters in a way that had quite eluded my exact understanding, but hopefully now I can see more clearly how to wrap things up satisfactorily.

On Saturday I had my first go at running A Wilderness of Mirrors. It's a poster-child for the Indie-game movement in a lot of ways: it's self-published, relies on shared narration, is explicit about how gameplay should be, and includes non-traditional game elements. It sounds ideal for a convention game too, because it can be run either in a highly compressed timeframe (eyes_of_winter ran it in an hour later in the con) or be expanded to fill a longer time, and because it's pick-up-and-play.

The game works in 3 phases:
1. Create characters
2. The GM pitches a one-line mission, and the players detail that mission
3. Execute the mission

Mechanically characters are very simple: they are rated in the 5 classic spy activities. Leading, Talking, Gadgets, Sneaking and Killing. These are bought on an inverted triangle of cost, encouraging people to specialize heavily.

I understand why the characters are so simple, but what happened for us, was that we had pairs of characters that were very similar: distinguished entirely by how they were played. This shouldn't be too great a problem, because that's all that distinguishes most characters fundamentally. The game is built around the spy-team structure, which does help somewhat, because even though two characters might have the same maxed skill, they conceived of themselves as different parts in the spy machine.

Generating the nominal story is equally easy. I pitched a mission, and they make up how the mission will be accomplished. For each thing they need to do, I award bonus dice to be used in completing the mission.

This is where I first started to think things were not going exactly as the game writer intended. Like most roleplaying groups that need to make a plan, my group were good on the big picture stuff and the flavoursome descriptions. It took quite a few pointed questions to focus them into a more detailed plan: one with risks and rewards. Slightly problematic too was that rather then trying to figure out how to execute the mission I'd actually given them, they kept trying to push out the mission to see what would happen next.

The mission was "Execute this English Cardinal, and recover from the body a stolen cypher". By the time the plan was finished, they had to do this on a time-frame controlled by him meeting with Spanish agents, and not only was he to be killed before then, but they had to have someone take his place at that meeting, then kill the Spanish and steal their ship to travel back around the coast and up the Thames.

After the plan, we didn't know exactly how the Cardinal was guarded, what his habits would be, or a host of other useful details - almost 2/3 of the items on their plan occurred after the mission I'd given them would be over. This is no great problem: it's not like I'd spent a lot of time writing a pre-gen adventure I'd now have to toss.

But there were a couple of other things I didn't pick up on quite as quickly. The plan wasn't especially risky, or detailed. By which I mean that while there were a sequence of things they planned, it wasn't clear to me what the timeframes were, what could prevent the planned actions from taking place, and what the possible consequences might be of a failure at each stage. Perhaps a slight pause after the plan was finished would have enabled me to think of some things, but 2 hours for the complete game does not allow much thinking time.

And then it was time for them to play through. Right from the get-go I tried to create trouble by doing things unforeseen in the plan. Having their contact in Edinburgh under surveillance, having the Cardinal move up the time-frame by scheduling a public appearance, and that kind of thing. I relied in several places on the players to narrate the details of what had gone wrong, my brain not being quick enough with the required details.

Due to time constraints, we had to finish after they'd killed the Cardinal, but before they'd moved on to their post-assassination part of the plan.

Some general comments on issues I noticed.

The basic mechanic is (Skill+Expendable Pool)D6, but most characters did their damnedest to operate within the scope of their 5-rated skill. To get total narrative control of a scene outcome, you need to get a total on your dice of 20, so 5*3.5=17.5 implies that you need only a marginally above-average roll to get total control of the scene. Allocating a single Mission Point die solves that problem, and the odds of rolling a total below 5 on 6 dice (5 is the cut-off for GM narration) are, well, pretty low.

This in turn meant that once the players were on their story track, it was difficult for the GM to have much influence, and so in order to raise challenges you need to obviate all their planning (i.e. effectively ignore the first half of the game)

There are suggestions for arbitrarily reducing their competence as time wears on to put them under pressure, which I didn't properly implement. But if I had, then the table would have turned and in the last few scenes nothing would have worked for them. A better way is needed than presented in the book IMHO.

My group decided to effectively act in concert right up until the end, where the two Malcs fell out. There is a mechanic for the character to betray each other... but there isn't really any motivation for them to do so because the pay-off is additional dice, which as I've noted above, are not terribly useful because it doesn't matter whether you roll 20 or 30 you get the same narrative control.

As a couple of hours of gaming goes, this wasn't bad by any means. I thoroughly enjoyed the game, and it ran just as quickly and smoothly as I'd hoped. But I found myself disappointed that the game mechanics seemed to militate against the sense of tension and uncertainty that pervades my favourite spy fiction. "A Wilderness of Mirrors" suggests a landscape where you can't see where you're going, where you can't be sure that what you're seeing is real, that you need to be vigilant and alert... and I got very little of that from the rules as written.

This is a very promising game, but very far from a finished product. The basic shape of the game is really appealing, but there needs to be more thought put into introducing risk into the plan, and into sowing mistrust and betrayal amongst the characters. I think that hybridizing the Mountain Witch's Dark Fate mechanic in some form would work well, and widening the margins for each success level would allow the GM greater input and monkey-wrench application without having to blatantly derail the PCs plans.

And having written that, it occurs to me that with an appropriate hack of the Mountain Witch you could probably do everything that this game wants to do but doesn't.

I'm being prompted to post here by reading Luke's recent fond reminiscing about Exalted.( Read more... )

It's been a slow month in the land of Gametime. A month ago I posted Part 1 of my inquiries into how long term games function, and at long last, I've got something coherent to offer as a follow up.

Part II( Read more... )

( Read more... )

Recently though, my thinking has been turning away from this methodology to look towards analagous human experiences, and not surprisingly given the proportion of time I spend doing it, I've struck on the notion of roleplaying as a team sport.

( Read more... )

Over on Story Games there was a thread recently about whether you could become "Story Game Brain Damaged" - get so used to the style of play originating in the Forge that you forget all the basics you grew up with.

Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, it's something I can certainly identify with. I recently dropped out of a game recently partially because my expectations about game content and action levels were out of sync with the group as a whole. A disappointing experience that in part comes from my recent emphasis and experience running short games which necessarily pack a lot of punch into not much time.

Perturbed by this, I have been spending quite a bit of time thinking about the Long term games I've been involved in, both as a player and a GM. Trying to figure out what was good about them, what they did that a shorter game couldn't do. Games like 8w_gremlin's short-term Call of Cthulhu and my own Grim Harvest games muddied the water for me by bringing a lot of old school elements, especially related to pacing & the absence of scene framing, to a short term game.

So I decided that I would consult two friends of mine who both have a lot of experience with Long Term games and whose opinions I have always found deeply interesting, if not always entirely my thing. They are Steve Rennel, and Ivan Towlson.

I've never actually gamed with Steve, but he's been an important interlocutor for gaming discussion for a couple of years now; I've spent more time talking to grandexperiment, but Steve may well be second.

Ivan has been one of my semi-regular gaming buddies for about 4 years now. He's a stalwart in my convention playtesting cycle, ran the Lace and Steel game that I've posted about many times, and played in Dale Elvy's 2 year Paths of the Damned campaign with mr_orgue and myself.

We've been engaging in a lengthy series of e-mail discussions, trying to tease out what they see as the strengths of Long term games and how they've approached getting the best from them. This discussion is very much ongoing, but I've compiled the first bit of it and present it here for your comment.( Long, but well worth your time to read. :) )

Friend of Gametime scurvy_platypus has responded to Luke's last two posts here about the heroic journey in 4E with a big post of his own, which is mostly about how big, crucial chunks of the hero's journey are absent entirely from RPGs.

It has sparked some cool discussion!

Go see.

So, IMO D&D4e integrates the concept of a hero’s journey into gameplay much more than previous editions. However, that leads us back to an examnination of the starting point. If the starting point is too high then the journey essentially fails as you miss an essential first part of it. D&D4e does empower PCs at first level with a greater competence than previous editions but the real question is by how much?

( The Boy who becomes the Hero )

So, in summary IMO D&D4e handles the heroic journey better than previous editions of D&D and this is one key reason why I am enjoying it. It has embedded this core concept into the game much more than previous editions. On saying that, the starting point is a little higher than previous editions but what it is actually doing is putting the PC on the starting point of their heroic journey from the 1st session.