Trying to get back into using Monday's to point to things I'm excited about and remind me why I like the internet. And we'll start with Strands of Fate, a new Fate based game that has just been released after a pretty robust beta. You can read more about it here, but the quick pitch is that it looks like a well-engineered version of Fate that makes a few different choices of emphasis (like removing the adjective ladder) and goes a little more crunchy. Someone describe it as a love child between GURPS and Fate 3.0 (and I think they meant that in a good way) but I'm not sure I'd even go that far. I think it's still close to Fate at heart, keeping a lot of the fast and loose, but nailing down a few more quantitative things like equipment. I'm still reading my pdf, but it's pretty cool so far.
I have been reading the hell out of Gray, Brown & Macunfo's Gamestorming, and enjoying it enough that I've been taking my time going through it (and taking notes! Voluntarily!). I'd been following the blog and I enjoyed Gray's previous writings on visualizing information (I have the initial copy of the unbook Marks & Meaning), so I was already ready for this to rock. See, Gamestorming is about games you can play in a business context to get things done in meetings, such as brainstorming, team building, problem solving and so on. There's some fantastic analysis of games and creativity, but the bulk of the book is dedicated to the actual games themselves. In a weird bit of nerd recursion, I've been looking at a lot of these games he's adapted to business and been thinking about them in terms of adapting them back into games, and it's been quite useful. It especially offers some useful insight on shared creation, as in games like the DFRPG. Sometime after I finish, this one will probably merit a full review, but for now suffice it to say I'm very much enjoying it.
On the fiction end, Harry Connolly's Game of Cages is out. I mentioned this when it was released, but having finished it I need to mention it again because it rocks hard. As with its predecessor, it's much more on the action-horror end of the Urban Fantasy spectrum, full of dark, painful stuff. But it rockets forward, once again underscoring how scary you can make something without ichor by illustrating it's impact more than the thing itself. This is shaping up to be a great series, and since there are only two books, this is a great time to get on board. However, I would definitely remind any prospective reader that I do not lightly describe this as dark. Very bad things happen to people, and the usual protections of fiction are no place to be seen. I find it a breath of fresh air, but I also have warned my wife off the series.
I have to recommend reading What Batman Taught Me About Being A Good Dad. As a newish father, it kind of doubly struck home and got me thinking about what I will be watching with my son as he gets older.
These are too pretty to go without comment: Typographic Maps.
Linnaeus (Who has been doing some FANTASTIC daily game analysis) has offered a summary of why Race for the Galaxy works so well for him that I am in strong agreement with. Race is one of my absolute favorite games, but one I only get to play every so often because it's got a bit of a learning curve.
Alex Epstein, one of my favorite writers about writing, breaks down the 6th element of story. John August, who is also in that category, provides the short answer for how to write a romance.
Gamefiend has started a kickstarter to fund his 4e villain book, Worldbreakers. If you haven't seen the stuff he's done so far, you should. With the Worldbreaker's he's basially creating boss fights where ther transitions, environment and flow of the fight are all baked into the monster. This is good stuff, and more it's exactly the sort of stuff that D&D 4essentials could use more of. The fact that Gamefiend is probably one of the most insightful guys writing about D&D these days is just a bonus (and if At-Will isn't on your 4essentials radar, it should be)
That should do for now. I already feel reminded that the Internet is full of awesome.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Friday, October 8, 2010
Aspect Technology
I've been kind of randomly designing Fate widgets for a variety of purposes and thinking about some fiddly bits, and I figured I'd share a couple of them.
Hard and Soft Compels
So, one of the most contentious rules issues in Fate revolves around the handling of compels. The question is this: when the GM puts forward a compel, should the player be able to defer (at no cost) or should the player have to pay a fate point to put off the compel.
There are good arguments on both sides that more or less boil down to this: On one hand paying to resist a compel is pretty expensive and not necessarily fun because that fate point could be better spent doing something interesting. On the other hand, paying to resist is the only way to give aspects teeth, and without the requirement to pay, aspects which should have a concrete effect, like injuries or scene aspects like "Out of Air" don't actually have any teeth.[1]
There are other issues too, though less central ones. For example, not-paying is arguably more newbie-friendly (which is why my earlier Magic Words implementation was a no-pay one). You can pick any number of issues, but as long as you can grasp the main conflict, it should be pretty clear.
In an ideal world there should be some way to distinguish between aspects that you opt to take versus those which you must take. There's a temptation to split the terminology here into offers (optional) and compels (Pay or play) but just for consistency I'll refer to them as soft and hard compels.
There are a couple of ways to handle this, so here are two that are on my mind[2]:
1. Straight Signaling
No mechanical change here except that when the GM puts forward a fate point as part of a compel, there are two ways to do it, depending on how the GM intends the compel. On a soft compel, which the player is free to refuse, the GM offers the fate point held upright in his fingers, or in his palm, facing up. On a hard compel, which the player would need to buy off, the GM sets the fate point down on the table (ideally with a forcible *click*) and withdraws his hand.
The one thing this demands are fate points that are clearly visible and easily manipulated. Poker chips are my usual favorite and they work very well for this approach, especially for getting that *click*.
2. Adjusted Cost
One other easy way to do it is to up the effective "value" of a hard compel over a soft one. Doing this effectively reduces the cost of refusing a compel by one fate point, which is to say, when the GM puts forward one fate point, the player is free to refuse. If the GM puts forward _two_ fate points, the player needs to put forward one to counter it. The GM can then put forward a third, the player a second and so forth. This has the advantage of being pretty clear with any kind of fate point, and it implicitly acknowledges that some compels are nastier than others.
Decoupled Refresh
So, a fixed refresh pool is an important thing when it's a part of the rest of the system, as it is in the case of Dresden Files, but that's not a necessity in every game. Similarly, Spirit of the Century has an implicit refresh (it's not called that) equal to the number of aspects, but there's no need why that must be so. Setting a much lower or higher refresh value can tweak a game. Admittedly, setting it higher can get silly, but setting it low, sometimes quite low, can be very powerful. The trick that I am currently very fond of is this: Assume a default refresh of zero, and increase it by one for every aspect on the character's sheet that you've used to plan the current session.
This is a nicely double-edged trick. To players it communicates who is going to be in the spotlight in a given episode. As a GM, it tells you how well you've engaged each player. If you find yourself giving someone no fate points, you've probably done something wrong. I'm doing this in my Cold War game, and, I try to gun for at least two per player as a baseline, with more of them for the character drawing my attention.
Fast Aspects
I love a good phased chargen for building connections between players and characters, but you simply don't always have time to do all that, so here's a quick and dirty way to generate a list of aspects that defines the character and ties everyone together.
First, generate your three key aspects. The first is your High Concept. As in the DFRPG, this is the single aspect most reflective of what your character is, If you were to describe him in a single turn of a phrase, it would be this. The second should be your Trouble, the aspect that lies at the heart of most of the problems you encounter. This is the big obstacle you struggle with. Third is your ace in the hole, your little something extra that makes you a little bit more than yout high concept and trouble might suggest. Maybe it's a secret, maybe it's a different problem entirely, maybe it's some unexpected past experience you can call on. Whatever it is, it's the twist that rounds out your core description.
You will get an additional number of aspects equal to the number of players (including yourself, but not the GM). The first of them is what your character thinks (or perhaps hopes) people think of you. This is your Facade. At this point take a quick pause - everyone should share their High Concept, Trouble and Facade and, optionally, their Ace in the Hole.[3]
The others are each something your character thinks is true about each other character. It's helpful for these to be strong opinions, and it's important to embrace the idea that these (as well as the facade) are not simply _possibly_ wrong, they are almost _certainly_ wrong. That's as it should be. It creates a mild friction that provides a basis for interaction that might otherwise be purely limited to the necessities of play.
Feel free to openly discuss these aspects as you pick them, and players should reveal them all at the end of chargen before play begins.
As a GM, give the players opportunities to change the aspects if they have particularly good player-player interactions that would seem to change the relationship. Make sure that the new aspect is clearly stated. See, no one is one thing all the time, so creating a new expectation is just as much of a play driver as a misapprehension.[4]
1 - The iconic bad example of this is a character with a "Broken Leg" refusing a compel on an athletics roll to keep the from sprinting around.
2 - This pair of options (and others like it) are the kind of rules options I'm very fond of because you can drop them into any FATE variant and they hold up.
3 - Yes, you can keep your Ace in the Hole secret, and while this would seem at odds with my usual problem with secrets, note that with the limited set of aspects, there's going to be a strong incentive to _use_ that aspect. Which is to say, if it's a secret, it's a secret that wants to come out in play, and that's as it should be.
4 - Kudos to the fantastic Smallvile RPG, which inspired this idea.
Hard and Soft Compels
So, one of the most contentious rules issues in Fate revolves around the handling of compels. The question is this: when the GM puts forward a compel, should the player be able to defer (at no cost) or should the player have to pay a fate point to put off the compel.
There are good arguments on both sides that more or less boil down to this: On one hand paying to resist a compel is pretty expensive and not necessarily fun because that fate point could be better spent doing something interesting. On the other hand, paying to resist is the only way to give aspects teeth, and without the requirement to pay, aspects which should have a concrete effect, like injuries or scene aspects like "Out of Air" don't actually have any teeth.[1]
There are other issues too, though less central ones. For example, not-paying is arguably more newbie-friendly (which is why my earlier Magic Words implementation was a no-pay one). You can pick any number of issues, but as long as you can grasp the main conflict, it should be pretty clear.
In an ideal world there should be some way to distinguish between aspects that you opt to take versus those which you must take. There's a temptation to split the terminology here into offers (optional) and compels (Pay or play) but just for consistency I'll refer to them as soft and hard compels.
There are a couple of ways to handle this, so here are two that are on my mind[2]:
1. Straight Signaling
No mechanical change here except that when the GM puts forward a fate point as part of a compel, there are two ways to do it, depending on how the GM intends the compel. On a soft compel, which the player is free to refuse, the GM offers the fate point held upright in his fingers, or in his palm, facing up. On a hard compel, which the player would need to buy off, the GM sets the fate point down on the table (ideally with a forcible *click*) and withdraws his hand.
The one thing this demands are fate points that are clearly visible and easily manipulated. Poker chips are my usual favorite and they work very well for this approach, especially for getting that *click*.
2. Adjusted Cost
One other easy way to do it is to up the effective "value" of a hard compel over a soft one. Doing this effectively reduces the cost of refusing a compel by one fate point, which is to say, when the GM puts forward one fate point, the player is free to refuse. If the GM puts forward _two_ fate points, the player needs to put forward one to counter it. The GM can then put forward a third, the player a second and so forth. This has the advantage of being pretty clear with any kind of fate point, and it implicitly acknowledges that some compels are nastier than others.
Decoupled Refresh
So, a fixed refresh pool is an important thing when it's a part of the rest of the system, as it is in the case of Dresden Files, but that's not a necessity in every game. Similarly, Spirit of the Century has an implicit refresh (it's not called that) equal to the number of aspects, but there's no need why that must be so. Setting a much lower or higher refresh value can tweak a game. Admittedly, setting it higher can get silly, but setting it low, sometimes quite low, can be very powerful. The trick that I am currently very fond of is this: Assume a default refresh of zero, and increase it by one for every aspect on the character's sheet that you've used to plan the current session.
This is a nicely double-edged trick. To players it communicates who is going to be in the spotlight in a given episode. As a GM, it tells you how well you've engaged each player. If you find yourself giving someone no fate points, you've probably done something wrong. I'm doing this in my Cold War game, and, I try to gun for at least two per player as a baseline, with more of them for the character drawing my attention.
Fast Aspects
I love a good phased chargen for building connections between players and characters, but you simply don't always have time to do all that, so here's a quick and dirty way to generate a list of aspects that defines the character and ties everyone together.
First, generate your three key aspects. The first is your High Concept. As in the DFRPG, this is the single aspect most reflective of what your character is, If you were to describe him in a single turn of a phrase, it would be this. The second should be your Trouble, the aspect that lies at the heart of most of the problems you encounter. This is the big obstacle you struggle with. Third is your ace in the hole, your little something extra that makes you a little bit more than yout high concept and trouble might suggest. Maybe it's a secret, maybe it's a different problem entirely, maybe it's some unexpected past experience you can call on. Whatever it is, it's the twist that rounds out your core description.
You will get an additional number of aspects equal to the number of players (including yourself, but not the GM). The first of them is what your character thinks (or perhaps hopes) people think of you. This is your Facade. At this point take a quick pause - everyone should share their High Concept, Trouble and Facade and, optionally, their Ace in the Hole.[3]
The others are each something your character thinks is true about each other character. It's helpful for these to be strong opinions, and it's important to embrace the idea that these (as well as the facade) are not simply _possibly_ wrong, they are almost _certainly_ wrong. That's as it should be. It creates a mild friction that provides a basis for interaction that might otherwise be purely limited to the necessities of play.
Feel free to openly discuss these aspects as you pick them, and players should reveal them all at the end of chargen before play begins.
As a GM, give the players opportunities to change the aspects if they have particularly good player-player interactions that would seem to change the relationship. Make sure that the new aspect is clearly stated. See, no one is one thing all the time, so creating a new expectation is just as much of a play driver as a misapprehension.[4]
1 - The iconic bad example of this is a character with a "Broken Leg" refusing a compel on an athletics roll to keep the from sprinting around.
2 - This pair of options (and others like it) are the kind of rules options I'm very fond of because you can drop them into any FATE variant and they hold up.
3 - Yes, you can keep your Ace in the Hole secret, and while this would seem at odds with my usual problem with secrets, note that with the limited set of aspects, there's going to be a strong incentive to _use_ that aspect. Which is to say, if it's a secret, it's a secret that wants to come out in play, and that's as it should be.
4 - Kudos to the fantastic Smallvile RPG, which inspired this idea.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Using Monsters
I talked a bit yesterday about how pleased I was with the Dark Sun monster book because it had the tools of play baked right in. That got me thinking a bit about monster books in general and how well (or poorly) they line up with how they actually get used. (This is all pretty 4e centric, but theoretically applies to any game with a bestiary.)
For me, monsters fall into two categories - reliable and stunt. Reliable monsters are ones that I'll use a lot in any given game. Kobolds. Skeletons. Orcs. Creatures which I imagine existing in the setting as "monster races" or otherwise having a reason to exist in large, interchangeable numbers. 4e proved an absolute delight for these guys since it embraced the idea that there might be lots of creatures of that type representing a range of threats. That made them a lot more useful to me.[1]
Reliable monsters also have a substantial impact on the setting of the game because they don't come from nowhere. The goblins live somewhere, and the undead were once not quite so dead. They become part of the fingerprint of the setting.
Stunt monsters are pretty much everything else. I pick them up to jazz up fights or to build fights around. They're one-offs, and while some of them fit into the setting in a high level sense, there's not necessarily a huge need to put a lot of effort into it. Ultimately, nobody really cares where that gibbering mouther comes from once it's been looted and the party has moved onto the next room.[2]
Now, it's possible this is entirely idiosyncratic on my part, but I think not. Consider the way adventures make use of new monsters - it is a rare adventure which does not have at least a few unique monsters which are unlikely to ever bee seen outside of the bounds of that adventure (and maybe DDI). These monsters serve some particular purpose in the adventure, and that's much of the fun of them.
All of which is to say that this speaks to the importance of putting plot hooks right into the monsters. With reliable monsters it might be important to give some amount of background and social context, but for the bulk of monsters, it seems the thing to provide is guidance for how to _make_ it that interesting one-off.
Curiously, one of the most interesting examples of how to do this can probably be found in people's write ups for their own version of New Crobuzon.[3] Since the basis of the writeup was (effectively) pick three reliable and three stunt monsters for your city, you get to see some really fascinating ways to handle both types. Because the stunt monsters are explicitly designed as one-offs, they get writeups that are all about play, not about bad biology essays.
1 - Birthright did this quite cleverly with their "Orogs" which basically were a single bucket into which a number of evil humanoid races were tossed, with the idea that you could run into small runty ones or huge, ogre sized one, but they were still Orogs. Given that they had a national presence in the game, this worked surprisingly well, though it only came up every so often - Birthright was usually about people and Big M Monsters. Handling Orogs this way felt suitably Tolkeinesque.
2 - There's an exception to this in the form of Big-M-Monsters, monsters that are big enough that as individuals that they are elements of the setting. Named dragons are probably the best example of this, but things like the Beholder crime boss of Waterdeep count too.
3 - If you haven't read these you absolutely should. They're some of the best examples of how to take a small set of 4e elements and make something fantastic. I admit, I'm totally proud of mine, Vicidia.
For me, monsters fall into two categories - reliable and stunt. Reliable monsters are ones that I'll use a lot in any given game. Kobolds. Skeletons. Orcs. Creatures which I imagine existing in the setting as "monster races" or otherwise having a reason to exist in large, interchangeable numbers. 4e proved an absolute delight for these guys since it embraced the idea that there might be lots of creatures of that type representing a range of threats. That made them a lot more useful to me.[1]
Reliable monsters also have a substantial impact on the setting of the game because they don't come from nowhere. The goblins live somewhere, and the undead were once not quite so dead. They become part of the fingerprint of the setting.
Stunt monsters are pretty much everything else. I pick them up to jazz up fights or to build fights around. They're one-offs, and while some of them fit into the setting in a high level sense, there's not necessarily a huge need to put a lot of effort into it. Ultimately, nobody really cares where that gibbering mouther comes from once it's been looted and the party has moved onto the next room.[2]
Now, it's possible this is entirely idiosyncratic on my part, but I think not. Consider the way adventures make use of new monsters - it is a rare adventure which does not have at least a few unique monsters which are unlikely to ever bee seen outside of the bounds of that adventure (and maybe DDI). These monsters serve some particular purpose in the adventure, and that's much of the fun of them.
All of which is to say that this speaks to the importance of putting plot hooks right into the monsters. With reliable monsters it might be important to give some amount of background and social context, but for the bulk of monsters, it seems the thing to provide is guidance for how to _make_ it that interesting one-off.
Curiously, one of the most interesting examples of how to do this can probably be found in people's write ups for their own version of New Crobuzon.[3] Since the basis of the writeup was (effectively) pick three reliable and three stunt monsters for your city, you get to see some really fascinating ways to handle both types. Because the stunt monsters are explicitly designed as one-offs, they get writeups that are all about play, not about bad biology essays.
1 - Birthright did this quite cleverly with their "Orogs" which basically were a single bucket into which a number of evil humanoid races were tossed, with the idea that you could run into small runty ones or huge, ogre sized one, but they were still Orogs. Given that they had a national presence in the game, this worked surprisingly well, though it only came up every so often - Birthright was usually about people and Big M Monsters. Handling Orogs this way felt suitably Tolkeinesque.
2 - There's an exception to this in the form of Big-M-Monsters, monsters that are big enough that as individuals that they are elements of the setting. Named dragons are probably the best example of this, but things like the Beholder crime boss of Waterdeep count too.
3 - If you haven't read these you absolutely should. They're some of the best examples of how to take a small set of 4e elements and make something fantastic. I admit, I'm totally proud of mine, Vicidia.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
The Sun is Dark
The new 4e Dark Sun setting books are pretty good. They've changed up their format a little bit, and rather than doing a GM's book and a Player's book, they just did one setting book and one monster book[1]. I was a little bit skeptical of this approach, but as it turns out, I like it very much. It made Dark Sun pop in a way that the previous settings hadn't quite managed to.
Now, some of this may be all about legacy. The first two settings are both thoroughly documented beasts from previous editions which had to get distilled down into some manner of workable version for the much more minimalist 4e presentation. Dark Sun had different parentage.
For those unfamiliar with it, Dark Sun was one of the Boxed Set setting released in support of second edition D&D, along with Planescape, Birthright and Spelljammer.[2] Like Planescape, it was in large part defined by its art style (courtesy of Brom) and it was well-loved and mechanically interesting, trying to express ideas like tougher PCs, ubiquitous psionics and bone weapons without he fairly crude tools 2e provided. It wasn't always a great match, but it more than made up for its shortcomings with its clear, brutal style and creativity in presentation.[3]
Dark Sun suffered a bad fate at the hands of a revised edition that showcased all the worst parts of novelization. Basically, the setting had been changed over the course of the books as a troupe of heroes had gone around and killed all the big bad guys who had a large role in defining the setting. Revised Dark Sun kind of hinged on how awesome those guys were and how much you were getting their sloppy seconds.
The 4e version kind of rolls back the clock on that, picking a moment of change (just after the death of one of the Dragon Kings) and taking a snapshot there. It's a good choice because it puts a nice level of tension and potential change into things without mandating anything. Players could be at the center of changing the world, or they could just go off in their own direction without things changing drastically. That's good design.
The art is...well, it's maybe unfair to pick on the art. It's ok - too clean in places but excellent in others. The problem is that in my mind it's being compared to some truly iconic art, and much of it suffers by comparison. Still, the good is quite good, and some of the monsters really shine.
And monsters bring me to the part that I found most impressive. The monster book _is_ the GMs book. A lot of the hooks in the main book are fleshed out in one monster entry or another. There's no easy way to document these connections, which is perhaps a bit frustrating, but at the same time the fact that the reader can make the connection as they go draws him in a little more, so I think it's a net positive.
I'm not sure I can state strongly enough how good an idea this is. Putting the material in the monsters book basically imbeds the setting elements right into the tools. There's no abstract layer between them required to bring them together - it just happens. These monsters are associated with this setting feature. Done.
I really like this direction for setting books. Where Eberron and the Forgotten Realms were well enough put together, they are not setting that lend themselves well to overview. There's just too much stuff. Dark Sun, on the other hand, is actually a fairly small setting, for all that it contains bigness within. It's a limited geographic area on a world that might otherwise be dead, with civilization clustered in only a few places. The volume of text in these books really feels like it's just about the right amount.
Now, no books are going to be completely flawless, and a few weaknesses pop up in the main book. The bulk of the book is setting information, usually 2 or 4 page spreads on each area of interest, with a larger spread for Tyr, the theoretical hub of any campaign. Sadly, Tyr is probably the least interesting part of the setting. In and of itself that's no problem - something has to be least interesting - but why it (and a few other entries) fall flat struck me as very interesting.
See, the dullest entries in the book are the most normal. The ones that fill in names of locations with a line or two of detail. They're very clearly written in accordance with a specific format which hearkens back to older adventure design, and the weakness of it ends up standing out more strongly in a book that mostly eludes it. The pattern is this: where a writer assigns two lines apiece to outline five "normal" parts of a setting (shops, NPCs, stuff like that) it feels like filler. But when that same writer[4] takes 10 lines to talk about, well, almost anything, the setting comes alive with hooks and interesting elements.
It's very curious to me, since it seems to be no shortage of talent on the writer's part. Rather, I think the bullet-point location format proves to be a bit of a lead weight because things like the name of a cheese shop are the parts the GM can most easily fill in on her own. Giving the same writers a little more breathing room produces much better results.
So I'm filing that one away as potentially useful down the line. I don't think it's a blanket condemnation of short summaries - there's plenty of evidence that you can put a compelling hook in a single sentence - but it definitely warns against small details purely for the sake of small details (at least for me).
All in all, I'm pleased I picked it up, and a little worried that just as WOTC hits their stride on a setting book, the entire idea of setting books is tossed up in the air by the emergence of the Essentials line. But such are the vagaries of the hobby.
1 - I believe there may also be a mega-adventure for it as well but I, er, kind of don't care.
2 - Of these four settings, three of them were brilliant and evocative. One was very stupid, but evocative.
3 - Many of the Dark Sun adventures were physically unlike any other published adventures, including folders of flip-top books with information for players on one side and the GM on the other. Even if they weren't great adventures they were bold experiments.
4 - And I mean that literally, some entries go from flat to snappy at the drop of a hat.
Now, some of this may be all about legacy. The first two settings are both thoroughly documented beasts from previous editions which had to get distilled down into some manner of workable version for the much more minimalist 4e presentation. Dark Sun had different parentage.
For those unfamiliar with it, Dark Sun was one of the Boxed Set setting released in support of second edition D&D, along with Planescape, Birthright and Spelljammer.[2] Like Planescape, it was in large part defined by its art style (courtesy of Brom) and it was well-loved and mechanically interesting, trying to express ideas like tougher PCs, ubiquitous psionics and bone weapons without he fairly crude tools 2e provided. It wasn't always a great match, but it more than made up for its shortcomings with its clear, brutal style and creativity in presentation.[3]
Dark Sun suffered a bad fate at the hands of a revised edition that showcased all the worst parts of novelization. Basically, the setting had been changed over the course of the books as a troupe of heroes had gone around and killed all the big bad guys who had a large role in defining the setting. Revised Dark Sun kind of hinged on how awesome those guys were and how much you were getting their sloppy seconds.
The 4e version kind of rolls back the clock on that, picking a moment of change (just after the death of one of the Dragon Kings) and taking a snapshot there. It's a good choice because it puts a nice level of tension and potential change into things without mandating anything. Players could be at the center of changing the world, or they could just go off in their own direction without things changing drastically. That's good design.
The art is...well, it's maybe unfair to pick on the art. It's ok - too clean in places but excellent in others. The problem is that in my mind it's being compared to some truly iconic art, and much of it suffers by comparison. Still, the good is quite good, and some of the monsters really shine.
And monsters bring me to the part that I found most impressive. The monster book _is_ the GMs book. A lot of the hooks in the main book are fleshed out in one monster entry or another. There's no easy way to document these connections, which is perhaps a bit frustrating, but at the same time the fact that the reader can make the connection as they go draws him in a little more, so I think it's a net positive.
I'm not sure I can state strongly enough how good an idea this is. Putting the material in the monsters book basically imbeds the setting elements right into the tools. There's no abstract layer between them required to bring them together - it just happens. These monsters are associated with this setting feature. Done.
I really like this direction for setting books. Where Eberron and the Forgotten Realms were well enough put together, they are not setting that lend themselves well to overview. There's just too much stuff. Dark Sun, on the other hand, is actually a fairly small setting, for all that it contains bigness within. It's a limited geographic area on a world that might otherwise be dead, with civilization clustered in only a few places. The volume of text in these books really feels like it's just about the right amount.
Now, no books are going to be completely flawless, and a few weaknesses pop up in the main book. The bulk of the book is setting information, usually 2 or 4 page spreads on each area of interest, with a larger spread for Tyr, the theoretical hub of any campaign. Sadly, Tyr is probably the least interesting part of the setting. In and of itself that's no problem - something has to be least interesting - but why it (and a few other entries) fall flat struck me as very interesting.
See, the dullest entries in the book are the most normal. The ones that fill in names of locations with a line or two of detail. They're very clearly written in accordance with a specific format which hearkens back to older adventure design, and the weakness of it ends up standing out more strongly in a book that mostly eludes it. The pattern is this: where a writer assigns two lines apiece to outline five "normal" parts of a setting (shops, NPCs, stuff like that) it feels like filler. But when that same writer[4] takes 10 lines to talk about, well, almost anything, the setting comes alive with hooks and interesting elements.
It's very curious to me, since it seems to be no shortage of talent on the writer's part. Rather, I think the bullet-point location format proves to be a bit of a lead weight because things like the name of a cheese shop are the parts the GM can most easily fill in on her own. Giving the same writers a little more breathing room produces much better results.
So I'm filing that one away as potentially useful down the line. I don't think it's a blanket condemnation of short summaries - there's plenty of evidence that you can put a compelling hook in a single sentence - but it definitely warns against small details purely for the sake of small details (at least for me).
All in all, I'm pleased I picked it up, and a little worried that just as WOTC hits their stride on a setting book, the entire idea of setting books is tossed up in the air by the emergence of the Essentials line. But such are the vagaries of the hobby.
1 - I believe there may also be a mega-adventure for it as well but I, er, kind of don't care.
2 - Of these four settings, three of them were brilliant and evocative. One was very stupid, but evocative.
3 - Many of the Dark Sun adventures were physically unlike any other published adventures, including folders of flip-top books with information for players on one side and the GM on the other. Even if they weren't great adventures they were bold experiments.
4 - And I mean that literally, some entries go from flat to snappy at the drop of a hat.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
A Good Setting
I have occasionally remarked that for all the incredibly clever and interesting ideas we have managed to develop in the realm of RPG rules, we have let setting be something of the poor cousin in our pursuit of excellence. There are a lot of reasons why this is so, but one in particular keeps bubbling to the surface. We can say with reasonable accuracy whether a set of rules works. It's testable. You consider the goal, run some scenes, and assess it. Maybe you hate it, but it still may do what it's designed to do quite well.
It's much, much harder to assess a setting. Part of that is a problem right on the face of it - setting is going to be even more a function of taste than rules are, and there's no way to get around that. It's easy to like or dislike a particular setting. But more than that, it is much harder to _test_ a setting.
Certainly, there are some rough benchmarks. "Do I get an idea for a game hook on every page of the book?" is a common one, but it's pretty loosey goosey in terms of pinning things down. How well the setting suggests ideas can hinge on a lot of factors, including taste.
Hell, it's hard to even settle on an idea of how setting should be presented. On one end of the spectrum you have entire volumes dedicated to a given setting like the Forgotten Realms or Glorantha, while on the other hand you may have nothing but a roughly sketched out set of ideas and maybe a map. And what's utterly baffling on some level is that both of these models work equally well.
And that, right there, may be the trick of it. For a minute let's set aside the people who buy setting books out of a desire to know more about the setting or a completist urge.[1] What are we left with?
The answer is: play. Play is the eye of the needle which the camel of setting needs to pass through. In any given game the players will see only so much of the world, encounter only so many people, and otherwise explore only so much setting. That amount is often small enough that it's possible to build from scratch, but it's equally easy to shave that portion off a larger block (as in the case of a large setting) for use.[2]
What's interesting is that this doesn't have any relationship to the size of the setting. If the game is world-spanning, players may see many locations, but they will see them very shallowly. The published setting may have an advantage in terms of already having names for those places, and cool maps, but the bulk of the information in that setting is simply not going to ever be seen.
Now, how we arrive at this unit of setting definitely impacts its composition. If it's shaved off a larger whole, there is probably a stronger sense of a "world beyond the horizon". If it's built from the ground up, there's probably a stronger tie between the actions of the PCs and the details of the setting. Both of these are cool, and you can strike differing points of balance between them, but ultimately they're fairly small differences.
With that in mind, I find myself wondering if the trick of setting is not to try to make better or more compelling settings. Neither is it to make more clever rules for generating setting. Rather, I think the trick may be providing more guidelines for how to turn a setting of any size (from a page of notes to the Forgotten Realms[3]) into a game-sized piece.
Obviously, I'm a little late to my own party. In some ways this is one of the purposes of collaborative character creation, especially when it has an explicit setting building element to it (as in the DFRPG). Sitting down and doing this can either build up the elements you want for a game, or pull out the interesting bits from a larger setting based on the interests of the group. This is potent kung fu, but it comes from the rules end of things. What I'm wondering is what we can do with the design of settings to make tools like this more viable.
1 - They're a non-trivial segment of the populace, so I would suggest against ignoring them from a publishing perspective, but that's a whole other discussion.
2 - I feel like there's a soup metaphor here just waiting to be put to use, but I'll resist.
3 - Initially typed that as "Forgotten Reams" and was sorely tempted to leave it as such.
It's much, much harder to assess a setting. Part of that is a problem right on the face of it - setting is going to be even more a function of taste than rules are, and there's no way to get around that. It's easy to like or dislike a particular setting. But more than that, it is much harder to _test_ a setting.
Certainly, there are some rough benchmarks. "Do I get an idea for a game hook on every page of the book?" is a common one, but it's pretty loosey goosey in terms of pinning things down. How well the setting suggests ideas can hinge on a lot of factors, including taste.
Hell, it's hard to even settle on an idea of how setting should be presented. On one end of the spectrum you have entire volumes dedicated to a given setting like the Forgotten Realms or Glorantha, while on the other hand you may have nothing but a roughly sketched out set of ideas and maybe a map. And what's utterly baffling on some level is that both of these models work equally well.
And that, right there, may be the trick of it. For a minute let's set aside the people who buy setting books out of a desire to know more about the setting or a completist urge.[1] What are we left with?
The answer is: play. Play is the eye of the needle which the camel of setting needs to pass through. In any given game the players will see only so much of the world, encounter only so many people, and otherwise explore only so much setting. That amount is often small enough that it's possible to build from scratch, but it's equally easy to shave that portion off a larger block (as in the case of a large setting) for use.[2]
What's interesting is that this doesn't have any relationship to the size of the setting. If the game is world-spanning, players may see many locations, but they will see them very shallowly. The published setting may have an advantage in terms of already having names for those places, and cool maps, but the bulk of the information in that setting is simply not going to ever be seen.
Now, how we arrive at this unit of setting definitely impacts its composition. If it's shaved off a larger whole, there is probably a stronger sense of a "world beyond the horizon". If it's built from the ground up, there's probably a stronger tie between the actions of the PCs and the details of the setting. Both of these are cool, and you can strike differing points of balance between them, but ultimately they're fairly small differences.
With that in mind, I find myself wondering if the trick of setting is not to try to make better or more compelling settings. Neither is it to make more clever rules for generating setting. Rather, I think the trick may be providing more guidelines for how to turn a setting of any size (from a page of notes to the Forgotten Realms[3]) into a game-sized piece.
Obviously, I'm a little late to my own party. In some ways this is one of the purposes of collaborative character creation, especially when it has an explicit setting building element to it (as in the DFRPG). Sitting down and doing this can either build up the elements you want for a game, or pull out the interesting bits from a larger setting based on the interests of the group. This is potent kung fu, but it comes from the rules end of things. What I'm wondering is what we can do with the design of settings to make tools like this more viable.
1 - They're a non-trivial segment of the populace, so I would suggest against ignoring them from a publishing perspective, but that's a whole other discussion.
2 - I feel like there's a soup metaphor here just waiting to be put to use, but I'll resist.
3 - Initially typed that as "Forgotten Reams" and was sorely tempted to leave it as such.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Magic Words
Aspects in Fate (and by extension Spirit of the Century and The Dresden Files RPG) are an incredibly powerful tool, but like most tools they can be hard to use without a little familiarity. Obviously, if you're already very comfortable with their use then advice in applying them is of only limited use, but maybe you'll find this interesting anyway.
Players tend to be very enthusiastic about using aspects once they feel they can, but there's often an initial period of hesitation, where the player is mostly asking the GM whether or not he can use an aspect. It may be a step on the learning process, but playing mother-may-I with the GM is rarely something that gives players an excited first impression.
More problematic is the GMs end. The process of compelling aspects is one of those things that is harder to explain than do, and the process of explaining it can often end up seeming needlessly arcane. The fact that it works well at some tables does not erase the fact that it's overly tricky on others.
So with that in mind I'm going to propose a model of aspect use which will hopefully solve both problems. This is of especial use for new players and new games since it will have an impact on the type of aspects that people choose (or more specifically, how they phrase those aspects).
In this approach, we no longer explicitly refer to compelling, tagging or invoking aspects, and in fact there are no such actions. Instead, we simply treat aspects as magic words.
For a player this simply means any time he actually uses the aspect as part of his description, as part of what his character says or generally as part of play, he can spend a fate point for appropriate bonuses.
I come at him fast and furious.
"Jet's in trouble!"
I look over the scene cautiously.[1]
When spending for effect, which is to say, spending a fate point for something other than a bonus, simply make it part of the phrase.
I'm pretty well prepared, so I'm sure I've got some spare batteries here somewhere.
I've got a girl in every port and this one's name is Trixie
I've been up for two hours already. I'm a light sleeper.
And that's all the player needs to know. Say the word and slide the fate point forward. No need to ask the GM or check if it's ok. Just go forward. Now, yes, a GM may raise an eyebrow if something is totally out of line, like using well-prepared to justify having a rocket launcher in a boy scout pack, but things like that don't actually happen unless someone is being a tool, so don't sweat it.
On the GM side, the same logic applies. These are magic words, and every now and again you will start a sentence with one while sliding forward a fate point. If the player takes it, that's their cue to pick up the thread. If they don't then close it off. For example:
This guy has been riding you for the whole trip, trying to get under your skin. It would be easy to get angry...
At this point the GM slides forward the chip, if the player takes it, then the player proceeds.
Yeah, he gets me so pissed off that I pop him one in the dinner car over breakfast.
If the player declines, the GM proceeds, taking back the chip.
...but you manage to keep a cool head.
Yes, for the GM's part there's a bit more non-verbal communication, but not enough to break the flow.
Long time Fate players will also notice that in this case, the player was given leeway to make trouble for himself with the aspect. This is not mandatory - the GM can frame the aspect in much more detail - but unless the player is in a position where it might be hard to come up with a way the aspect might complicate things, it's often worth leaving such trouble in the hands of your players.
This model is fairly flexible in terms of what aspects it supports - people, places and things can all be named dropped ("If there's one thing Master Po taught me it's...") but it will get a bit gummy with more poetic aspects. The harder it is to work the aspect into a sentence, the harder its going to be for it to come up in play. Players looking to use this approach in existing games may need to consider rephrasing some of their aspects so they flow more naturally.
1 - Yes, adverbing it up or making other reasonable transformations are entirely valid.
Players tend to be very enthusiastic about using aspects once they feel they can, but there's often an initial period of hesitation, where the player is mostly asking the GM whether or not he can use an aspect. It may be a step on the learning process, but playing mother-may-I with the GM is rarely something that gives players an excited first impression.
More problematic is the GMs end. The process of compelling aspects is one of those things that is harder to explain than do, and the process of explaining it can often end up seeming needlessly arcane. The fact that it works well at some tables does not erase the fact that it's overly tricky on others.
So with that in mind I'm going to propose a model of aspect use which will hopefully solve both problems. This is of especial use for new players and new games since it will have an impact on the type of aspects that people choose (or more specifically, how they phrase those aspects).
In this approach, we no longer explicitly refer to compelling, tagging or invoking aspects, and in fact there are no such actions. Instead, we simply treat aspects as magic words.
For a player this simply means any time he actually uses the aspect as part of his description, as part of what his character says or generally as part of play, he can spend a fate point for appropriate bonuses.
I come at him fast and furious.
"Jet's in trouble!"
I look over the scene cautiously.[1]
When spending for effect, which is to say, spending a fate point for something other than a bonus, simply make it part of the phrase.
I'm pretty well prepared, so I'm sure I've got some spare batteries here somewhere.
I've got a girl in every port and this one's name is Trixie
I've been up for two hours already. I'm a light sleeper.
And that's all the player needs to know. Say the word and slide the fate point forward. No need to ask the GM or check if it's ok. Just go forward. Now, yes, a GM may raise an eyebrow if something is totally out of line, like using well-prepared to justify having a rocket launcher in a boy scout pack, but things like that don't actually happen unless someone is being a tool, so don't sweat it.
On the GM side, the same logic applies. These are magic words, and every now and again you will start a sentence with one while sliding forward a fate point. If the player takes it, that's their cue to pick up the thread. If they don't then close it off. For example:
This guy has been riding you for the whole trip, trying to get under your skin. It would be easy to get angry...
At this point the GM slides forward the chip, if the player takes it, then the player proceeds.
Yeah, he gets me so pissed off that I pop him one in the dinner car over breakfast.
If the player declines, the GM proceeds, taking back the chip.
...but you manage to keep a cool head.
Yes, for the GM's part there's a bit more non-verbal communication, but not enough to break the flow.
Long time Fate players will also notice that in this case, the player was given leeway to make trouble for himself with the aspect. This is not mandatory - the GM can frame the aspect in much more detail - but unless the player is in a position where it might be hard to come up with a way the aspect might complicate things, it's often worth leaving such trouble in the hands of your players.
This model is fairly flexible in terms of what aspects it supports - people, places and things can all be named dropped ("If there's one thing Master Po taught me it's...") but it will get a bit gummy with more poetic aspects. The harder it is to work the aspect into a sentence, the harder its going to be for it to come up in play. Players looking to use this approach in existing games may need to consider rephrasing some of their aspects so they flow more naturally.
1 - Yes, adverbing it up or making other reasonable transformations are entirely valid.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Reading
Sick days are good for video games and popcorn reading, and today I finally decided to take a swing at Riordan's Percy Jackson series. It is, so far, inoffensive and enjoyable and it absolutely makes me want to pull Nine Worlds and Scion off the shelf and shake them up a little. And that twigged me to something.
I'd never given it a lot of thought, but I had always associated my love of RPGs with being a reader. Sure, there were fantasy and sci fi movies out there which I watched and loved, even some TV, but books had always been the centerpiece of the sort of adventures and stories I imagined that I wanted to capture in play. For a long time I just assumed that was universal, but I am less and less certain of that assumption these days. Other media have simply gotten richer, partly as a result of multi media, but in large part from the growth of cable TV and the evolution of storytelling in TV programming.
I think it's safe to say that more people have seen the Lord of the Rings films than have ever read the books, and they're just the tip of the iceberg. The growth of anime in the states has opened the doors to deep, rich, fantastical stories of amazing depth. In short, I no longer have a problem imagining someone who might enter into the hobby with most of their imaginary touchpoints coming from something other than books.
Intellectually, this should delight me. Anything that grows the hobby is a good thing, right? But at the same time, I must quiet that voice inside myself which sounds a lot like my hardcore video game friends talking about HALO players. These are strangers; outsiders who are invading our space. Clearly they must be relegated to some sort of lesser status, condescended to, condemned and hopefully driven away so that we can go back to withering away.
So, yeah, I try to squash that instinct. And some days its made easier than others.
See, I can talk about a shift in media, but in some ways that's less telling than the inevitable shift in touchpoints over time. The books and movies that were most important to me are going to fall by the wayside, and as time goes on people find new touchpoints: Jordan, Martin, Rowling or whoever else - it always changes and that's a good thing, But it's hard. There is a temptation to treat the bibliography in the original DMG as some sort of holy writ. To think that the problems people see with our games or our play would be solved if they would simply read those books and internalize them the way we did. And it's easy to couch this desire in the noblest of terms, talking about respecting roots and acknowledging the giants who built these foundations of our play.
Except, that's kind of crap.
This is not literary criticism. This is a hobby where people take imaginary swords and kill imaginary monsters while sitting around a table with their friends. It does not demand that you read the right books or buy into the right logic. It demands that you revel in imagination, and that you carry worlds within you. It demands that you find joy in things that can never be.
That is, to my mind, pretty fantastic. There is no need for us to be less than that.
I'd never given it a lot of thought, but I had always associated my love of RPGs with being a reader. Sure, there were fantasy and sci fi movies out there which I watched and loved, even some TV, but books had always been the centerpiece of the sort of adventures and stories I imagined that I wanted to capture in play. For a long time I just assumed that was universal, but I am less and less certain of that assumption these days. Other media have simply gotten richer, partly as a result of multi media, but in large part from the growth of cable TV and the evolution of storytelling in TV programming.
I think it's safe to say that more people have seen the Lord of the Rings films than have ever read the books, and they're just the tip of the iceberg. The growth of anime in the states has opened the doors to deep, rich, fantastical stories of amazing depth. In short, I no longer have a problem imagining someone who might enter into the hobby with most of their imaginary touchpoints coming from something other than books.
Intellectually, this should delight me. Anything that grows the hobby is a good thing, right? But at the same time, I must quiet that voice inside myself which sounds a lot like my hardcore video game friends talking about HALO players. These are strangers; outsiders who are invading our space. Clearly they must be relegated to some sort of lesser status, condescended to, condemned and hopefully driven away so that we can go back to withering away.
So, yeah, I try to squash that instinct. And some days its made easier than others.
See, I can talk about a shift in media, but in some ways that's less telling than the inevitable shift in touchpoints over time. The books and movies that were most important to me are going to fall by the wayside, and as time goes on people find new touchpoints: Jordan, Martin, Rowling or whoever else - it always changes and that's a good thing, But it's hard. There is a temptation to treat the bibliography in the original DMG as some sort of holy writ. To think that the problems people see with our games or our play would be solved if they would simply read those books and internalize them the way we did. And it's easy to couch this desire in the noblest of terms, talking about respecting roots and acknowledging the giants who built these foundations of our play.
Except, that's kind of crap.
This is not literary criticism. This is a hobby where people take imaginary swords and kill imaginary monsters while sitting around a table with their friends. It does not demand that you read the right books or buy into the right logic. It demands that you revel in imagination, and that you carry worlds within you. It demands that you find joy in things that can never be.
That is, to my mind, pretty fantastic. There is no need for us to be less than that.
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