Borrowing from the idea of the Pluspora Check-in get some tabletop conversation going. If you have any questions that you want to get on the list to be asked, let me know. Also, if you'd like to be added or taken off the list of participants, let me know.
How do you prefer to learn a new game?
Roleplaying games, I love to read. I realize that some nuances might not be understood in that fashion, so changes might be required, but I don't really like to have things explained as a whole- reading the RPG is one of the necessary things to me.
Boardgames, I don't mind as much. I've learned quite a few from being explained- but I like having that done during play to learn by experience. Rules without that experience of being during play don't really stick in my memory.
For both RPGs and BGs, if I can I prefer to read the rules while playing through. It takes time, but I prefer to take longer and be sure that I didn't miss anything. Then usually after the first game I re-read the rules with the gained experience and see if I missed anything, and/or if I misinterpreted something.
If I can't read the rules the first time (e.g. because someone else is making me play a demo or somehow teaching me the game), if I like the game I usually try to read the rules afterwards
I can't say that I have a preferred way, but I have found that with board games that most of the manuals out there are kind of terrible. Watching a review / actual play can sometimes help with that.
For Roleplaying games there's no better way than reading the rules a few times, preferably with a play in between.
A doctor and self-professed maker comes up with an alternate version of the intubation shields employed in Taiwan. Links to both of these devices are below.
Borrowing from the idea of the Pluspora Check-in get some tabletop conversation going. If you have any questions that you want to get on the list to be asked, let me know. Also, if you'd like to be added or taken off the list of participants, let me know.
Does the experience of playing a game online lose anything compared to getting together in real life to play?
To me, there's no replacement for the casual interactions that happen during the course of the game. When you're waiting for another group to be GM'd when they're split off and you get together to talk about what you're going to do when its your turn. Or when it's not your turn in a boardgame and you're talking with another player.
Sure those can get annoying at times- especially when they aren't contributing to a game. But you never realize how much it is a part of the game until it is gone.
The main problem I have playing online is how easily I get distracted. Also, face-to-face interaction is very important for me, I couldn't exactly pinpoint why, at the moment
I've only done online gaming a couple of times in the last decade, so my data set is fairly small...
But here's where I sit on this. - Like online business meetings, at least some time is lost to tech glitches and user/software usage issues. And some gamers just.. cant.. play online because they don't have compatible systems or just can't figure out the various software stacks. And/or the audio that cuts out at least once in any given meeting... it feels like the 1st 20 minutes at least of any session is just getting into the meeting and getting everyone set to go. And/or reminding people to mute their audio when crunching chips or pouring drinks or whatever.... - The online software stacks are all imperfect. It feels like the "best" gaming experience requires some blend of techs to maximize, but its all subjective, so there's no best, really. Some people hate Roll20, some love it. Some services, like Google Meet are great for cameras and/or audio, but don't have any gaming-specific tools, etc. - Online in some ways can require more prep time than in person. Like, I can pencil in a map on a sheet of notebook paper in 30 seconds and make up a session that can be played. But online, I'd need to redraw that map electronically and then share it online via Dropbox or whatever, or build it into the appropriate stack for Roll20, etc. If your gaming style isn't map-oriented or miniatures-based, the prep isn't likely to be vastly different.
But in-person struggles too, with distractions especially. Side conversations, off-topic remarks, movie quotes... I'm far more likely to waste everyone's time and blow everyone's attention in person than via online meetings, where I can mute myself and quip to my heart's content.
So it's a mixed bag.
Though I think I'm going to be moving to online gaming almost exclusively. Because I can game with people from anywhere. I don't have to find local gamers that I am willing to go interact with in person. :)
Definitely. I'm no psychologist but I would guess that different parts of the brain are activated and used when in an actual face to face social situation. Playing online the game part is pretty much the game but the event itself is much luss fulfilling.
Where possible I play in person. To this end I've never played an RPG online, only board games and other tabletop games and well video games multiplayer.
I'm sure someone has done some kind of research on the different brain state during a physical conversation and one over the phone and one through text.
I have a habit of DVRing shows, and then binge watching them when I don't have anything to watch. I was doing that this morning, watching Zachari Levi extoll the benefits of shopping at TJ Maxx and hearing songs about the most wonderful time of the year when it struck me- several people won't get to see another Christmas that might otherwise have done so.
A lot of people support a particular person for President. I've always been one that votes for someone, rather than against someone. I like to believe in the person that I'm voting for. But I'm putting that aside this cycle. We have someone in office that can't even empathize enough with the people that have died under his watch because his performance was obviously not a 10. We also have voters that seem like if they were in Jim Jones' congregation, they would drink the Kool-Aid, because they are willing to die to increase his chances at Electability, and he encourages this behavior.
I've always thought that a President couldn't do enough damage in four years to be irreversible. That this was the reason that we had checks-and-balances on the office. But these deaths- they're an irreversible fact that he caused by his actions, and there are more coming. We have a real need to get him out of office this year. Hopefully, enough voters realize this that it will happen in November, and by the time these Christmas commercials come on our TVs and into our lives, this nightmare will be over.
The other day I was feeling overwhelmed and helpless reading about coronavirus.
In one article I ran across (I can’t find it now, unfortunately) a mother mentioned that there were no good resources she knew of for teaching kids not to touch their faces to avoid getting sick. Well, that seemed like a problem I could take a crack at helping with.
Over the last week, I put together a free print-and-play game on the subject, appropriately named “DON’T TOUCH YOUR FACE!” It makes the surprisingly difficult task of not touching your face into a fun, competitive challenge. I hope it gives some families out there some help and some laughs in these difficult times of itchy noses that must stay itchy.
Borrowing from the idea of the Pluspora Check-in get some tabletop conversation going. If you have any questions that you want to get on the list to be asked, let me know. Also, if you'd like to be added or taken off the list of participants, let me know.
What do you look from in reviews or recommendations about games?
I try to find reviewers that have the same tastes and/or biases as myself in order to cut through the noise of the number of releases to allow me to focus in on those projects that might appeal to my sensibilities. In general, I only look to those when the description of the game isn't enough to immediately make me say, "I want to play that.". If I'm interested in the game from reading the box or the description, I will go with my own feelings.
I don't look for anything specific, really. I am one of the very small handful of folks who still likes Tom Vasel's reviews - I don't always agree with him about the games, but watching his reviews gives me a good idea of whether or not I will enjoy a game (regardless of what he thought of it).
I appreciate Shut Up & Sit Down, but their reviews are so hit-or-miss because they get so distracted by one another that sometimes the game itself gets lost in the play surrounding it, making for an oddly unsatisfying review even as the spectacle is entertaining.
I look for things that I might have missed on first glance. Lots of folks are way deeper into things than I am, so a well-thought-out review that discusses intricacies and what-not is helpful to me.
That said I've also followed Drive Thru Reviews, The Dice Tower, Rahdo, and Kurt Wiegl over the years and I can get a pretty good sense based on those folks reviews of what might tickle my fancy and what might become another shelf dust cover.
When I go looking for reviews of a product I usually look for a variety of sources, so as to round off an individual bias and to make sure there isn't a mismatch (like a reviewer that has only played, for example, D20 based games and has a bias against percentile dice or against dice pools; or who doesn't like games that focus on non-combat activity etc.)
For reviews, I usually just go to BGG and read user posted reviews. I often read a number of them to get different perspectives and experiences about any particular game. Also, with BGG user reviews, I have the opportunity to ask the reviewer some follow up questions and they sometimes answer or other members may answer.
I generally do not read or watch reviews from well known boardgame bloggers or video channels. I find those reviews tend to feel more like entertainment than information. I also prefer reading reviews than watching video reviews. I find videos are not an easy format if I want to skip over certain parts of a review. For instance, I am generally not interested in the aesthetics of a game. As long as I can tell pieces apart and see the game state of the board, I am generally satisfied. I don't care about how pretty the game looks. I usually just care about how it plays. It is hard to skip over this section in a video review compared to a written review.
Borrowing from the idea of the Pluspora Check-in get some tabletop conversation going. If you have any questions that you want to get on the list to be asked, let me know. Also, if you'd like to be added or taken off the list of participants, let me know.
How do sales affect your buying habits (especially on digital offerings)? Do you value the writing less than having the physical books?
"$20 for a PDF" is a quote that I hear all the time, and I know that I know that I've been guilty of the same thoughts. After all, it's an electronic document, right? But when you look at the rate for artists, writers, layout designers, editing- the only thing different in delivering the PDF is the fact that it doesn't have to go through printing. So I've been trying to adjust my thinking in that regard. In terms of boardgames, I tend to stay away from PnP, so it's never been a consideration for me. The few PnP that I have, I haven't really played.
As far as sales, I'll buy a lot that I was on the fence about given a bundle of holding or humble bundle- and many things that I've never even considered. I don't necessarily wait for sales anymore- something that I did before on many more products.
It really does depend on the item, as well as the price.
I recently picked up the Adventures in Middle-earth PDFs via Bundle of Holding; those were books I'm only slightly interested in, since I don't particularly want to play D&D in Middle-earth, and would never have bought in print or as full-price PDFs, but at Bundle pricing I'm happy to add them to the reference library. (Especially since they're probably disappearing soon with the loss of Cubicle 7's license.)
There are other books I wouldn't buy at any price, and books I'd happily buy at their regular price. The sale is a factor, but not the only one.
As for physical vs. PDF, again there are some books where I want both, and some where just having a PDF for reference is fine.
When the difference is between $20 and $50 I will generally go for the PDF every time.
That said the number of gaming books I have bought lately has been rather small as there is less out there that interests me than used to. There is a glut of repetitive content or simply old content reworked in many cases, or what I felt could be handled in a 10 page update rather than redoing a complete basic book.
I have one mass market pair of books I'm thinking about that got a new edition.... and it's been 20 years since the edition I have which is the only reason I'm considering the updated version.... but even then I am balking at laying out $100 for what cost me $30 back then. No PDF version except when you buy the hardcover is annoying, and thats why so far its all unpurchased.
I have an emotional attachment to physical books. I like and prefer them, mostly. However, practicality rears its head.
I accept ebooks most readily for prose. The do well in this format, to the point that about 15 months ago I gave away 14 bankers boxes full of paperbacks I had ebooks for, mostly because I needed the shelf space.
For technical works -- and I include most RPG books in this category -- I want to read physical copy. I don't like reading a lot on my tablet, mostly for readability reasons, and I'm not really fond of sitting at my desk reading a book, even with the 4k monitor. I have printed out many PDFs for that reason. My technical -- programming, database, and RPG -- library is... pretty big. And very heavy.
However, I do find a well-crafted PDF very useful as a reference work, and make great use of them there. I sometimes get the hard copy for reading and the PDF for utility, in fact.
Price-wise... PDFs are cheaper. I have bought $20 PDFs. I have sold $60 PDFs (_Echelon Reference Series: Sorcerer/Wizard Spells is about 1,000 pages and has literally thousands of spells... I want to say about 4,000 spells, but I'd have to go back and count -- mechanically, in source, not by hand).
I mostly watch for them to be on sale, though, either an event at OBS or a Bundle of Holding or something. My backlog is big enough that I don't feel a real need to grab something as soon as it's published. Usually.
I almost never buy physical RPG books. The kinds of games I play are typically short-ish and don't usually need much reference, and in any case I would hate stopping play to go find some rule or whatever.
From my point of view, digital versions are better: price, practicality, shelf space, environment.
I have a Chromebook with an 11" screen. PDFs just do not cut it. I sometimes buy PDFs if I just want to have a look. I wish it worked so that if you buy the PDF as a preview you then get a discount if you move onto the printed copy but that isn't the way they work. As for bundles - the last time I bought one it took me months to unwind all the promotional emails that kept popping up for products I wasn't interested in and never downloaded. Never again.
I like having both - a searchable PDF for GM use at the table, and a physical book for players to reference. Because of this I'm a HUGE fan of Bits & Mortar, and am much more likely to buy books from folks on that list than I am from anyone else.
Despite the many advantages of PDFs, I still prefer owning the physical book. A book that comes with a free or cheap PDF is perfect.
I do buy PDFs, but mostly in Humble Bundles (which are a great way to get tons of stuff from a system I'm somewhat interested in but am unlikely to run in the short term), or when it's something I really want and only exists as PDF.
On the other hand, in my current Shadowrun campaign, for which I bought a ton of books, I find myself using PDFs more and more. Many of the short adventures I run exist only on PDF, and that seems to be the gateway for me to do more with PDFs.
On the one hand, I'm more aware of the games that have higher sales. Well, that have more market penetration. Everyone knows D&D; it's one of the few RPGs that ever ascended to "household name" status. It's also the one most likely to be found in your average mall bookstore.
Of course, that's a feedback loop: get on bookstore shelves, get more sales. But that takes a heaver investment; you have to print more books that may not sell at all...
I'm more likely to be aware of specific company products. Monte Cook's products, for example, seem to hit my awareness more than most publishers.
But I don't follow the various blogs, podcasts, etc. that would keep me in the know of product releases or product reviews, so I'm not the best source to go to.
I used to buy RPGs because they looked interesting. Now, I wouldn't buy in unless I already had a group willing to at least try the game.
I like physical books but I also like sales. I tend to only buy physical games when they go on sale and only if they are at least 30% off. I prefer to read physical copies of books from cover to cover.
Where I like digital versions of RPGs is for reference sake, same with board game rulebooks. In that case though the PDF better be searchable. None of this we just scanned all the pages BS in 2020.
Borrowing from the idea of the Pluspora Check-in get some tabletop conversation going. If you have any questions that you want to get on the list to be asked, let me know. Also, if you'd like to be added or taken off the list of participants, let me know.
How varied are the genres in your RPG/Boardgame collection? Are there any that you avoid or prefer?
I like to think that I have space for everything, but there are definitely those that I eschew, whether deliberately or subconsciously. I dislike party games- I don't know if I'm at the level of hate, but I guess I'm only not there because my family loves them. In the case of RPGs, I have representation across the board, but I definitely tend more towards darker themes- sometimes action oriented, sometimes not.
I like games that are simple, not too long or too complex, and I'm a sucker for co-op, so the games in my collection mostly fall into these two categories :)
As for rpgs, i play Story games and mostly on conventions, I don't have a stable gaming group. For this reason most of my collection are easy one shot games, I don't own many campaign games
i'm right there with @Patrick Marchiodi, it seems! Most of the RPGs I buy or play are story games (very simple mechanics for the most part, very focused on the story, very focused on one specific kind of story/mood, for one-shots mostly). I tend to like darker themes and usually avoid power fantasies and the like.
I almost don't play board games, but the few I like are often co-op. Hard strategy and high competitiveness are almost guaranteed to bore me.
What are your favourite rpgs and bgs? Mine ar Kagematsu, Dogs in the Vineyard, A Taste for Murder and A Penny for My Thoughts. And for boardgames I love Forbidden Island and Pandemic, Hanabi, Power Grid, Tokaido and My Little Scythe
@Patrick Marchiodi That would be nice! I'm going to start a story soon using my system NARROWS (did you see my post about it on tabletop.social?). It's going to be a dark fantasy story set in the Young Kingdoms (but you don't need prior knowledge of the setting). Do you want to join? It's async, so basically reading a small chapter once a week and reply with whatever your character is going to do. No mechanics, rules, or dice.
My favourite games are probably Ribbon Drive and The Skeletons, but I loved Dialect, Dread, and House of Reeds the one time I have played each one, and Fiasco when I make it work. I haven't been able to play Night Witches or The Watch yet, but after reading them they totally seem like they're very much up my alley. I bought Dogs in the Vineyard in Spanish recently, but I haven't read it yet. I'm sure I'm going to love it, though!
Board games I have very few, but Pandemic and Forbidden Island are definitely keepers 😄 I remember liking Ticket to Ride when I played, although it can get long I think?
i was only semi-serious about playing together but what you describe seems affordable. Is it possible for me to try for some time and see if I can follow the game, and dropping out if I can't (unfortunately I have a lot to do at home). If so, then please tag me on that post you mentioned! :)
I know some of the games you mentioned only by name, gonna give them a read if I can find them :D
I really don't like collectible card/miniatures games at all. I think having to chase after certain bits in order to enjoy a game is anathema to how I like to enjoy my games. I much prefer games with a non-randomized assortment of equipment.
Regarding RPGs I tend pass over things like World of Darkness and the OSR. I still like fantasy and urban settings are kind of cool, but the things that seem common and interesting to folks in those games are things that really don't appeal to me.
Board games, I generally favor euro games, especially those with a strategic element to their play. I like randomness where it influences resources available and drives decisions, rather than when it resolves what I'm trying to do, especially when I have some measure of control over the randomness (deck-builders are right in my spotlight).
For practical reasons I especially favor games that can be set up, played, and reset/torn down in under an hour (or under an hour with practice). We used to play at work on our lunch hour.
I usually stick to 60-90 minutes (90-120 with first play) outside that. Two or three hours doesn't seem to work well for us, even at home when we make an evening of it. We'd rather play two or three games, or one game two or three times.
I like medium to heavy (leaning more toward medium) a lot of the time, but depending who I'm playing with it's likely to be light to medium.
I should find some more casuals. I don't usually find them satisfying, so I haven't gotten many, but they can be fun, and that's worthwhile on its own.
RPGs, OTOH, are all over the place. I mostly play some form of D&D (if broadly defined; I'm willing to treat Fantasy AGE as a weird D&D, and 13th Age also). To play or to run, I really dislike things that are fiddly at the table. I don't necessarily want a 'light' RPG, but I don't want to be chasing down a lot of modifiers and whatnot.
Low Fantasy Gaming from Pickpocket Press and AGE System from Green Ronin are probably my sweet spots here.
As a designer and tinkerer and publisher, though, I look at stuff all over the place. I don't care if I think I'd ever play it, I'll steal ideas and mechanics from anywhere. I have a deep love of Hero System engineering, and keep it in my toolkit, but I think I will never again run it, and might never play it, again. At least in the form it's presented; I could see using the chassis and canning a bunch of the content ahead of time, and giving players choices from that (i.e. use the rules but build concrete choices for the players to build with).
I think I probably have at least one game covering every topic or genre. I own A LOT of games and I'm always on the look out for something new.
Overall I prefer heavier games to light games and tend to avoid party games, but even those I collect because I run a lot of events where party games are popular.
I've come to the opinion that every GM needs at least one solid universal system, to cover any ground missed by more specialized games. My go-to is Mini Six.
In the RPG arena I have a bunch of GURPS books on a range of genres but also specific Space (Traveller et al), Cyberpunk (Cyberpunk 2020 et al), Fantasy / Pseudo Historical (many), Military (Twilight 2000 et al), and Espionage (GURPS). My boardgames are much less representative partially because I have friends with a huge collection and partially because genre's are lass important than mechanics. The people I play with are not into GrimDark or Military although I have RPG rules sets covering both. My main dislike is games where I cannot maintain my suspension of disbelief. I'm not much into zombie apocalypses or overt blood sports / ultraviolence.
I have or used to have many genres: - Fantasy (books from AD&D 1e, 2e / D&D 3.0, 3.5, 4) - Sci Fi (Star Wars d20, Star Wars D6, Doctor Who, ShadowRun) - Weird West (Deadlands) - Supers (TSR's Marvel) - Horror (Call of Cthulhu) - Generic / multiple (FATE Core, GURPS) - Spy/Cold war (Paranoia) - Modern era (D20 modern, Leverage)
In board games, I have several genres as well - War: (several versions of Risk, Diplomacy - Sci Fi (Risk 20??, Pandemic) - Fantasy (Risk LOTR, Castle Ravenloft) - Capitalism (Monopoly, Ticket to Ride) - Horror (Castle Ravenloft, Cthulhu, Zombies!!!, Escape the Room)
In rpgs I like to mix and match when I'm Gming.... Low Magic Fantasy, Spy, Horror, Pulp, High Magic Fantasy, Exploration, Mystery, etc. I find SF hard to run (I've had too many games with Science degree holders who didn't deal well with suspension of disbelief needed to use game mechanics or run certain settings), and only ran low level Cyberpunk a few times. I did supers a few years but the mechanics eventually drove me a bit batty (since I had either GURPS or Champions as options).
I don't do high crunch and I don't do games that have lots of story meta in design (No Fiasco or Fate).
Board games and card games, I've tried a lot. Not big into collectable/deck builders. Love simple and elegant (FLUXX), humorous (Munchkin), and things like Cosmic Encounter.
It's interesting to see how "genre" means different things to different people! I was thinking more of mechanics, some other users talk about genre of the setting/fiction :D
@Joseph Teller It's interesting that you mentioned Champions, since nobody else has mentioned the supers genre yet. It's not an unpopular genre, but it doesn't get brought up that much.
I had a group, for about a decade, where Champions was the lowest common denominator that wasn't D&D in regards to what they had books for (and I actually didn't own any D&D books that were near the current edition, still don't, as I last touched it around 91 or so).
Champions requires a different mindset on things... all characters are constructed and building your character concept so it fits under the mechanics by various tweaks, backwards engineering etc is for some a game in and of it self... and I was gaming with Accountants, Computer Science folks and Engineers who loved that sort of thing.
If run in the supers Genre it does a good job of removing the murder hobo aspects (since loot is pretty much useless, anything you'd want to keep had to fit your design idiom and cost you character points to use). It can also force folks into a mehem but no murder mode in their actions.
Used for non-superhero (it had at that time genre books for a lot more options and we had other GMs in rotation in the group that ran non-superhero with it) it could sometimes be a burden to work with, but the mechanics are well integrated.
It was as crunchy as I could deal with, and eventually I decided it was too crunchy and I went back to my own system designs which were better for my own ideas for settings and the sort of limits I wanted in place.
Oh as a side note, Champions (5th ed on) was the only game I ever found that really had built in the ability to play Batman, that is the character that was all super skilled without having any super powers, just tools they built. GURPS failed to do that effectively because of the point values you needed for skills and to be good at them. In Champions you could simply buy 'Overall Skill levels' that could be fluxed into whatever skill you had to make them superior to your stats base. So you could have 50 skills that might be obscure at times but which if needed to events (I need my expertise in Egyptian Archaeology right now that I have never had to use in the past 2 years but is important for this one event) could be boosted up using such levels for that one roll that could make or break the team's story line, but not be a point sink that did nothing useful for 2 years.
@Joseph Teller I never tried to build Batman in Marvel Super Heroes. It allowed for the concept of gadgets as powers (see Iron Man, or Spider-Man's webs, etc.) and it had a power, "Hyper Invention" which lets you make things with relative ease. It doesn't explicitly say this can be used to duplicate powers, but it implies it. But that's not a perfect fit; Wayne doesn't make most of his weapons, he hires people to do that for him. Rules as Written would require Batman to inventory all his gadgets and list each as a power derived from that gadget.
It would work. But it would be clunky and awkward.
Yes, and Super Skills aren't really a MSH thing either, which I also see as very much a Batman thing even more than the gadgets. Bats is also not necessarily the Best at everything he does, just better than most (he can't out Medical Doctor a professional surgeon, but he can remove a bullet and dress the wound for example).
So having a pool of +1 to +8 or +10 added to a base skill (say 11 or 12) when needed gives him flexibility in what he can do at the moment, and allows him to pull off the near impossible when he uses one of his constant skills (Acrobatics, HTH Combat, Climbing, Detection, Tactics, etc) to compensate for penalties from conditions (ex: Picking a Lock while hanging upside down from a batline anchored on a hovering heliocopter while in the dark of night and someone is shooting at him with a sniper rifle, and having a 16 or less chance roll on 3d6 after modifiers and pushing overall skill levels into the skill and Defense to avoid getting shot while attempting it. Batman, in Champions, always has a chance to fail and even fail badly, but also has his chance to shine around the characters with physical powers).
Can a system Build Batman is often a good scale of whether a system can do supers effectively. The other measure some people do is 'can I build superman' but I tend to prefer that a system can't build the modern versions of superman... as that means the system is too easy to abuse thru Min/maxing.
Borrowing from the idea of the Pluspora Check-in get some tabletop conversation going. If you have any questions that you want to get on the list to be asked, let me know. Also, if you'd like to be added or taken off the list of participants, let me know.
What game do you think is underrated and why?
For RPGs, I think Godlike by Arc Dream publishing. The way that it integrates super powered individuals with our own timeline to create a cohesive alternate reality reminds me of the best works of Turtledove, and I've never played a game that wasn't intense- largely because for all of the powers that the characters have, they're just as much at risk as the normal line soldiers. The system really supports that feeling, and makes the action fast and frantic.
For Boardgames, I think In the Shadow of the Emperor.
I don't see many talk about this in the aegis of well respected games and it's not one that I see people wanting to play often. It has so many well done aspects, from aging of the nobles to the marriage and inheritance process to the way that the game encourages change with concrete rewards. I'll play it any time (as my time on mabiweb shows), but in person, it's rarely a game that people want to play.
Fudge, even though it's descendant Fate is very popular. Fudge is fast becoming my favorite system (next to Fate). The way it handles scale was a bit confusing to me at first but the more that I read it the more I think you could model any sort of fiction with Fudge with relative ease. Unfortunately it requires a bit of a learning curve to really understand what it's doing.
This game came out in the late 1980s and early 1990s as one of the first super hero RPGs. It's mechanic was simple, a chart that had 0 - 100 down the left side and columns for different ranks, from Feeble to Unearthly (and a few higher ranks for exceptionally powerful beings). Your stats -- FASERIP -- and powers had a rank. FASERIP was Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, and Psyche. For any check, you rolled D100 and compared it to your ability's or power's column. This resulted in a color: White for failure, Green for mild success, Yellow for medium success, and Red for an exceptional success.
Things could cause column shifts, like shooting at someone behind cover, etc. but generally this was a fast, easy to adjudicate, set of rules. The column headers (Feeble, Good, Excellent, Incredible, Amazing, Monstrous, Unearthly) were names that every Marvel comics fan knew well from the titles of the comics.
But what really made the game an exceptional product was the Ultimate Powers book. This was over 100 pages of super powers, listed by category. They were quite thorough and represented powers from the wide range available to comic book characters. Over the years, I used that book to make characters from a wide array of SciFi and Fantasy movies. It made character generation something interesting in its own right, not just a boring task to slog through before playing the game.
The other thing TSR did that really impressed me at the time was their Handbook series. This was a series of books that gave a full page (sometimes two) for basically every single character that ever appeared in the Marvel Comics at that time. From Spider-Man's Aunt May and Uncle Ben to Galactus, from Spider-Man to dozens of characters that only appeared once to characters like the Watcher, you got to read the stats and histories for everyone, ever. They followed up this A-Z encyclopedia of characters with annual updates with new and changed characters for the three or four years MSH was in print.
The game system is out of print now. Marvel, a Disney franchise, isn't the same anymore and TSR folded, selling their D&D and other products to Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro... so there's never going to be an officially supported version of this engine out there again.
I've got to agree with Fudge. It's still got the best and simplest damage system I've ever seen in an RPG. (Marvel Super Heroes is a good one too.)
For boardgames, there are tons of excellent little games out there that never got any attention. Two favourites of my family are Rifugio, a tile laying game about hiking through the Dolomites while discovering the beautiful landscape; and Mini Miners, about 18 dwarfs with different, interacting skills, mining for gold and diamonds.
Has to be Tyrants of the Underdark. I think it's the best deck builder I've played. The area control adds a level of direct player interaction not seen in many deck builders. I think its lack of popularity is due to the D&D theme. It also has the worse choice of player colours I have ever seen in a boardgame. The colour choices of the game overall is also pretty poor. Makes it hard to look at and tell pieces apart.
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What criteria do you utilize when inviting new players to your gaming group?
I really struggle with this, so usually leave it to others to bring in players. I usually look for someone that's agreeable and laid back more than anything else- I hate drama when playing any sorts of games. Also, a commitment to showing up, playing, and timeliness. Beyond that, I think anything is surmountable.
@Douglas Bailey - that's becoming more and more my problem, I find. I just don't have the time for new people, and having moved away from the old ones, it becomes harder to make those connections. I've tried a couple of times, and the groups have fallen apart, so I stopped trying.
I don't have a regular group, but I'm quite open, anyone is welcome at my table. I have the advantage that I tend to play one-shot or short games, and if I happen to have a player at the table I'm not completely ok with, it doesn't have to last long. There's also to distinguish between people who are unpleasant and those who aren't good at playing. The latter I generally manage to handle and help, the former... to be honest, I can't remember playing with shomeone who's unpleasant as a person, I guess I'm lucky ^^
Depends on the group. For my main group, it seems to be people we've known since our university days. But we're getting a bit small, so I'm considering proposing we invite two people from my church, though that might be a very different dynamic.
I haven't had an organized group in a few years, just a few short games with a few old friends, thanks to life problems. I generally feel people out carefully when I do put together groups, usually having a get together or two before actually putting together a group (playing board or card games to see how competitive, cooperative etc they can be).
We tend towards a low tolerance for absences when I get a game going, so scheduling is vital. Also since we generally host in our home we expect good behavior, no smoking, no drugs or alcohol at game (or coming to game in an inebriated state). We avoid rough physicality, shouting, cutthroat competitiveness with the other players, murder hobos or folks that can't be bothered with remembering their materials or who won't make an effort to stay in contact between sessions etc.
We also remind folks that our game is not a dating service (this was an issue occasionally when I used to accept more college students in my games).
I mostly play very short games, one-shots and the like. Most times single-session narrative games. I never organise campaigns, so the commitment is on par with meeting once for boardgames.
My problem, more than anything, is finding people who are interested. Not because it's hard, necessarily (with some very niche games it can be, but not usually), but because I have to find players every time, as I don't have a fixed group with which I play. I usually invite anyone who seems open-minded and chill/not competitive, and I don't remember having had problems for a long time. It's usually coworkers or friends, so I guess I already know more or less what to expect.
Experience with these kinds of games is not really necessary, so it's somewhat easier for me to find people, I guess, especially since the commitment is fairly low.
@Nathan Norway I know that pain! I live in a small countryside town, but in the cities around here there are gaming clubs that have regular gaming evenings. Those are a great place to find players. Unfortunately because of my family obligations I can't participate regularly, but it's something I'd love to do. I've been toying with the idea of setting up a gaming club in my town, but I don't know how many people would be interested...
I admit I should get better at one shots. However, I try my best to do enough of a sandbox that it could be easy to join up/leave on downtimes.
So I really hew towards OSRIC. If I talk with people who do game and think they would be good for inviting (all the usual personality/comfort boxes are checked - you know you all have 'em wink), and they have played some other games I give them one of these (sometimes both):
Whoops! Forgot to say at the end of the above; if they seem interested in those pamphlets and like what they have to say then that covers it for me.
However, I need to get my brain around more games...so those would find me being a player looking for a GM that would have to submit me to their criteria!
I use one-shots as a way to see how the chemistry between the players is/will be. If someone clearly doesn't fit with the rest of the group, I don't invite them to a non-one-shot-game.
It's a lot harder to do on the board game end of things. I try to maintain an open table policy, and it's rarely bitten me, but once in a while, you get That Guy ...
@Eric Franklin that is DEFINITELY the reason for the criteria.
I guess maybe I am more a bit of a monkeysphere style person. If the friend is trusted by me (actually a friend) and they bring along a friend, that is generally okay.
I can't trust that friends will get along with other friends - I have at least three distinct circles of friends (and I try to make sure each RPG group I run contains members of at least two of those circles).
When I say, "Distinct," I mean, "Don't know and/or have never met one another." Sometimes a mixture like that can be volatile.
@Eric Franklin - I had that problem with different circles of friends on a couple of occasions. I now avoid crossing the streams like I was a seasoned ghostbuster!
I run a lot of public play events. Over time I get to know the regulars. Many I enjoy gaming with. Over time if I find I get along with someone and enjoy playing games with them then I may invite them to my house for a game night or two. That usually starts with big party like events with lots of people. From that subset there will be people I invite to smaller events.
I'm up late working, so figured I'd go ahead and post it.
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There are a few games funding right now on crowdfunding platforms about the current crisis. This is not the only time that has happened. In all honesty, World War I and II, Vietnam, etc are the same sorts of products. Is it just good business, or tacky? Is there a difference between types of events that make it OK or not? Or maybe time? When is it OK to release games about events?
I think it depends on the event, the timing of the product, and the delicacy in which it is handled. There was an event that White Wolf used (before Paradox decided to just farm everything out) where the terrors that were currently happening were based on supernatural forces rather than the evil that exists in the hearts of certain men. That was definitely tasteless. To base events on certain other atrocities even if you didn't do that would still be tasteless. But wars themselves- after a time when the populace is not going through them is fair game IMO. During Desert Storm/Desert Eagle I worked in a game shop and GMT (and others) released war games about the ongoing conflict. I thought that a bit too soon.
I think it depends on how the game handles the theme. A game is always a point of view on something, and I think it's easy to see when an author is trying to profit from a tragedy, when they are trying to enrich the world with their game, or when they're just being tactless and/or naive. There are games about war that celebrate the violence, and those who criticize it and make you think. I recently played a video game that among other things talks about depression, and it does so in a very believable way. I have some friends who struggle with depression who found playing the game to be eye-opening on how their illness looks from the outside. But it's a very delicate theme and it can be handled poorly, and becoming offensive and hurtful. The choice of the event a game is based on and the timing of the game imo fall under the broader concept of delicacy, how you say.
There's one scenario for Advanced Squad Leader that many players refuse to play: Mila 18, which is between the SS and the Polish resistance. I think the latter are unarmed, even. The scenario is basically replaying an act of genocide. Playing the Wehrmacht is no problem. Playing the SS in combat is fine. But replaying SS atrocities is clearly not, in the eyes of many wargamers.
But pandemics? I believe there's a rise in the popularity of Plague Inc. My son is interested in it, and I'm fine with that. I've personally been thinking about how I could use a pandemic in the Shadowrun setting.
There's definitely a line, but there's plenty you can do before you get close to that line. But it's absolutely a matter of how you handle it. But I also think it's hard to impossible to clearly define where that line is. I think you can have very good and valuable games close to that line, but it's easy to cross it if you're careless. Make sure you do the subject matter justice, and look at it from different perspectives. But don't be too afraid to use it either.
I'd argue you need to have the whole arc of a real-world event in the rear-view before you begin working up games for it. I also think that the more death and societal harm, the harder it is to make a game of a thing without being disrespectful of those who died.
I feel like maybe there are too many 1st person shooter WW2 games, for example.
So yeah... gaming coronavirus seems tacky at best right now.
I think current events sometimes do require the critical eye of art to provide perspective, and that includes game design. I'm particularly reminded of the game War On Terror, released in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq War: a Risk-like world conquest game where you can fund terrorists to fight your opponents, but if everybody does it, the terrorists win. Clearly a jab at how Al Qaeda was originally trained by the US to fight the USSR in Afghanistan.
Maybe the issue is: does the game have a relevant point to make about the issue it's about, or is it merely turning other people's misery into entertainment. Then again, to get back at my previous comment, Mila 18 probably is the only ASL scenario that has such a point to make, and yet that's the one that horrifies everybody.
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In the old days, large companies were the only ones who could afford to publish games. We've discussed Kickstarter and other crowdfunding, and Patreon and other ways to support individual artists to release the flow of content to the masses. That's, however, a small part of the overall industry, and there are horror stories of different crowdfunding projects that have gone awry. How can we best continue this trend in removing gatekeepers while protecting the consumer from those who would prey on them and by these bad experiences, start to reverse this trend?
I remember my first Kickstarter. It was Greg Stolze for a new idea that he had called Reign. Greg Stolze was not unknown in the industry, and Arc Dream, though still small, had published a few items and had made a name for itself with some Delta Green content. But this was a way to directly fund a project that would not otherwise have been made, with a new system that would go on to power Godlike, Wild Talents, and several more unique products in the industry. Back then, I had no real rhyme or reason why I backed anything, and with a notable few exceptions (Far West), when I look at the projects on my spreadsheet, they are all fulfilled. There was even one that had problems- and they gave me my entire pledge back.
As time went on, and more money began to flow through the platform, it began to change. More people were concerned with the products and the bottom line than the idea- creators and backers included. That idea of removing the gatekeepers became less and less the idea. I know that I look to projects with a more critical eye- and this is from someone that's engaged because I like seeing people's dreams come to life, and hope to one day run my own project and have it greeted with a similar enthusiasm.
I've always wanted to be a writer- and Kickstarter was the manner by which I found my pseudonym on a couple of publications. With the traditional way that things were done, I don't think that would have happened. But the concerns about the platforms and the projects are really important. If we apply a more critical eye to the projects that are being funded, then we just move the gatekeepers to another location. However, there have to be certain safeguards in place- I just can't figure out what they'd look like in the end.
I'm not sure if those two goals are mutually compatible, honestly. In order to prevent predatory behavior, you'd need to have some level of gatekeeping.
I think the only way to reliably do this is for the affected communities to warn the others. otherwise there/s not much to do to help keep people away from being part of these scams.
@Nathan V I agree that there would need to be some kind of gatekeeping, but probably not the old school kind that's controlled by the publishers.
For instance, KS could do a better job of monitoring the project owners. Even if they don't actually enforce their policy of 'deliver or refund', barring repeat KS abusers (Whitman) early would help. In principle there is a 'no new project until your last one is done', but that one is ignored enough it might as well not be there. Though in fairness, most of the people I see doing this actually are good at delivery, so I can see why it's ignored.
@Keith Davies - that rule is interpreted wrong in many cases. I can't even find the rule now, but it was something like "You can't start another project until the first is fulfilled." Not the exact verbiage, but that points to the source of confusion- it was a one time prohibition, i.e. First time creators can't start another project until that first one is fulfilled.
I do agree that they could do a better job of monitoring the project owners- I think it would be perceived less as gate keeping if the criteria were laid out clearly, and the appeal process was transparent.
Ah, is that so? If what you wrote is correct (and I have no reason to disbelieve, just stating my assumptions) then you're right, it would be the first one only.
Colloquially -- which has no bearing whatsoever in contract law -- this phrasing often does equate 'first' and 'previous'.
That said, it's an interpretation that does align better with observation, so I expect you're right.
I used to back almost everything I heard of, but lately I've become extremely picky. Not because I fear they might not deliver; I'm aware I'm taking on part of that risk when I'm backing something, but because I've got way too much stuff already.
I don't mind the risk, though I'd like to know if someone has a history of failed projects. I'd love to give first-timers the benefit of the doubt, though.
In the actual old days lots of people published games. The early RPG writers were part of a culture with lots of history of amateur publishing. Individual zines, and group APA zines. Lee Gold's Alarums and Excursions went all over the world. To me the blog advice about minimum publishing standards is puzzling and almost gate keeping. Don't ever publish unless you are a professional. The hobby would never have gotten started if those had been the entry requirements.
I've never actually backed anything thru kickstarter or used it to publish anything. It always looked to me like an unnecessary middleman, and I always found myself cringing when reading kickstarters when it came to how they used tier investment strategies and stretch goals... disasters waiting to happen and in some cases looking like pyramid schemes.
Considering how close Chaosium came to going extinct because of kickstarters I would think long and hard and have rock solid contracts on printing and other costs before ever using one to publish.
@Stephen Gunnell is right about the old school/second wave folks, we started in our zines and APAs and threw caution to the wind in order to get ideas out before they were super polished and in many ways it made things happen rather than fight with gate keepers.
If not for the semi-pros and amateurs there would be no gaming, no gaming market or support to keep the companies alive. No publisher can produce enough content for their own game alone to fit the desire of the players and GMs out there.
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Have you seen any games that go out of their way to be accessible? Have you considered accessibility in your designs?
I took a workshop recently, and there was a particular lesson about designing for accessibility. To my lament, I'd never even considered a lot of the points in that lesson. Colors, contrasts, textual clues for screen readers, layout- all these things and more go into making the hobby more accessible to everyone.
Jacob Wood is one designer that I know that's visibly at the forefront of making this a more known subject with two kickstarter projects on the issue:
You mean other than the FATE Accessibility Toolkit?
I know that Repos has announced that they are working hard to make sure their board games are color-blind friendly (using shapes/textures in addition to color for differentiation).
A person I met at work is actually colour blind. It's interesting speaking with him about his experiences. Game pieces with red and green are hard for him to distinguish. The most interesting thing is that the game Tyrants of the Underdark chose some what I thought were poor choices in colours for the different pieces. There are dark grey and dark purple pieces which are hard to tell apart when lighting is less than ideal. I showed them to my colour blind friend and he said he has no problems distinguishing between those two colours.
Apparently, some colours that non-colour blind people find hard to distinguish stand out a lot to colour blind people. Camouflage is an example. He tells me that when he saw vehicles painted in camo against foliage, they really stand out to him and he doesn't understand how it could be useful. I'm beginning to wonder if the person who chose the colours of the pieces in Tyrants of the Underdark were colour blind.
I do recall seeing some guide for game designers on what colours to choose for game pieces that would be easily distinguishable by colour blind people. The colours in that guide were mostly not any of the primary colours, but rather bland looking colours. At least to me, I felt those colours looked quite bland. I can tell them apart and apparently, so can many colour blind people.
@Stuntman AFAICT to help colorblind people games often code pieces and symbols both in color *and* in shape. E.g. red tokens are square, green ar triangular and blue ones are round.
This comes up a lot on our podcast talking about games. This is something that I personally have become more and more aware of over time. Part of that is driven due to the fact that these issues are talked about a lot more openly and another big part for me is that we have a big fan who is legally blind and often will open my eyes to problems in games I would have never realized being fully abled.
One of the most obvious ones are companies changing the default player colours. For years almost every game came with yellow, red, blue and green as player colours. Those are not colourblind friendly. Many modern games have swapped up those colours to be more accessible.
A step further is changing the physical shame of different things. Instead of having 5 different cubes in different colours, games have each colour also be a different shape. A good example of this is Gold West from TMG.
Personally I think it's great that this is something that more and more companies are considering.
I think perhaps it comes up most obviously with board games, as @Moe Tousignant describes.
I don't go really far regarding accessibility in my books, but...
Part of the reason I started the Echelon Reference Series, beyond just trying to gather and organize the damn content, was to make it more usable. This starts with no backgrounds on the pages (partly to save ink, mostly to make it easier to read) and presenting headers (section and game object, like spells and feats) so they really stand out. Aggressively so, even.
To my amusement, a well-known reviewer commented in his early reviews that these layout conventions we a bit weird but harmless... and later he found that he loved them because they increased the readability and utility of the books. He was even more excited about a couple other improvements I made.
So... 'accessibility', I hope my changes help, but absolutely I put a lot of emphasis on readability and utility.
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I know that designers are becoming more aware of diversity and inclusion, but it can be an area that is fraught with unknown landmines, especially during this time of transition to being more aware of marginalized groups.
Have you ever played a game that patronized you, or otherwise insulted you? And did you keep playing?
I've seen this a lot, and I think that I've just become inured to it. But I also think that this is an important area, and the hobby suffers when people are excluded either intentionally or unintentionally, so am interested in thoughts on the subject.
Never happened to me, but I'm a straight white man, so almost all products have always been falling over themselves to cater to me. It's good that games aim for more diversity and inclusivity.
The only one I remember, from many years ago, was a computer game I tried (once) in the Leisure Suit Larry series. That was a walk away from it game for me.
I avoid tabletop or roleplaying games that partonized or insulted me (and the GMs that ran them)
This topic is reminding me of a zine that was passed my way.
Esp since the typical population dominating gaming seems to be similarly privileged groups. I think it is good to also approach this topic from the other side; how to provide a game that is diverse and advocating. This is a punk rock/horizontalidad style zine too, so makes me like it all the more:
Being Asian, I actually loved the fact that the fluff for Space Base contained a character that was of Asian decent. It didn't make me buy the game. I loved the game after playing it once. When I bought the game finally, I was pleasantly surprised by the Asian character on the cover photo and fluff.
@Nathan Norway Yeah, I prefer to not name names. It doesn't do much good at this point.
There are some who lead well by example. They are inclusive, and it shows in their work. I like these ones.
There are some who are inclusive in their work, and publicize that they are so... which sometimes is the primary feature of an otherwise mediocre product.
And then there are those who fight anyone who doesn't stand up and agree with them on the matter... and often deliver a product that isn't very good, if it gets delivered at all (I've backed KS projects by some of these people and they're on the short list of projects I expect to never see the final product).
Now that you mention it, a very vocally inclusive game designer accused me of having made a vaguely homophobic comment when in fact his comment was more homophobic (though still vaguely) than mine. I called him on it and he closed the discussion and ignored me. This is a pretty well-known name with a very successful Kickstarter. I stopped supporting him, though I still have a lot of respect for his partner who is a good guy and less militant about appearing so.
I think that's one danger with the current climate- there are those that will support and will engage honestly trying to understand and be an ally- and they are belittled and condescended to, potentially alienating those that want to support. I understand the anger and frustration, but to take it out on those that are willing to consider and change seems counterproductive.
I felt patronized reading through the Mouse Guard Rulebook, 1st edition. The way Luke writes implies he knows more about roleplaying that you do and that he does it the right way and you have been doing it all wrong your whole life and he knows what he's doing so don't house rule anything because you don't actually know what your are doing.
Interestingly it must been made evident to him as the 2nd edition is much more reader friendly.
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Have you ever played in any way other than Face-to-Face? Why or why not? And if you have, what are some tools that you've used/advice that you'd give in doing so?
I play almost exclusively non-face-to-face these days. Even before the COVID-19 epidemic, I'd found that it was easier to get together with friends, negotiate schedules, and meet new gamers online rather than trying to get anything together.
For #RPG I use the mediums of play by email or what I've come to term play by google doc (even though we don't always use google- the non-google alternatives I've used are https://cryptpad.fr/ and https://hackmd.io/). Though I have tried roll20 and Fantasy Grounds, I find that the asynchronous types of games seem to be easier to schedule and last the longest.
For #boardgame I've tried Tabletop Simulator and roll20, but again, the most successful have been more asyncrhonous types of games. We've used Google docs for those also and play by e-mail, but even more I've found myself using websites built for the games.
As far as advice, it seems to me that social contract becomes even more important when playing games online. It's too easy for interactions that are not conducted in person to go wrong, and having a baseline for what is expected help to smooth these along.
I do a lot of board gaming online through sites like Board Game Arena and digital version of games on Steam, Epic or apps. Note BGA isn't on your list and I think it's one of the best free or cheap options.
RPGs I've yet to try an online game though I have watched a few streams going back to the G+ Hangout days.
Wish things going as they are now it's likely I will be doing more and more online gaming as time goes on. I made a Roll20 account yesterday.
For about eight years now -- since 'D&D Next' went into early playtest -- almost all my RPG play has been done online. First via Google Hangouts (thanks for trashing that, google), eventually settling on Discord (for voice) and Roll20 (for VTT).
For board games, it's still face to face. I know there are emulators and the like, but they never have captured the feel of a board game for me.
Here in the italian story games community, Google Hangouts was a revolution: we were already used to organizing CONs to meet and play together, but with hangouts, we finally had an easy and functional way to play online. And Google+ made it easier to discover new people who were interested in playing those games. I played a few games on hangouts but eventually decided that I get distracted too easily, and now avoid playing that way if possible. I also played some games on a few forums via play by post, but that turned out to be too slow for my tastes. I'm currently playing on a 1-on-1 play by chat using telegram, and it's working decently.
I played a few times on BGA some years ago, but the social interaction with other players is a big part of why i like gaming in general, and that was the part I missed most.
None of the folks I have gamed with in recent years have liked E-Gaming via discord, hangouts etc. and my wife equates online video-conferencing is something she does only when forced to for work so my experience is real limited.
Back in the 80's, I tried to play Chinese chess with a friend over email. At some point during the game, we realised one of our boards was wrong and could not back track our moves. We didn't save emails back then.
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If you were going to teach a class on game design, what topics would you emphasize to your students?
I think that playtesting is a section of game design that is in many cases and after thought (or not thought of) that has ruined more than one game. How to playtest and how to use the results of those playtests is a soft skill that can be hard to master.
Interactivity is what I'd focus on. Games are interactive by default, and require a bit of uncertainty to keep the players on their toes. The choices the players make need to be meaningful choices. If your game is just a speedrun between the start and the finish without meaningful choices then at best it's a puzzle.
Spit shine and polish don't matter. You have a mechanic start using it, playtest it, get it to the table. You have two mechanics, play with them see how they interact. Things aren't going to work right away and the sooner you figure out what doesn't work the sooner you can start work on something that does.
Far too many designers "finish" a game before even figuring out if it works. You need to find the problems as you design, as quickly as possible so you don't waste far too much time working on things that are never going to work.
* The mechanics _are_ the game. The constraints they give, and how the encourage, inspire and guide the players, are the most important thing. * Practical knowledge of probability and how to calculate different chances in different scenarios (plus learn how to use tools like AnyDice). * Story structure, narrative, that kind of thing. * Psychology, how certain things encourage or inhibit certain behaviours. * Study of concrete mechanics of different games, a la Game Maker's Toolkit.
@Chuck Dee (I know it's a very minor thing, but would it be possible to tag the people at the bottom of the post rather than at the top? this way the question and answer are the first thing shown, the list of names is less interesting to me personally ;) )
In my completely novice opinion, I would say you need to first decide on your audience. There are a variety of games and gamers out there. You want to find your target audience and design a game for that audience. You need to know what that group of people like or want and make something that would make your target audience excited. It's OK if others hate your game. You want to find some people that love it and make the game for them.
You mention play testing in your OP. I would say that play testing falls under the development part of the process. That is where you see how your game is likely to work for real. Development is where you solicit feedback and identify where you need to work on. This is where you would hopefully make more minor tweaks rather than major changes to the overall game.
Always set down a series of goals/vision as to what you want the system to do at the start, and work your design based on that. Audience is a concern only if you are on the marketing side of gaming, design to fit your ideals not what will in some way grab elements of what is already out there and draw them to what you are doing.
If all you are doing is making the 4000th variant of D&D but with element X added or elements Z & Q removed then you're wasting your time. Same with board games... no one really wants/needs UNO with different cards or Monopoly but with star systems instead of real estate locations of the 1920s.
@Chuck Dee I'm not a designer myself but I'd say the things that I would stress are:
- Keep your game focussed: think what kind of experience/story you want the game to give the players, and choose mechanics that support that goal - keep it simple: I'm a fan of games with few mechanics that work well together, not much of games with hundreds of subsystems and interactions. But that could just be me - playtest, check what works, tune numbers and chance - "Perfect is the Enemy of Finished": you'll reach a point where playtest and tuning will have a diminishing return. That's the point where you should call your game finished, and put it out. If there are still things you want to test and add, you could keep those for a second edition of the game - play a lot of other games, and ask yourself what you liked and what not, what worked and what you would change to better fit those games to their goals. Experience is extremely valuable!
I also think that like others said, being aware of who you are making the game for is important: is it for you and your group? do you plan on selling/distributing it? A few concepts of marketing and self-promotion could be very useful to a designer that wants his game to be known.
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I know that we've talked about Kickstarter- but what about Patreon, Payhip, and other smaller sites to support smaller artists? Any that you support that you want to call out (Tabletop or other)
I know I run a site that supports PbEM and PbP with mailing lists, wikis, websites, etc, and it took a long time for me to feel comfortable even asking for support. CPanel changed their method of charging for their software, and it increased my hosting costs to the tune of $10 a month. Just by asking, I've been almost able to cover that increased cost.
I've always been very supportive on Patreon, but also found out there are a wide variety of sites that people use including:
Like @Eric Franklin, I have my own patreon, nominally, but it's not even populated and I'm not publishing anything through it, so I'll not provide the link now.
I don't use patreon even though i've been considering it for quite a while now. I admit I'm a bit scared of monthly subscriptions that pay automatically, and I'm not sure how much I can toss at creators at the moment.
@Moe Tousignant - I'd never heard of podpledge- thanks for that shout out! And I totally agree about itch- I've been getting used to it, but it's definitely a different paradigm being geared towards digital gaming and just being repurposed for tabletop.
I do like that it's specifically designed for podcasters and has a lot less of the limits of Patreon. Like you can do things like giveaways and swag. There are some major board game podcasters that use it.
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How is the COVID-19 Pandemic affecting your gaming habits?
My last face-to-face gaming group died out a few years ago. Well, more than a few. It was some people at work, and we'd play after hours in a conference room. We started out with D&D4e- playing in Eberron and then Dark Sun. Then we moved on to FATE 3.0 (DFRPG). We also had a Board Game group where I live, but they repurposed the clubhouse to make it only for the golfers and more high scale clientele.
As a result, my gaming has moved online, so it's not really affecting me, other than the sporadic visits I'd make to Barnes and Noble and the couple of game shops in the next town.
I haven't been able to play RPGs regularly for a while now, so that's still out of the question. I did start to see some friends and play boardgames with them from time to time, and that's not possible for me anymore. I also have some friends who live far from my town and usually have playing groups, who are now setting up RPG campaigns to play online, which I might join :D
I'm playing a lot more videogames recently, and working through my comics and books backlog ^^
Last Saturday we were supposed to play Steam Over Holland with my dad. We cancelled because my dad is 70+ and I don't want to risk his health for a game.
I also expect next month's RPG session to either get cancelled or move online.
These days, most of my gaming is solo, anyway. If anything, it's been a positive effect on that. At least one publisher has made their solo RPG PDF's free because of this.
It is having little to no effect, almost entirely because we haven't gotten together for games outside my family in months. I still play online via Discord and Roll20 and whatnot, but that's mostly because my group is all over the continent.
I'm not attending any boardgame events. Many are being cancelled anyway.
Also, I broke out Pandemic for the first time in years. It's been several years since I played myself. I did run several Pandemic Survival tournaments in the past few years, but never played for much longer.
My D&D5e Rappan Athuk group all agreed to an "in person only" rule when this campaign started about 15 months ago and have managed to have 2-3 sessions every 2 weeks, but we've realized that if we don't take this online someone's going to get the D&D DTs over the next several weeks (maybe months), so we're giving it a try! The first online session of our D&D5e Rappan Athuk campaign takes place tomorrow night, using D&D Beyond for character sheets (I do enjoy using paper, but tracking spell/ability slots and doing all the math are much easier with this—and gameplay moves along faster) and Roll20 for a virtual tabletop. Fingers crossed it goes smoothly!
Update on my group's first online D&D session: There were five players and the DM, and everything went very well! The Beyond20 extension (https://beyond20.here-for-more.info/) nicely connected Roll20 and D&D Beyond. This group is pretty tech savvy, so tech-related issues didn't come up; this group has also been playing together for a while and is already comfortable interacting with each other (which might be an issue for new-to-each-other players whose first session together is online). The biggest "problem" is that the Rappan Athuk setting isn't in the Roll20 catalog, so the DM had to manually create the maps, etc., in there. Even though that takes a bit of prep time, it's not an insurmountable obstacle. We are looking forward to more sessions with this setup! (@Patrick Marchiodi and anyone else who's interested)
Right now I should be in Toronto working at Breakout Con. I should be in a panel right now taking notes and after that I should be playing Sentinel Comics.
Leading up to this and going forward we have had to cancel our Gloomhaven live stream. Now for most people this doesn't seem like a big deal but those live streams help pay the bills.
I also host game nights at a local FLGS and a video game cafe and both of those places are now closed for public play events.
No more Monday night group playing at my house, which again makes it really hard to talk about and review games when I have no one to play them with. My Pile of Obligation is sitting here gathering dust.
On a positive note it has meant more gaming with the kids which is cool and fun a a great way to spend time with them, but doesn't help getting any work done.
@Moe Tousignant - maybe a spin on your normal reviews and such to family type reviews and things to do when you're quarantined? A lot of people have the kids in the house and are getting cabin fever- a few ideas of things to do and games to play and reviews from a family perspective might be helpful to some of your followers.
Yep, that's what I'm working on, the review going live today is Talisman Legendary Tales a kids game and the next advice post is on games to play when stuck at home for an extended time.
That will only get me so far, not sure what I'll do for the next 18 months. At least I'll finally get through all the two player games in my pile of shame :D
Exalted Funeral has a suite of free PDFs on their landing page (scroll down a bit) in support of passing the time during the general distancing at present.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: "Quand les pauvres n'auront plus rien à manger, ils mangeront les riches!" (When the poor shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich).
I am offering you this massive collection of herb photos with my medicinal descriptions and notes. You can load the Kindle app onto almost any phone, tablet, or computer. All I want is to offset all the chaos in the feed with a gift for you :) [March 15-19 Only] https://www.amazon.com/…/B07…/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3
The Story Engine is a deck of 150 cards (now upgraded to 180 with stretch goals!) that offer endless storytelling prompts for writers, teachers, artists, DMs, RPG players, and more.
It runs on a simple, fast, open-ended system of drawing and arranging cards to create prompts for:
* Story ideas * Character concepts * Encounter premises * Magical items * Campaign hooks
It's all in how you arrange the cards, interpret the connections between them, and bring the concept to life.
The digital version just fulfilled for backers, but the creator, Peter Chiykowski, is offering the basic deck for .01 to anyone that wants it as a quarantine activity.
Borrowing from the idea of the Pluspora Check-in get some tabletop conversation going. If you have any questions that you want to get on the list to be asked, let me know. Also, if you'd like to be added or taken off the list of participants, let me know.
How do you use technology to aid in your gaming?
I use a gaming wiki to log the campaign and keep track of the essential in-game information. There's also areas for the players to log information about their characters. I also use my tablet instead of carrying a crate of books around- one less milk crate being carried around.
For D&D, we use D&D Beyond for character sheets and Slack for planning/RP/out-of-game chat (there are about 18 people involved in our West Marches–style campaign in the Rappan Athuk setting). Once we realized how quickly daily banter and meme-sharing made us hit Slack's 10,000-message limit for free accounts (and how expensive the paid accounts are!), we set up an Obsidian Portal page for stuff we didn't want to lose (e.g., campaign logs and wiki).
Now that we are in lockdown and in-person gaming won't be happening for a while (), the DM is looking into using roll20 for a virtual tabletop and Discord for chat and video conferencing.
* NARROWS: This is a system to play online. It's very different from play-by-forum software, playing this feels more like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but you can write whatever you want for your character's reaction, instead of just choosing from a couple of presets. http://hardcorenarrativist.org/narrows/
* Lyre: A web app to aid narrators add images (including maps that can be uncovered piece by piece) and audio to their games: http://hardcorenarrativist.org/lyre/
* Wiki-Toki: A personal wiki I use to keep notes for (mostly past) games, ideas for new games, a list of games available that we can play, etc.
@PresGas (OSR) Aspect What do you mean, that it cannot be reshared because it's a comment instead of a regular post? If so, do you want me to write that as a regular post so it can be reshared?
@Nathan Norway @PresGas (OSR) Aspect - I think that on Friendica we can re-share comments, but Diaspora* doesn't have that functionality (along with liking comments)
I use Tabletop Audio for all my tabletop games Syrinscapes to supplement that Various Phillips HUE apps for lighting effects Game specific apps like the Gloomhaven Helper, or the DCC app that I can't remember the name of.
For Pathfinder, we all used laptops with Herolab to create and maintain our characters. I hated it and preferred to olay something that is easy to do on paper, but our next campaign became Shadowrun, which is arguably even more complex than Pathfinder, so it's al laptops again.
Also: PDFs of books. I love paper books, but I'm starting to get used to PDFs.
Not much, to be honest (and I kinda feel like an outlier now xD). We happened to use tablets to have game manuals handy, but I hardly ever play any RPG that needs electronic support. Even when I played D&D some 15 years ago, I mostly used to write down what I needed. I'm a programmer but I find it easier to find and remember stuff I wrote by hand, than searching through files.
@PresGas (OSR) Aspect - thanks for that link! I might try to just have a list of links that I consolidate all of this under and update as people find new resources.
I use tackle box technology to replace the inserts in may games. Tackle boxes make organising many of the gaming bits easier and allows me to store games on their sides instead of always having to store them flat.
I use card sleeve technology on my cards. Sleeves protect the cards and they make shuffling easier, particularly for smaller sized cards.
I use deck box technology to hold my cards. Most standard inserts that come with a game are not sized properly and are often incompatible with cards that use card sleeve technology. Deck box technology is designed to hold sleeved cards.
For computer technology, I often use a spreadsheet to track things when necessary. I use one to track my campaigns I play in Sword & Sorcery. There is an app for it, but I personally like the flexibility of a spreadsheet. It can be shared easily with other people if needed.
About 20 years ago, I got a PocketPC (handheld device before smartphones). I used to keep notes on one of my D&D sessions I had going back then. I think I still have those notes on my computer somewhere.
I also use Chwazi to choose who goes first when playing a game.
There were a couple of games I either ran or played in that took place in IRC, but other than that, the only technology I tend to use is paper, pencils, dice, and books.
For TTRPG play online, we use Discord for voice and roll20 as our VTT. Though I'm looking at Foundry to replace roll20.
I have had an Obsidian Portal account for years, ascended. I should either use it or kill it. I also have a (free) WorldAnvil account I need to look into.
In light of the COVID-19 situation, Larcenous Designs, LLC is offering all The GameMaster's Apprentice decks in pdf for free (with discounted POD) on DriveThruRPG.
Stay Home and Game--and Help Save the World! Free PDFs March 16-27th! Because I (Nathan Rockwood/Larcenous Designs) am a high school teacher by day, I'm very much aware of the need to practice social distancing in order to 'flatten the curve' of demand on hospitals right now. For at least the first two weeks of school closure in my area, March 16-27, I am making my GMA PDFs free and my Print on Demand items signficantly discounted (to about 0.50 more than print cost). Please, please, PLEASE take this opportunity to stay home and game solo, or use my cards to prepare awesome stories for remote-play sessions for your friends!
If you like the cards and can afford the cash, you can use my Pay What You Want products to tip me--or just enjoy them, and encourage your fellow gamers to stay home!
Borrowing from the idea of the Pluspora Check-in get some tabletop conversation going. If you have any questions that you want to get on the list to be asked, let me know. Also, if you'd like to be added or taken off the list of participants, let me know.
Does a designer's personal life influence you to try their games, either positively or negatively?
Negatively: I don't usually have a problem separating the artist from the art, and unless it's something egregious, it doesn't affect my habits. If I already have items and have been enjoying them, then I don't feel any need to divest myself of them even in those cases.
Positively: Absolutely! If someone is doing positive things, especially in the hobby, but also otherwise, I might give something that they've done a try even if I might not have been inclined to do so. If there is a happy confluence of good design and good designer, so much the better.
It has. I've pretty much written off whole game systems and publishers because of their defense of questionable and horrible people. I've even sold off or given away things that I don't care to own because of this.Fortunately my FLGS is pretty liberal about what they'll accept.
(I don't tend to make a big deal about my divestiture, though. That usually ends poorly.)
I've also supported things that I have little or no interest in because I think the person working on it was nifty or was going through a rough patch.
Absolutely. I flat-out refuse to buy anything with Zak S's name in it, even if my money isn't going to him. He's a shit stain, and the industry is far better off without him.
It does. In most cases, that's a negative impact: I don't generally find myself trying things based purely on what I know about the designer beyond their design work, but I do mark people off my list if they're abusers (Zak S.) or abusive (RPG Pundit) or liars (Gareth-Michael Skarka) or even just if they strike me as assholes (John Wick).
I don't always dump their work: that varies by exactly how much I dislike the designer. I don't think I own any works by Zak S. or RPG Pundit; if I did, I'd throw them out. By comparison, GMS was one of many authors on the 5th-edition Legend of the Five Rings RPG core book (based on Wick's original game!), and I'm not tossing that book, though I won't buy or even consider anything on which he's the primary author.
Hugely. If a designer has treated me poorly (or has treated others poorly where I have seen/been aware of it), I won't buy their games. Or play their games.
On the other hand, if I've had positive interactions with a designer, I'm much more likely to buy their games. And I enjoy them more.
There are sometimes people I decide I want nothing more to do with, and that I refuse to give money to. Usually they're people who have personally pissed me off, if I'm honest, and less often someone who is just generally shitty that hasn't affected me at all. Frankly, I usually don't care enough to learn about the creators to learn these things.
On the other hand, I'm fairly likely to buy something I don't need if it means giving an otherwise decent person a hand, or if it means supporting someone I know and think is pretty cool, regardless of actual expressed need. I've bought a fair few things simply because I have spoken with -- even if only virtually, via G+ or the like -- and I want to encourage them in their endeavors.
It does up to a point. But their professional behaviour and the behaviour of the inner circle of supporters has far more influence. If you are unpleasant to deal with on the official support forums for your games then I am not going to give you repeat business. If you don't keep order on your official support forums it reflects badly on your professional stance. LotFP left me feeling a bit unclean when I visited the support forums so I never got into it at all. I went to the Broken Wheel forums and asked about what I thought was an error in the rule book (a skill that was written up but not obtainable) and I got beaten up.
One game I bought partly due to the designer being local. I ended up really liking the game. I posted a bunch of session reports on BGG about the game. Then last year, he contacted me and wanted to meet with me. He wanted my opinion on some game ideas he had.
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What sites do you visit to find out about upcoming games and/or projects?
Honestly it's not as much as I used to. I hear about things via Ken and Robin talk about stuff, Mastodon, Pluspora, and occasionally the RSS feeds that I maintain of other projects (Beau Sheldon's in particular, but also Evil Hat and Pelgrane Press).
It's not quite the same as G+, sadly, but it's sufficed. Also I don't back as many kickstarters as I used to, primarily because my income situation changed since G+ so I don't have the ability to spread out as much as I did in the past (also because it was kind of retail-therapy for being outside of a community but still supporting it in some material way).
It is a voluntary aggregation of blogs all in one place. If you want your blog posts to show up there or want to know more about it you can look at these links:
G+ was awesome for this, because I'd see so many people talking about their own projects, either others' projects, and just cool stuff they found. I don't see that anywhere else.
Now, much of it comes from
assorted announcements on Facebook
smaller number on MeWe
email from publishers I've bought from before
youtube suggested videos (Rahdo gets me in so much trouble with my wife)
The blogosphere was around before G+ and it is really still around after. There are plenty of decentralized options besides blogger if you really look. Google failed us all on numerous occasions by killing services:
I just today backed Viscounts of the West Kingdom after seeing someone talk about it on Facebook this morning. I didn't see any announcement (or overlooked it; I've backed this publisher before and probably got email)
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If you could interview any game designer (alive or dead), who would you interview and what question would you ask?
Monte Cook or Ed Greenwood. I've always had a hard time with setting design, and both of these have proven themselves to be very good at the craft of world design. I'd want to pick their brains on how they go about designing their worlds.
Tough one. I admire a lot of game designers, from Ken Hite and Robin D. Laws to Steffan O' Sullivan. Even video game designers like Chris Crawford would be high on my list.
The question, though, is the same: Can I buy you a drink and chat? :)
@Craig Maloney - I thought a lot about those people too. Many people in the industry, both past and present, have influenced my gaming style and design sensibilities.
I know that I looked at Minds.com for a while, and decided that it wasn't the place for me. The reports I'd seen of the alt-right and radical racism there made me not want to put any effort into it. So it was strange for me reading this article about one of the people responsible for Minds.
This article features an interview with Daryl Davis about how he was able to inspire more than 200 KKK members to change and why he created a new platform to increase dialogue.
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What's a mechanic that you don't care for but understand why it's in a game that you could otherwise love.
His answer: Negative scoring for me. It's pretty much killed my love for games like Blokus because it's feels like a lazy design choice.
Mine is a more pervasive one in the hobby- polyhedral dice. I understand the need for different probability distributions, but I just prefer 6-sided dice (including dF). I play, and have played other games, but this polyhedral dice are the reason that I end up converting so many things to Fate Core or PbtA (in the past, I converted everything to GURPS).
Any mechanic that resets the game back to or close to a zero stats.
These include players swapping hands of cards, discarding everything already in play, discarding your hand and drawing a new one, resetting the score, swapping position on a score track, etc.
Most often included in party games and I understand why there are there, so that every player has a chance no matter how badly things are going for them. They can be exciting in these games and often get a rise out of the table when they happen, but I hate them.
I like to be rewarded for actual player skill, even in a silly game like Fluxx. If I'm good enough to remember what keepers have already been played and know the deck distribution and have my next turn planned out I don't want to suddenly have to discard or hand over my entire plan to someone else. That's just one example. There are many games that do this.
Similarly any game designed so that the goal is that you prevent everyone else from winning. See Munchkin, the goal in this game is stated to be that you need to get to 10 points, but the real goal by design is that you are trying to stop everyone else from getting to 10 points and what this does, is draws out the game unnaturally. The actual mechanic is designed to prolong the game, the goal is to try not to let the game end. In almost every case this means, to me at least, that the game goes on way longer than it needs to and way longer than it's actually fun.
I hate games with a spoiler mechanic. It's those games where players have to work together so that someone can win. However, it is quite possible that someone who realises he is not likely to win can sabotage the game to ensure no one can win. Although I haven't seen someone purposely cause everyone to lose, the existence of the possibility annoys me. Dark Gothic is one such game that has this mechanic.
I always wonder if it was the publisher that changed them. Like the game was designed to be competitive but then the publisher is like: cooperative games are hot right now, so we need to make it a coop.
I just found out about another on a feed that I follow: games that teach rather than entertain.
There's a certain amount of learning in games, but when something is so overbearing as to profess that it must teach and you must step outside of your comfort zone to play, I think that its crossed a line.
Yes, that definitely happens, all the time. At least in the board game industry the game you sell to a publisher often doesn't look like the game that comes out. Retheming is the most common. You create a game about the Roman Civil War and when it comes out it's about colonizing Pluto.
Rules change, themes change, mechanics change, A good publisher buys a game, then puts it through a full playtest and development process before it's released.
Now in some cases the original designer has input but in others they do not. I know someone currently going through this with a game they sold 3 years ago that's still being developed. Now on one hand they are happy, they already got paid for it, but on the other hand they just want to see their damn game out in stores!
I expect that there must be a development process that games go through. It is in a publisher's best interest to make a game appeal to as many people as possible. Not sure how many resources a designer would have to develop the game compared to a publisher.
If I can't read the rules the first time (e.g. because someone else is making me play a demo or somehow teaching me the game), if I like the game I usually try to read the rules afterwards