Wednesday, January 18, 2023
I Remember My First Time
Monday, January 2, 2023
Picture Book Gameplay
I recently had a very novel experience running a game that I think has some potential that ought to be explored. Maybe someone out there has done this sort of thing and would like to share. It's a weird one.
Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Product Identity? In MY Monsters?
Notorious bird Prismatic Wasteland is up to his antics again trying to get decent, law-abiding folks to weasel their way around legal trouble, and I'm here to help.
I put together a similar list a while back and I figure it's worth sharing.
First, More Names for the Monsters He Covered
Mind-Flayer: Bathalian (Reaper Minis), Cephalid (Dark Sword Minis), Mind Lasher (Old School Essentials), Octopoid/Gastropoid (The Black Hack), Philosophers (Zak S), Brain Fiend (Fantasy Craft), and, arguably, Genestealers (Warhammer 40K).
Beholder: Eye Tyrant (the alternate, generic name they already have in D&D), Eye Beast (Reaper Minis), Eye of Terror (Old School Essentials), Gazer (Dragon's Crown), Watcher in the Dark (Fantasy Craft).
Personally, the name I'm using is an Oculus.
...Just... just get rid of the Orientalism, they'll be fine. Really.
I offer to you: Nagendra (Reaper Minis), Librarians (Zak S), and... that's all I could find. Really disappointed to see how many companies just go with "snake men" or "snake folk" for these guys.
Monday, December 26, 2022
Not All Balance is the Same
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Artist Credit: Wayne Reynolds |
So while you very likely have strong opinions about this word, it might be useful to take a closer look. In this article, I'm going to examine six ways that the word "balance" commonly comes up when discussing RPGs, and why it's important to recognize that they are indeed distinct.
As usual, I will mostly be making reference to ol' D&D as my primary example, but don't mistake that for meaning that this only carries relevance to D&D alone. All kinds of gaming philosophies might benefit from a little bit of thought about these six different meanings for the word "balance," even if there are some that you can safely dismiss. So yeah, balance matters to other crunchy games like GURPS and Lancer and Genesys-system stuff of course, but it can also come up in your rules-lite games, story games, FKR games, lyric games, and so on. If you want to design a Star Wars game and you aren't sure about how to handle the Force, or if you're going to be running a Call and/or Trail of Cthulhu and are crafting a mystery for your investigators, or you're making a random mutation table for a Mothership adventure you're writing, then there's likely something in this post that you should be thinking about. It just might never have occurred to you before because you're only ever thinking of one possible definition out of many.
Tuesday, November 8, 2022
Enough Dweeb Adventures
I have a hypothesis: Wizards of the Coast's 5E adventures are for fucking weenies.
I know, it's a tall claim to make. Let's prove this through rigorous scientific analysis.
[Okay, in all seriousness, I recognize that I'm really preaching to the choir here. But use this article for 1) knowing how not to write dope adventures, and 2) explaining to your friends who are squares what the difference is between dope adventures and mayonnaise adventures.]
The principal variables I want to examine are villains and conflict. They reveal a lot about a designer's sensibilities towards what's cool. Because as we all know, the bad guys are always cooler than the good guys.
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
You Suck at Keeping your One-Offs as One-Offs
- Ask for everyone to commit to a long session length to begin with. Last one I did, I said "at least 5 hours" and everyone braced themselves accordingly. I'm not saying it's impossible to run a short one-shot (people manage it at conventions all the time, I hear). But I just feel like saying "we're gunna have a complete adventure, with a beginning, middle, and end, by the time we all head home tonight" and then only giving yourself 2 or 3 hours to do it is just setting yourself up for failure. You might pull it off, but it's so much safer to prepare for a longer session and assume you'll need that extra time. Nothing wrong with an occasional big marathon session anyway (provided that you let your players take a break every hour or hour-and-a-half).
- Have as much prep done ahead of time as possible, especially player prep. They should have their characters finished, equipment bought, basic setting info learned, and quest established before you even begin. It is so easy to lose precious time at the beginning of a session to "pre-adventure" gameplay. Regular readers of my blog will know that player-driven, open-world sandboxes are my favorite style of play, but they are optimized for campaigns. If it's only going to be a one-shot, then it's okay to just thrust upon the players your choice of today's quest, and then kick things off as close to the good stuff as you can get. They won't mind the lack of agency regarding that kind of stuff, because they'll be too busy having fun actually adventuring.
- Have something in-game that escalates the situation and keeps things moving forward. The stuff that tends to bog games down the most is player inaction. People talk a lot about "keeping your world moving even when the players aren't" but that's not just a saying. That's actionable advice. Personally, I like to use a timeline with planned events that make the scenario increasingly dire as the session goes on. I find that when I'm keeping track of time, and I'm routinely updating my players whenever the clock ticks ahead, then that does the trick by itself. You might prefer a more time-independent source of regular pressure application, like introducing more monsters or fatigue or darkness or whatever. Dread has escalation built-in because you're literally just playing a game of Jenga but with a story attached.
Most importantly of all, there should be a natural and visible conclusion to that escalation that will inevitably happen by the end of the session unless the players divert it. Think about it: how does a one-off end up needing 2+ sessions? Because you got to the end of that first session's scheduled time allotment but felt like the players still had more they could do. But if you decide beforehand that "the moon will crash into the PCs' hometown by the end of the session" and make it very, very clear to the players, then you can't be tempted into giving them a second session.
And if they fail? Then fuckit, they fail. Honestly, failure is funniest and most easy to deal with in one-shots anyway. It almost always makes for a better story years later. "Remember when we all got together to play D&D at Bob's bachelor party and we went in the dungeon and the dragon killed all of us?" Fuckin' hilarious. - Similarly, you can combat player inaction by giving them lots of shit to think about. You don't just tell them what today's adventure is. You give them rumors, relationships, personal complications, and lots of telegraphed resources and points of interest to seek out. I know it might sound like a lot for just a one-off, but think of it this way: 1) Bro, you should be re-using your one-shots on multiple groups anyway, and 2) Your players otherwise won't have much to invest themselves in knowing that this character they've made won't be seeing any more action after today, so giving them a handful of little things to grab onto can go a long way towards, in a sense, jumpstarting their investment in the game and churning their imagination. In a campaign, it's usually best for those things to emerge naturally over time. Players will befriend NPCs they like, build a mental picture of the world piece by piece, entangle themselves in drama more and more each session, and so on. But in a one-shot... it's surprisingly effective to just skip ahead and say, "alright, here's your character's life. Spend a few minutes catching up."
- If your game has crunchy tactical combat, then don't plan to have more than one fight in the session. I'm serious. Better to prepare one really cool and dynamic boss fight at the end of a short dungeoncrawl than to deceive yourself into thinking you can run a medium-sized dungeon with 4 or 5 combats in it. Only folks with fast-paced, rules lite combat get to have that experience.
Tuesday, August 9, 2022
Computer Hacking in RPGs
I've been thinking about hacking a lot lately. Not "hacking" like hacking a rules system. Not even "hacking" like "exploratory programming." I'm specifically talking about our favorite x-tremely kool 90's heroes who save the world by breaching computer security (and occasionally rollerblading). It's a well-known challenge of game design.
I have never actually played a cyberpunk RPG like Shadowrun or... Cyberpunk. Hacking was in Star Wars: Saga Edition but I kinda bullshitted (bullshat?) my way through those parts because I was like 16 when I ran that game. But I have read lots of different hacking rules and I've read lots of other people discussing their experiences using them, and these are my takeaways for the most common problems:
- It's complicated and a headache to learn, especially for the GM who has the rest of the system to learn as well.
- It's usually only for one player to participate in while everyone else waits on the sideline, and in Shadowrun especially is notorious for taking a really long time.
- Either it's realistic and confusing or it's abstracted and unsatisfying.
- The GM doesn't consistently integrate it into the game world, treating it almost like an afterthought.