Back from a lengthy break

So here I am several months after my last entry, now the proud father of a baby girl who is sleeping through the night. She's the cutest thing I could imagine and my wife and I are deliriously happy being parents for the first time. Here, take a look:

So there's the little lady who's been keeping me away from this blog.

Never fear, though, my design work has continued. In February, I participated in Nathan Paoletta's BibliOdyssey RPG Design Challenge, designing "In Frankenstein's Wake," a hybrid RPG-board game that is intended to be pick-up-and-play. Think competitive graverobbing and wooing of patrons in the quest to create life from dead flesh. And low and behold, the game went and won the Most Playable category and will be playtested by Nathan and company up at Storygames Boston. Color me excited!

This year's Game Chef competition is also moving towards its close as peer judging goes on. I designed a children's game set in ancient Persia called "Children of the Magi," which uses the players' memory as the conflict resolution mechanic. My daughter is, of course, much too young to playtest the game for me, but the future possibility of introducing her to role-playing was my inspiration in designing the game.

In both contests, I went in with a design agenda in mind apart from the constraints of the contest itself. For BibliOdyssey I wanted to see if I could design a game that required no advance prep, no character creation or collaborative setting creation, and could be played in a single sitting. I see a lot of room for such games in the marketplace as gamers become increasingly busy and unable to commit time for prep or continuing campaigns. I'm very pleased with the design and it may well move to the top of my development stack once The Committee is completed and published (more on that effort next post).

My goals were similar for Game Chef - I wanted to design a kids game regardless of the ingredients. I struggled mightily with this design and wrapping my head around the functions of the text (to be read and used by the adult running the game) and the play experience of the children. I think once my daughter is older I'll have a much better insight into how to design for kids, but for now I was left reading educational Web sites and hoping for the best. I'm hoping to find some families willing to playtest the game for me and help me develop it for eventual publication. There aren't nearly enough role-playing games for kids out there, something I think is vital if we want to keep the hobby going strong.

So life is good, the baby is cute, and my design work is moving forward. And now my blog is updated, too.

Cheers,

Eric

The Big House - Scenes as Currency Structure

Lately I've been reading Burning Empires and playing some board games and I think I've hit upon a system for structuring the game, something lacking in my earlier design thoughts. I love the idea of using a limited number of scenes as currency that must be expended to achieve your goals in Burning Empires, but I wanted something to better capture the unpredictability and sudden violence of prison life.

So I think play will be organized into Cycles, during which each player can pursue a goal through 4 scenes. Extra successes gained during conflict resolution can be saved and rolled over into later scenes in a Cycle (encouraging planning), but after a Cycle ends, all left over successes are lost. The GM would get 2 scenes for each major opposition faction and several wild scenes that can be used by any NPC.

So there are 8 types of scenes, one focusing on each of the traits. So if you want to kill someone, you can only do it in a Shiv scene, while if you want to score some drugs you need a Yard scene. Your character's intent must correspond to the type of scene you chose to have. At the beginning of each Cycle, 8 cards (one for each scene type) are shuffled and then dealt out in a row, the first four face up and the last four face down. The cards dictate the order in which the types of scenes will be played out, and, of course, you're not sure what order the last four will come up in.

Once everyone sees the order the scenes will be played in, each player secretly writes down the four different types of scene they want their character to have this Cycle and their goal for the Cycle. The GM does the same. You cannot have two of the same type of scene, although you can be dragged into a scene type again if another character targets you with it. Then play begins with the first type of scene, starting with one of the GM's NPCs and then going to a player and then alternating between the GM and other players until everyone who wanted that scene type has had their scene. The scene types are played out one at a time until the Cycle is finished and each character has achieve or failed in his goal for the Cycle.

Example: Joe wants his character Vern to finally kill his nemesis Beecher. The scene cards are dealt out in order as follows: Yard, Snitch, Guilt, Block, and four face down cards. Joe devises Vern's plan. Vern will have a Yard scene to procure a weapon, a Snitch scene to get the guards to turn a blind eye in exchange for ratting out another inmate, a Block scene to get his Aryan Brotherhood buddies to help out in the killing, and finally a Shiv scene to attempt the murder. Vern hopes to roll extra successes in the early scenes to help in the Shiv scene and put that bastard Beecher out of commission for good. Of course, who knows what Beecher is planning...

So my open questions:

1) The planning and goal creation parts of this structure need mechanical support to have this scene structure make sense. I need to ensure that the characters all have strong story goals that can broken down into Cycle-sized pieces, kind of like BE's Infection mechanics but much more flexible.

2) If the face down cards don't come up like you want them to, what would be an appropriate consequence - Forced to follow through anyway? Able to abort and lose one (or all the rest) of your scenes?

3) Is the whole thing too mechanical (betraying its boardgame roots), and does it capture the kind of play that I want?

As I move forward, I'll see how each answer emerges. In the meantime, feel free to chime in with any thoughts.

Burning Empires - Grab Bag of Awesome

So I have finally had the chance to sit down and begin perusing my copy of Burning Empires, Luke Crane's game of sci-fi war and intrigue. And I am completely and utterly blown away. The interaction between the macro- and micro-level mechanics is amazing in its ability to present a compelling tale of planet-wide conflict with huge stakes and thrilling parries and reversals that still features your individual characters and makes them central to the fate of their world. Wow, just wow.

So while I wait for some outside playtesters to report back to me regarding The Committee, I've taken The Big House out of mothballs and begun considering its further development. And I now think that Burning Empires will be a major inspiration for the game, in particular the World Burner and Infection mechanics.

Cooperative setting creation at the beginning of play is a feature of The Committee and I want a similar process to be in The Big House, establishing the details of the prison in which the characters find themselves and the social dynamics and relationships that surround them. I know that creating a relationship map will be a huge part of that, but now adding a burner-esque series of choices that have broad mechanical implications for the rest of play seems to fit well. After all, the security level, the amount of guard corruption, the extent of rehabilitation programs, etc. should have a profound impact on what life in different prisons is like. So taking those details and making them matter in a mechanical way beyond mere color will create intensity and allow each instance of play in a different prison to be custom-tailored to what a given group wants.

I also have been trying to find a way to feature the large-scale conflicts between various prison gangs and factions while still focusing on the player's characters, no matter how small scale they may currently be, and the Infection mechanics are a great example of the kind of thing I'm looking to achieve. Since The Big House is structured in a completely different way, I'm sure my eventual mechanics will be something vastly different, but seeing such a well-done example of what I've been trying to do is very inspirational.

So thanks Luke, Thor, Dro, and crew for inspiring the rest of us with your awesome innovations. I'll bet I'm not the only one reading Burning Empires and jumping up and down with the utter coolness I'm finding both for future actual play and my own designs.

The Committee - Seeking the Fruitful Void

Vincent Baker coined the term "fruitful void" here to describe the part of a game that is central to its theme and play experience but that isn't covered by the rules (e.g., The Mountain Witch is about samurais and honor but there aren't any rules for tracking honor points or using honor mechanically). The idea is wicked cool, and I can see how many designs have created a fruiful void that ends up driving play. Creating a fruitful void for The Committee is something I want to do, but execution is a bit harder that theoretical understanding.

The Committee explains the involvement of the characters in the expedition that they are reporting on by establishing that each character has a secret desire whose achievement requires the additional acclaim and recognition to be gained in going on the expedition and coming back with thrilling tales of their exploits. Of course, while these desires are "secret" to the other characters, all the players know the desires of the other characters so they can frame hazards that touch on them. At the end of the game, each player gets to narrate an epilogue for their character in which this desire is gained or lost, depending on the amount of Acclaim (in-game currency) they have accumulated.

Ok, so the desire helps explain why the character is going on another expedition into danger and its gain or loss ends the character's story, but how to use the desires during play? Currently, the desires of the characters are story elements that the character gets for free (usually creating a story element costs one point of Acclaim). When another player reuses your story element when acting as Opposition for another character or providing reflective narration at the end of their own character's scene, then you get a point of Acclaim and so do they. In addition, you can choose to "cash out" of your story element and receive back the initial point of Acclaim you spent to create it. This keeps the system nice and streamlined, but it doesn't seem to make desires as important as I want them to be. The local playtests I've done used the desires but didn't see them driving play as much as I hoped. Of course, early playtests spend so much time finding rules kinks that focusing on larger goals of play can be difficult. Still, I'm not satisfied with the current treatment of desires.

Another thought I've had was to allow players to call on desires during a scene by making a narrative aside describing how their desire influenced their actions in the scene for good or ill. In exchange, the player gets to roll a die or two to help him successfully overcome the scene's hazard. Joshua BishopRoby's "thematic batteries" in Full Light, Full Steam may end up being inspirational here, since I'd like calling on your character's desire to have both positive and negative effects that you can manipulate to maximize your benefit when it really counts.

So does such an approach enable the desires of the characters to drive play more effectively? Or should I not focus mechanics on the desires at all? Which does the best job of trying to create a fruitful void in the game? Testing of both options will tell the tale.

What's in the Pipeline (Part 2) & Game Design Contests

Continuing the review of my current game design projects from the last post:

(3) Utopolis: Policing the Retrofuture - The Pitch: It's the future as imagined by those in the 1950s - jetcars, automats, huge stylized skyscrapers, slidewalks connecting the buildings together, robots with vacuum tube heads, etc. It's a paradise of well-ordered prosperity. You're a police detective tasked with solving the crimes and finding the criminals that still emerge in the dark corners of Utopolis society. The catch is you once were one of these criminals, but you've been reeducated to forget your prior life and crime. If you do well in your new job, you'll eventually be released back into general society with a generous pension. But your inner demons and slowly accumulating memories of your life before may drive you over the edge into new crimes or madness before that happens.

The game came about as part of the Reversed Engineer Challenge and can be found here. The game is inspired by the evocative character sheet of Thom Foster found here. I decided to stretch myself a bit and go with a card-based system and a very explicit IIEE progression. I'm pleased with how the design came out and I'm going to continue its development.

(4) Today - My first complete design and a product of the second round of the Ronnies. The Pitch: You're a person a pain, real deep soul-crushing stuff, that has driven you to self-destructive behaviors and kept you from really living. Today is the day that you confront (or are confronted by) the people associated with your pain and try to overcome it for good, putting yourself on a path out of the darkness. You have supportive people in your life that will try to help, but ultimately it's up to you if you sink or swim.

Ron was quite right to critique the game as parlor narration that allowed no room for meaningful decisions by the players. I took that advice to heart and spent a lot of time revising the system. The result was a game that fell into another trap - setting stakes that essentially limited the results and narrated consequences before the dice were even rolled (another pitfall discussed by Ron at Gen Con). So this design would need a total retooling in order to be effective, and I'm not sure I'm in a place to that work right now. So this one is being put on the shelf, ugly and incomplete, for now. Maybe when I've got a couple of my other designs completed I'll have learned enough and recovered the passion to return to Today and really do it justice.

So three of my four current game design projects have come about as a result of game design contests - The Ronnies, Game Chef, and Kevin Allen, Jr.'s Reversed Engineer Challenge. Looking around at other game designers, I see that my experience is not unique, and many of the most successful indie games to date have come about as a result of contest entries. A contest is a great way to get initial exposure for your design and get a couple of people to read it (the judges). Even if they have a less than stellar view of your design on the first read, your later development can find them coming back for a second look and offering you additional feedback and maybe even playtesting. Speaking of playtesting, The Committee has entered the outside playtesting phase, which wil be the subject of my next post.

Welcome and What's in the Pipeline (Part 1)

So welcome to my blog where I'll be charting the progress of my various game design projects and musing on game-related issues as they arise. I'm hoping to regularly discuss where my designs are at and the bumps in the road as I develop them for eventual publication. Please feel free to offer comments, advice, share war stories, etc.

Here are the first two of my current projects in development and where each is and what I'm thinking about it:

(1) The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries - The Pitch: You're a group of pulp heroes, each awesome in your abilities, just returned from an expedition into the unknown sitting with your peers of the Committee gathered around to hear your report. Brandy in hand, you tell tales of your exploits to gain the additional acclaim and reputation you need to achieve your hero's secret desire.

Originally my submission for 2006 Game Chef (see orginal version here), this storytelling game of pulp exploration is slated for spring 2007 publication (knock on wood). I'm currently deep in playtesting (see threads here and here) and after making the necessary rules changes after my latest playtest I'll be looking for outside playtesters to make sure everything hums.

I've been pleased with how the game plays so far, combining a rollicking Baron Munchausen-esque quality with crunchy resource allocation and narrative tricks. I think the balance between the two is working, but I am wary of creating a system that requires too much exacting knowledge before it energizes play. Play aids to ease the learning curve will be key. I'd really love them to have a pulp feel to further bring the players into the game (maybe parts of an expedition map or something).

I also want this to be a game where you can achieve full-on pulp-inspired awesome because you can narrate your character doing pretty much anything you can imagine to overcome the hazards you're presented with. You have to back it up with dice to actually overcome the obstacle, but the steps along the way are always entirely successful if you narrate them so - no whiffs, ands, or buts. I did see in the last playtest a time where the Opposition (the closest thing to a GM who frames adversity for a player and narrates complications during conflict resolution) negated a character's actions as part of a complication - this is a big no-no and I should have made that clear immediately.

Expect to hear a lot more about The Committee since it's my top-priority project.

(2) The Big House - The Pitch: Oz, The Shawshank Redemption, Prison Break. Prison is a place of high drama and high action, despite being enclosed within the same walls day-in and day-out. You've got people and things on the outside that inspire you to persevere and keep your nose clean, but the institution is trying to break you down or deepen your criminality. Which is gonna win out?

The original posts related to this game can be found here and here. This the only design that I didn't put together as part of a contest, and I think I'm ready to come back to it after The Committee and take it in a new direction. I want to add a collaborative setting and situation creation method and tie that to the existing structure that is focused on driving the characters to an endgame. The endgame is going to be individualized, allowing characters to come and go independently of each other (much like in Oz). I could also see PvP play emerging as players pick characters in rival gangs.

Writing the next version of the text is going to be very different than The Committee. I want to capture prison obscenity and slang in all its rawness, and fully integrate the language of prison into the rules text. I'm intrigued by Jonathan Walton's Push and Joshua A.C. Newman's Shock: and the sidebars they use as integral parts of the game text. Keeping a running glossary of prison slang in sidebars is a strong possibility.

So that's the top of my to-do list. Next post, my other two projects.