Wednesday, July 28, 2010

octaNe

So I had an opportunity recently to play a game of octaNe. You see, I bought a copy for my friend Wade a while back, as its theme seemed to be the sort of thing that would spark his imagination. And it was.

Within seconds of touching the book, he had an idea for a game that he'd like to run: "The War Zeppelin of the Iron Man." (WZotIM) This game ignores the setting that octaNe includes, and takes place in the mind of a teenage metalhead named Todd in the 1980's. Plot Points were replaced with Rock Points, and we achieved them not only for good rolls (as in the basic game), but also for performing actions that were awesome enough for the GM to throw the horns.

Five years later, he got around to running the game. It was the usual one-shot group with two of Wade's old friends added to the mix. The character list is in this post on his blog (which, by the way, you should be reading if you aren't already).

Before play, he also took the time to express his fears, too.

While I understand his pre-game jitters, they didn't show (much) once he arrived. The prologue had some rough spots while we figured out what we could do with complete control over the story (answer: anything that rocked), but once we got through the prologue, it ran smoothly. Every character had a 'snapshot' moment or two. "That," someone would say, "would totally be the album cover."

There were a few rules tweaks that - for the variant setting - served to make the game more awesome. The most significant rules tweak was how players spent Rock Points - as written in the basic game, you spend Plot Points to (basically) add detail to the setting to tip things in your favor. The restriction on spending points is that you can't overwrite someone else's details or add a detail that wouldn't make sense (the example in the rulebook is having cars kicking up dust in a rainstorm). For WZotIM, we could spend Rock Points (I keep wanting to call them RAWK Points) any time we could make the scene more AWESOME!

Since you gain points when you roll a five or a six, it reached the point where I spent all of my points every roll - if you're rolling six or seven dice, you're going to roll a fair number of fives and sixes, which immediately gives you those points back. It means that Plot Points flowed like water in the game, and it got more and more awesome as the game went on.

To give you an idea how much fun we had, here were a few of the snapshot moments:

1) A one-armed ninja standing on a fire-breathing devil-bat, nunchucks in hand.
2) A Demon Biker driving his bat-winged bike along the top of an exploding zeppelin, jumping off of the end of the zeppelin just as the last bit explodes.
3) An ancient superweapon that is basically a super-advanced fighter jet firing its afterburners and flying through a portal to Hell.

As my wife said the next morning, "A+. Would game again."

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Character Generation Project: Fvlminata

Character: FvlminataTo the right, you can see the first character Stephanie created for our character generation project.  I'm not entirely sure why, but she chose Fvlminata as her first public foray into character-making.  Okay.  That's a lie.  Check the questionnaire below and she'll tell you why this was her first choice.

The scan you see is actually a second scan - the first one was done in pencil, and didn't scan very well so she recopied it in pen.  For the record: I think that recopying in pen made both of us a bit twitchy.

I don't think I've ever done a character in pen - it's generally not a good idea - I can see writing new skill names in pen, but ratings do change with time and experience, so I would never put any numbers on a character sheet in pen. And I don't think I'm alone in that.

If you can't read the sheet, by the way, clicking it will take you to the image's page on my Flickr photo stream.  We will likely refine a few things which are project-related as we go along.

As promised, here are her answers to the questionnaire:

Which game is this for?
Fvlminata

How long did it take you to make the character?
About 90 minutes.

What was your character concept going into generation?
A merchant who is able to defend herself, but does not actively look for trouble.

Did you feel like character generation captured the flavor of the setting? Did this influence your decision-making process during character generation?
Yes and no - I didn't feel that this was particularly different from historical Rome, other than giving me a bit more freedom as a female character than I would have had in a strictly historical setting.

How much control did you feel like you had during character generation?
Quite a bit

Did the game help you make the character you wanted, or did it feel like you were fighting the game?
The game helped guide my character in a way I didn't expect, but I don't feel like it wouldn't let me do what I wanted to do.

Do you like the character you ended up with?
I do - it wasn't entirely what I started out with, but I liked what it turned into.

Do you think your character fits your initial concept?
Yes

Do you feel like your character would be effective and/or useful in a game?
I think she would probably be good for reconnaissance and information-gathering, but would not be the best in a fight unless she was cornered.

Was there anything in particular that you struggled with mechanically?
It took a little while to wrap my head around the humors and the temperaments were a bit difficult to understand. I also wasn't sure, with the skills, whether it would preferable to be reasonably good at a lot of things or to be really good at only a few things.

Did anything run more smoothly than you had expected?
There was a little bit of a stumble with the humors, but otherwise it went smoothly.

What changes would you have made to the character generation process?
I think the combination of occupation and rank could be better explained, but other that, it seemed to fit the system.

Did anything leap out at you as obviously broken or unbalanced?
It would be easy to make an overpowered fighter, with the skills and attribute point-buys, but I think it would end up coming down to GM discretion to prevent that.

What led you to choose this game as the next one to make a character for?
The concept caught my attention, and I was curious about how it was implemented.

How would you compare your experience with this game to your experience with other games?
It struck me as odd that I could theoretically create a character who would have no ability in combat or magic, and would be basically useless - other games I've played have made it pretty near impossible to create a truly useless character.

[Eric's Note: Prior to this, Stephanie's experience consists of D&D and pre-generated characters for one-shot games]

Is this a character you would be willing to play in a campaign?
Yes.

Does this character make you want to play this game?
Yes.

Do you have any other questions, comments, etc.?
I would have appreciated a better overview of the system before going straight into the character generation portion of the book - while I appreciated the charts that indicated what was average, above-average and extraordinary in terms of the skills and attributes, a brief intro into what one would be rolling before setting those numbers down would have been nice. The book goes straight into character generation, however, and I didn't really delve into the mechanics of the game much as I would going through "by the book", as it were, and working my way through based on what came next in the book.

Did you consider creating a magic-using character?
Not really, no.  I didn't even look too much at the magic system.


Were you afraid that a magic-user would be too complex for someone new to the game?
For some reason, the idea of magic and Ancient Rome just didn't click.

Did the availability of gunpowder in an otherwise mostly historical setting impact your character generation at all?
Nope.  It just didn't seem to come up, other than as a possible skill choice that didn't fit the kind of character I was creating.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Character Generation Project: How I Make People

So, I know Eric's been talking about this character generation project for a bit, and I thought I might jump in here for a minute and discuss my approach to the project before my first character goes live.

I haven't made a ton of characters - as has been mentioned before, my role-playing experience has been primarily D&D and one-shots with pre-generated characters - but I do tend to go about creating them the same way. I'll look at the core book for a basic idea of how the system works, if I'm not familiar, and then I'll start working my way through the book. I'll start with some basic idea for the character - can beat things up, is more of a thinker than a fighter, that sort of thing - but I don't usually have many details in mind beforehand. I let the character generation process guide how the character develops.

Something that I don't do much, and maybe should start doing, is read through the entire core book before creating the character. I don't learn everything about a system before I start, but rather try to find out enough to know what numbers are considered "good" or "average", and go from there. It means that I don't always create the most effective character, but my characters can be a lot more interesting.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Making Characters: The Procedure

So a few weeks ago, I mentioned that my wife and I were starting a character generation project in part as an experiment and in part because it may be useful to me if and when I get my own game off the ground.

Over the last few weeks, I have assembled a long list of games that I own that I'd like to include in the project. I also put the games into a number of groups based on the theme, including a "miscellaneous" group for games that like anything else. I also picked games that Stephanie has not played (which really only eliminated d20 games, 4E, and a small handful of one-shot games we've played)

I won't share the list of games with you, as it's pretty long. And it keeps growing:

"Oh! Mutant City Blues! I'd forgotten I owned this one!"

 "Hey, sweetie, I just found World Action and Adventure at the used book store."

(Both true stories, BTW)

Either way, Stephanie will create a character using only the core book(s) for the game (with one or two exceptions, which I'll highlight in the appropriate post).

I also went through and created a questionnaire for her to fill in as she makes the characters. The questionnaire is pretty well set:
Which game is this for?

What was your character concept going into generation?

Did you feel like character generation captured the flavor of the setting? Did this influence your decision-making process during character generation?

How much control did you feel like you had during character generation?

Did the game help you make the character you wanted, or did it feel like you were fighting the game?

Do you like the character you ended up with?

Do you think your character fits your concept?

Do you feel like your character would be effective and/or useful in a game?

Was there anything in particular that you struggled with mechanically?

Did anything run more smoothly than you had expected?

What changes would you have made to the character generation process?

Did anything leap out at you as obviously broken or unbalanced?

What led you to choose this game as the next one to make a character for?

How would you compare your experience with this game to your experience with other games?

Would you be willing to play this character in a campaign?

Does this character make you want to play this game?

Do you have any other questions, comments, etc.?
Once she's done with a character, I'll scan the sheet and upload it to Flickr. I'll then go through the questionnaire, and will cut-and-paste her answers. I'll also ask any follow-up questions which occur to me at that time.

And then I'll post it here.

I hope it's a sufficiently interesting project for you. I'm really looking forward to this.

If you have any games you'd like to add to the list or questions you think I missed in the questionaire, please feel free to leave a comment here (or e-mail me).

By the way, she's chosen her first two games: Fvlminata and All Flesh Must Be Eaten. I'll let you know when she's done and will try to let you know what games are coming up.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

All Games Considered e-Book Roundtable Discussion

A quick Tuesday post with an even quicker link:

Recently, I had a chance to speak with my good friend Mark Kinney and his friend Mark Dykstra about eBook readers for the ENnie award-winning Podcast All Games Considered.

The final discussion is here. Listening to it, you can tell I'm not a podcaster - my microphone is noticeably of worse quality than that of the other participants, and it kept making noises while the other two were talking.

Thank you for the opportunity, Mark. I enjoyed our conversation a great deal.

All Games Considered, by the way, is an ENnie nominee once again for 2010 - congrats to Mark and Mags and Chris and Carol. The nomination is well-deserved.

And I would be remiss if I didn't remind you that my blog is available on Kindle.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Kobold Guide to Game Design

As I mentioned briefly once before, I'm a real fan of the Kobold Guide to Game Design.

Volume One was rich with adventure design tips, including ways to add flavor to your game and it had a few tips on world design as well. It was well worth the money I spent on the PDF version (I was given the print copy as a gift).

Volume Two was all about cleaning your adventure up and selling it. I have used it when discussing published adventures with friends to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of those adventures.

Both of the first volumes are very Pathfinder-emphasized, but most of the ideas contained therein are useful for other games - just keep in mind that other games may have different reward structures and character goals.

A few weeks ago, I was given a download link for The Kobold Guide to Game Design, Volume Three: Tools and Techniques

I noticed one difference right away: Volume One is "by Wolfgang Baur with Keith Baker, Ed Greenwood, and Nicolas Logue," Volume Two is by, "Wolfgang Baur with Nicolas Logue." Wolfgang Baur's name is in a larger font than the other authors, making it clear that it is primarily his work.

Volume Three is by "Wolfgang Baur, Monte Cook, Ed Greenwood, Rob Heinsoo, and Colin McComb." All five authors' names are in the same size font, giving them roughly equal billing this time out. Not only that, but the little word "with" is missing - again, emphasizing the shared authorship of this one.

Volume Three is also almost twice as long as the first one.

Like the other two volumes, Volume Three is a collection of essays. From the very first essay, it's made clear that this one has a broader scope than the other two volumes. The first two were about building adventures, this one is about building games. The bulk of the advice in here is about systems and mechanics. There's even an essay on computer-based roleplaying.

The other two volumes, with their tighter focus on adventures, started with a central idea and (for the most part) focused on that idea, building on it the further into the book you got. This one, without that same tight focus, doesn't build in the same way the other two did. There are essays in here on the creative process, on fighting writer's block, and several good discussions on what the essential parts of a game are. Several essays overlap to varying degrees, but - again - with the much broader focus, it doesn't feel like this overlap is robbing me of wasted space. This book is also much less Pathfinder-focused than the others, so nearly all of the advice is useful without any sort of adaptation or conversion for the non-Pathfinder players.

There are also essays which would have been at home in the earlier volumes - essays on plotting and using locations as adventure hooks, for example - but the bulk of the essays have that larger-scale focus on rules design - this book barely even touches on setting and world-building.

The book wraps up with a few paragraphs on each of the contributors - it's a good reminder that these aren't just game bloggers and hobbyists. Each of the contributors has had a significant (and measurable) impact on the role-playing hobby. These guys know what they're talking about - even their mildest suggestions should carry weight for those who are interested in game design.

All in all, I think it's very well-done. Volume One is $18.95 for a print copy. Volume Two was the same price. Volume Three is actually more useful for me, and is the same price. Because I'm a completist, I plan to purchase a print copy of this one on my next payday.

It's also worth mentioning that Open Design has made the first three volumes available in Kindle editions (in fact, I think that the links at the beginning of this entry go to the Kindle editions). Print copies can be purchased directly from the Kobold Quarterly store, and PDF copies are on IPR and RPGNow.

The PDF resolves on the Kindle with no problems.

Next week, I'll be talking about ... something.  There are several possible news items hanging, so next week's post will depend on what happens over the next week or so.  I'm also starting to gear up for GenCon, which is now less than a month off.

And in case you somehow missed it two weeks ago, you can now read my blog on your Kindle.