Character Comparison #1: Fvlminata

As threatened two weeks ago, here is my Fvlminata character for comparison, as well as my overview of the game itself.

You will notice that both characters are remarkably similar.

Similar enough that I don't know that there's any point to breaking down specific differences - it's more important that I talk a bit about why they are so similar.

"It's the system, stupid."  Yes.  Really.  The game only has four attributes, and when you only have four attributes - and a dedicated pool of points for attributes - you are going to have a lot of similar characters (unless you game with math geeks who optimize).

I, by a strange coincidence, DO occasionally game with math geeks who optimize.  I'm not saying that it's a bad thing - dealing with munchkins is a fact of GM existence, and you need to make sure the game is interesting and challenging for all players involved.  But that's another rant for another time.

I showed the game (and its probability curve, which you can see below) to one of my more math-oriented friends.  Here is what he had to say:

Most builds should have 2 @13 and 2 @7 with the last 2 points distributed in a manner dependent on how the xp tables function (15,15,7,5 may also work, if you can fully sacrifice one attribute).
3 skill points into balancing humors, some into dabbling in survival and the rest into being awesome. Precise distribution dependent on how any difficulty modifiers break out and how xp works (in the absence of difficulty modifiers, 1, 3, 5 and 9 are the breakpoints for the high attribute based skills; 1,3 for the 7 and 1,3 for the 5).

Of course, I wouldn't allow that set of stats into one of my games, which is one of my restrictions.

All in all, I wound up with a character I think I'd be willing to play, but I also learned some things to watch for in character generation (and elsewhere) when I end up writing my own game.

Here are my takeaways from generating this character that I can use when working on my own game:

1)  Chapter Organization: Explain the system before character generation in the book. Even a two-page "system in a nutshell" intro will make it easier to make useful characters.

I see this in a lot of games, and it goes all the way back to Dungeons & Dragons. There are games where knowing the system doesn't matter, either because you don't have a lot of control over the finished product or because you're just going step-by-step through a lifepath of sorts.  For point-buy games, however, it's a good idea to know what these numbers mean before you are stuck with a useless character.

2)  I was astounded at how little of Fvlminata's page space was given to combat compared to the rest of the system.  Many games will devote an entire chapter to combat.  This devoted only a few pages of the system chapter.  It almost felt like combat was an afterthought for the Fvlminata designers.  Magic also had a surprisingly small footprint on the finished book. These are neither good nor bad - merely interesting.

3)  Layout: Don't put page numbers in the middle of the page.  Put them in the outside corners.  And if you have art in your margins and along the edge of your pages, leave a gap for your page numbers.  Obscured page numbers in the center of the page make an index extremely frustrating to use, even if it's a good index.

4)  Function: Don't require custom dice for your game.  They can screw with the odds in a weird way that you may not have anticipated, which will make the more math-oriented customers a bit twitchy. Not only that, but gamers don't want to spend extra money on custom dice when we already spent $30 or more on your book.

Note that when I say "custom dice," I'm not counting the (by now) gaming standards - d4, d8, d10, d12, and d20.  Fvlminata uses custom d8's which are numbered 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, and 6.  Or, more accurately, I, I, III, III, IV, IV, VI, and VI.  Yes.  They used Roman Numerals.  They also provided stickers if you didn't want to buy custom dice - you could just sticker up some of your existing d8's (rendering them useless for anything else).

Also worth mentioning on this point: For some reason, FUDGE doesn't trip this button for me. Maybe because FUDGE dice are more versatile than Fvlminata's tali.

5) Setting: Make it interesting.  Fvlminata has a very interesting setting.  It really does. The core concept is fascinating, and I like what they did with it.  That said, however, the authors managed to publish a game book that reads like a history book.  They took an awesome concept and made it dry and dull to read.

When all is said and done, what do I think of the game?

It has potential, and there are things in here I can borrow for other games, but I'm not likely to one-shot this one.  It's headed back to the shelf.

GenCon 2010

I already put together a Geeklist of what I wound up purchasing and playing at GenCon this year, so this post is more a step-by-step what I did and saw and who I chatted with. It's gonna be a bit long until we reach Thursday, so please bear with me.  Even then, it'll be a bit scattered and probably not up to my usual standards.

We left Seattle mid-day on Tuesday. The flight to Chicago was uneventful and even a little boring (which is the ideal, to be perfectly honest).

We had a few hours of layover in Chicago, and ate at Chilis. For us, this is a rare treat, as Chilis doesn't exist in our area anymore (and it had been one of Stephanie's favorites).

The flight from Chicago to Indianapolis had a great view out our side of the plane:



We arrived safely in Indianapolis shortly after midnight and took a cab to our hotel.

For the last few years, Stephanie and I have paid for a hotel connected to the convention center. It costs a little more, but allows us to set our own schedule (and sleep in in the mornings). This year, our reservation was at the Westin in Indianapolis.

This year, my payday matched up almost exactly with our leaving for the trip, so we made a large payment that morning. It hadn't processed by the time we arrived, so we had some initial trouble checking in. Apparently, it processed at midnight Pacific, so we were only a few hours off.

The gentleman behind the counter suggested that we authorize for one night immediately, and he would adjust the authorization in a few hours when he did the night audit. He would even hold the audit for a bit to give the card more time to accept our payment. This was the first of several times when the Westin staff stepped up for us.

When we got up to the room, it was ... warm. Really warm. But we were too tired to care, and crashed pretty quickly after setting our alarm for "Way Too Early" the next morning.

Wednesday
For us, GenCon actually starts on Wednesday, when the dealer's room is open for setup.

Wednesday morning, we stumbled out of bed and fumbled through our morning routine. We then headed down to Steak 'n Shake for breakfast, as it's generally too busy the rest of the weekend.

While there, our good friend Wade Rockett called. "Eric," he asked us, "How crafty is Stephanie?" It turns out, the Kobold Quarterly team had a wheel of prizes in their booth, and one of the possible prizes didn't exist. In short, they needed an Albino Dire Weasel.

After breakfast, we headed to the convention center, where we obtained our badges. Upon reaching booth 1901, we noticed that no-one was there and there was no "stuff" there, either. So we headed to CVS to pick up the Dire Weasel Fixins.

We then headed back to the room to assemble the Dire Weasel - the finished product can be seen here. At that time, we let the desk staff know that our room's AC unit didn't appear to be working, as it was still well over 80 degrees in there.

We then headed back to the KQ booth, dropped the Weasel off, and headed back to our booth, 1901. Our timing was perfect - we arrived just as they were finishing up with the carpet.

Every year, Asmodee buys a roll of carpet for GenCon, you see.

Then we had lunch with the Asmodee team - this year, in addition to Stephanie and myself, we had Patrick, Chantal, Stefan, Christophe, Alex, Drew, and Jeremy. Patrick was the only member of the team that I didn't already know in person (but I'd interacted with him a bit on BoardGameGeek).

True fact: Canadian Mountain Dew contains no caffeine. This means that there's really no reason to drink it. Upon learning that Dew in the US is highly caffeinated, Alex had to try it. He was buzzing for several hours.

I had a gift for Christophe, and so Stephanie and I then headed back to the room and found the AC working - we recovered Christophe's gift, and headed down to finish setup.

Setup went remarkably smoothly, and the booth looked like this when we were done:

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I had originally planned to meet David Miller of Purple Pawn to play some Savage Worlds. Apparently the Savage Worlds fell through, but we did meet and play a few games - Fantasy and Identik. I think Fantasy was a little too simple for my tastes, but I did like Identik.

Stephanie and I then headed to our usual Asmodee team dinner at Champps. "We missed you last night," Chantal told us, "We would have done better at trivia."

That night, we crashed.

Thursday
As is our habit, Stephanie and I were at the booth before the rest of the team was. We get there before the room is opened to dealers. I had a chance to chat a bit with Wolfgang Baur and Wade a bit more before the doors opened for us. At this point, I also had a chance to chat with someone (I think it was Henry Lopez, but I'm not sure) from Paradigm Concepts. That discussion sold me on Witch Hunter: The Invisible World, which I picked up that evening.

Thursday morning, the doors opened and folks trickled through. I only played Claustrophobia a few times, but I demoed it a lot. In fact, it became clear early in the day that we'd need more tables for Claustrophobia.

The day was a blur for me. I didn't even leave the booth to take a lunch break - Stephanie went to the concession stand and bought a bratwurst for me. Generally, I subsist on Brats at GenCon - they're bad, but they're better than the hot dogs, and the're relatively cheap.

Thursday evening, I went to Chick-Fil-A for dinner. Don't tell anyone, but CFA is half the reason I enjoy GenCon. We don't have it here in Seattle, and I really love their sandwiches. Nothing here even comes close.

After dinner, Wade came by with his haul. This was his first Gencon, so he also wanted to unwind a bit. We had a good chat, before he headed back to his hotel and Stephanie and I crashed.

Friday
Demo-wise, the entire weekend blurs together. I don't remember anything specific from Friday at all. I demoed games and games and games. I think that Friday was the day Stephanie discovered how dangerous the IPR booth is. After last year, I'm not allowed to visit them unaccompanied. After this year, neither is she. Maybe we'll browse online and give money to a proxy next year.

Saturday
Gil with Repos arrived, bringing with him 7 Wonders. Good game. Great game. Heartily recommend it. Then I went back to Claustrophobia and Cyclades and Ghost Stories.

Saturday Night, we played Werewolves of Miller's Hollow. We usually play 1-2 nights per con.



Katie, who is moderating this game, is a friend from Seattle.

Sunday
Again: All the demos blur together after a while. So all I remember of Sunday is cleanup and dinner with the team. The cleanup was faster than usual, because Troll and Toad bought most of our unsold inventory.

Dinner was at the Weber Grill, and then we all headed our separate ways.

So, even with nothing hugely memorable, it was still a great GenCon - we got to see old friends again, and (of course) play games and games and games.

I'm already looking forward to next year.

Making Characters: The Other Side of the Equation

So I walked you through the procedure for how this project will work a few weeks ago.

The next week, we posted her first character and questionnaire. I learned a bunch in the process (and tweaked the questionnaire slightly by adding a few questions).

In discussion with Stephanie between the two posts, however, I realized that I had left out one essential part of the project:

When Stephanie is done with a game, I will use her concept and generate a character of my own with the same system. Once I've done my character, I'll post the sheet (and include a link to the original post), and discuss the differences and why I made different choices.

Now, there will be games where this isn't feasible - generally for games with a significant degree of randomness - but by and large, this should provide some interesting contrast, and hopefully it won't bore you to death in the process.

The restrictions I'm placing on myself are as follows:

1) I must use the same method of generation as Stephanie does.
2) I must use the same basic concept as Stephanie does.
3) I must create a character I would allow as GM.
4) I must create a character I'd be willing to play.

Then I'll talk a bit about the game and what I liked and disliked about it.  In some cases, this will be longer than the character differences overview.

Now, I won't do all of this for all of the characters she makes, but I will discuss the games a month or so after her posts go up.

I hope you find this part as interesting as you find Stephanie's part of the project.

Timing Expansions

I think I've mentioned several times that it's a good thing I don't run a publishing company.

This week, I discovered another reason why that is: Timing expansions.

Over the last decade or so, expansions have become a more and more common an expected aspect of gaming, but each one comes with questions unrelated to game balance.

Claustrophobia is an excellent game. I have a hunch CROC has one or more expansions ready to go, but they wanted to make sure sales justified the expense of an expansion before they started work on it. Here in the US, it was a slow starter sales-wise, but those sales have started to pick up. Has it earned an expansion, yet? At what point has it earned that expansion? Is it too late to publish one? Too early?

Keep in mind: I don't have inside information on sales here. All I have is what CROC and others have said on BoardGameGeek and elsewhere.

If you release an expansion too soon, you run the risk of publishing an expansion for an unpopular game. You also run the risk of repulsing late buyers - "Am I going to have to buy expansions to play this, too?" Or of alienating completists who see it as just a money grab.

On the other hand, if you wait too long you run the risk of people moving on to other games. Three Dragon Ante went five years before its standalone expansion made it to market. I have personally seen people pick it up, see the word 'expansion,' and then put it down because they can't find the base game anywhere (it's out of print). Wizards of the Coast cost themselves sales by doing that - I had to find my copy of the base game before I was willing to spend money on the expansion (even though I could see that it was a standalone).

The best counter-example to this is, Nuclear War has been around since 1965. Nuclear Escalation hit nearly twenty years later, and did well enough that Nuclear Proliferation hit a decade after that ...

Dungeon Twister had a lot of expansions in a short time - and it was good at first, but sales apparently trailed off over time. Because putting out more and more expansions means people will start to get pickier about which expansion(s) they pick up and you'll start to see "recommend an expansion" threads on Boardgamegeek (and elsewhere).

You also need to keep in mind the designer's timing - Christophe Boelinger put out Dungeon Twister: Prison, and then moved on to other projects with Ludically (including the upcoming Earth Reborn). Has he abandoned Dungeon Twister? Has he forgotton about us? No. He'll get there.

While I'm briefly on the subject of DT, there is a poll on BoardGameGeek that I'd like you to take (if you haven't already).

It's a tricky juggling act, publishing games. It's a bit like running a store - you need to be passionate about gaming. You need to love games and gamers. But you can't lose sight of the fact that it's a business. You need to make money.

And that, my friends, is where I would fail.

GenCon

As you read this post, I am at GenCon (which coincides with my annual meal at Chic-Fil-A). As I write this, we have about a month to go and I don't know who will be in the booth or what games we'll be focusing on.

I can, however, make a few guesses based (in part) on these photos from Origins 2010 and what I've seen rules-wise.

Dixit and Dixit 2 will be be prominently displayed due - in part - to the recent Spiel des Jahres win.

Okko has a fresh expansion. Two of them, in fact. And the Cycle of Earth has hit print since the last GenCon. I suspect this will be the game I spend the most time playing, because I'll be the player who is most familiar with it.

Claustrophobia will be there as well - and CROC will be there.  I really like Claustrophobia, but I don't have as much time to play two-player games as I would like, so this hasn't hit the table as often as I would like.

Jungle Speed, of course, is a continual GenCon favorite, as is Werewolves of Miller's Hollow (which ALSO has a new expansion). And I think I saw the Jungle Speed expansion pictured in one shot (but, having only recently seen the rules, I don't know if it'll be available or not).

Cyclades is, I think, my favorite new game of the past year. I was invited to play a prototype at GenCon last year, and knew it was going to be a winner for me.;l

7 Wonders might unseat Cyclades, however. And there will be a pre-release copy at GenCon for play. Odds are good that I'll be teaching this one - and I'm really looking forward to it.

Dice Town will probably be around - it's light, it's fast, and it's fun.

And there may be a surprise or two as well. I'll update this post as I learn what to expect.

UPDATE: Christophe E-mailed me. Stephanie and I will be focusing on Claustrophobia, Cyclades, Buzz It, Dixit, Jungle Speed, and Identik

If you are attending GenCon, please drop by Booth 1901 to say hi.

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."

Character Generation Project: Fvlminata

To 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.