There’s something I tell people often when they start to get tripped up in a thought — be it playing a game, or trying to articulate a design, whatever:

Say it badly now. Then we’ll work on saying it well.

This comes from my own experiences where trying to state an idea well right away caused me to hesitate, which made me feel like I was a fucking idiot, which in turn killed my confidence in myself and my ideas. I like to tell people that I could have been the person I am today years fucking earlier if I had learned that one lesson sooner.

(Of course, it took those years to learn the lesson concretely/emotionally/to-heart/however you like saying that, rather than just intellectually. So, even that’s bullshit.)

Then I started using this technique a lot as a GM to get players stumbling over an idea to slow down and feel comfortable about saying anything. Works fucking wonders. Only later did I realize the uses outside of the gaming table, and about using it for myself.

We all fear looking like an idiot, especially on the Internet with cockbites around every corner waiting to tear you down, or we’re looking to gain the respect of people we respect, stuff like that. I totally understand the impulse to craft a message well before saying it. Hell, it’s not like I don’t still try myself — we all do. We all should when we can. This rule applies to when we find we can’t.

As social creatures, we are brilliant when we’re feeding off of each other — many minds are better than one and all that jazz. If you have an idea you’re having trouble articulating or making work, get outside of your head. By saying whatever you can to someone else, they can to help you better figure it out. Last night, I was working on trying to explain what I mean by “emotional resonance” to one of my good friends, Justin Smith, and I started with “so, I’m going to talk some dumb shit here, bear with me.” He helped me understand what I was actually talking about, and now I get the concept itself better than I did by thinking about it silently.

Look at my last blog post, Reward Mechanics & Paying Attention. I poorly articulated some shit there that it took others to help me better understand. If I was afraid of looking like a moron on the Internet, I wouldn’t have posted that. I knew I was off on something, but couldn’t entirely figure out what. Now I know (or, at least know better than before).

So if you’re flustered or confused or just can’t quite articulate this thing in your head, stop trying to do it well. Do it poorly. (If you need a safety net, do it poorly with friends, and state up-front that you’re going to do so. Also, if people give you shit for it, I recommend the retort “Fuck off, cockbite.” They’re being the asshole, not you.)

Related: Be unafraid of being wrong, and of admitting that you’re wrong. I have formed and furthered relationships with people that have started by me being wrong in a conversation (not intentionally, of course). No one needs to be right all the damned time. Which is convenient, since no one is.

- Ryan

Last week, I was having a Twitter conversation with the bane of my existence[1] Clyde Rhoer, sparked by this comment:

What if your “good roleplaying” awards in a LARP were medallions that were given from one player to another like Fan Mail.

I suggested that this was not particularly possible, and he asked me to unpack why. Now, I haven’t played in many American LARPs, but I have done enough to feel like I have a sense of those social dynamics. And something like Primetime Adventure’s Fan Mail system wouldn’t carry over.

See, in LARPs, you’re talking about 30 people, give or take, doing a lot of small-group interactions. Rarely (and it happens, but rarely) is the entire room paying attention to the same thing. So, any positive reinforcement mechanism will have to complete with the medium, rather than cooperate as it does with tabletop.

The point of positive reinforcement is two-fold:

• Reward the person for good behavior (whatever that is)
• Demonstrate to others the benefits of said behavior

In a LARP, the first can happen provided those with the ability to grant rewards are paying attention to you. Good luck with that. But the second? Hell no. There’s too much going on. Five people can sit around a game and throw Fan Mail around when people are being, well, whatever we want to reward. (Eric Boyd got Fan Mail for being particularly evil in several scenes of my first attempt at Blockbuster Adventures, the PTA-for-movies hack. Which made me realize the power of Fan Mail to be use in more specific ways to different characters/players rather than general.) But 30 people have 10 different constantly-splitting-off conversations cannot do so with the same effectiveness.

“But Ryan, we could tell everyone why X Dude is totally awesome and deserves this bennie!”

Yes, yes you could. But that’s way, way diminished in value. There’s being demonstrated behavior and its reward in person, and there’s hearing about it. When you hear about it, some of the emotional resonance of that moment are lost. You’re retelling a story whose context was moment-dependent, and while people can intellectually understand why a X Dude got his bennie, there’s much less of a lesson to connect to, if at all.

Furthermore, we can also intellectually re-equate hearing someone else’s tale with something we did. If I hear “X Dude got the Good Roleplaying Award for being true to his character even when his secret of being a necromancer was out and he was beheaded” or whatever, rather than actually see the quality of that moment and the emotional resonance around it, I can re-equate it with “Fuck, man, I did that last week and I didn’t get shit for it.”

(Why, yes, I have worked in a large institution that has given out little certificates of achievement for years and seen how they depress morale in staff that gets little attention. How can you tell?)

This is why I responded to Clyde at the time with the following[2]:

There’s something I tell software people that I feel applies here: be wary of using technology to solve social problems.

Not “don’t” but “be wary of”

And I’m wondering if it’ll end up backfiring due to social dynamics.

Something that works well for five players constantly communicating might not for 30 split up.

Positive reinforcement is a different beast when everyone is able to pay attention to both the act and the reward.

I naysay not to discourage but to make sure you’re armed properly for the attempt I’d like to see.

We’re talking about a social issue that the innovation proposed might be ill-suited for. Granted, I’m all for someone trying. I hope someone proves me the fuck wrong.

- Ryan

[1] For the love of fuck, Internet, it’s a joke. I know, I have to say that upfront. Y’all are a touchy bunch.

[2] I was pretty mouthy that moment on Twitter. Clearly I was bored.

(Normally, I only allow myself one blog post per day at max. But seeing as the last one was just an announcement, I can bend the rules today.)

As a story game designer, I often wonder what the difference is for me between story games and adventure games[1]. Oddly, the difference hit me while watching Crank 2: High Voltage last year. In short:

• Adventure Games test competence
• Story Games manage page

See, here’s the thing. Crank and Crank 2 are classes in action beats. There’s little more to the film than that, by design, so you get an eye-full over and over again of what makes an action scene work. It’s all about beats — action, reaction, follow-up. And what we do with adventure games models only a piece of that, the initiative system and flow of turn order. But by testing competence and allowing for the sort of failure that blocks or fucks with the flow of the beat, we make games that look less like action movies and look more like, well, like a fight in real life.

Which brings me to another difference:

• Adventure Games model a fair, consensual reality (and often strongly)
• Story Games model a desire for an arc (and often weakly)

Not that I want to get into GNS theory here. Fuck no. (GNS is about play dynamics, I’m talking about design modeling.)  But it’s the qualifiers that I want to get into. Adventure Games have a strong modeling, intentionally. Fairness, and thus the feeling of success or safety net against abuse, requires a strong modeling. Sometimes that modeling is rules-heavy, and in other cases rules-light, and they often fall back onto an arbiter of sorts (the GM), to manage the modeling, fairness, and people. But because of this focus, creating tools for an arc are a secondary thought, if that.

(Often, the tools are in the form of GM advice, which is a fine, fine tool for such a job. And I think we Story Gamers forget this from time to time.)

Now, Story Games often model weakly, also by design. Yes, we have games that have strict sense of timing, with our love of pacing mechanics, but they don’t strongly model arcs the way that adventure game strongly model fairness. Again, by design. These games are tapping into the shared sense of media, of story, as a way to fill in gaps and allow us flexibility in how we interpret that pacing.

If you look at a lot of freshmen indie games, they try to too strongly model an arc. The very complaint you get in a lot of poorly-designed adventure games — of rule loopholes and soft points and weakness — are what you need in order to make a story game work. Make a story game too tight, and you risk making a game that’s about parlor narration, one that you feel you’re along the ride for rather than an architect of.

Which brings me to…

• In an Adventure Game, strongly-modeled rulesets allow for the players to contact the world
• In a Story Game, strongly-modeled rulesets disengage players from the world

So, when we’re testing for competence, we need strongly-modeled tools. Otherwise, we’re not really being competent if we’re not in the face of fairness. (Even dramatic fairness, like using a Hero Point to reroll or the like. There is room for some movie logic here, just not overly.)

But when we’re modeling for narrative arcs, we need weakly-modeled tools. We need to be able to project our own ideas in the game.[2] That’s how we come into contact with a story game, not by attempting to do something by by attempting to express something.

And that’s why, as I’m writing up a bit on a little game I’m tinkering with, Gun ‘n Fuck, I find I’m making a story game about action beats and not an adventure game about a dude on a rampage. I don’t want to challenge the main character’s competence constantly. For this specific purpose, that would be boring as fuck. (As one playtest proved.) That means I have to figure out what I am doing, and that’s where pacing and timing are the key.

Nothing more for now, just a few thoughts on keyboard. Oh, I should leave with this:

• At no point am I saying this is what makes an Adventure or Story Game good or bad. Just observing games I’ve played over the past few years.

- Ryan

[1] I do not condone the use of “traditional” or “trad” to describe these games. That’s a useless term, sometimes used derogatorily, and makes use folks in the story game scene look like pretentious hipster fucks. Just sayin’.

[2] Why, yes, this post was partly inspired by Inception.

Hey! So, yeah, I took my sweet time here with my ICONS contest from late May. (I’ve had a bit of an insane few weeks, with moving, conventions,job changes and all that — apologies to those waiting for this!)

Per my rules, I had two entrants: Josh Rensch & Chris Czerniak. (I did discount Steve & Eddy, because of their ties to ICONS. No offence guys; I wanted some fans to win this one.)

So, Josh & Chris, here’s the deal:

You both win.

I haven’t had a chance to play ICONS yet, but I still think the character creation ideas will provide for a lot of fun just on their own. (I was hoping to get some time to play it in the last couple months, but it isn’t meant to be at the moment.)

I’ll be contacting you individually about your prize. Thanks for playing!

- Ryan

Hey! I’m happy to announce that we’re doing This Just In…From Gen Con! for the third year in a row! (Which also answers the question: yes, I’ll be at GenCon! I’m also working the Indie Press Revolution booth this year.)

I’ll be joined by Kevin Weiser of The Walking Eye podcast. I met him last year, and we hit it off, so I thought I’d bring him on to help me run the show. We’re sponsored this year by Sandstorm Productions, which is totally badass! We’re totally looking forward to it! In the next couple days, we’ll reboot the website and put up the first episode.

Point of this point, aside from reminding you that we exist (and I’ll do it again when we have content it) is to put out two calls:

Do you have a product you think we should be aware of?

If you do, let us know! You can email us about it at ThisJustInFromGenCon@gmail.com. It could be a role-playing game, board game, event, whatever. We’re looking for things to cover at the show, and the best way to make sure we know about your thing is to email us.

Do you want to be on This Just In?

We’ve emailed quite a few potential guests, some from previous years and some new, but we still have a couple holes to fill. If you’re interested in being on the show, email us at ThisJustInFromGenCon@gmail.com.

Thanks! Hope to see many of you at Gen Con!

- Ryan

I really should get back into the habit of blogging, so I will by writing about something I have been telling some people lately.

When it comes to working with people, I have learned a really crucial rule: It isn’t your job to give someone a reason to tell you ‘no.’

This is really, really important. I used to do that total bitch move of, when people asked me to work on something with them, saying “Are you sure?” Whiny, insecure validation bullshit. The simple truth is that I should trust people to be sure of that when they’re asking me to work with them. Or when emailing someone about a job, I would put in my own caveats and make myself sound weaker, sound insecure. I’m giving the person I want to convince to hire me reasons to tell me “no.”

I learned to stop doing that.[1] I will accept “no” as a response, and if there’s an issue that I think I would be irresponsible in withholding (like, say, my availability), I will put that upfront. But I no longer act like someone who needs validation in order to “feel right” about getting a job.

As a result, I have received more work. You can to. Just stop being an insecure tool. Hell, you don’t even have to stop, just *pretend* that you aren’t. Fake it ’til you make it, baby. Just don’t make it easy for a client to want to tell you no.

Related, it’s okay to be confident. You might be worried about sounding arrogant or cocksure or whatever, and thus be afraid of that being off-putting. Stop that.

If you’re worth working with, I want to know that. And I want you to know that. I have little patience (some, but not as much as in the past) for people who need hand-holding. Have confidence in yourself and your decisions. Show me that you do. You’re only being truly arrogant if you’re throwing it in my face and refusing criticism in return.

I used to equate showing confidence with showing arrogance — which is to say, I was a fucking moron. When I decided to show more confidence, suddenly I got more work and more people interested in said work. The trick is still simple: as long as you’re not throwing how “right” you are in others’ faces and as long as you’re willing to take criticism, you’re not being a cockbite.[2] (If you’re afraid you’ll become a cockbite, surround yourself with awesome people who will tell you you’re being one and be willing to listen. This is why I am proud to be in the Evil Hat family — we do this.)

Just try it. Don’t hide behind weakness. I understand the impulse to do so — if you do, then you’re in control of your own failure and lack of progress, and there’s something to be said for being in control of *anything* in your life. All I can tell you is that three years after starting this new life, I find putting myself out there and struggling with my own success far, far more fucking satisfying than being in control of my own failure.

- Ryan

[1] This is one of those times where my advice with being a freelancer overlaps with dating advice. Mildly.

[2] Clearly this is my favorite word to use on my blog.

I pre-ordered The Bones from Gameplaywright Press this week. They have a hardcover special edition that I’m very, very eager to get my hands on. I have a few friends in this book, but even if not, I would have to buy it.

See, every book I’ve seen with Will Hindmarch as editor or developer has impressed the hell out of me. His name is one of those that, when seen, will cause me to buy a book without hesitation. (Jeff Tidball, the other half of Gameplaywright, is like that with me for board games. The two together are a fierce combination against my wallet, yo.)

Enough of my verbal fellating.[1] What I want to do is tell you a story. But first, I’ll do a little copy-paste from GPW to tell you what this book is about:

about the book

This isn’t about math. It’s about unlucky breaks and victory against all odds.

This isn’t about percentiles and probabilities. It’s about late-night game-ending rolls where everything hinges on that climactic moment when one single die skitters across the table and determines the fate of a hero, a city, an empire…

The Bones gathers writing about fandom and family—about gamers, camaraderie, and memories— and ties them together where they meet: our dice. These are essays and anecdotes about the ways dice make us crazy, about the stakes we play for and the thrill we get from not knowing what the next roll will bring.

Step back and look at how we play with dice.

When they announced the hardcover[2] on Monday, I ordered it.[3] I got the PDF Tuesday morning. I was in quite a bit of pain from a gout flare-up that started the day prior, so I was in a pretty piss-poor mood. I decided to take a slow that morning at the kitchen table, and downloaded the PDF. Sipping my coffee (which I walked down the damn block to get, because I really wanted that coffee), I opened it and started flipping through.

(Note: if you don’t have a Mac, you don’t know the joy of trackpad gestures. I can honestly feel like I’m thumbing through a book with how swiping up and down scrolls the page. That sort of natural motion is what’ll drive me to buying an iPad. And I’ve been a Windows monkey since 3.1 — you know, back when they used civilized version numbers. Get off my lawn.)

I started with John Kovalic’s Foreword, forgoing the “random essay/article” roll that you can do on the table of contents. (Which, by the way, I think is keen. I may never roll on it, but I love the personality there.) I grinned. Here I am, the big toe on my left foot in a crapton of pain, my left calf aching from having to walk weird, my back complaining about having to use a cane again…and I’m grinning.

And then I read Will’s introduction. That’s when The Bones clicked for me. It’s distilled Gamer Joy. From the history of dice as told by Ken Hite, to Fred Hicks talking about how diceless gaming made him love dice, to Paul Tevis sharing a story about dice and his gaming group[4], to Jared Sorensen sharing with you the random places he’s found his dice by describing it as a random table, to…well, you get the idea. All these people love this thing we do. And it reminded me how much I love this thing we do, why I keep doing it, making games for other people, things like that.

I kept reading. I kept smiling. I’m not saying The Bones made the pain in my leg go away. That’s crazy talk. But it did cut into the foul mood I had that morning, and made the rest of the day just a little easier. And I know I’m not the only one on the planet who has foul moods. I’m looking at you, Internet. You’re a moody bastard.

So, if you’re looking at The Bones and wondering to yourself “well, that’s neat, but it’s not a game or an advice book, so why would I want it?”, I’m here to tell you: because, if you’re a gamer, if you love this thing we do, it’ll put a smile on your face. It’ll teach you something. (I don’t know about you, but as a nerd, that puts a fucking smile on my face.) It’s about our tribe and being connected to it.

And when you’re having a piss-poor day, there’s that random essay table…

- Ryan

[1] Or is it?

[2] I typed and deleted “hardcore.” Thought you should know.

[3] Yes, I still don’t know where I’m living at the end of June. But I hope to know that by the 15th.

[4] Which I have heard at least three times before, in person over drinks. Still, the man can spin a fun yarn.

I’ve been working on Mythender since late 2007. People have asked me a lot of questions about it, especially recently as folks are starting to know me from stuff I’m involved with (like Dresden or IPR) but haven’t heard me talk about my pet love over the last couple years.

So, I thought I would share with you the intro text to Mythender. Thank you to the couple dozen people who helped me workshop this, and my editor, Amanda Valentine, for being totally awesome. (I’m sure it’ll continue getting tweaked in further revisions, but not much more so.) Hopefully this gives you a taste of the thing I’ve devoted myself to for some time now. I’m still working on the text, and have a number of people slated to playtest the game from the text alone (in addition to the 70 people that have playtested it at home and cons via me running it).

Maybe tomorrow or later this week I’ll post about my philosophy of game text openers. But for now, I hope you enjoy.

Mythender – Epic Metal Opera

Far north, there is a place of legend, a land of gods and monsters. It is the home of cruelty and oppression, a domain of ice and peril. It takes its strength from the worship its gods demand of mortals, from the terror its monsters inspire in them. With the full force of Eternal Winter, it crushes any who oppose its gods and monsters. To free all people from this fate, these gods must die. This is Mythic Norden, and you are the living weapon that will strike true into the heart of Winter.

Mythender is a game about the handful of mortals who steal power from this land and wage a war against it. This is an epic metal opera, filled with raging battle anthems and reflective power ballads. There will be passion and blood, consequence and tears.

As a Mythender, you are a titan among men—the might of myth, bound within mortal flesh. Your rage boils rivers, sunders mountains, and brings the heavens crashing down upon the earth. The land quakes with each step you take. You rip out the still-beating hearts from the gods and destroy the mythic world. You are the walking incarnation of wrath, of death, of change.

Grand battles will scar the land. Screams will echo like thunder across the world. Rivers will run red with the blood of the fallen. Trolls, giants, witches, warriors long dead, valkyrie, and even Odin and his kin will all taste your blade and your hate. Only the gods themselves are peers to you, and you fill them with an alien sensation: fear.

Even that is not the limit of your power. With each god that you End, you deal another mighty blow against the land of myth itself. You carve away pieces of it and make room for mortals to live without fear of the night and cold. As you choke the life from a god, you rip the power away from Norden to reshape this newly mortal world with your own desires. You can End anything you wish—hunger, despair, illness, peace, love, death—striking it from the world and mortal memory.

Your power rivals that of the gods. But while many would aspire to apotheosis, for you it’s a fate worse than death. The moment you let it go to your head, the moment you give in to hubris, you become those you fight.

Your power—ripped bloody from the beating heart of Myth itself—will make you into the very thing you must destroy. A god. A champion of Norden. A myth.

That is your Fate, Mythender.

The only way to fight against this corruption is to bond with Norden’s people, the innocent victims of this terrifying world. You must struggle to gain their sympathy. But this will be your greatest challenge. You may be able to snap Thor’s neck, but no one will sit at your dinner table. They can no more relate to you than they can to a storm or the sea. As they fear the gods they rarely see, they fear you more. This is the curse of the power you steal from Norden. It is easier to rip away Fenris’ jaw than to put a smile on a child’s face.

But if that is the price of such power, so be it. You will not go quietly into that good night, Fate be damned! You will make Norden pay a dear price before it claims you. And when you fall, you know your comrades will continue ceaselessly with this quest. You trust that, when the time comes, they will End you. For you are the harbingers of destruction, the cleansing fire, the Spring that melts away Winter’s frost. You are a Mythender.

- Ryan

Many of you saw the post from the other day about ICONS, and some of you might have stuck around to see that Gareth and I cleared the air. I said I would post up a public apology here, and I was thinking about what to say.

Then a friend and I were talking about this, and a good point was brought up: I say that ICONS deserved “better marketing” than that in my post…but doesn’t that mean it’s also mean it deserves better than some fuck on the Internet mouthing off? I thought about that overnight, and came to this idea as a way to show this mea culpa as well as put my money where my fat mouth is:

Welcome to the “Taunt Ryan Macklin with how awesome ICONS is” Unofficial ICONS Contest!

I did keep saying that I wish the best for Steve Kenson and ICONS, so here’s the deal. I said that I might not have an interest in ICONS when the PDF is actually available for purchase. But if I keep hearing about how awesome ICONS is, you bet your ass I’ll be grabbing it June 1st. So I’m going to do this contest. You comment on this blog post about the fun ICONS characters you’re making or playing, and one of you will win me buying you the next few ICONS supplements.

No joke. This isn’t something I’m doing with Adamant. It’s just me doing my own thing, because I can and I should.

RULES:

• You may submit one (1) comment to this post per day. Posting more often will decrease your chances. (I want to be flooded, but past experience shows that people who gunshot post just to post don’t post awesome ideas.) Otherwise, each post you enter gives you more chances to win.
• If you’re worried about whether my time zone will count two posts as being on the same day, keeping them18 hours apart is good enough for me.
• Said post must contain the random bits generated and the character idea that gave you.
• If you’re an asshole in your post, you’re disqualified and I’ll delete it. (I hate having to write this, but it is the Internet.)
• The contest ends June 1st, when I can order the PDF of ICONS. At that item, I’ll close comments on this post and post a follow-up.
• Important: The point of this contest is to continuously taunt me with how awesome ICONS is. If this post gets no comments in a 36 hour period, then the contest is closed with no winner.
• The Winner will be chosen at random from those entries that are valid per above.
• The Winner will receive me buying for them PDFs of future ICONS supplements (when available for purchase), to no more than $50 or until August 2011, whichever comes first. (Should there be no supplements for whatever reason, uh, we’ll figure something else out.)
• Should the Winner not already have a copy of ICONS, but submitted because he has a friend who got it and looked at his laptop and no one would never, ever pirate games because I mean come on, I’ll buy that PDF as well (counted against said limit above).
• I reserve the right to change these rules at any time. Probably to make them more awesome.

BRING THE HEAT! Taunt me (nicely, don’t be a dick) about the awesome that is ICONS!

- Ryan

Man alive, I and 87 other people got a hell of a gift this morning. Daniel Solis released a preview PDF of his upcoming childrens’ game, Happy Birthday, Robot!

If you haven’t checked out this game, you owe it to yourself to watch this short movie (2m 6s):

(Holy damn, that Solis kid has himself some amazing design wizardry. I’ve seen this video a few times, and it never ceases to impress me.)

The PDF is gorgeous. I’m looking forward to sending this book to my sister in Colorado. She’s got three kids and another on the way, and I think they would just absolutely love HBR.

Good news for you is that you can still get the PDF now if you join the Kickstarter. Daniel’s doing a good job of building up buzz and getting people interested while its available. If this sort of thing is your bag, help him out! You can find out more at danielsolis.com/happybirthdayrobot.

(As an aside: I’m totally envious that Adam Dray landed this project.)

- Ryan

P.S. I’m not exactly unbiased here. I think the world of Daniel and his awesome talents. And he decided one of the stories we made playing HBR was good for the book, so my name’s on it (even if it a very minor capacity). You can see the story Justin Smith and I made over a lunch break by going go Daniel’s HBR site and looking at the third story.