Archive for January, 2009

Some of you might have already seen this, but for those who haven’t, I posted a progress update on the Dresden Files RPG.

I have to say that it’s a lot of fun to be on this project.  It’ll be a few weeks before I do the next update, but we’re plugging away hard on this bad boy.

- Ryan

People often talk to me about wanting to start a podcast.  For those looking to start a podcast, this is a good discussion to have.  Not being sure of what you’re trying to do has killed many a podcast, leaving behind a string of one-episode experiments.  In talking with these fine people, I’ve come up with a series of questions that I ask new podcasters-to-be to help them get a grip on this thing called podcasting.  There are no right or wrong answers to any of the question.  The goal in answering them them is to help the new podcasters better understand what they want to accomplish.

This is the first in a series of articles for new podcasters and for people who are re-thinking their current podcasts.

What will your show be about?

This is the first question I always ask.  At first glance, this seems like a simple question with a simple answer.  I’ve heard answers like “I want to do a show about game-mastering advice,” “I want to have a show where my friends and I can talk about things that are on our minds,” and even my own “I want to do a show about game design.”  But this question exist as a conversation starter, to start talking about the topics you want to cover and the format you want to follow.

Many new podcasters have a vague topic idea or a vague format idea when they get jazzed to start recording.  In the examples above, the people talking about game-master advice and game design have ideas about the topics they want to cover, while the person talking about a show with his friends has a good idea of how to approach the things they want to talk about – in other words, their format.

Knowing only topic or format is often enough to get you started.  But that’s the easy part; keeping your momentum going and publishing new episodes takes more work.  That’s where knowing both topic & format, and getting to know them better over time, come into play.

When you start talking about topic, don’t concern yourself with how narrow or wide it seems.  You may start off thinking that your topic is fairly narrow – I did when I first started talking about game design.  You’ll likely find that as you research and speak with people, you’ll find points of view you hadn’t considered, nuances that weren’t first apparent, and a great deal of information created by those before you.  That’s a function of becoming an expert on your topic.  Of course, there are exceptions; I doubt there’s enough material about “owlbears of the 20th Century” to get more than a couple episodes off the ground (though I invite folks to prove me wrong on that).  But overall, don’t let thinking your topic is too narrow stop you from podcasting.

On the same note, don’t be afraid that your topic is too broad.  If you decide that you want to do a show about play advice or fantasy gaming, great!  Those are very large topics, so much so that there are several podcasts that cover both in different ways.  You’ll find plenty to talk about on your topic, so you shouldn’t hurt for ideas.  But if you aren’t careful, you’ll run into “podcasting paralysis” — writer’s block for podcasters — from having too many ideas and not being able to focus on one.

How do you know if your topic is too broad or narrow?  That’s largely a matter of what you’re able to talk about on the subject.  To get a sense of that for yourself, come up with what you want to talk about on your first six or seven episodes.  If you’re struggling to come up with seven different things to talk about, maybe the topic is too narrow -– though give it a shot anyway and see what you’ll learn along the way.  If you are having a hard time limiting yourself to seven, it could be possible that your topic is too broad (though, it could also be possible that you’re just really, really eager).

If you do have too many ideas you want to start with, that can also lead to podcasting paralysis.  If that happens, look at common topics and picking a single group of them to start with.  This technique works for podcasts with multiple hosts who are trying to coordinate their ideas.  Perhaps our friend above who wants to make a show with his friends just has in mind “a show about role-playing games,” with nothing more specific.  The three of them come up with around 40 ideas of things they want to talk about, and around 15 of them involve gaming conventions.  Seeing that, and seeing that everyone contributed something to that group, they’ve found a starting point.

Should you be unsure of your topic even after thinking on it and making a list of your first few episodes, that’s perfectly okay!  Do not let that stop you from trying this great experience we call podcasting.  The most important thing to understand about this medium is that, because it’s consumer-created and has a much smaller gap between host and fan than other media, you’re free to experiment and your audience will generally be forgiving — especially if the changes you make produces a better show.  Feel free to narrow your topic as time goes on, because you decide you’re doing a “how to handle gaming conventions” show.  Feel free to broaden your topic if you decide you’re more of an “owlbears, then and now” sort of podcaster.  And if your answer to “so, what’s your show about?” is “I don’t know,” don’t worry – sometimes the best way to answer that question is to just do it and look back later.

Next time we visit the subject, we’ll continue by talking about the other part of this first conversation: understanding your format.

Master Plan #42: Interview with Crafty Games, Part 1

Ryan starts 2009 off with the first of a two-part interview with Alex Flagg, Scott Gearin & Patrick Kapera from Crafty Games. They talk about their upcoming product, Fantasy Craft, and how they retooled their award-nominated Spycraft system both for streamlining the rules (for their new Mastercraft base system) and for working with a different genre. After the first part concludes, Ryan talks about a game & a content that has hit his radar, and figures it’s worth other people knowing about.

Crafty Games:

• Fantasy Craft
• Spycraft 2.0

Other mentions:

• Sexy Deadly
• Game Design Company Game Design Challenge (Story-Games.com)

Running time: 25:19 / File size: 17.4M

In my previous post, Marhault asked:

Howcome they get charged +3, +2, +1 and not +1, +2, +3? The latter would seem to incent the player to hold off for longer when charging. Is that not desirable in this case?

That is, in fact, a fantastic question.

The reason I went the way I did (and, incidently, you’re free to charge in any order) is because I think this presents more choices than the 1-2-3 method.  With that method, you have to check the +1 box of one of your traits on the first turn, so that’s prescribed.  On your next turn, you have the following choices:

• Discharge your +1 box to roll four Storm dice rather than three.
• Charge your +2 box and roll three Storm dice this turn.
• Charge another trait’s +1 box.
• The game-breaking move called “Grandstanding,” which doesn’t affect your charging at all (and can potentially kill you if its too early in the game, should you not have enough dice and roll poorly).

In many ways, there’s really only one option: Charge your +2 box on the same trait.  After all, you can either roll 4 dice right now, 3 next turn, and then 5…or you can check and roll 6 on the following turn.  You get the most bang for your buck that way.  Of course, from there it might have an interesting choice between “Do I check the +3, or do I cash out now?”  Something certainly answered by tempo.

In the current setup, with the diminishing returns, the choice is initially more interesting:  on the second turn, you could:

• Discharge that +3 for 6 Storm dice.
• Charge your +2 box, so you can roll 8 next turn.
• Charge another +3 trait, so you can have two 6-dice turns in a row.
• And, of course, Grandstanding.

Much, much more interesting to start, and with enough little options the game will sing.  But, in thinking about your question, I did have to wonder about the value of the +1 box.  Sure, it’s tempting to go from the +3 box to the +2 box so you have one turn with a lot of dice, but checking the +1 is silly — you might as well charge your other trait or something like that.  So, I revised the +1 box rule — if you charge the +1 box, when you discharge it you also get a sweet, sweet point of Mythic Power.  So, really, it’s: [+3], [+2], [+1/1MP], chargeable in whatever order you desire.

So, thank you Marhault for questioning me on this.  I hope this new idea will pan out.

- Ryan

People who have playtested Mythender will be familiar with the first part of this post.

When I came up with the “stat subsystem” for Mythender, I was reacting the the concept of a “dump stat.”  I liked the idea of quantification & relative competence (and still do), and wanted to avoid a situation akin to Charisma in classic D&D — a place to put your worst stat and ignore it.

So, when I drafted up the stats for Mythender, I wrote down seven words — I can’t recall all of them, but “Guile,” “Fortitude,” “Nimbleness,” and “Prowress” where four of them.  The idea was that you would pick four of these seven essential hoeric qualities, and you would rank them something like 2, 3, 3 & 4 — the number of dice you would roll when you use that stat.  The core system is “dice pool, individual success” style, so rolling more dice is always good.

Now, with nebulous terms like “guile,” any half-creative player could come up with a way that anything they do is “with guile.”  This was intentional in the design.  Mythender is, in some ways, my answer to high-level D&D 3/e — demigods walking the earth should be nigh-limitlessly badass.  But, this means the dump stat problem exists, because anyone creative enough could avoid using the lowest stat (as opposed to games that are more rigid in their quantification, and can present problems to characters that require the use of said stat).

My “brilliant” solution: require the use of every stat for a bennie.  You would check off when you used a stat, and when you used them all you got Mythic Power — the powerful supercharge currency in the game that fuels special, rule-breaking abilities.  (Which is to say, yes, they’re the feat fuel of the game.)  I thought this was elegant and inspired and awesome.  I was eager to show it off.

I explained this idea to my game group, and they found it intriguing.  So, in our first few playtests of Mythender, back when the stats were set terms, it seemed to work (if a little flat).  I later switched to a “you come up with your own stat” method that I loved with I first discovered Unknown Armies (and seen in many indie games), to make it more interesting to the players.  And we played this way for months.

Did you know that sometimes your playtesters can be too nice to you?  Sometimes they’ll play along with your pet idea because they’re trying to test it out mechanically rather than play as they might truly do?  Yeah, sometimes your playtesters may accidentally lead you astray, if you let them and give them reason to.

There was this issue with human nature: given two options, you’ll want to pick the better one.  So, do you roll your best stat or your worst with facing down a dragon?  I was trying to encourage using everything to be awesome and breadth, but critical situations caused players to question the “I’ll get a bennie later if I totally hose myself now, but I might die if I don’t do well enough now” mechanic that I apparently devised.  Rob Donoghue brought this to head at GenCon, when he completely ignored the bennie element and completely destroyed the system in doing so.

I have to thank him so very, very much for that.  That was the kick in the ass that I needed, to see what someone would really do with the mechanic and how it didn’t work.

So, I came up with others ideas within the same vein, because I had spent so long with this “you have stats and they have numbers” idea that I couldn’t really see a way out.  Then recently, and I can’t remember how I got such inspired, I found a way to divorce stat & number, which keeping numbers which were important to the “so, how many dice do I roll right now?” element of the design.

This meant going back to the drawing board and trying something new, which I was scared of because Mythender was something people were looking forward to, and at the time I couldn’t mentally handle another huge delay.  I mean, yes, if the game’s no good it needs to go back to formula before publication, and intellectually I understood this, but emotionally I was frustrated as all hell and avoided the drawing board after Rob’s revelation for months.

“Sometimes, you just have to suck it up and press on,” I had to remind myself.  I seem to be in need of reminding myself of that a lot.

The concept I have is that all Mythender have a single, base rating, their Storm stat.  It defaults to 3, but there are reasons and times when it’ll go up or down.  (Why “Storm” is something you’ll have to wait for — the central mechanic of the game is a complicated dice exchange.)

A Mythender has (currently) four stats, in the “you describe it yourself with some guidance from the text” style.  Instead of separate numbers, each stat has three boxes: +3, +2 & +1.

To start off an encounter, each box is clear.  On a roll, a Mythender (and I should preface with: this is also how it works for Myths, so the system is finally more unified and non-crap for the GM) either “charges” or “discharges” (for lack of a better term) a trait.  If they charge, they put a slash through one of the boxes on that trait and just roll their base Storm dice along with their Thunder dice.  If they discharge, they put a cross slash through the charged boxes on a trait and roll Storm + charged box bonuses, again along with their Thunder dice.  Once a box is discharged, it’s used for the encounter.

Let’s show this visually.  Say you have the trait “Ancestral lance.”

Ancestral Lance [+3] [+2] [+1]

On your first turn, you charge Ancestral Lance, talking about how you bring it to bear on the valkyres charging.  And you roll your base 3 Storm dice.

Ancestral Lance [+3] [+2] [+1]

Now, on your second turn, you could choose to discharge it for a +3 bonus to Storm, totalling 6.  Or you could charge the +2 box, so you can get +5 next turn.  We’ll say that you’re not feeling the pressure at the moment, so you’ll charge.  (Yes, you could also use another stat, but let’s not overcomplicate this for the explanation.)  That means rolling another 3 Storm dice only.

Ancestral Lance [+3] [+2] [+1]

It’s your turn turn, you just got hit hard.  Your Thunder pool is almost depleted (seriously, there are maybe 40 people out there who have any idea what I’m talking about at this point — I should talk about Storm, Thunder & Lightning later).  It’s time to discharge your Ancestral Lance.  That’s +5 on top of your 3, for 8 Storm.

Ancestral Lance [+3]  [+2] [+1]

And those boxes are done and unusable for the rest of the encounter.  Since I haven’t yet had a battle that’s taken longer than 8 turns (and I’ve had a lot of battles), having two open traits should be no problem.

Now, I want a sense of breadth in Mythender, but also fiery focus.  So the solution I came up with (that is yet untested) is that you get to use two traits for free in an encounter, but if you want to open up your third or fourth, it’ll cost Mythic Power.  Playtesting will see if that works.

Luckily, my playtesters and I have learned how to better playtests — when to play around with my half-baked ideas and when to punch them in the moneymaker.

- Ryan

Edit: To answer Fred Hicks’ Twitter comment on “Can I charge the [+2] on my Ancestral Lance without having charged my [+3] yet? I want the answer to be yes.”  Yes, Fred, you totally can. An intentional part of the design.