Archive for September, 2010

Hey! So, I one of the guests at the upcoming RinCon in Tucson, AZ[1] from October 8-10. I am doing stuffs! If you’re going, these might be of interest to you:

Friday 6p-or-whenever: Macklin-Tevis Mindmeld

Paul Tevis and Ryan Macklin want to talk about something, but we also want to have beer. So we’re going to do a thing that’s off the con books. We’re going to gather at some place, sit down, possibly record the conversation, and talk about pacing in GMless games. It’s something we’ve wanted to brainstorm about for a bit…though for what, we’re not going to say just yet. :)

I’m going to be using Twitter to organize this, so if you want in then follow me on Twitter.

Saturday 10a-2p: Playtesting Mythender (RPG Playtesting Extravaganza)

Come and experience the latest indie RPGs before they are published! Special guest Ryan Macklin (Dresden Files) joins Jerry Tidwell, Eric Boyd and Colin Mulkerin to demonstrate their latest creations. Do you want to stab Odin in his good eye and make the world around you tremble with change and power? Then you want to try Mythender, an upcoming Evil Hat/Ryan Macklin game about epic power and consequence. Eric Boyd brings a high-flying heist game, “House of Cards”. Atelier is “Touched by an Angel” meets Mage: The Ascention, in an alternate apocalyptic 1930s America. You play a mojo-enhanced emotional troubleshooter who helps people reconnect with each other in the midst of a magical dust storm bent on driving humanity into estrangement and extinction – brought to you by Jerry Tidwell. And Colin Mulkerin brings his local favorite “Trilogy”, a card-based fantasy short story game! You won’t just get to play, you’ll also get to give much needed feedback and be a part of the design process up close and personal!

Saturday 2p-6p: Dresden Files

The Dresden Files novel series has excited fantasy and mystery fans for years, and now the Dresden Files RPG is lighting a fire in the roleplaying community! Come and experience the fantastical mysteries in a modern setting – wizards, faeries and psychics contend with crooked cops, backstabbing femme (or homme!) fatales, and strange crimes. Game creator Ryan Macklin will show you how to play this exciting new roleplaying game – no prior experience necessary!

Saturday 6p-10pm: Houses of the Blooded LARP

Last year’s Houses of the Blooded LARP was the event everyone was talking about. John Wick brings the unique world of the Ven back to RinCon with the Houses of the Blooded LARP. Houses of the Blooded is a fantastic RPG of a decadent culture of ambition, romance, revenge, art and politics, in which the players take on the roles of nobility engaging in a deadly game of espionage, sabotage and assassination. In the LARP, all the major players gather together…secrets will be exposed and grudges will be carried out. No prior experience is needed to play and characters will be provided.

(I’m merely going to be attending this. But holy crap this was fun last year.)

Sunday 10am-noon: GM Conference

The Southern Arizona Gamemaster’s Conference has offered ideas, training and discussion for over a year, and it returns to RinCon for a second session. Our presentations this year include many special RPG Guests: John Wick, a returning favorite of the SAGC, will present “Play Dirty: The Con Man”. This will be a revved up and revamped version of what he presented at the first Gamemaster’s Conference, so long-time attendees will have a special treat, and first-time attendees will be blown away (we already know.) Ryan Macklin will be our keynote speaker, and he will talk about “Creating Context Quickly and Collaboratively”, turning the first 30 minutes of a session into a rich setting for play. Since his Dresden Files RPG has a much-celebrated setting creation system, he is sure to have some exciting insights. Paul Tevis, another special RPG guest and creator of the innovative Penny For My Thoughts, will talk about “What Improv Taught Me About GMing”, a topic which many at previous conferences have expressed interest in.

Also, I’ll be a guest at NeonCon! When my schedule for that’s firmed up, I’ll have a post on that.

- Ryan

[1] I lived in Tucson when I was five years old. While I have very little memory of it (though one vague memory of my first schoolboy crush still exists).

I have been chewing on this for some time now. I’m not sure how useful of a model it is for practical purposes, but it has helped me frame advice to others.

I see seven different layers with convention games, each with their own issues, ideas, patterns and goals.

1. Pre-game Preparation
2. Introductions & Initial Rapport
3. During-game Preparation & Context-setting
4. Early Game
5. Mid Game
6. Late Game
7. Exit

Short post, because I’m pretty busy. But it’s an idea I wanted to get out there, because I’m going to build heavily on it. There’s so much advice we can talk about that I find talking about when different advice applies is useful.

Later, actual discussion on it!

- Ryan

(P.S. This post inspired by Rob’s occasional ultra-short posts, when he’s just looking to get an idea out there to build on it later when there’s more time.)

(This is the start of a series that I’m going to try on Wednesdays — at least for the next few months — where I talk a bit about one of my deep passions, convention GMing.)

There are two broad reasons that people go to convention games: for an experience and to see how a game works. And while that probably gets a “duh” response from a bunch of you, here’s the rub: you can’t predict the mix you’re going to get.

As a convention GM, you’re both crafting an experience for and with these unknown players and demonstrating the game. Most people want both, though to different degrees. But you could just as easily have players who don’t give a damn about the game because they just want to play in a fun story (or worse). You could have players who don’t give a damn about the adventure you’ve prepared because they’re there to finally see how combat or magic or whatever works in this new-to-them game. And you could have those two types show up to the same game.

I call these the Twin Masters of Con GMing. You, as the con GM, need to be ready for a situation where you have all of one or the other, or whatever mix happens at the table.

Players Seeking Experiences

You’re going to get a lot of these, especially if you’re running older games. You write up a fun blurb for the con and people show up jazzed to be a part of it. One of my first con games, a GURPS Horror game set in Disneyland, grew crowd after crowd of people wanting to play in a zombie apocalypse set in the happiest place on earth. They wanted this experience I was billing.

I got lucky during those games, because that’s not the only experience people could be seeking. There are your trouble players who go seeking the experience of frazzling a GM. Or you get the group of friends that swarm a table and want the experience of playing together, which is a very different dynamic than people who don’t know each other before sitting down.

The mindset of this type of player is focused on enjoyment and the moment.

Your job as a con GM is to prepare an experience for the table, but it’s also to be prepared for other experiences the group or individuals might want to push on you. It’s rough, but we’ll talk in future installments about how to be a “Bend Like Reed” GM.

Running a Game Showcase

The more I run “the small press hotness” or other new games, including playtests, the more I get people who are more interested in a game because they haven’t played it before than I do for the adventure pitch. (In fact, many of the indie play cons pitch games simply by saying the title of the system, and that’s what people glom onto.)

When this happens, your job is to have enough mastery of the game to demonstrate it, answer questions, and direct the flow of information for optimal learning. The mindset of this type of player is focused on discovery and understanding.

Column A & Column B

Of course, not everyone is two-dimensional. People want to be entertained and to entertain in return. People want to discover cool stuff. But the mix is where it’s hard, because you, as a GM, likely have your own desire. Sometimes I want to show people the cool shit they’re playing, and sometimes I just want to have a fun light experience.

How do we, as con GMs, deal with this situation we’re constantly throwing ourselves in? That comes in the form of many skills that I’ll want to talk about later:

• Reading people at the table
• Building rapport, both between you & them and with them & each other
• Building up your “reactive GM” muscles
• Retaking control of the table

Next week, a new topic! But here’s where I wanted to start, because understanding the job we’re doing helps highlight the skills we need.

Agree? Disagree? Please add your thoughts in comments!

- Ryan

I’m loving Apocalypse World right now. I should just get that out of the way. I’ve played it a few times, sadly just as one-shots or really short games. I’ve run it once, as a con game. And I’m even now starting to make notes for a hack, where I marry AW’s play style with the sweet, sexy stylings of Unknown Armies.[1] (Forum post about it on Story-Games, in one of the sections that for some reason requires you to have an account to view. Easily enough done, though.)

I was talking about AW with folks at PAX this past weekend[2], and one thing that came up was how I don’t like how History is explained — in that it’s poorly explained and confusing as hell. Things made more sense when John Harper talked about how that was Vincent’s intent, how he sees frustrations a group has to overcome as a bonding experience. (Hopefully someone on the Internet can point me to an actual discussion, as while I totally hear what John’s saying, I’m curious to read Vincent’s own words about it. Thus, the rest of this post is about what John said rather than anything else. EDIT: See the first comment for actual text.) I flippantly replied with something like “Yeah, and Stockholm Syndrome is a great way to meet women.”

That decision to inject frustration there for the point of the experience sort of bothers the fuck out of me, and sort of doesn’t in the least. Yay for ambivalence. I wanted to take a moment to unpack my thoughts on that.

How it doesn’t:

• Shared experience is the heart and soul of RPGs, both in the direct sense (my group did this thing, and we can keep talking about it) and the indirect (my group did the same scenario your group did, and it’s neat to compare/contrast).
• We should admit that game design is mind control. There are tools and techniques at our disposal, and as game designers we play the role of amateur practical psychologists. We already do it with reward mechanics, so why should this feel different?

How it does:

• You can come off looking fucking incompetent — either as a designer or as a writer. Remember, those are different skills. And if you don’t communicate your intent to frustrate in even a roundabout way, well, it just looks like shitty text. I personally give Vincent credit in this arena, but if some designer I was completely unaware of pulled the same trick, I would throw the book across the room and use impolite terms to refer to his or her parentage. So one really only gets a pass if their readers know you enough to, well, give you a pass. (Edit: I should also note that I didn’t realize it was intentional until John said something.)
• It might not work. I’m frequently in unequal states of mastery at a table, and AW is no different. When I ran a con game last month, I walked them through Hx saying “Yeah, it’s confusing. Here’s what you do.” I overcame the frustration for them, because I didn’t have the time to deal with it nor the desire to make my players hostile against the game.
• I see little benefit in turning the players against me and questioning the confidence in my text. Especially as early as character creation. If they get past this frustration without realizing that was the point of the exercise, any later legitimate frustrations they’ll have will be colored by that earlier experience, and could lead to judgement calls that go against the game and break it.

I’m not trying to say that Vincent’s call is bad. Really.[3] It is fucking interesting. And as I always do, I applaud those who try interesting shit because it gives the community more data and more thinking points. Of course, AW is working for a shitton of people, including me and the folks I’m going to keep running it with. But contact with this idea makes me better understand where my own lines as a designer & writer are.[4]

And I’m not against frustration in games per se. Overcoming adversity, including in frustration, is the hallmark of adventure design. Keep on the Borderlands, man. Shoot, it’s a hallmark of much of computer gaming. So I’m not at all knocking that as an idea. But I better understand now why it’s a writing choice that’s alien to me.

Still, I’m glad Vincent did it. I learn more from people who present very different experiences and viewpoints than when I live in a damned echo chamber. And now I’m left wondering how to achieve that effect while minimizing those issues of mine mentioned above.

(Now let’s see how flamey the responses get as people assume the tone of voice I’m using is harsh. Yay for inflectionless text!)

- Ryan

[1] Those who know me know the highest praise I can give a game is “I think I want to use this to play Unknown Armies.”

[2] Doing posts of PAX recaps seem to be all the rage. Perhaps I will as well.

[3] Responses that don’t get this will be deleted. Fair warning.

[4] My lines as an editor are, funnily enough, somewhat different.

Back in 2009 and early 2010, I worked 60+ hour weeks. Between my day job, Dresden, IPR, etc., life was full. Too full. “Mental breakdowns happening like clockwork due to the constant pressure”-full. Add my rather rigorous convention schedule to that, and it was a recipe for unhappiness.

The problem is that I tricked myself into this toxic situation because I would see the number of hours I *could* work in a day and the number of things I needed to do both to keep a roof over my head and to achieve the dreams I had, and said “yes, I will work all those hours. how bad can that be?”

Ambition is a demon on your back that makes you feel guilty when you have to tell someone “I would love to work on your project…but I can’t.” It makes you feel guilty when you decide to watch TV for a couple hours instead of working. (It also robs the feeling of awesome from the achievements in your life, but that’s a topic for another time.) Ambition is the thing that told me I should work all those hours.

The other side of the coin is that we aren’t robots.[1] We can’t be on 24/7, even if there’s time in the day for us to do so. Because time is only one part of the equation. It took me until a few months back to realize more of the equation[2]:

Time + Mental Bandwidth = Productivity

Mental bandwidth[3], unlike, time, is not a constant. It’s your ability to focus on an idea, your energy to do something brain-based, like deal with customers, write, edit, produce audio, manage projects, whatever. Of course, mental bandwidth is also consumed by dealing with home maintenance, travel, relationship issues, business meetings, taxes, all that crap. And mental bandwidth isn’t something entirely under your control — both in that the world will throw you crap you have to deal with and that it’s linked as much to your physical condition as anything else.

To plan my life solely around the time I have is an amateur move. I also have to plan around my mental bandwidth. But since I don’t know what that’ll be tomorrow or next week or whatnot, that’s hard to plan for. So I’m starting to take an approach of figuring out how much I could work in a given stretch of time, and committing to only working 70% of that. If a day gives me ten hours of work time, I know I have to work seven. (That doesn’t count breaks and the like. No one pays me for those anymore. But I’m strangely comfortable with that.) That said, I’m planning more weekly than purely daily.

Right after GenCon, I tried to dive back into work at 100%, and crashed a bit. I didn’t really have that mental bandwidth back. Lesson learned and all, but it’s hammered home that I need to be more aware of my mental bandwidth both in the moment and how I can predict it in the near future. To that end, I’m (slowly) reading Getting Things Done (mentioned previously) and am trying to take better care of myself physically & mentally.

This is not an easy thing to do. I can’t tell which activity of all those I need to do in a day will cost more bandwidth at that moment. Sometimes, dealing with customer service is easy, and costs less than writing. Sometimes, the opposite. Shoot, sometimes writing makes me feel like I have more mental energy than before I sat down. It’s all strange and relative and a bit chaotic — enough to make planning difficult. Especially because they all need to be done. I can’t just say “meh, I won’t do X today,” at least not without drastic consequences.

Like many of my “Thoughts on” posts, I am not stating a solution to something. Just putting thoughts to virtual paper on this lovely Seattle day.[4]

- Ryan

[1] Close friends will know the tone of voice I’m using here. And that I’m wincing as I type it.

[2] Math & CompSci nerds will cringe at how basic that equation is. But you get what I mean, which is the point.

[3] A friend of mine calls this Emotional Bandwidth. I used to think of that as something different, but today I’m less sure. I prefer “Mental Bandwidth” as a label, though.

[4] I’m writing this while chilling outside. It’s drizzly. I’m enjoying my pipe & KMFDM. This is heavenly.