What I Learned This Week At DexCon

This week was DexCon, the annual summer gaming convention that happens between Origins and GenCon (the two other big summer conventions). And if you've been anywhere near me lately, you likely got sucked into the tornado that was John-prepping-for-a-convention.

This year I was assisting in the running of a Signature Event, a tournament of Night's Black Agents where the winning team scored a $1,000 for surviving and discovering the conspiracy unfolding around them. I am forever grateful to the tremendous assistance and support of Ken Hite, the game's creator as well as Bill White, the third GM for their enthusiasm and patience with me -- I have no doubt I was an over-compensating buzz of frantic anxiety, and they were masterful in keeping me on track and keeping everything moving forward.

Granted, my job seemed easy - I had to create the 30 characters for participants to use, as well as develop adventures designed to both give the players clues as well as winnow down the 30 players to a final round. We were successful, and I felt a tremendous sense of relief and adrenal relaxation (I suddenly lost an invisible 60 pounds of "what if this sucks?" I had been carrying). And the whole event, which mauled my Saturday, taught me A LOT.

Combine that with likely one of my top-four workshops (which is no longer at midnight, and comes with coffee for the morning crowd) and I am deeply happy man. That also taught me a lot.

I list those things now. When I talk about "it" (whatever "it" is) just replace that word with your book/game/project/thing you're doing).

1. It doesn't have to be perfect, it has to be the best you can do, and you have to give a shit about it. When I said yes to the opportunity to co-run a tournament, and once I got past the excitement of "I'm going to play one of my all-time favorite games with one of my favorite people who happens to be the guy who wrote the game!" and I saw the amount of work I had to do, it was tough not to get immediately paralyzed.

Create 30 characters that were pitch-perfect, interesting and accessible to players as well as seven scenarios that would weed through players and characters all within a 6-or-so-hour block? Gulp. I have experience making characters, I've even thought at times I was good at it, because I'm really just filling out an excel sheet, but this....this is serious! I can't just have "my" kind of characters, I need to have Grade-A characters (kudos if you just caught the implication that I doubt myself sometimes).

And I just can't have decent or average plots, I have to have plots good enough for the guy who wrote the game will respect and enjoy and not scowl at me all the way through. I can't suck at this. (Cue anxiety, nervous stomach and panic sweats)

So, I sat down, talked myself down off that ledge and got to work.

a) I know how to do this.
b) I do this for my friends all the time.
c) I'm not working in a vacuum, I have people (like the game's creator, duh) who can help me
d) and if it all goes pear-shaped, who cares, it's a game, not nuclear disarmament talks with the Iranians)

And I did it. It was time-consuming, and it was essentially its own clinic in game design, story development and how-John-deals-with-the-spotlight, but I did it. Likely, when I tell you that I had also dropped about $90 at Staples to get pencils, erasers and folders, you'll tell me that I overdid it, but the fact remained that I put all these things together. I don't say that so that people say "Oh wow that's amazing." I say that so that I get it in my own damn head that I took on a big project and kicked its ass.

Was it perfect? Nope. Characters were under-powered, plots had holes, and my printer is low on toner, but all those things are fixable, despite my frustration and guilt that I didn't do a perfect job, what I got was teased, not yelled at for the errors. And the errors got fixed, and a good time was had by all.

2. There are few things as nerve wracking as watching someone else go through your work with an audience, especially when they're the developer of the game upon which your work is based. I'm used to people critiquing my writing. I go to meetings, I share my work with a lot of people, and they give me feedback (usually it's "keep writing this!" and "stop thinking that you're not good at it!" etc etc), so I have no problem sharing my work when my work is prose - someone reads it, they make comments, I'm used to that.

But it is wholly a different beast when what you've written is something interactive. When you watch someone at the top of the field take your work and make it come alive for an audience in a way you didn't realize possible. It wasn't just roll a few dice and say something, it was a moving, near-theater experience. It was as gaming should be - a dive into deep waters of imagination and story-telling where everyone is equally invested and equally enraptured by the tale and their contributions to it.

So I'm sitting there in the back of the room, watching Ken lead the final table through the plot. I know where the monsters are. I know where the red flags are. But what Ken did was transform them from simple encounters and bullet-points on page 4 into a story, and he painted (I mean like Van Gogh) a picture of an adventure and enemies and tension and excitement that I had some inkling of on the page...but Ken filled in the dots in a way that I don't think anyone else could. He made my words not suck. He made them awesome.

That is scary though. While the other people in the room are listening to the players gasp and laugh and cheer and panic and play, I'm listening to the plot, I'm waiting for "Okay, does this monster kill them?" and "What about the clue?" That tension goes far beyond I-hope-there's-a-winner and turns into oh-god-I-hope-this-doesn't-suck-for-people. But...we made it. Hooray!

3. The biggest interference in a plot are the characters. The plot for the tournament, I felt, was one of the cleanest and jaw-dropping-est I-can't-believe-that's-a-thing plots I've ever worked on. It was so not a "go to Place A, retrieve item B, fight enemy C" affairs, but it rather intricately wove about 2 dozen clues together so that people could follow along.

Of course that somewhat assumes they will follow along. When one character takes the lady he's supposed to protect and seduces her, then knocks her unconscious and throws her out a window into a pool (so the badguys can't get her), that's both one hell of a mixed message as well as something I wouldn't think to do.

Likewise when characters are marshaling their forces and say "We need a flamethrower", that's not really something you can plan for. And no, you cannot plan for everything. The characters will surprise you when you leave them open-ended and provide fertilizer for the seed beds of imagination. (No, this isn't the time to get into that discussion about whether you or not you "let the characters dictate the story as you write it", this isn't the place for that.)

I'm not saying that people are going to sabotage the plot, but you just have to roll with the punches when characters decide to make a hard-left out of the story and take it in a new direction. Granted this weekend we had neither time nor energy to vamp for 3 hours to get them back on track, so there was a huge margin of flexing, but as the developer of content, much like Moff Tarkin, you can't hold too tightly to your plans, else things slip through your fingers. And I guess your British accent will come and go. Or something.

4. You need to take care of yourself. So I worked on this tournament and then decided that a six-hour marathon game wasn't enough, that I would pull myself to my feet and play in another game that went from midnight until about 2am or so. Because that's the healthiest response I could make, right? So by the time I fell asleep it was around 3:30 and I had to be up at 8:30 and ready to give a workshop at 10.

Also, if you're scoring along at home, I am not 22 with a super metabolism and incredibly springy immune system. Oh, and I've fractured my ankle recently, depending on which medical authority you talk to (sprain, fracture, break, microfracture, these terms are but commas in medical sentences), so I'm gimping along on one leg and doing my best to pop Advil here and there and rest whenever possible. So what's more restful than gaming for 12 hours straight?

On Sunday I had a GREAT, SUPER AMAZING WORKSHOP with a fantastic and detailed discussion of writing - covering discipline and habits and goal-setting and related ideas. I also answered a ton of questions (there were some wonderful questions this time), but I was so tired, I wanted to be more enthusiastic and answer more questions and get more into how to individually help people....but I just ran out of gas. I was tired and worn down and needed to rest.

It should be mentioned that this whole weekend it was hot. Like crazy living-in-a-furnace hot. Like 89 degrees at 2am hot. Hydration was the order of the day, and when I was hydrated, I felt great, I was awake and my foot didn't hurt. When I was way behind in my waterload, I was sluggish, tired and a little babbling.

Those times when I stretched out in a chair, put my leg up and drank water? Incredibly restorative. I didn't feel like I needed to be go-go-go all the time, I was better for not pressuring myself to do more.

So, summary time:

Take good care of yourself, and it makes stressful high-energy times worth it.
You're going to end up stressing yourself out trying to be perfect, you'll be much better off trusting yourself to do the best job possible.
More than you realize, there are very likely a lot more people who support you and actually like you, rather than who just tolerate your presence.

Happy writing. Later this week, I'll do a post about how my writing has changed because of this experience.

Forward Vs Lateral Movement

No, not football.

What I'm talking about today has both a writing/gaming component and a writing-lifestyle component. I'm not really sure where to start, so let's start with the broadest and work our way down. 

How's Your Life?

Lately, I've been doing two things differently -- I'm eating decadently (on a budget!) and paying for it afterward. I guess it's because I'm in my thirties now, so this shouldn't be a scientific breakthrough or great revelation for anyone, but I can't eat the same things or the same way I used to, say, ten years ago. 

I can eat pretty much anything I want, barring allergies, but not that doesn't mean, I'm discovering, that I should.  Big heavy meals weigh me down and put me in a fog. Meals that scream "Yeah I'm healthy, look how cruciferous I am!" often taste like lint and leave me ready to gnaw off someone's arm. I will even admit to getting way too freaked out that what I'm eating (which is seldom fried, seldom battered and seldom wrapped in other foodstuffs) is going to immediately kill me (thanks scare tactics of diets and nutrition, way to make me feel powerless). 

After one weekend where I ate far too much, I started taking stock of my food-life. Sure I'm getting the 8 glasses of water a day (sometimes more), and sure I'm avoiding too much junk food (because there just isn't any in the house), but I look over my life and see that I'm not in the best health. Forget the shape, forget muscles, I just want to be healthier. 

To that end, I'm making better food choices, eating regular portions, eating regularly and doing my best to stay hydrated. It's not a thorough diet plan, it's not a complete panic-inducing revamp of the food I eat. This is forward progress, I'm moving towards my goal.

Lateral progress was all that time I spent thinking about getting to the goal, but not taking any steps to get there - reading reviews, putting off going to the bookstore, listening to podcasts talk about the book, etc. 

This same question of lateral-vs-forward comes up every time I look at other things in my life.

My book -- GOAL: Finishing it

Forward Progress - Writing new pages

Lateral Progress - Buying/reading books about how to write those pages, watching movies and tv shows that demonstrate how scenes look, talking about writing pages.

The state of my office -- GOAL: Cleaning it

Forward Progress - Cleaning the desk off, filing papers away, throwing out/shredding what I don't need

Lateral Progress - Buying organizational racks, shelves and items to sort out things (while still leaving so many piles), thinking/feeling that I'll never make any headway

My income -- GOAL: Having more of it

Forward Progress - Being visible and helpful to others, finding clients, doing work, sending invoices

Lateral Progress - Bitching about how after I pay my bills I don't have much money left, scrounging up change out of laundry, swearing to never again buy stuff all week (see above)

See what I'm getting at? 

Sometimes, the lateral progress looks like forward progress, and for whatever reason, I guess because it's not difficult or changing the state of anything, it feels like I'm making progress to my goal. 

Forward progress isn't always fun. Forward progress on eating better means I have to amend my grocery lists, exercise some willpower and spend time actually cooking better things rather than settling. It takes work, but the goal is worth it, isn't it? So why not do it? That's the lesson I'm learning now. 

Forward and Lateral Around The Table And At The Desk

We revisit this idea of forward and lateral progress when we sit down to play a game. Board and card games aside, let's look at role-playing experiences. 

The Forward element is the plot of the campaign. Whether that's killing the dragon, solving the murder mystery, reaching level 10 or defeating the conspiracy against you, Forward comes in when the player(s) do things that bring them closer to resolving that goal. 

The Lateral element is a little trickier, since sometimes people will argue that the lateral movements are just as important as the Forward ones. For example, my brother and I spent WEEKS playing Final Fantasy X when it came out, maxing our characters' stats, acquiring all the items and weapons and basically lording over everything on the digital landscape. We didn't advance the plot too far while this was happening, because we were too busy in making it easier for that to happen.

You see, we had this idea in our heads that if we did all these side quests and branches off the main plot tree, the main plot would be easier. And while that's true (the items we got as rewards totally made the endgame simpler), it speaks to the underlying issue - we thought the endgame would be hard, and that we were too unprepared. 

As GMs we can offer players a lot of paths to follow, no matter the game system. We can give the paladin a sidequest to get a horse, we can tell the secret agents to spend some time protecting their family members from attack. Sometimes, the players jump at these actions because it's a break from the main story, or because it offers them a chance to be at the center of attention for a little while, but other times they take based on how it's sold to them.

If a side quest is sold with the same intensity as the main quest, you can't expect them to be able to make the distinction that one is superior to the other, and by extension, that they should or shouldn't throw their full weight of focus towards that new (and perceived important) goal. 

A lot of this has to do with how the hook is baited, and if the players are invested in their characters. A lot of this also has to do with the reward offered. Too great a reward, or if the reward is thought to be bigger, more immediate or more useful than the reward of the main plot, naturally the players are going to jump at it. How could they not?

Some games mechanize around this possibility by creating conditions that lead the hero(es) into side quests so that they gain material or knowledge they must apply to the main quest -- Link can't fight Ganon until he has all the pieces of the TriForce nor can Mario reach Bowser without first traversing the level(s) of the castle. 

Writers I didn't forget about you - many genres (detective in particular) hinge on the idea that the bigger case is related to the smaller case or its solution. Likewise, we can bog down protagonists with side quests that develop emotions or responsibilities or new character arcs outside of the change represented by the main plot. 

So What Can We Do?
Writers, it's time to face the possibility that you're going to finish your book. And that this book isn't going to be perfect, but it will be complete - with a plot and character development and all the trappings therein. Forget the idea that you have to X number of plots and subplots, that you have to have exactly this number of scenes that develop specifically this or that idea and that flashbacks all have to be a certain and specific length. Accept that you're going to finish the story, and it's going be a good thing, and it will get edited and become a better thing.

Gamers, take a good look at your players. (Designers, you take a look at your audience) There is a very good chance that they're not going to take the bait on many of the hooks you throw at them. The problem is that you don't know which hooks they'll take and which they won't, so you just have to keep putting them all out there. Sometimes they'll move laterally, sometimes they'll go forward. What you can do is offer them the best path forward (the most compelling, interesting, superlative story) and the most evocative path laterally (so that when they step off the plot, they're immersed in the flavor and the world(s) you've built).

Remember - this isn't a one-or-the-other, all-or-nothing prospect. You can do very well for yourself making steps forward while laying out side routes along the way. It's also not required that you sprint towards the finish line. We all want that end goal, we all want our work to be published, there's no reward for finishing ahead of other people, because the market(s) we're going into are wide enough to support all of us. Don't fall for that scarcity-trap. We can all "win" at this.

Happy writing

Writing/Gaming - Hooks!

What's a hook?

It's a critical pirate element.
It's one half of Velcro Theory.
It's also what gamers need to feel like what they do matters at the table, that it's not just rolling dice, scribbling pencils and a way to spend an evening at a friend's house.

What I'm going to talk about today is types of hooks (for different types of players) and how to figure out how to hook whoever you have at your table (or your future audience).

Now, a disclaimer - I broke gamer-types up into 4 types, just for the ease of writing this blog post, it is BY NO MEANS CONCLUSIVE. I just picked 4 because 4-is-a-nice-number-that-satisfies-my-OCD-eccentricities-no-don't-make-that-face. You may not have ANY of these players at your table or in mind for your audience, and if you have a group that isn't listed here, leave a comment below and/or send me an email, I'll do a follow-up.

I'm supposing here that you're designing your own game, or you've recently picked up a new game and you want to bring players into it.

What do I do for a new player, someone whose never played this game (or any game like it)?

For new players you want to create what I call 'Hooks of Ease'. Regardless of whether or not the player has ever played a game before, you want to make sure that this experience (the experience of playing YOUR game) is easy, so that they come back, or want to play it more.

Hooks of Ease are anything that makes play EASY to do, EASY to understand and EASY to repeat. On a mechanical level, this may be reflected in a lack of complexity or in a straightforward and unvarying checklist of steps.

Example: The GUMSHOE engine uses a six-sided die, terming a roll of 1-3 a failure and 4-6 a success. 
Example #2: Most board games have a roll dice/spin the wheel mechanic that doesn't change as play advances. 

Hooks of Ease are anything (mechanical, narrative, etc) that create a sense that "I can do this", because encouraging action is the first step to securing enjoyment and immersion. People like to do things (and repeatedly do them) if the task was not complicated, produced a result without too much effort and had a benefit for them.

The vulgar version of this is "If they get it, they'll do it, and want to do it again."

What about rules lawyers who are used to a very literal interpretation and strictly go by-the book?

I know, they're tough. I play with a few, and they can leech the fun out of the room faster than a bad cabbage fart.

The first step is realizing that for ANY type of "difficult" player, you have to remember you are NOT at their mercy. They are not the boss of you, and you cannot let their existence act like an unseen hand in crafting the overall game. In short, you're not playing FOR the rules lawyers of the world, they just happen to be a part of it, like midgets, clowns or the strange guy at the supermarket who talks to the produce as he bags it.

Chances are the rules lawyer is looking for control of the experience. In bad cases, this means they want to be "the guy" at the table (this is not a sexist thing, you can be "the lady" too), meaning all the plot and the decisions of the table go through them. This is likely because outside the game they're unhappy with something, and in this fun-time, they get to correct their unhappiness, even if they do so somewhat obliviously to how the rest of the table may feel about their bluster and possibly douchebaggery.

Hooking the rules lawyer involves Hooks of Consequence. This isn't consequence like punishment, more like an understanding of Newtonian laws -- what the players do will generate reactions/ripples within the world. Knowing that following the rules and still creating good experiences will pacify even the most crusty of rulesmongers.

Narratively, this applies as well. When the player cries foul because the NPC has done X Y or Z, which may be mechanically supported, but not what they're counting on having happen because it means the player(s) (read: they as individuals above all) won't "win", point to the actions that caused the response -- and take note that their narrative argument, the fact that they're bitching at all about what's done, has proven them to be engaged.

Note -- Just remember you don't have to cow to the rules-lawyer or rules-lawyer-bully both at your table and as a designer. Stand up, put down those things at the ends of your legs (we call them feet) and have fun, above all else. 

What about the other end of the spectrum, the player who isn't so rules conscientious? 

Someone who's just sort of at the table, interested in having a good time but not too terribly invested in knowing that the particular combat mechanic is on page 44, second column 3rd paragraph, or that you can't roll d10 for damage with a short sword, is a good person to have a table, because like the new people, they're often malleable. (Unlike the aforementioned rules-lawyer or the later discussed jaded player who both may just be curmudgeonly or creatively-sedentary). With a good experience you make a light player into someone more serious or more invested, and that's a great thing for your gaming.

What you need to offer them are Hooks of Potential. Like the line in the Aladdin song, you can show them a world...(I'll let you keep singing). By showing that the game has a lot of opportunities to do things (both narrative options in-game and mechanically in-system), you spawn a stream of opportunities and if you pair these with a Hook of Ease, make these opportunities into easy decisions. 


Easy decisions become fun decisions very quickly, because they generate consequences and feedback (Are you starting to see how these things all come together?).

Help! I have jaded players (or "I'm writing a game that has a lot of competition in the marketplace!")

I am apparently, a jaded player. I work in the industry, I write/edit/play games with designers and writers, I play multiple games a week if I'm lucky. No, I'm not bragging - I'm telling you that overexposure has dulled my sense of newness. I don't get all aflutter over prestige classes and skill suites. I'm not entirely too jazzed about a constant evolution and progression of medieval and Renaissance fantasy. This tiredness is what drove me towards "indie" gaming - where settings, mechanics and play types are vast and hugely different from game to game and session to session.

I've asked Mike my GM about this, and he's often expressed a concern that I'm bored with traditional model gaming, and I keep telling him I'm not. It's not the game itself (because that's inert), it's how it gets developed at the table. This is the attitude I want to impart to all the designers who think about their game getting into the hands of people who have played more than half their lives or who are developers themselves. What brings the jaded to your game with a spark and interest is a Hook of Demonstration. When they see the game DO something, handle something mechanically, resolve a crisis narratively, introduce elements a certain way, they will sit up and take notice.

This is what happened to me at my first Dresden Files RPG game - I arrived early, and was still eating my turkey club. The GM (not Mike, this was another group) laid out the books and gave each player a legal pad. No dice yet. Just pad and pencil. He also didn't let me crack open the books. Now, this was not typical of this group, who normally get very handsy with materials.

The rest of the players arrived and we got started. And our GM led us through City Creation. (We made some sort of amalgam between Newark, Elizabeth and Hoboken with a smattering of Atlantic City and Cape May -- very different cityscapes within NJ). We consulted no charts, we made no rolls. We did however do a lot of Googling and Wikipedia reading (yes, it's a credible source! Ask your local rockstar librarian!).

I took notice because this allowed me to combine my passions - storytelling, writing, creating with gaming into a new synthesis of awesome. I was no longer jaded (and many months later enjoy the game still).

So we have Hooks of Potential (show them what the game can do), Hooks of Consequence (show them that what THEY do has ramifications, responses and reactions), Hooks of Ease (that it's not hard to try/do these things), and Hooks of Demonstration (show them how the game does something in a way that others don't).

Remember: Hooks are not only mechanical, but can and should also be narrative tools as well. Remember also it is the combination of narrative and mechanics that create the game experience.

Happy (game) writing.

Party Balance, Narrative Weight - Gaming/Writing

Today I'm going to try and explain a gaming concept that closely mirrors a writing concept. I can't say they're synonymous, but they're pretty close. Game designers and players, this one's mostly for you.

There's a sense, I think due in part to more recent editions of products as well as a great deal of MMO-play, that an adventure/episode/campaign/game should be forever balanced or scaled to the party, that is to say a 4th level party should almost always encounter things within the range of 3rd to 5th level (3rd level presenting no obstacle, 5th level to challenge them), because that's what a party can "handle".

I completely disagree and find this a cowardly way to create play opportunities. I say this quite strongly because I'm a player in a group that is currently at odds with the idea that a party of more-or-less 4th level characters is having trouble with essentially an apex predator in its natural habitat. Because we're not able to kill it quickly and celebrate gloriously then boo-hoo the game must be broken, or our GM must be an idiot.

This all smacks of selfish, spoiled play. And to go further and lob accusations that a GM is engaged in a game of "anything you can do, I can always do one better" is entirely the wrong attitude to take when your character struggled in a fight moments previously.

My opinion: It is the role of the GM and the players to work together to tell a story. The GM presents the plot, and the players offer characters and actions (hopefully) in line with the plot. The game, whether a single session or a campaign is a result of BOTH these things coming together. When one side believes they're carrying all the weight (a GM who has to pull teeth to get things moving, or players who just roll dice and deal damage, giving no interest in story), then play stops. And when play stops, it's a good chance to evaluate why and what can be done to make the process better.

Note: I didn't say 'empower' the players, because no one side of the table is subordinate or superior to the other. The whole table is in this together.

'Balance' is a tricky concept to handle in a game. Mechanically, you have to appropriately seed the possibilities of actions and reactions so that things work with almost a Newtonian elementary precision. Narratively, the story has to offer challenge and incentive for future challenge so that rewards may be had.

But, if you're looking to create either a realistic or immersive world, you have to chuck balance out several windows. The world is not balanced. Balance is not the focus of worlds that present great danger or texture. There will be times when players are out of their element. A game should seldom be locked into zones where low-level creatures cluster, then they may head down a road to where there are tougher creatures, and the further still live the stronger beasts. This is the legacy of MMOs, creating pockets of gameplay that emphasize a need for mechanics over story. It is unlikely that a low-level character will ever have a reason to wander to the dragon's lair, because they'll know they'll not survive - so they just won't do it. Although still an option, the game restricts the likelihood of it occurring by incentivizing alternatives - closer zones offer more immediate rewards without the problems of character death.

However, looking at fiction, the opposite is true. The "low-level" character embarks upon a huge quest where failure exists and seems likely, but through the application of skills and equipment, succeeds in the face of great danger: The peasant kills the giant, the squire eliminates the dragon, the farm boy blows up the planet-exploding superweapon.

At the heart of fiction lies something called "narrative weight", which is the idea that some portion of the character-pool (a single protagonist, a group of heroes, etc) is doing whatever is necessary to move the story forward from plot-point to plot-point, while the rest of the world keeps turning or while other characters go about their day/lives. The 'weight' refers to the decisions/reactions/consequences made at Point A that drive the character(s) to Point B. Often this can be traced down to a single character's action or decision (the one party member who needs rescuing, the one who commits the rest of the party, the one who charges into battle, etc), and it can be said that this one character carries the bulk of the weight.

What's funny is that when a single character carries more weight than others in fiction is that no one ever stops to question the balance. It's only in gaming, where egos bubble up, that people worry about balance, because there exists the chance that they're not getting heard or rewarded.

Example: You can argue that Lord of the Rings is as much Frodo and Sam's story as it is Aragorn's.The other characters serve a function, but it's usually to assist one of those two branches in the narrative. Were this a game, this would be unbalanced, since the the mechanically disadvantaged characters (the hobbits with no combat skills) are 'superior' to the wizard, the ranger and the fighters (the combat-capable characters).

This is the danger of 'balance' - it requires that the game be about who has mechanical rather than narrative advantage, because the party only moves forward when the mechanics make it reasonable, rather than possible.

And gameplay should exist more in the possible rather than the reasonable (since it's a subjective assessment), because that's ROLEplay rather than ROLLplay.

If the goal of playing is to create a collaborative story, then there needs to be a synthesis of mechanical potential and narrative merit. Sure, the party can stroll through the fields until they reach the dragon's lair on day 1. They have that option. If it makes for a good story, let them do it. If however the point of playing is to roll dice, feel superior to imagined scenario and gain stuff, then they should probably be dissuaded from moving forward and instead roam the fields and kill a billion mice until they gain the strength and prowess needed to make the dragon less of a foe, right? Which one sounds more fun?

I play a lot of level-less games, because without the emphasis on accruing improvements, it's a chance to focus on story and let that build and reflexively shape the character. My characters are not a pile of numbers that translate into which-die-do-I-roll-to-beat-the-imaginary-beast, there are feelings and ideas I'm trying to express beyond hitting things with sticks.

So what's a designer/GM/ST/DM to do? Take another note from writers. Just tell the story. If the party keeps hitting first and asking questions later, then perhaps its time there are consequences for those actions. A group of adventurers roaming the land killing creatures / endangering the peasantry is just a different flavor of danger to a nobleman's land, right? Will the players balk? Possibly. But if you're trying to reduce rollplay and insert even a smidge of roleplay, there aren't many easy balk-less solutions.

I appreciate you reading this long rant. We'll go back to more proper writing theory next post.

Writing/Gaming: Character 101 - Part 1: Overview & 'The Sandbox'

Good morning. On this particularly sleety and craptastic morning (the ground and the sky are the same color. I'm not sure if that counts as a Lovecraft moment or not), I want to start the new series on this blog, Character 101.

This series will be in up to 8 parts....(definitely 6, but there are two additional components we can bring in later). Now some of you have heard me talk about the first 6 steps when I taught this as a workshop 2 years ago - but a lot has changed since then, so update your notes. And unlike those previous workshops I'm not going to cover the whole list up front and reference it in every post. (So pay attention, and ask questions/leave comments if you get lost)

Character 101 is a series of posts aimed at ANYONE doing ANYTHING involving characters. This applies to novelists, short story writers, screenwriters, game designers, module creators...even somewhat to board and card game people, (though not all parts would apply there).

Much like my previous post about characters not being awful, this is more a walk-through on how to specifically do that - and although I don't present the components in order of magnitude, every piece is an equal facet in making the gemstone that is your character.

Granted, if you're only making some secondary characters or NPCs or background fluff, you don't need to do all these steps. Maybe apply one or two. But if you want your main characters: your protagonists, antagonists, chief NPCs, mentors, sidekicks, love interests, bullies, your fan favorite characters to stand out and get some attention (like eye-popping, 'Wow' attention), then this whole series will benefit you.

Now, let's go make your characters better.

Character 101 - Part 1 - The Sandbox

The Sandbox rule can be written out as follows:

A set of boundaries and a playground within those boundaries that is at times limiting or limited, causing the character to be tested.

If you had to highlight the key parts for this rule, look at the beginning and end of the sentence:

• set of boundaries
• a playground
• at times limiting or limited
• causing the character to be tested

No character should exist in a vacuum. They don't just float aimlessly in Void-space, nor should they. They need to have some sort of area where they exist. Sometimes, this is a whole world, or on a more localized sense, this could just be the place(s) where the action occurs. 

If we're writing the classic Oscar the Grouch novel, then we're likely talking the trash can on Sesame Street and the surrounding areas. If you want to craft a game about masterless samurai in feudal Japan, then you'll probably want a province, a town or two and the surrounding forests. 

Basically, the 'playground' I'm talking about here is the world of the character. Even if that means the whole world, don't freak out and think that you have to create this monstrous real-time updating construct and deal with every living thing and every event on it all the time - you don't. You only need to concern yourself with the world of the character.

If I'm the character, then right now, all you'd be writing about is me in my immediate surroundings (the office in the house), my immediate goals (to write this post then go do laundry) and maybe my plans for later in the day (go out and meet new clients). Notice that you don't have to consider...the fate of a Sierra Leone diamond mine or the traffic in Acapulco when you're working with me as a character. Yes those things exist, but they're not in the scope of THIS character, and therefore not part of what you need to add to the recipe. 

Over time, you'll discover that the playground for a particular character doesn't have to be so large in order to be "good". 

Note: As I've said elsewhere, you're really going to do yourself a disservice the more you hang on to notions of "good" "right" "best" or "is it okay if..." as all those thoughts are subjective and contextual. Kill that doubt and move forward. If you need help, ask.

So, to build the best world for your character, think about their routine. Think about where they live. Think about what they do. Your set up here is to be concrete initially. Facts and statements are ideal right now. Those basic Who/What/When/Where questions come in handy here (we leave off Why and How for the moment) 

Yes, you can easily get a legal pad and make a chart. 

Let's suppose I was going to make a character called....Timmy, so my chart starts like this:

Timmy the Character

• Wakes up every morning at 8
• Is currently a 'salad technician' at a restaurant
• Is 18
• Lives with his parents in a condo on 16th Street

No, I didn't prioritize those facts, I just listed the things that came to mind as I sat here. There really isn't a best order of magnitude, as this first column is just to list some of the pieces of Timmy's world.

So those are Timmy's facts, and in turn they are also boundaries. Timmy is 18, so he won't have the experiences of a 90 year old war veteran. He's male, so he won't know anything about the struggles of being a girl in middle school. He wakes up at 8, so he isn't going to have the same experiences as the crackhead who sleeps all day. Facts are good, and facts are boundaries. (Without these boundaries, Timmy is essentially an omnipotent, omnipresent, limitless deity).

Because Timmy is limited we've now planted the seeds for desire. Think of your own life here as well, you may be reading this at a job you no longer love, you may be reading this late at night because you're afraid what your spouse will say if you tell them you want to be a writer, you may be reading this thinking, "I could do a better job..." Whatever the reason you provide, there is a desire you can tether to the fact. 

Let's go back to Timmy and see if we can find some desires for him based on the facts we gave. (If you're making a chart, these desires are a second column)

Timmy the Character

• Wakes up every morning at 8 >> Wants to sleep in longer
• Is currently a 'salad technician' at a restaurant >>Wants to be a professional sculptor
• Is 18 >> hates that people think he's a 'dumb kid'
• Lives with his parents in a condo on 16th Street >> wants to move into his own apartment downtown, nearer to where he's seen college-age girls

Whenever you create limits on a character, you also plant the seed to exceed or overcome those limits. And yes, the character should want to overcome those limits (those conflicts are plot points) and the method the character goes about moving from his limitation toward his goal is essentially a plot unto itself. 

You could stop here with the chart, but you can also go one step further to see how each plot develops. (This would be a third column on your chart)

Timmy the Character

• Wakes up every morning at 8 >> Wants to sleep in longer  >> Starts setting his alarm later and later, angering his mother
• Is currently a 'salad technician' at a restaurant >>Wants to be a professional sculptor  >> Applies for a class in sculpting at night school
• Is 18 >> hates that people think he's a 'dumb kid'  >> Spends all his free time reading college textbooks and trying to sound like a grad student.
• Lives with his parents in a condo on 16th Street >> wants to move into his own apartment downtown, nearer to where he's seen college-age girls  >> Intentionally gets off at the wrong subway and bus stops so he can be around girls, hoping they notice him

We've built Timmy up pretty quickly, and given him a lot of different qualities and possibilities for our stories, games and wherever else we want to deploy him.

The key to that third column is that the plan the character undertakes to make the second column happen SHOULD NOT BE EASY. If it were easy, the character would have done it already, and they wouldn't be limited by it not-being-done. The challenge for the character is critical for the audience to emotionally invest in the character - we want to see him succeed (or not, if he's an antagonist), and we will only get to do that if we see the actions taking time and being done over the course of pages/chapters/sessions/etc. 

If a character's desire (also called a motivation) goes untested, then it isn't important enough for us to hear about. Having said that, let me also say that you don't need to detail EVERY motivation and develop them all before advancing your story. 

Remember Rule #1 of Writing - Writing is the act of making decisions. You decide what motivations to pursue, when, and to what degree. You decide how to express the desires and the plans and their consequences. 

The short formula for today's lesson:

1. The world of the character is the immediate facts and desires they experience/want

2. The desires are goals they've not yet realized and they will have to work (change their current state) to achieve them.

3. The plan they develop and engage to sate these desires is material for plot. 

Welcome to Character 101. 

In part 2 (due out later this week) we'll talk about character descriptions. 

Happy writing. 

(If you have questions or comments about today's lesson, leave some comments below. I would love to hear from you.)

The Beat Sheet Of Game Design

Oh man is today ever a great day to read a blog post. Now this is a long one, and it's dedicated entirely to game design, but I swear to you, this post is a gold mine for you designers out there.

Today I'm going to show you a complete system of game development, so that you can take your game, whatever it is, and work it through what I'm describing below so you can see where your holes and gaps are...and then fill them.

Before we get started, we have to go over the three rules I'll be referencing.

The Rules

Rule 1: Writing is the act of making decisions
Rule 2: Be easy on yourself
Rule 3: You always have options, there is always a way out, you're never trapped.

Critical here are Rule #1 and Rule #3. Rule #2 is there to remind you that you're not a failure or bad or stupid or wrong for not being perfect the first time, every time.

(Side note: You're also amazing, if you didn't know)

Before we get into the meat of this system, I have a little questionnaire for you, to help sort out the finer points of your game. Answers to these questions will be USPs (Unique Selling Points) that you can immediately use in your pitches. If you can't answer the question, or if your answer isn't one of the options listed, that's okay, it just means that your game is a little more niche and/or atypical.

Yes, absolutely, you should be writing the answers to these questions down, perhaps on a legal pad or in your 'Game Development Notebook' or wherever you store your ideas.

Question 1: Is this game about Character or about Plot? (Are you creating a linear game where people go from one place to another and do a single task to 'win', or is this a game where you create a character and they're pretty free to do whatever, within the confines of the world, and this game is their biography?)

Question 2: Is this game a single serving or can this be a long-term game? (Is this a game I can get into for a few hours on a rainy evening with a few friends, or is this game something that I can play over the course of many weeks and months?)

Question 3: Does this game get easier/better/more enjoyable by using previous knowledge or can anyone pick this up? (Is this a game where I have to know about something else going in, or can someone whose never seen a particular show, read a certain book or had a certain game experience still get the same level of enjoyment as someone who is better read/experienced?)

Question 4: Do the characters matter in this world? (If players eliminate or disempower a major quest-giver or chain of events, do their actions resonate 'locally' or'globally' or not at all? Or are the characters fighting a Sisyphean battle, with huge odds stacked against them?)

Question 5: Is this game about the experience or about winning and losing? (Does this game have specific 'winning conditions' or is this game to be played just to play and enjoy the company of your friends and have a specific experience along the way?)

Got your answers? Lets go meet the driving force of this design system.

Beats!

Previously, I talked a little about "Beats", the moments and particular scenes that act as signposts from your project's Point A to wherever you end up at Point B or Q or F or whatever. Now, some types of beat-layout and even some beats are optional, but in game design, there are three unavoidable beats, and they act as large umbrellas for sections of the game.

The Opening
The Mid-Game
The End Game

The Opening introduces the players to their characters and the world, as well as gives them a baseline of mechanics to operate within the world. Near the end of the Opening, you introduce them to the plot, as you'll see and play intensifies from there.

The Mid-Game (or mid-Session, if your game is a long-play) develops and expands on what the players and
characters already know. They discover and use more mechanics, they receive more information about plot, and they advance themselves experientially. Near the end of the mid-game/session, they propel forward into end-game/session which is generally a moment of significance for them.

The End Game/Session is where the experience and development accomplished so far pays off. Armed with
material and knowledge, the characters and players are able to take significant actions and headway for or
against the plot, resolving it in some cases (situationally) and either concluding their development, or launching them forward toward another cycle of the same beats.

Now under those three big umbrellas sit a host of other smaller beats. Let's break them down, one umbrella at a time. I should point out that although I'm expressing these beats numerically, your game doesn't have to. You can adjust the order of these beats within these umbrellas as you like or need to. Further, you may omit
or relocate a beat to serve your purposes.

The Opening

I. The Introduction of Characters - Sometimes this includes character creation, sometimes this doesn't (and
therefore considers that creation to be separate from play), but this beat commences the minute the first character does something in-character in-game. In older games, this is the 'you all meet in a tavern' moment, where suddenly and randomly a fighter, a healer, a thief and a wizard just happen to sit together at their local
restaurant. In plot-driven games, the reason this is done is because the plot gets explained here. "You're sitting at the tavern, having answered the summons for adventurers..." In more open-ended plot games, possible plots are teased here, by way of what characters see (this is where flavor text helps develop and enrich the world, by showing the players what's possible).

II. The Introduction of Conflict - For the more structured (read: less flexible) gamer, this is the beat that answers, "Why are we doing this?" This beat comes most often as a box of prepared module-esque text that
somehow you've asked your GM to make interesting, without a lot of dice rolling or random inflection. Here the characters learn about the conflict they face within the world. It may be pretty straight forward (Mario, go rescue the princess) or it can be far more layered (resolve the conspiracy, defeat the terrorists, save the hostages).

Time and experience pass and the characters learn more about the conflict and themselves. There are a few simpler beats to hit in the Opening:

III. First Combat/Mechanical Trial - Thanks to a particular circumstance (bandits in the road, a locked
door, etc), the characters must make use of the mechanics to resolve problems. Key in this beat are the 'ease of play' (how straightforward the experience is) and 'depth of play' (how this trial and resolution feel...not so much in terms of accuracy, but in terms of enjoyment). In some games, this trial is expressed as a mini-game (game within a game) and other times as a series of contested rolls and expressed actions (you rolled a 15 against a 3, you hit).

IV. The Disbelief Point - Up until this moment, what the players have done is fairly elementary statistical exercise: roll some dice, record the numbers in little boxes on a sheet, tell a shared fairy tale. But there comes a point within the opening third of the game where the story and character(s) grabs them, and involves them. Going forward from this point, the player is immersed. Now, yes, every player has a different disbelief point, acting via free will to suspend their disbelief and engage their imagination at whatever point they like. Perhaps Player 3 got involved during combat when she totally shot that guy in the face, and perhaps player 8 really liked the way the setting was described when he sat down at the table. Every player has one, and while no game can specifically address every player, a game designer can put together the best components within the product and remember Rule #2.

The Opening Ends with...

V. Launch Into Mid-Game/Session - Here, the players have completed whatever basics need be done, and they have discovered some element(s) of the plot. They may be suitably armed (physically, mentally and otherwise) and they often are (thanks to flavor text) relocated from one place to another, a physical migration to start this movement (they leave the tavern, they board the train, they go somewhere else, etc). Further, the characters have a purpose, a mission to do and a reason to do it.

The Mid-Game/Session

The Mid-Game is characterized by expansion. Everything gets bigger here, quantifiably more than qualitatively. Characters advance in level(s), gain more material and knowledge and the playing "field" (perhaps a board or the collaborative environment) is impacted by their growth and decisions (yes, Rule #1 is in effect even for players)

The Mid Beats all focus on moving things (people/places/plot) forward.

VI. Setback/Obstacle, Smaller - At some point, as the characters advance, the GM will want to add a wrinkle to the best laid plans. This is done through obstacles. Granted, some obstacles are opponents in combat, but Obstacles are not only combat constructs. Any impediment to some type of advancement (combat, social, plot, in-party) counts here.

Obstacles are designed to improve the character(s) involved without sidelining them too long from the actual
objective. The locked door, the puzzle in the room, the guard that needs to be persuaded, these are at best speed bumps on the road.

Now this isn't to say the GM shouldn't take delight in letting players overthink, but from a design level,
remember Rule #3 and plan for what they do after the obstacle. An obstacle is only as good as the action that follows it. It means less if it's just a passing idea.

VII. Setback/Obstacle, Larger - These are the obstacles that will really teach two things: 1. Some character advancement or ability (in video games, these are the side quests that unlock new gear) 2. That the antagonists are bigger badasses than first realized. This is done because the larger setbacks run parallel and
concurrent to the main plot, without actually being the plot. Consider them practically sub-plots if you like, as
they can be involved and consume quite a lot of design/creation space.

A note about setbacks: They have to matter, and they have to provide knowledge. The bigger something is, the more steps involved and the more the pay-off should be.

Get out of the dungeon by picking a lock? Small success
Uncover the plot to smuggle a bomb in the fuel tanks of the plane before the peace treaty? Bigger success.

The bigger they are, the more open-ended they should be. If it's a subplot, or something that adds context to the game world (an RP seed), then it doesn't need anything more than a hook to snare players and a start of the path to head them on. Let the players resolve the issue in their own way, everyone will feel more rewarded.

VIII. Things In Danger - There comes a point in play where the characters are suitably powered and capable to defeat plenty of challenges, and the only way to up that scale is to raise the intensity of challenges. And while following a scalar model is a good thing in most games, sometimes you can't race the players forward too quickly (often for the sake of plot). So what can you do?

Just before you launch them forward towards the end-game, give them one more reason or reminder to help galvanize them towards resolution (because it's likely at this point they've spent a lot of time away from the reason that brought them this far).

Challenging the safety of something they care about shows the extent the antagonists/opposition will go, as well as remind the players that what they're doing matters.

IX. Reconfirmation - This beat can be as short as a shared group look and nod, or as long as a Normandy
invasion planning session. Here, the players apply what they've learned to date, with what they hope to
experience to create their strategy for the endgame. The benefit here is that they're not actually IN the endgame yet, and the GM is free to raid their ideas as well as ideas provided in the design to work with and against (a good measure of each) the players in the actual endgame.

Good design hinges on this beat by offering a lot of options that all converge towards resolution, in sort of
a "no matter how you got here, this is where things stand" moment.

From here we launch into the third act...End Game!

End Game

X. The Big Huge Setup and Execution - Carrying forward from the previous beat, here's where the planning of Act 2 goes forward and begins to be resolved. If there's a fight to be had, this is getting all the pieces in place before the fight begins. This is also the last chance for the game to make offerings outside the plot for a while, as what follows will be more strictly tied to the plot than at any other time in the game's progression.

XI. The Loss is a Gain - As things ramp up towards the Big Battle, along the way there can and should be casualties. It's difficult to avoid telegraphing this, but a good game can obfuscate it by creating options (which can be reinforced as being likely or unlikely in Act 2 with subplots). The goal here is to take away a key asset from the players but not deprive them of whatever knowledge or power it offered (Before you fight the guy in the black suit, your vaunted British actor has to get chopped in half by the lightsaber).

In one regard, the asset was just a tangible item or person, but as a teaching tool, RP element, magical device or wisdom, the asset can flourish to deeper levels (the wise teacher killed in Season 1 had a warehouse of material for Season 2....) and at this point, it's time you remove any and all crutches you've given the players to date.

Of course, removing too many crutches too quickly does not have the impact of a systematic and deliberately tense extinction of resources, but it does have the benefit of strongly marking lines between pro- and antagonists.

XII. The Big Huge Battle (Climax!) - So, at some point, the players have done all they can and the only bridge to advancement is battle. (We can look at this in a micro level as a battle on an immediate scale or in the macro as part of the overall campaign/game design)

Here, the players should have to risk everything to gain the largest rewards available at the moment. And likewise, the opposition should be as strong or even a hair stronger for the fight to feel satisfying to everyone involved.

When it's over, there should be quantifiable consequences and results.

XIV. Consequences! - If the climax was large enough, and the battle ferocious enough, and the danger great enough, the players should have really pushed themselves, the mechanics and their abilities to the limit here. But they're not off the hook just for defeating the opponent - now there are ramifications for what happened. Did they just blow up a building? Look at the victims. Did they just crash a ship into a spaceport? Won't someone go after them? Did one just use godlike powers to unmake something? I'm not sure a god would be pleased about that....

The point here is that in order to keep the players grounded, you have to provide consequences with tangible results that counterbalance the size and scale of the climax. Big tense climax? Big intense consequence. Don't judge this solely by the specifical literal action, do consider the impact on the created world. Since the characters don't live and operate in a vacuum, consequences should lead to a change in action, which springs us forward further...

XV. What's Next? - Following the consequences, players should have more questions than answers. Yes, they should have answers for what they asked initially (did the badguy kidnap the girl, did the supervillain almost blow up Time?) but there should be other questions being asked. You can plant these seeds as early as Act 2 subplots if you want, or more traditionally lace them into the framework leading up to and throughout Act 3.

This is a cycle, don't forget. Even at its most linear, this is a parabolic curve, arcing slightly towards more questions, more buildups and more payoffs.

In this system, even if the book ends, play and potential play shouldn't. At worst the book is a self-contained experience, at best, it is a launching point for further cycles of development and character expression.

* * *

Now what I want you to do is take your game, and lay it out over this template. Adjust both until you get a snug fit (move some beats around, fatten up your game as needed, etc) and then tell me about it. Leave a comment below, send me an email...but let's talk about your game. Nothing fancy, nothing forcibly professional, just some conversation.

You can do this, you're awesome, and I most definitely wish you,

Happy writing.

Game Design Tool: The Note Card Trick

Note: The following technique for idea development is a variation on my Original Note Card Trick, available in its natural form when you start writing a novel. This version is modified heavily to reflect the complexities and scope of game design.

Go get some note cards. I prefer the standard size, but in a pinch you could use the larger recipe size, or even cut squares of paper. The idea here is that you basically have little boxes to write in (don't use Post-It notes, they stick together and that's actually another technique). As for the number of cards you need, start with at least 24. The most I've ever seen used in this technique was 150, but you should be okay with a few dozen.

They do not have to all be the same color, but if you're the sort of person who wants uniformity in their development, then try and make them all white. Or blue. Or whatever color makes the voices stop screaming in your head.

I'm assuming you have blank cards here or at least 1 side is blank. Please take the top three off the pile you have and label them:

"Players" "World" "GM"

Over the course of this lesson, you're going to fill these piles with the appropriate information. Yes, you're going to write up to 3 statements per note card (If this is your first time, do one to a card), so that it fits into one of these three big categories.

Now, I know what you're thinking - Isn't this just a recopy of the Feel Document? To which I answer - No, if the point was just to make a Feel Document, I wouldn't be teaching other techniques, would I? Do not 'crib' from the Feel Document whenever possible, as you need to start conceiving of those ideas in variable and multiple ways. Also, this is one of those times you get to expand on them.

Note: You don't have to do this all in one sitting, and in fact, if you can, then maybe you need to spend more time thinking and developing. This is as macro and/or as micro a style of creation as you're comfortable, and rushing through this is only going to produce shoddy work. Take your time, the care you put in here is critical to your finished product.

Let's start with the Players pile.

Players

This pile will contain all the facts, data, instructions and chunky bits a player would need to sit down and play the game, from the moment they have it in front of them. You're going to want to be objective about this, as if you're answering the question, "And what can you tell me about players in your game?"

So, the Players pile will have things like:

• character creation rules (or if your game doesn't really pick up until after the players do that, you can just call it "character creation" and move forward)
• any opening gambits the players enter into upon introduction of the game (does everyone wake up on bus? Are we all on a crazy Grecian riverbank holding 2 coins? Or is this game pretty variable?)
• The number, names and types of races/character-types available to the players (are they just tokens on a board? Are they all humans? Are they all mutant animals? Do you offer them 40 different species and 50 different classes/professions?)
• What's the first thing the players will do when they start the game? Also consider what's the first thing YOU want them to do when they start playing?

There's no plot in the Players pile. There shouldn't be, anyway. And in advance of your next question, do the players NEED your plot desperately in order to act? Even in a board game where all they can do is roll a die and then proceed, they still have options. Plot isn't a player requirement. (It's actually a world requirement, which we'll talk about next)

World

This is the setting of the game, the created-world experience, and all the NPC details that exist concurrent to the players. Yes, the players may be noobs, but the rest of the world isn't, is it? It might be Tuesday, the Eight Day of Flooglefog, and the Eve of Saint Carlos' Day. The world still spins even if the players aren't there, I hope you realize. This pile is also objective, and addresses the question, "What's the world like and what's the plot like?"

Note: If you're developing a board game, your World Pile may just have 1 card called "Board Game" in it. 

The World Pile will contain things like:

• The time-period of the setting
• The technological complexity of the world
• The name of the supervillain bent on conquering [insert city name here] by way of [insert name of insidious device here]
• What sort of weather does the world have?
• What sort of gods or belief system does the world have?
• How literate is the average NPC?
• What's the population breakdown like, by percentages? (40% Caucasian humans, 30% dragon cyborg hybrids 30% awesome living sound monsters, etc)
• What's the badguy trying to do? Why? How?

GM

Here's the trickier pile. This pile is a combination of mechanics, written out, as well as feelings and desires you want the GMs to have/convey/understand. Just like most games, this is the pile you don't really need the players to see, but this is more the "behind the screen" side of the game. It answers the question, "What does the GM know that the players don't?"

The GM pile will contain:

• A breakdown of the basic rules for conflict resolution and skill-checks
• A summation of sample combat
• A sentence describing how the players should feel during or because of combat
• The mood the GM should convey when describing the overarching world-plot.
• The mood the GM should convey when the players throw a monkey wrench into the plot
• A few alternate mechanics for resolving the player-instigated problems
• A sentence describing the overall "difficulty" of the world for the player(s) (How forgiving is this world on its inhabitants?)

By now, I've lost some of you, because I've tried to convey in text what is for some people a visual progression. So here now, for the sake of the confused, are some sample cards. Just imagine boxes around the next paragraphs.

PLAYER

1. Start on a boat, in messy rumpled tuxedo/party dress
2. Stats: Strength, Smarts, Sass, all 2d10
3. 1d4 personal items in a pocket/purse

WORLD

1. The sun hasn't shone in twenty years.
2. Time measured in days/weeks/years
3. Most people enjoy parties

GM

1. [Name of Game here] is roll-and-keep, d10s
2. The plot advancement of the game is tied DIRECTLY to what the players discover
3. Game "mystery" elements should feel like old 1930s films

Each of the nine items listed above could go on their own card, and likely should, if you're new at this or if you're trying to be more thorough. 

You could stop here, and use these piles to help your writing and development, and put together an excellent product with many layers. Or you can go one step further, deeper into the development and start tying these threads together. 

What I'm going to explain below you'll do to each pile, but I'll just explain it once, with the Players pile.

Group like-minded ideas together, usually by common idea or term and label the card.

So the Players card above I'd label "Starting Characters" (I'd label either the top or the reverse side if it was blank) because those are elements that come into play at the start of the game. Try to avoid numbering the cards or organizing them obtusely, as these cards are more for your constructed benefit rather than a run of numbers. Having them labelled like that allows for other techniques to be applied, but at the very least, this gives you a sort of loose confederation of ideas as to how the game operates. 

You'll find this time-consuming initially, but I promise you this won't distract from getting your material developed.

Hope this helps you, if you have questions, please ask.

Happy writing.

Game Design Equation, Part 2

YOUR GAME = Desired Emotion / Experience + Mechanics + Theme/Setting

You're going to want a legal pad by your side when you go through this post. It's meaty.

Today we're going to explore game design at it's core, because in order to understand something, you have to get down to it's most basic unit. We can't talk science without atoms, we can't talk writing without words, and we can't gaming without emotion, mechanics and theme.

When you're designing a game, whether that's a card-trading game, or a board game or a structured tabletop RPG using licensed characters and cinematic plots or something home-brewed, there sits at the heart of it a desired experience. You want the players, and you (presumably as its first GM) have an experience in mind - you want your game to be a certain way, you want the time you spent playing to feel a certain way.

Part I: Desired Emotion & Experience
Because game design is a practical task, take that legal pad next to you and write down some words, concepts or phrases to describe this desired experience. Ask yourself the question, "How do I want the game to be?"

Maybe you've written down things like:

• Fun and easy
• just like [insert favorite movie title here]
• fast-paced
• my players want to do it again

You want to stay away from the mechanics and setting here, because we'll get to those next. For now, think only of the experience of people around the table while playing. The better you can detail this experience, the easier it is for you to put your finger on it, the more evocative and expressive the game will turn out. 

Add to this list, or in a second column, a list of emotions you want the players to experience while playing. This is just a list, you don't have to tie emotions to things you've already written. Do your best to have more 'player' feelings than 'GM' feelings, but don't exclude the GM side of play either. 

I should point out now that there's no 'wrong' length to any of the lists we'll create, and if you only have one item on it, that's fine, in time you can always expand it later. What matters is that you've put something down on paper. 

Your list may have things like:

• excited during combat
• nervous during suspense
• happy to play at all

Now stop and congratulate yourself because you're one-third of the way done with the first draft of this game. Onto part 2.

Part II: Mechanics

Games can live and die by their mechanics, since it is lifeblood of play. Mechanics are the practical application of creative desire, and should be relatively codified in such a way as to answer basic questions and promote imagination about future issues. 

Basically - mechanics should be 'how' the things you want to do get done but they aren't meant to be everything to everyone. Remember that play is a collaborative event, and no game is ever going to be able to account for all the potential things a player can do (or not do, depending). No game should be a Swiss Army knife, constantly trying to do everything, as that sounds and feels desperate, like a child begging a parent to pay attention to them. Don't be a desperate designer. 

Likewise, don't swing the pendulum the other way and over-specialize. Your game might do one thing well, it may have one or two strong building blocks at the base, but by no means is your game just about the rolling of dice or the playing of one specific card in one specific context is it? Yes, the game can be driven/railroaded towards that situation time and again, but there's a decided lack of emotion and fun in always going back to rolling that die just because it's the only part of the game that you know works. 

When talking and thinking about your game, those elements you get really excited about, or the ideas you want other people to be excited about should have mechanics. Also, if your game is "about" something, that "about"ness should be mechanized too. It's really hard to have a game where players are police who catch robbers if there's no way for them to find and/or catch robbers. 

But how much is too much? Does EVERYTHING need a rule? No. You have to let the game be collaborative, remember? You have to trust those GMs and players to take what you've given them, and use it their way...so long as their way doesn't absolute ruin your intention...but if it does, so what? You cannot ultimately control that. All you can do is provide them a skeleton with some meat on the bones, and it's up to them to Frankenstein it to life.

Your best mechanics should be the clearest to understand, not the most convoluted. And you should be able to distill explanations of mechanics down to easy-to-grasp sentences. To practice this (and develop the critical skill of being able to explain your game), get that legal pad again, and write out first the mechanic and then an explanation.

It might look like this:

* Roll Fudge Dice and add your [Attribute] to the result.

* Roll Fudge Dice and count the plusses. To this number, add your [Attribute] score. The end number is the number used for [whatever mechanical issue we're talking about].

Or maybe this:

*Roll d100, subtract X% for difficulty.

* A percentile die is rolled, and from the result a penalty is assessed. The result is the percent chance of [whatever mechanical issue we're talking about]

Yes, it's going to be clunky if you're new to thinking this way. Yes, it's not going to be pretty writing. But that's why the world has editors (Hello. My 2012 calendar open, and we should talk.) But just like all your other favorite skills and habits, you got better at it over time with practice. 

Mechanics are dictated by the story and they also dictate the story ahead. The GM will take the players through the imagined/created story and at some point will turn to the mechanics because the story got them there. If we're telling the story of conquistadors encountering natives, then at some point, we're likely going to have mechanical instances of combat. The story has brought the players and GM to that experience, and the mechanics will walk us through the parts of the experience where chance/risk/luck/The Force plays a role.  

Also, the resolution of those mechanical situations will shape the story going forward. In the above conquistadors versus natives example, if the conquistadors get walloped by the indians, then the story will advance differently than if both parties fought to a standstill or if one side ran away. The story will ALWAYS move forward, it may not move forward in a way that you or the GM intended. But adaptability is a good thing. Both designer and GM need some amount of adaptability in their thinking, because it will have profound and positive impacts on the experience of play. (Note: If the game is supposed to have a certain situation go a specific way, it should be narrative, not mechanical)

We end now with the top of the pyramid.

Part III: Theme/Setting

I've talked previously about finding your theme. You're going to want to do that exercise now before going further. Now let's look at what the theme can do. 

Theme and Setting (which is the theme objectified) are where the meal that is your emotion and mechanics are eaten. Up until this point, your game is nebulous and can occur anywhere. This is where you place a firm stamp on where the game occurs, how it occurs and to a deeper level, why it must occur. 

A game's setting dictates parameters for the players. A game that occurs in 1492 won't have planes in it. A game that occurs in deep space likely won't have American politics at its core. The setting gives you a playground to explore, and the mechanics are the swingset thereupon. The theme is the...lax supervision that allows you to run from the slide to the monkey bars and tease that one kid for his pants falling down. (Not that I'm bitter about my pants falling down, but I was sensitive and stuck on those damn bars for five minutes until you were done laughing) Theme cooperates with emotion you want to express to cohere the mechanics and setting together into a game. 

Likewise theme gives you a different axis of parameters for players. A "serious thrilling" game should not have too many moments of slapstick humor. A "fun rainy day" board game should not result in arguments about the nation's death penalty. Codifying and expressing your theme are critical if you want your game to feel unified. 

Note: We're going to talk more about this soon

But that's enough for now. Happy writing.

I got interviewed!

I was recently interviewed on The Jennisodes!


http://www.jennisodes.com/podcasts/editing-your-game-book/

You should be listening!

More Game Design Goodies: A B structure

I originally taught this with note cards, but have found you can also do this in two columns on a piece of paper. Designate one column (or card) 'A' and the other 'B'.  (Or some cards 'A' and some 'B') Put them aside.

Now, the theory - for creating shorter (and slightly more intensive) direct experiences, there is a basic mechanic at work. It can be expressed and explained in three variations. I will detail them below.

Note: All of these can situationally operate 'backwards' as B:A B/A and B-A

A / B
Here we have two tracks of action, an A and B, and they work oppositionally. Time is not necessarily a factor here, but this is best expressed as 'nearly simultaneous'. Conceptually, this means that while A acts, so does B. While the good guys act, so do the bad guys. Their agendas need not mesh, although at some point, they should intersect (at plot climax ideally). This setup works best in larger scale campaigns, where players (often A) can operate under a wide variety of designs and are only vaguely aware of B's actions. (If that is the case, this is called a 'Blind A' or 'Blind B' scenario). Taken a step further, you may even withhold the existence of the one side from the other, although that tends to rob the players of the satisfaction of knowing the stakes they face and therefore projecting possible reward/praise.

Note: The majority of game experiences fall under 'Blind A' conditions, as the party operates mostly unaware of what their foes are directly doing (even though they might know about the goals). 

A:B
This is more a traditional cause-and-effect situation, and is stated as "If A, therefore B" In this case, A and B need not be opposing sides, they could be action and consequence, move and counter-move, or any like-bonded pair. The majority of two player board games operate under this theory. (If he moves his pawn, I will move my knight -- if the rogue checks for traps, I will guard the door, etc) In multiplayer contexts, this serves a lot masters - individual characters follow cause-and-effect, players have an expectation of having their actions 'A' have in-world consequences 'B', and NPCs assume that 'B' is the reward for their plot. In this model, the tension surrounding "what will happen next" serves the desire to move things forward, as players will naturally want to know "what happens next". 

A-B (-C)
This is the most open-ended and often most subtle expression of the structure, and is stated as 'A to B'. This is not a direct relationship (that's A:B), this is more about the option of the path from one item to the next. In a linear context, this is going from a quest giver to a location, or moving from one room to the next. What is not stated here is 'C', which is often defined as a larger goal (clear out the dungeon, win the election, do my errands, etc) and that 'A' and 'B' are items on a to-do list or instructional template that lead towards C's realization. 

Now, let's see how they all blend together. Let's assume you have two players (the actual number doesn't matter), and that you're starting them in a room with a body.

1. Two players are in a room, with a body. (It is natural that they will want to explore/examine both the room and the body, although more likely the body, as they will assume it possesses more potential) [A-B]
2. Two players will speculate as to who they are and why they are here [A:B]
3. While this is occurring, the world exists OUTSIDE this room [A/B]
4. The players will discover some plot elements (they have to, else the game stalls out) [B:A]
5. The players must cooperate to leave the room [A-B]

Ideally yes, the whole game should blend together these elements on a moment-by-moment scale, and yes, in theory you should be able to chart the 'beats' (the scenes, the 'things') by this shorthand. 

Now as an overall game experience, we can see a larger A and B relationship. In two-session play, the first session is 'A', and the second 'B'. The variation in relationship is dependent upon the way the sessions link together, which is an expression of the desired plot (either via game or via GM). Likewise, you may designate the players 'A' and the antagonist 'B' and determine their relationship accordingly. Going further, you may see all PCs (heroes and villains) as 'A' and the world they operate in as 'B'. 

Return to your paper or note cards. On 'A' list the appropriate beats or characters. Number them as well, so that you can cross reference. Do the same for 'B'. See below

A
1. The players are in a room with a body
2. Gary, player #1, has an Aspect of 'Don't Take Me For Granted'
3. The villain buys the election.

B. 
1. The players must cooperate to escape.
2. Engineer the situation so that Gary is compelled.
3. Therefore, he's set to become comptroller in two months. 

(Using note cards is easier, since you can create note card pairs like A-1 & B-1, but side-by-side columns are effective if you have space for them)


In game design (as in storycraft of a novel) you should be able to chart out even the most open-ended experiences (hi Skyrim!) because the opportunities need not be linear, but they can be plotted (If the story/characters go to Location #1, that's an A:B, at Location #19 that's B-A).


I hope this sets some creative fires burning.


Happy writing.


Note: I realize that I make use of the term "beats" so perhaps I'll do a second post about what those beats are....