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September 18th, 2011
11:19 pm - LARP Scenarios Posted
I have just put up three of my earlier LARP scenarios on my LARP Page. Their write-ups are rather rough, but the materials are all the ones that I have used in my runs of them. The three scenarios are:
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September 17th, 2011
12:11 pm - Pacificon 2011 Report
I just posted my Pacificon 2011 Report, linked as part of my Convention Reports Page.
On a related note for those in the Bay Area, there is a new convention called Big Bad Con that will be starting October 7-9. The schedule is posted, and signing up for games in advance will start tomorrow at 1:00PM.
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12:39 am - A Critical History of Role-playing Games
I have an essay from a long time ago on the history of RPGs. I have just now linked it into my RPG Theory page, along with a collection of other links on the history of RPGs. Here's the essay itself:
A Critical History of Role-playing Games
I had written it for an old academic call for papers, and I worry that it's too dry. Still, any comments or suggestions would be welcome.
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August 31st, 2011
04:19 pm - French essay on role-playing immersion
So Mike Pohjola posted a link to this essay in French by Vincent Choupat,
http://www.electro-gn.com/article-immersionnisme-1ere-partie-l-enfant-batard-des-theories-rolistes-80373168.html
I scanned it via the Google Translate version, but of course that is prone to huge misunderstandings.
The funny part is that the last section is titled "Kim 1 - Pohjola / Bockman 0." From what I can tell, he is referring that Bockman's adaptation of the Threefold Model for Scandanavian larp, where he substituted "Immersionism" instead of "Simulationism". Choupat seems to think that this was mistaken, in that while he accepts the Threefold Model divisions as useful, he feels that immersion can be a part of any of those styles - just different kinds of immersion.
I have been wondering for a while about what to say about the Threefold Model. I still think it was a good idea at the time, and I have the feeling that I should be moving past it to more nuanced distinctions. Still, it seems to stick around.
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August 24th, 2011
02:05 am - Thoughts on "Wrath of Ashardalon"
I first played Wrath of Ashardalon in May at KublaCon, but I didn't play it again until my summer vacation in New York. I've now played it half a dozen times, adding to another half-dozen times playing the Castle Ravenloft board game. Besides BoardGameGeek, there is an unofficial wiki with a lot of data from both games and the upcoming "Legend of Drizzt". There is a short official FAQ and a more complete unofficial unofficial FAQ (PDF) with reported rulings.
Overview
Ashardalon and Ravenloft both use almost the same rules with different sets of player characters along with monster, encounter, and treasure cards. Coming from the dungeon crawl experience in RPGs, it can seem bizarre in that new monsters and/or traps pop up with every character action. Thus, between one of your turns and the next, five or more new monsters may have appeared and several traps or events. There is a lot of room for teamwork, but it is in a different sense than otherwise.
Compared to Ravenloft, Ashardalon has slightly less brutal encounter cards - though they are still brutal. The characters seem roughly balanced, though I haven't compared point for point. Treasures seem definitely more powerful in Ashardalon - which I consider a positive point. Ravenloft sometimes seemed like a beatdown with no rewards or letup, while in Ashardalon there is more positive feedback.
Strategy & Tactics
Mobility is Key - Something I only realized in the Ashardalon game is how much faster PCs are than monsters. The PCs can travel 5 or 6 squares per turn and still attack - or move 10-12 squares per turn by not attacking. Monsters almost all move one tile per turn. A tile is 4 squares across, but monsters can't move diagonally. So monsters are extremely slow at turning corners, while characters can zip around a corner to go through 3 tiles and still attack. Most of the scenarios depend only on reaching an end goal after exploring a dozen or more tiles. This means that a coordinated party can pop up a host of monsters, but rather than fight them - they just leave the monsters behind in their dust while jumping ahead to reach their goal and win.
Ashardalon provides some useful tools to accomplish this. A crucial one is the "Wizard Eye" Utility Power. This lets the wizard turn over tiles from an independently moving token. Moving the eye substitutes for the wizard's movement, so you may have use some tricks or forego some attacks to catch up, but it is very useful to have monsters pop up 5+ tiles away. Others include: - The fighter's "To Arms" utility power may be misnamed as it is great for running away from monsters, pulling a slower-moving ally with her.
- The "Flying Carpet" item would slow you down to a crawl of 1 tile per turn if you used it continuously. However, it lets another character carry the wizard with them for one hop from the back of one tile to the front of the next - which frees the wizard to move his eye token instead.
- Taking the "Charge" at-will power makes the fighter the fastest character - able to move 10 squares and still attack.
- The rogue's "Positioning Shot" at-will power lets him shoot an enemy 1-2 tiles ahead of him, then even if he misses put it a tile behind him, and then move ahead out of its reach.
- The wizard's "Hypnosis" at-will power also lets him push back a monster 1 tile automatically, and he can then move forward.
- The Long Hallway and sentry monsters put monsters 2 tiles away from you (or more if there is a chain reaction). When you hit them, turn and go another direction if possible.
The funny thing is that it often isn't necessary to fight the chasing monsters at all. They can get left so far behind that you can finish the scenario without ever fighting them. There are some dangers, though. - A chasing monster can catch up if it has a duplicate card between two players - going on both of their villain phases. Kill the extras, though, and it slows down again.
- The "Dazed" condition is deadly, and in particular the Gibbering Mouther is insanely dangerous - able to attack heroes on 5 tiles and Daze them all. Do everything you can to kill it quickly.
- Chasing creatures will tend to all clump onto one or two tiles, which lets the wizard kill swaths of them with his area-effect daily power. "Flaming Sphere" does more damage but spread over 3 turns. "Shock Sphere" does less, but is good if you have some dangerous 2 hit-point creatures that need killing immediately.
- The cleric's daily power "Blade Barrier" is also amazing in that it can do 5 guaranteed damage to chasing creatures, which can be incredible for killing off the vanguard of chasing creatures - but I don't recommend it because...
- Another cleric daily, "Cause Fear," is even better. It lets everyone on a tile get a free at-will attack, and then pushes all surviving monsters two tiles back. With that lead, you likely will never have to fight them.
I have been starting scenarios by having all the rest of the party break off to the left, then have the wizard go last and cast Wizard Eye in the upper right corner of the start tile. That lets it explore for two turns without moving.
Satisfaction
The game does scratch a certain system-mastery itch for me, so I've enjoyed play. However, I find that the tactics are dominated by strange artifacts like the square/tile distinction. It is a very different experience than a role-playing game. Still, it's fun as of now, and my son has been interested. He laughed his head off at a bunch of the tactics.
I'm not thrilled about this as an entry point into RPGs, since even for this genre of game, I find it not very evocative of the fictional world. There's too much gap between the game design and even minimal logic - like how even rockslides or falling boulders can't damage monsters, but do damage heroes - while fireballs ignore heroes and damage monsters. This isn't simpler rules-wise. It would be simpler to just say that everything in a tile takes damage. I suspect that the designers thought it would be easier to mathematically balance this way, but I'm not convinced that it worked.
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August 19th, 2011
05:51 pm - Procedures of Play and Streamlining
On vacation in New York with my family recently, I played a bunch of boardgames along with a few RPGs. It has me thinking about game procedures and components of play. My son and two of my nephews were enthusiastic about the PS238 RPG.
In addition, I ran a humorous live-action game with the larger family. Our board and card games included Magic the Gathering, Apples to Apples, Scrabble, Risk, Pandemic, and the D&D boardgame Wrath of Ashardalon.
It has left me thinking some about procedures of play. What follows isn't a soft of stream of consciousness of how my mind considers aspects of play. This is something that I feel is important regardless of the underlying game design. In other words, no matter how you design your game, the mechanics should be handled smoothly and quickly.
( Four cases in the cut: Pandemic, The PS238 RPG, James Bond 007, and Marvel SuperheroesCollapse )
Conclusions
I don't have a strong conclusion here, except that even in otherwise well-designed games, the mechanical process can often be streamlined. Streamlining designs is generally a good thing, though arguments could be made for the good of extra effort in some cases.
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August 14th, 2011
01:25 am - State of Indie RPGs and RPGs in general, 2011
Now that Gen Con Indy is over, I was thinking about the state of indie RPGs and of the RPG hobby in general. Besides the Indie RPG Awards, I was inspired by two threads: Steve Dempsey started thread on the Story Games forums about the state of indie RPGs, and on theRPGsite, "Bloody Stupid Johnson" made a thread on Gen Con Event Breakdowns.
RPG Awards
In the ENnie Awards and the Origins Awards, the Dresden Files RPG took top place. In the Indie RPG Awards, Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World was the big winner - taking Game of the Year by a large margin and also netting two other awards. In the Diana Jones Awards, Jason Morningstar's Fiasco took top place.
Convention Play
Gen Con Indy was apparently a big success. An ICv2 report says that Gen Con Indy broke previous attendance records, with 36,733 attendees.
To see what was played, "Bloody Stupid Johnson" analyzed the schedule of games at Gen Con Indy 2011, and broke them down by system. For each, he had number of scheduled games, maximum number of players, and total hours.
D&D (all editions): 436 games , 10469 max players
Pathfinder: 251 games, 3258 max players
World of Darkness (LARP): 17 games, 2715 max players
Legend of the Five Rings: 30 games, 1008 max players
HERO games (various): 104 games, 769 max players
Shadowrun: 97 games, 718 max players
Call of Cthulhu: 98 games, 657 max players
Star Wars: 71 games, 442 max players
Savage Worlds: 71 games, 442 max players
GURPS: 18 games, 121 max players
World of Darkness (tabletop): 17 games, 76 max players
Palladium: 6 games, 47 max players
Indie RPGs*: 55 games, 1216 players
The status for indie RPGs is hard to measure. I count 35 specific games of the recent indie RPG trend (Dresden Files, Dread, Don't Rest Your Head, FATE, Mouse Guard, etc.). However, there are 20 identical slots of "Games on Demand" for any "indie RPG" with maximum 48 players.
Note that there are no numbers for how many games got their maximum number of players or even how many ran at all. So this is more a measure of interested GMs than of players. Interesting point that I took out of it were the resurgence of HERO games, that World of Darkness has shifted almost entirely to LARP.
Edited to add: The breakdown of D&D into different editions may also be of interest.
4th Ed. - 232 games, 8325 max players (including 188 RPGA games, 7742 max players)
3.5 Ed. - 77 games, 1291 max players
2nd ed. - 17 games, 60 max players
1st ed. - 110 games, 793 max players
Sales
Most RPG companies don't release their sales numbers. However, there was interest last October because Evil Hat released its sales figures at the same time as its Dresden Files RPG made ICv2's top 5 RPGs in hobby store sales. (ICv2 depends on self-reporting from hobby stores, so its rankings are prone to error, but they are still significant.)
Fred Hicks of Evil Hat posted Q3 2010 Sales Numbers post, showing a combined 3061 DFRPG book sales through "distribution orders" and 4427 DFRPG book sales total. Cyclopeatron's blogged about the ICv2 Q3 2010 sales. I can't do this for other quarters because Dresden Files didn't again make the top five. (If someone paid a bunch they could get the ICv2 full report - I don't). For comparison, Vincent Baker posted his 2010 sales numbers, showing that Apocalypse World sold 174 copies total in Q3 2010 - an order of magnitude less. On the other hand, countering the ICv2 numbers, author Shane Hensley commented that Savage Worlds product sales were 3-5 times bigger than the reported Dresden Files sales.
(For historical perspective, Gareth Skarka noted that his game Underworld sold 7500 copies in 2000.)
About Indie RPGs
Dresden Files has both taken mainstream awards and is selling an order of magnitude more than any indie RPGs. However, it is doing so mainly through the traditional distribution network - not the direct sales that most indie RPGs do. While I don't have sales numbers to confirm, I suspect that the best-selling indie RPGs would be Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard. However, these also have traditional distribution. Also, although Mouse Guard is solely written and copyright by Luke Crane, it is printed and distributed through Artesia author Mark Smylie's company Archaia Press.
Along related lines, I note that last year, indie RPG authors Rob Donoghue and Ryan Macklin helped freelance write the Leverage RPG for Margaret Weis Productions. Also at Gen Con Indy, Margaret Weis Production announced that they will be created a Marvel Heroes RPG line - a very major license.
The short form is, the current community of indie RPGs have started to merge with the mainstream. Even if they aren't really #5, Evil Hat have become a success in mainstream distribution - like previous author-founded companies Steve Jackson Games, Palladium Books, and even TSR. Authors of the current indie scene are being recruited for freelance work. However, the bulk of the indie RPG scene remains a small corner of RPGs as a whole - as evidenced by Fiasco and Apocalypse World. Whether you see this as indie authors gaining ground or selling out may depend on your point of view. *
Edited to add: The Dresden Files RPG was primarily written as work-for-hire and thus should not be considered indie. That mostly matches up with my point, that Evil Hat who published many indie games now also has a non-indie success.
About RPGs In General
The sales numbers I included above provoked some controversy. Gareth Skarka, in his October 2010 post Tabletopocalypse Now, predicted the "utter systemic collapse of the tabletop games industry within the next 5 to 10 years at most." He cited low sales numbers, and moves by White Wolf towards online play. Malcolm Sheppard added his own post, noting the decline of Google searches on the term "Dungeons & Dragons" - which Skarka responded to in a follow-up post. The significance of the Google search trend was fairly debunked by noting downward trends of "chess" and "Microsoft" and other terms. As noted earlier, the ICv2 numbers are also suspect. So while a downward trend in the industry is likely, the scale of it isn't clear.
I don't think doubtful about predicting any long-term future trend based on this. The RPG market has had plenty of ups and downs, and it has always been small after a brief fad around 1980 or so. There was a rise in the early 2000s with d20, but that bubble burst and there was a decline that followed. I suspect that the industry will continue to decline, though not drastically, until there is a new big splash.
In the meantime, convention attendance seems to be strong and not declining. Gamers continue, and lots of people are still publishing RPGs. Recruitment is limited, but it always was. On a good note, I have been seeing more kids events at the conventions I am going to. These are generally the children of gamers. Given that the peak of RPGs was around 1980, there could be a second wave as kids of those people come of age. As an anecdotal data point, my sister has not played any RPGs since high school - but her two sons are quite enthusiastic about D&D and the PS238 RPG.
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August 5th, 2011
05:32 pm - 2010 Indie RPG Awards Announced!
The results for the 2010 Indie RPG Awards have been posted on the website and are summarized below. There are voter comments and details at the website.
2010 was the ninth year of the Indie RPG Awards, as the field continues to mature and change. There was a single clear winner for Game of the Year, that also took Best Support and Most Innovative. There was split for the other awards, though.
And the winners are...
Indie Game of the Year
Winner: Apocalypse World - 68 points
First runner-up: Happy Birthday, Robot! - 21 points
Second runner-up: Blowback - 16 points
Mars Colony - 15 points
Freemarket - 13 points
High Valor - 13 points
Twenty-Four Game Poems - 11 points
Dread House: A game for kids and brave adults - 11 points
Hell for Leather - 8 points
Nordic Larp - 6 points
In Harm's Way: StarCluster - 6 points
Indie Supplement of the Year
Winner: Hot War Transmission - 54 points
First runner-up: B/X Companion - Fantasy Adventure Game - 20 points
Second runner-up: Blood Tales: More than you can Chew - 14 points
Agency Resource Guide: A Terror Network Guide Book - 8 points
Best Free Game
Winner: Stars Without Number - 46 points
First runner-up: Misspent Youth - 37 points
Second runner-up: Danger Patrol BETA - 37 points
Bloody Forks of the Ohio - 24 points
Best Support
Winner: Apocalypse World - 52 points
First runner-up: Happy Birthday, Robot! - 23 points
Second runner-up: Hot War Transmission - 8 points
Hell for Leather - 8 points
Misspent Youth - 7 points
Freemarket - 6 points
Best Production
Winner: Freemarket - 54 points
First runner-up: Happy Birthday, Robot! - 40 points
Second runner-up: Hot War Transmission - 24 points
Apocalypse World - 17 points
Blowback - 17 points
Misspent Youth - 9 points
Most Innovative Game
Winner: Apocalypse World - 37 points
First runner-up: Freemarket - 33 points
Second runner-up: Happy Birthday, Robot! - 30 points
Twenty-Four Game Poems - 21 points
Dread House: A game for kids and brave adults - 12 points
Mars Colony - 11 points
Hell for Leather - 6 points
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June 9th, 2011
10:49 am - Belated mini-campaign notes
A few belated notes about a mini-campaign I played back in February. run by Mike Sullivan, playtesting his system for "path fencing". The center was an interesting dice pool combat system, that I thought I should share musings about.
In the system, you had a pool of attack dice and defense dice (all d10s) and faced a single opponent. Each round you roll randomly for who attacks, which could mean several rounds on the defensive. The winner makes an attack from your personalized table using a flexible number of dice, then uses at least one die to press to the next attack - which can be on the same or different row. After you find the successes of your attack, the opponent has to choose a number of defense dice to roll to block that attack. If the defender has dice leftover and the attacker has not spent dice to disengage, then the defender can roll to riposte and get automatic initiative with extra dice. Everyone had 12 wounds.
I thought it was an intriguing use of dice pools that definitely has potential. My character, the Brawler, was like this:
Attack pool: 12 dice, Defense pool: 6 dice, Defense target: 5+, Riposte target: 5+
| First Attack |
Scratch
Attack: 5+
Defense mod: +1
Effect: Scratch
Press: 5, Disengage: 4 |
Maneuver
Attack: n/a
Defense mod: n/a
Effect: none
Press: 7, Disengage: 3 |
Thrust
Attack: 9+
Defense mod: +1
Effect: 1w
Press: 7, Disengage: 3 |
| Second Attack |
Kick
Attack: 4+
Defense mod: 0
Effect: 1w
Press: 7, Disengage: 3
Brawling |
Cut
Attack: 8+
Defense mod: 0
Effect: 2w
Press: 4, Disengage: 6 |
Pommel-Strike
Attack: 7+
Defense mod: -1
Effect: 1w
Press: 2, Disengage: 8
Brawling |
| Third Attack |
Back-stab
Attack: 4+
Defense mod: -1
Effect: 4w
Press: 3, Disengage: 3
Dishonorable |
Slash
Attack: 6+
Defense mod: -1
Effect: 6w
Press: 3, Disengage: 5 |
Gut-Wound
Attack: 5+
Defense mod: 0
Effect: 6w
Press: 7, Disengage: 4 |
| Fourth Attack |
Force Submission
Attack: 7+
Defense mod: +1
Effect: 1w, unconsciousness
Press: 4, Disengage: 8
Brawling |
Kill
Attack: 5+
Defense mod: 0
Effect: 8w
Press: 3, Disengage: 3 |
Destroy
Attack: 6+
Defense mod: +1
Effect: 10w
Press: 3, Disengage: 3 |
For the most part, RPG dice pool systems that I've seen just used the pool to generate a curve. While there were rules for splitting the pool, they tended to not be used. For this, how you split up your attacks was key to winning. Usually you would put just one die in the first attack which was ignored, and then try for some combination of heavier attacks depending on the situation.
The mini-campaign itself was pitched as "The Winter Guard".
You are the loyal retainers of the de Winter family, late of somewhat ill repute. Your martial skills are astounding, your sword tolerably long, and your pride unparalleled, though you are poor, politically un-powerful, and rather unpopular. You will strive to develop a reputation and uphold the honor of your patron, primarily by means of stabbing people with swords.
Swashbuckling! Heavily inspired by The Three Musketeers, though perhaps just a tiny bit less cheerful than that story. Slightly fantastic world, not set in France or the real world at all, and Lady de Winter is an homage to an awesome name, not actually the character from Dumas. A somewhat complicated custom die system for swordfighting. Expect lots of duels. You are encouraged to call things "insupportable!"
The fantastic setting meant we had a fictional religious split more easily glossed over, and eased things slightly for my character as an openly female member of the guard. The players and characters for the mini-campaign were: - Eric as Cyrano, the Swashbuckler
- Laura as Jean, From the Old Country.
- Keith as Andre, the Duellist
- Bernie as Vincent, the Generalist
- Madeline as Guillaume, the Reactive
- Myself as Roxanne, the Brawler
Everyone liked the mini-campaign pretty well, though we had some issues with how it ran. It was a mix of the involved fencing duels and a storyline split between establishing ourselves in the city with reputations and lovers, and rescuing Milady de Winter who was kidnapped early on. An issue we had was that the combat had to be one-on-one and took full attention, so to do multiple combat we had to have players running NPCs. If I were to try to run it, I would consider having the story use a GMless proto-system, rather than the diceless GMed system we used.
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August 6th, 2010
12:19 pm - 2009 Indie RPG Awards announced!
The results for the 2009 Indie RPG Awards have been posted on the website and are summarized below. There are voter comments and details at the website.
2009 was the eigth year of the Indie RPG Awards, in a changing field. There were close races in all categories this year, with a wide range of registered games!
And the winners are...
Indie Game of the Year
Winner: Kagematsu - 27 points
First runner-up: Fiasco - 22 points
Second runner-up: Beat to Quarters and Little Fears, Nightmare Edition - both at 18 points
Chronica Feudalis: A Game of Imagined Adventure in Medieval Europe - 17 points
Diaspora - 16 points
On Her Majesty's Arcane Service - 15 points
Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies - 15 points
Montsegur 1244 - 15 points
A Penny for My Thoughts - 14 points
44: A Game of Automatic Fear - 14 points
Ganakagok - 11 points
Atomic Highway - Post Apocalyptic Roleplaying - 10 points
Escape from Tentacle City - 10 points
Hellcats and Hockeysticks: A Role-Playing Game of chaos, anarchy, and decidedly unladylike behavior - 9 points
S/Lay w/Me - 9 points
Lady Blackbird: Adventures in the Wild Blue Yonder - 9 points
Shotgun Diaries: A Zombie Survival Roleplaying Game - 8 points
Time & Temp - 8 points
Slasher Flick - 7 points
Norwegian Style - 6 points
The Drifter's Escape - 6 points
Uml‰ut: Game of Metal - 6 points
Indie Supplement of the Year
Winner: The Day After Ragnarok - 60 points
First runner-up: RPG = Role Playing Girl 2009 - 49 points
Second runner-up: Thou Art But A Warrior: A Polaris Supplement - 48 points
Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales - 33 points
Bloodstained Stars - 24 points
The World of Near - 15 points
Best Free Game
Winner: Lady Blackbird: Adventures in the Wild Blue Yonder - 108 points
First runner-up: 44: A Game of Automatic Fear - 63 points
Second runner-up: Last Train Out of Warsaw - 29 points
MonkeyDome - 17 points
Best Support
Winner: First runner-up: Fiasco - 52 points
Second runner-up: Beat to Quarters - 23 points
Atomic Highway - Post Apocalyptic Roleplaying - 17 points
Lady Blackbird: Adventures in the Wild Blue Yonder - 13 points
The Day After Ragnarok - 13 points
Diaspora - 11 points
On Her Majesty's Arcane Service - 9 points
Action Castle - 8 points
Time & Temp - 6 points
Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales - 6 points
Best Production
Winner: Lady Blackbird: Adventures in the Wild Blue Yonder - 29 points
First runner-up: Fiasco - 22 points
Second runner-up: Atomic Highway - Post Apocalyptic Roleplaying - 20 points
A Penny for My Thoughts - 16 points
Diaspora - 16 points
Uml‰ut: Game of Metal - 15 points
The Drifter's Escape - 13 points
44: A Game of Automatic Fear - 11 points
Ribbon Drive - 11 points
Witch Girls Adventures - 11 points
The Day After Ragnarok - 11 points
Montsegur 1244 - 10 points
Kagematsu - 9 points
Chronica Feudalis: A Game of Imagined Adventure in Medieval Europe - 9 points
Bloodstained Stars - 6 points
The Dance and the Dawn - 6 points
Most Innovative Game
Winner: A Penny for My Thoughts - 32 points
First runner-up: Ribbon Drive - 22 points
Second runners-up: Kagematsu, Fiasco, and Ganakagok - all at 21 points
S/Lay w/Me - 17 points
Action Castle - 16 points
Montsegur 1244 - 11 points
Misery Bubblegum - 10 points
Little Fears, Nightmare Edition - 10 points
Hellcats and Hockeysticks: A Role-Playing Game of chaos, anarchy, and decidedly unladylike behavior - 8 points
Lady Blackbird: Adventures in the Wild Blue Yonder - 8 points
On Her Majesty's Arcane Service - 6 points
(NOTE: The points listed are according to a priority system from peer voting. Over eighty indie RPG authors were invited to participate, and over three dozen participated in voting this year. Each peer voter has three ranked choices as explained in the FAQ, resulting in the point totals above. This year the votes were spread widely.)
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