A New Game From Me!

Hey guys, remember Stencyl? I’ve been playing around with it a lot lately and I released my first game on Kongregate. If you’re interesting in playing, its called Avoid the Fire! and can be found here.

Board Games: What’s in the Box?

Ancient Egpytian Board Game c. 1298-1235 BCE (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Boardgames are a centuries old classic, a cultural go-to for fun. Almost every culture around the world developed some form of board game to amuse themselves once the work was done. From the far east we have such classics as Go and Mahjong. From Europe we have both Checkers and Chess. From the near east we have an entire category of games known as Mancala. In the modern day board games are still a wildly popular hobby, with clubs popping up devoted to playing the various types. But board games are also a mystery to some people. For most of the American audience, if you say board game, they think Monopoly and Scrabble and don’t get much beyond there. Maybe checkers and chess. But these days those are only the surface of a great and wondrous mountain of games. Games have fallen into 3 major categories: War Games, American Games and German Games.

War Games

War Hammer 40K, De Bellis Antiquatatis, Babylon 5 Wars and Troops, Weapons and Tactics are all examples of miniatures based wargames that take place throughout history, alternate history and science fiction futures. All of these games simulate large scale battles using the weapons of the age they take place in but tactics determined by the players. Some people like to set them up to start out like real battles and see if they can win where the great generals of history lost. Generally speaking, these games use lots of miniatures, detailed fields and lots of dice. Wargame miniatures can be acquired either pre-painted or unpainted to be painted by hand. For some players, that is a lot of the fun. Unlike a lot of other board game types, War Games aren’t designed to tell the same story or play the same way every time.

War Games are also the forebear to table top roleplaying games. It was a wargames ruleset known as Chainmail which Gary Gygax modified to create Dungeons and Dragons. For a comprehensive list of miniature wargames, you can look here. There’s something for everyone interested in taking up the hobby.

American Games

American board games have a strong tradition to them. Starting early on with handmade chess and checkers sets, they evolved only slightly over time. There are periodic booms of new games, but for the most part there are Parker Brother and Milton Bradley leading the charge. Most of their games are re-skins of the old traditional stand-bys. What kid growing up in America hasn’t played Monopoly? Scrabble? Chutes and Ladders? As far as the board game community is concerned, American games are this style, old games that have been around for decades, very few of which involve real skill. Take a look at Chutes and Ladders (or Snakes and Ladders as some people know it). First off, the roots of the game are actually found in India, not 1950s America as most people would tell you. Second off, its purely randomized using either a die or spinner. The Milton Bradley version includes a spinner rather than a die since at the time of its production, dice were considered sinful. Out of all of the games considered to be American style board games, Scrabble is probably the best. My feelings about Monopoly…well, that’s best left for another post. I tend to find that this style of game is very hit or miss, with a lot of the old “classics” being dry. They do offer a wide variety of games for kids though, which does redeem them some.

 

German Games

German style board games are wonderful. High quality games, designed to require thought and skill with added randomness. There are also always new ones coming out. Its quite wonderful. Now of course, German style is something of a misnomer. The trend for these new style games like Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride started in Germany and spread to the rest of Europe. These games tend to be light on conflict and drama, don’t kick players out of the game before the end and emphasize strategy over luck. Another great thing about them is that they largely use symbols rather than words so they can be played internationally. This genre leads to lots of new games, with only a few continuing to be published. The style is also starting to get adopted in America now, leading to wonderful things like Arkham Horror from 2005 and Merchant of Venus.

For more information on this type of board games, you can check out the wikipedia page on the topic. Its a bit sparse, but helpful and contains a list of publishers.

 

I hope you find yourself more enlightened about board games in general. Consider starting a board game night with your family. Its a great way to have fun together and to work on math, logic and reading skills with young children. For even younger children, there are even games that teach colors and shapes.

How to Make a Character (that other people will want to quest with and you’ll have fun playing too)

Whether its your first roleplaying game or your millionth, you’re still going to need to come up with a character concept and sometimes that can be hard. Creating believable, interesting characters who can play nicely with the other party members is a challenge, but one that can be very rewarding if tackled. That’s where I come in, I’m going to break everything down into a nice, simple step by step process to creating your character. To demonstrate I’m going to follow along, making a new character.

1. Alignment

Alignment isn’t normally the first thing people think about when making a character, but in a lot of cases it should be. Alignment is basically the believe system of the character boiled down into a few words. Generally speaking, roleplaying games use the old 3×3 alignment grid from Dungeons and Dragons, sort of like pictured above. The reason that people should think about alignment earlier in the character creation process than they tend to is because it effects party dynamic. It also can matter if the GM has disallowed certain alignments. If you decide you’re going to create a chaotic evil character in the same party as a lawful good character, it may not end well. I’m not saying that all the characters should be the same exact alignment, but try to be nearby or at least capable of getting along. In a lot of systems, a lawful good character such as a paladin can’t knowingly be in the same party as an evil aligned character.

DEMO: Well, lets say that my hypothetical GM isn’t disallowing any alignments, but told me that one of the other players usually players paladins. I tend to like a bit of chaos in my actions so I’ll go with chaotic good.

2. Concept

Concept is basically what you want your character to be. This can include race and class, or could just be an archetypal idea. Archetypes are things like undead destroying paladin or snooty elven noble, or things like thief who grew up on the streets and just suddenly developed magic. Despite the fact that this is more or less a one-line description, this is the step you should spend the most time on. In most cases, the concept is the character and if it isn’t something you’ll enjoy then you should just keep trying this step until you make something you do like.

Now, look at your concept. Does it work well with a team? If it can be described like the picture below, the answer is probably no. Your character should be good at some things, bad at others and have character flaws. And most importantly, take a good long look at your character concept and make sure you actually want to play this. There are some character concepts that sound really great on paper but turn out to not be so awesome after all. As tempting as it can be, I highly suggest having freewill and all of your limbs.

DEMO: So, I’m chaotic good. I think a good concept would be a wood elf who has never met anyone but other wood elves before coming to this city where they meet the party. This leads for great roleplaying potential, and it also means that I can play them as curious and somewhat naive.

3. Motivation

Motivation is just as important as concept, but in a different way. Motivation is what your character does what they do. And here comes the thing I have watched singlehandedly destroy roleplaying games. Why does your character adventure? A lot of people don’t think about this little detail and it results in characters who seem to be dragged through adventures, really making no progress. If a character has no reason to be adventuring, or maybe wants to get home, when they get a chance to return to their normal life, it makes no sense not to take it. So make sure your character wants to be exploring the world or has some other goal that can’t be reached by sitting at home.

DEMO: A chaotic good wood elf who has never left the forest is what I’ve built so far. Lets add in some motivation. First I need to decide why they left the forest. The easiest motivation to go with is that the little elf was bored and curious and wants to see new things. To add to it, elves are a long lived race with very little adventure, so maybe this elf heard stories about human adventures and wanted to go have some of their own.

4. Flesh Out the Details

So now you have your base concept. the next step is to fill in anything you missed. Remember, this isn’t about creating a character sheet, that comes later and might involve numbers. This is just the matter of creating a character. Where were they born? Are they from this world? Who are their parents? Do they know their parents? Are you already friends with people in the party? This is also the part where you come up with their name, and maybe appearance if you want. This is the where all the fun fiddly bits come in where you really get to decide that maybe your character really likes cheese or doesn’t like spiders come in.

I hope this helped you in your efforts to create fun and interesting characters that your party (and you) will enjoy. Have any advice you’d like to share or stories you’d like to tell? Feel free to leave a comment!

Help! My Players Know the System Better than Me!

Table top roleplaying as we know it has existed since the early 70s. Naturally, this means that some people picked it up before others did (or before others were born). And while there have been a lot of changes over the years, this still means that there will come a time when, as a GM, you may encounter players who are more familiar with the system than you are. If you’ve already been in this situation, as I have, you know it can be hard. There are different ways that kind of game can go, and I will cover them to the best of my knowledge.

Players As Rules Helpers

The optimal case for you as a young GM is that your experienced players will support you and help out. If the players know the rules well and can tell you the rules that apply in a given situation, they can really streamline the time the game takes. After all, how many people know off the top of their head how to handle a player vaulting across a pool of lava, hitting a wall and falling 20 feet down into a pool of lava by the rules in 3.5 D&D? And how long would it take to look up all the pertinent rules to figure out how much damage the player should take, by the rules. The best rules helpers, however, will offer the knowledge of the rules and then roll with it if the GM decides that no, you fell in the lava, you’re just dead. Rules helpers are also nice for streamlining character creation if you have new players or players playing more complicated characters than usual. My favorite use for the rules helpers is to partner them with a new player to help them through their turns. That really really helps to make it so that the newer player can learn the rules without having to occupy the time and attention of the GM.

Players As Rules Lawyers

Rules lawyers are annoying. There, I said it. Imagine if you will that you’ve written custom rules for a scenario only to discover that there were already rules for that particular situation partway through the session when one of your players informs you about them in full detail. Rules lawyers can be useful if you want to run a game completely by the book, and again for teaching new players, but can be very irritating. If you encounter a rules lawyer, make sure they understand the level of rulesiness your game is going to have and how much lawyeriness you are willing to tolerate. While it isn’t always possible to lay down ground rules for your players in this fashion, it can be useful to at least warn them that you’re going to be running fast and loose with the rules at times. If they can’t deal with your way of handling the game such that the rules make sense for the game rather than the other way around, then you may want to encourage them to find a different GM.

One think that can really help with rules lawyers is that if you know ahead of time that you’re going to be using an alternative or homebrew rules, then tell them what those rules are. In a lot of cases, this will give them the same warm fuzzies of there being logical rules which can be followed that they expect in a tabletop. Just remember that in the end, you need to make sure that what you’re running is what you want to run and not what one or two players are pushing you into running.

Players As Rules Manipulators

Rules manipulators are the worst kind of more experienced player you could have. Everything they do will either be entirely within the rules, or appear to be so, but is something that a more experienced GM would recognize and disallow. For example, an undead with a ring that turns all damage he takes to bashing damage…which undead are immune to. If you suspect that something your player is doing is fishy, ask to see the books they’re getting it from. Do some research on your own, ask other people about it. They may have misinterpreted things or they may be purposefully taking advantage of your lack of experience and knowledge. If you think one of your players is purposefully doing things that are against the rules or going against the spirit of the rules, they are cheating and you should deal with them appropriately. I suggest talking to them one-on-one without any other players there and requesting that they change their behavior. If they are good, give them some kind of reward to let them use their powers legitimately awesomely.

 

Hopefully this will help you with your endeavors in the future. Remember that you are the narrator of their story and that ultimately the rules are what you make of them.

Row Counter

Okay…I know, this isn’t my usual. My mom knits. Like a lot. And I wanted to make a quick app for the Chrome App store, so I decided to make a simple knitting themed counter for counting rows and such. Turns out they need those. I’m also trying to convince her to switch to Chrome on the main computer. I have my motives.

So here is Row Counter.

Encounters that Have to Happen

There comes a time in every tabletop rpg where an encounter is at least partially scripted. It might be your opening quest hook, it might be a later encounter, or in the case of introducing a new player or a player’s new character, getting the party to play nicely with someone new. Depending on your game, this can be a challenge.

I’m going to have to lay out a bit of background to start with. I tend to think of people playing roleplaying games in two categories: Games and Roleplayers. Gamers think about stats, work on the META (out of game) level and expect story cliches to happen. Roleplayers think about character, ignore the META level and act in the moment, thinking about consequences only on the in-game level. They’re actually pretty familiar to the Stick Jock and Paste Eater of Live Action Roleplaying. I much prefer to run games for Roleplayers, particularly since my preferred system is diceless, but also because I am one myself. However, Roleplayers are problematic. For a Roleplayer, actions need to be justified with character.

So you’re probably wondering how this all connects. Think about it this way. You’re going along on a quest to stop an evil lich from taking over the kingdom and one of your friends gets killed. This new guy shows up the next time you go into town, or out there near the lich’s stronghold. Are you going to trust him and have him join your party? If you’re a Gamer, you know its your buddy at the table and welcome him in. If you’re a Roleplayer, you’re probably going to grill him about who he is before letting him join at best. We actually encountered this problem in my game just last night. The new character in the game is a shapechanger who was captured by a non-magical noble and was being kept in a cage in the form of a raccoon. In order for her to join the game, the other PCs had to go rescue her. The information I gave them involved a mysterious creature never before seen and the strong belief of the nobleman that it was a Faerie creature. The characters were like its an animal, why should we care? And I ended up having to flat out tell the players that they needed to care so I could get a new character in.

So here comes the real question: How do I solve this problem? The first step is to identify the problem. Its a matter of motivating your players properly. If your players are Gamers, they should be pretty easy to motivate. Generally speaking, get a little input about what kinds of powers they want to have and you should be able to provide either in-game monetary rewards or items as an inducement to go play your adventure. If your players are Roleplayers, it may take more effort. Figure out what kinds of characters they are playing. If you have a group of good characters pitting them against evil is generally speaking a good bet. Things tend to get more complicated. Figure out their personal motivations and you have the proverbial carrot to dangle to get their attention.

And all of this comes back to encounters you have to run. If you have to get the players somewhere for the next aspect of the plot, or to bring someone new into the game, you can figure out the proper inducements for your players to lure them there. Think about ways to run your encounter where the players already are or how to include hooks to new content in ways that will interest your players. And remember that sometimes, you have to pull back the curtain and tell your players to suck it up and do what you need them to.

I bought this game and it stinks! What do I do now?

So you went out to your local video game store and picked up a new game. You play through the first hour, maybe two, and then realize that you have just made a horrible mistake and this isn’t what you thought you were getting. It happens more than you would think. Maybe you were expecting an action RPG and got a platformer, maybe you were expecting a casual game or maybe you just don’t like the play style or mechanics involved. All of this brings up the big question of what do you do with it. The natural thought is that you would return it. Sadly, a lot of stores won’t take returns on video games if the box has been opened. I know for a fact that Toys R Us doesn’t. So you can’t return it to say, Walmart, Target or anything like that if you’ve actually played it. The next place you could go is somewhere more like Gamestop where they do Trade-Ins of games, hardware and accessories and resell them. That sounds like a really great idea right? Here’s the problem, and it all falls on you the consumer. So you buy a $30 DS game, for example. If that game is for the DS and not the 3DS, don’t expect to get more than $5 of Trade-In value, and that’s for a really good popular game. You might remember my misadventures with The Sims 2 Pets for DS. Well, I took that in yesterday to exchange, along with a few other games like Populous DS and Logic Machines, which had all seemed like good ideas at the time of purchase. Four games sold back, for $4 of store credit, and that’s with the Powerup Rewards membership getting me an extra 10% on all trade-ins. And that’s with all 4 games having their case and instructions.

You’re probably wondering how that can possibly make any sense. I mean, that’s approximately $120 in games and I got $4 for it. But the thing is, those games aren’t even really available any more because they’re so out of date. And on top of that, the ones that are just aren’t popular. They’re running about $10 new. The video game market tends to be very much on demand pricing. If a game is the next big thing, super popular and everyone wants it, the price is going to be higher. Just look at the Metroid franchise. At the time of release, The Other M was running around $40 like the usual Wii game. At Gamestop yesterday, it was selling for $10. So if I had bought The Other M back when it was new and gone to trade it in now, Gamestop would be giving me a very small amount of money, enough that when they sell it again at $10 they would still be making some kind of profit.

Its pretty obvious that this system only benefits the game store. After the original purchase, no money is going to the developer and the return is hardly giving the customer any of their money back. So how do we solve this system. My favorite solution, though not one that everyone can employ, is the mantra of Try Before You Buy. The way I usually handle this is through rental of games that I’m interested in trying but aren’t in a franchise I have a lot of faith in. If a new Zelda game, for example, is coming out, I trust the Zelda developers to maintain a certain level of quality, but if I see something completely new and weird, or even a long standing series that I have no experience with and I’m considering buying it, I will rent it first. But not everyone can afford a Gamefly or Blockbuster rental plan. In that case, talk to your friends. See if anyone you know has the game and can let you try it out, or even just give you an opinion. If everyone you know says a game is terrible, chances are its terrible. Another way to avert gaming disaster is to check out a review website like this one here, or Metacritic.

So you tried before you bought, and got opinions, and even checked the Internet and still gamer fail occurred. What’s next? At that point come the options of give it to someone, yardsale it or shove it in a box somewhere. I mean, there’s also Ebay and Craig’s List, but that once again depends on the popularity of the game in question. Honestly, the best way to not have to deal with trading in games is to try really hard to do your homework before purchasing it.

Serious Games and Being Gameful

The Gameful movement is taking the indie game design world by storm, but what does it mean? What is a “serious” game and how do those two words together even make any sense? That is what I will be talking about today. The raw basic idea of what a serious game is can best be defined as any game that has a purpose beyond entertainment. These can come in several different varieties from the traditional educational game to the advertisement or training simulation or even a socio-political game. Gameful is a specific movement where game mechanics can be added to anything to help make the real world a better place, in particular, adding points and achievements to doing good things. Without further ado, on to the definitions!

The Types

Adver-Games
Adver-Games are any kind of game that is trying to get the player to buy some product outside of the game. They generally speaking use the product or the product’s mascot in some situation where they make it seem fun or exciting. Its like an advertisement only better because the player is invested in the game far more than they would be in a simple commercial. Adver-games don’t tend to be Gameful, given that they’re just a more audience inclusive version of your standard commercial.

Edu-Tainment

The edu-tainment category is a vast array of kinds of games, but for the sake of today, I’m going to define it down to any game that seeks to impart information of an academic or practical nature. This means that there are two types of games coming in under the Edu-Tainment umbrella.

The so-called Educational Game is the traditional type of game that most people think of when they hear Educational Game. They impart knowledge and information, typically geared to children, and include happy games, usually of the arcade style. Reader Rabbit and the Magic School Bus games are really good examples of this. Educational Games are quite Gameful.

The other type is Training Simulations. These teach a person how to perform a job or how to handle a situation. Many companies use these to train their employees, up to and including the military and police departments. They are particularly useful for teaching people how to handle volatile situations without putting them in danger, such as a police simulator that teaches officers how to handle various situations with possibly armed suspects. These can also be quite Gameful.

Persuasive Games

Persuasive Games fall into the dubious category of socio-political games. These are any kind of game that is trying to draw you over to the developer’s point of view. Darfur is Dying, Super SOPA Bros and ICED are good examples of the genre. These games can be made through a serious delivery of facts, or through comedy, or any other direction the developer wants to attempt. A lot of the really volatile ones about situations that the developer considers to be horrible will tend to be done through shock factor. These, of course, are very Gameful. I’ve seen some very good games that reward the user for doing good things, for talking to strangers, for cleaning up their homes and for almost anything else.

So now that we’ve defined the types, what makes a serious game good at what its trying to do. Well, the first rule (and the one most often overlooked) is that the target audience has to want to play it. It turns out that doing math problems on a computer doesn’t make doing math any more fun if you don’t like math. But if you make it an action platformer where you have to catch the proper answers, or a puzzle game where you have to slide tiles around to solve problems, it becomes much more fun. The second rule is that it has to impart whatever it is trying to impart, be it information or an opinion or even just a commercial. Adver-games are the simplest to succeed at but have the downside of most people can identify that they are an advertisement. Educational games are also reasonably easy, for a young audience. Training simulations have to be painstakingly accurate in order to be effective. Persuasive games are their whole own can of worms. Sure, you have an opinion. Everyone does. But can you convey it well? Can you make it sound reasonable? Can you avoid sounding like you’re crazy? Theses are all important concerns which have been failed countless times in the history of persuasive games.

For more information on serious games and the Gameful movement, you can go check out the Serious Games Initiative and Gameful.org.