Archive for the ‘Current Events’ Category

How to write a blog post with your cat.

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

I’ve finally found a way to post to my gaming blog from my mobile. That means all of the incredible insights I have while walking my cat around the yard, freezing my ass off at midnight will finally make it out of my head and into the rest of the my-blog-reading world.

Enjoy.

Another thing I’ve discovered: the Mixotronic looks great in a mobile browser. So now you can get you solid-gold ideas ANYWHERE.

You’re welcome.

Dollhouse

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

I watched the first episode of Dollhouse last night.  It was very, very good – it’s a testament to Joss’ power as a TV god that he can have a show that hits the ground running like Dollhouse did.   The first entire season of Buffy had a sort of stilted quality to it; Angel had the leg-up of being a spinoff (I think Angel actually declined in quality after all of the Connor shenanigans until Season 5); Firefly hit all the marks but still was wobbly until Our Mrs. Reynolds.  

Dollhouse is solid, through and through.  But it still has issues, the first of which is that Eliza Dushku, while very easy on the eyes and apparently passionate enough to help bankroll the show (she has producer credit), is really … not … that .. good … of an actress.  The first few minutes of the show I just kept thinking ‘what is Faith doing here?’ – her presentation of the in-over-her-head Echo was the same performance as her in-over-her-head evil Faith, and her negotiator persona was completely unbelieveable.  She played it like someone acting like they’re acting like they’re acting.  Which is either brilliant, or bad acting with too much analysis on my part.

The premise is intriguing (and Alias with a sci-fi twist, but never mind that), and of course I’ll follow Joss to the grave.  It was fun to see Commander Lock, Faith the Rogue Slayer, Helo from BSG and Mirage from The Incredibles (the resemblance of Dichan Lachman is UNCANNY) all in the same show.

* * *

And now to the inevitable (at least for me) game idea:

The players are all Actors (are they not?) who work together as a team.  No one has a character sheet to start with – they all get the stock characters for their assigned roles: negotiator from Quantico (I mean, come on …), bad-ass commando, &c., which are in themselves amalgams of other personalities (think of the Personas as LEGOs that get put together instead of single entities).  As they rotate through these personas, they leave a trace behind – those traces start to add up into the true personality of the Actor who’s been wiped.  All of the echos start to become the true voice of the character.  Think of the entire campaign as a character creation.  The echoes (when triggered by another character in the role with the echo), causes first an echo for that character, but also causes a stronger echo in the first character – a sort of positive-feedback loop.

So Character A has the negotiator persona (Persona A) and has a small echo of the wiping process caused by a stressful situation.  That echo (and its cause) stay with the persona.  Character B gets a persona that includes the echo’d bit.  Player B activates the echo (for some positive benefit), and gets their own echo that attaches to Persona A, and meanwhile Player A gets a stronger echo in Persona B; a chain reaction.

More on the podcast.

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

I’ve been combing around in my brainbox since I started thinking about recasting the Elsewhere podcast.  Here are a list of ideas that I’ve been kicking around between my mobile and my laptop, gathered while staring at the amazing blue sky we’ve had here lately, along with a brief explanation of each:

This is one idea that’s in the ‘definitely’ column – talking about the rather dark days I had in middle school, and the way that games and the escape that they provided kept me from far more destructive activities.  Talking about the characters, the storylines, and reflect on how they were a part of my life.

Talk about the process of designing of the omega to my alpha, Elsewhere, and about how very hard it is to design a game.  Talk with others about struggles in designing, and biting off more than you can chew.

These are two Vampire characters, one mine and the other belonging to my friend, Marcy.  We played them, on and off, for about four years.  It’s the only time that I’ve delved that deeply into a role-playing character (hell, any character), and perhaps getting Marcy on the phone for an interview wouldn’t be out of the question, he said knowing that she might read this on Facebook.  Perhaps it could be part of a larger arc on people’s characters and what they meant to them at the time and later.

The weakest of the ideas so far, because it’s very nebulous: getting people to talk about their experiences with immersion in games – computer or otherwise.  My 60+ hour marathon with SimCity 2000, for example.

This is something that I definitely want to explore – the corollary to the stories about people and their games – the story of the games themselves.  More than once, playing the Total War series, I’ve had the impulse to just write a journal of everything that was happening, to get caught up in the sweep of the story.  This merges with the last idea: take someone who’s never played, say, SimCity, and have them talk their way through a session.  Or the Sims.

This is a long-shot.  Finding and interviewing the people in my D&D group in high school.

The story of how, at my first convention, I played a game of Third Reich as the British and basically lost the game for the Allies.  Still my most crushing loss to this day, if you don’t count the hammering I took recently in Paths to Glory, a WWI game that I played (and lost terribly) to my friend Mike in Minnesota.  Maybe a whole podcast on loss and losing.

That’s what I have, so far.  Other than that, I’ve mostly been trying to figure out what sort of equipment I’m going to need to get to have a decent-sounding podcast.  Suggestions are welcome.

And message me, MJ.

No way is this Star Trek.

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

I watched the trailer (here).

I had cold chills from the minute I saw ‘Bad Robot’ was involved right up to the end.

May this movie send the Berman Dynasty over the Trek name to the dustbin of history.

This is a Mixotronic wet dream.  Star Trek + Cloverfield + Fringe?  Oh man.

Left 4 Dead + the First 101 Days

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

Here we are at November 19th, 101 days into my GenCon Year.  Where are we?

Well, I’ve completed an overhaul of my Game Chef 2007 entry, Eidolon – now retitled Terrible World.  I’ve created a couple of prototypes and I’m alpha-testing it to make sure that the system mechanics aren’t completely out of whack.

Second, I’m in the process of formally writing up Strangers (more on that in my next post), a slice-of-life game based on the idea of an R-map ‘story machine’.

But what I really want to talk about is Left 4 Dead, the new zombie shooter from Valve.

* * *

Oh. My. God.  Even if this weren’t the most thematically appropriate game for me to play on the planet, this would be one hell of an amazing game.  In case you’re not into PC gaming, Left 4 Dead uses a new technology from Valve called the ‘Director AI’ that assesses the health of you and your teammates and adjusts the location of enemies and resources throughout the map.  I’ve played through the first two maps of the game more than a few times using the demo, and every single play-through felt different.  L4D keeps you on the edge of your seat, waiting for the next flood of rage zombies to come crashing through a door; and when you’re absolutely ready, it lets loose some slack, presenting room after empty room that you keep bursting into, waiting for that next adrenaline-fueled wave of enemies.  I’m not sure how it does it, but when you actually do release your sphincter, you’re due for a dose of REALLY rough times.

On other run-throughs, my co-ops and I have been hit by multiple waves of zombies in the opening seconds of the game, reducing us to pulp.

My only real gripe with the game is that the four co-op characters are completely alike.  I understand the reasoning: Having the characters as specialists weakens the whole ‘we all need to make it to the end’ vibe of the game.  It becomes a matter of each specialist doing their niche thing instead of all the players doing their damn best at fending off the dead.  It takes a lot of grief out of the mix.

It’s also been fun to play online, where the Counter Strike mentality has gotten more than one player killed but good.  Charging ahead alone is the fastest way to get killed – as is lurking in the aft.  The Director will measure that distance and pounce on you.  Online play also taught me that ‘turtling’ – taking it slow and clearing the level methodically – is a bad idea.  Go too slow and you’ll run out of bullets before the game runs out of zombies.  You have pistols that have unlimited ammo, but unless you’re a headshot god (much harder in L4D because of the erratic way that the Infected move!), running out of ammo is a bad idea.

Which brings me to the visuals and sound: Really great.  Given that there are so many objects on the screen at any one time, the graphics aren’t next-gen, but I can crank all of the settings up on my dual-core machine  and get a great ride.  The Infected lurch, fight, slump and then burst at you in a full-on screaming rage.  Again, because of the pure number of polygons, the bodies disappear but the blood doesn’t – making any serious encounter look like a pipe bomb went off in a slaughterhouse.  Molotovs set the Infected on fire, but they run at you anyways, a la 28 Days Later.

All in all, the game has given me a lot of inspiration for working some additional material and changes into DEAD.  The very idea of a Director (embodied by the Dead player) and the Threat deck in DEAD as a character in its own right just got a big pat on the back.

And with 264 days left, who knows?

Our National Nightmare is Over.

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

President-Elect Obama, in Chicago’s Grant Park:

Hello, Chicago.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It’s the answer that led those who’ve been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

A little bit earlier this evening, I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Sen. McCain.

Sen. McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. And he’s fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.

I congratulate him; I congratulate Gov. Palin for all that they’ve achieved. And I look forward to working with them to renew this nation’s promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart, and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on the train home to Delaware, the vice president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation’s next first lady Michelle Obama.

Sasha and Malia I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the new White House.

And while she’s no longer with us, I know my grandmother’s watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my other brothers and sisters, thank you so much for all the support that you’ve given me. I am grateful to them.

And to my campaign manager, David Plouffe, the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best — the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.

To my chief strategist David Axelrod who’s been a partner with me every step of the way.

To the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you’ve sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn’t start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory.

And I know you didn’t do this just to win an election. And I know you didn’t do it for me.

You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.

There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage or pay their doctors’ bills or save enough for their child’s college education.

There’s new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I promise you, we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can’t solve every problem.

But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can’t happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.

In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let’s resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Let’s remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those — to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

That’s the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we’ve already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight’s about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that “We Shall Overcome.” Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves — if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

~

Yes, we can.  And yes, we did.

SPORE: Expectations and explanations.

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Out of the blue, I won a free downloadable copy of SPORE, which I promptly did, testing my new cable bandwidth for all it was worth.  About two hours and one giant unzip operation later, I installed the game and sat down with my 5 year-old daughter to kick the tires.  I was not disappointed.  Graphically and audially, the game is a masterpiece – in the Cell and Creature stages, you can see far-off (or much larger, in the case of the Cell stage) creatures with distance blur.  The procedural environments are intoxicating and the gameplay is simple enough that my daughter was able to play out the Cell stage on her own after a couple of go-arounds.

The Creature stage is also a lot of fun – you slowly morph your creature to fit your play style, encountering new adversaries along the way, along with the occassional, tantalizing glimpse of the future.  I was shocked to see a UFO, the centerpiece of the Space part of the game, appear over my creature and slowly circle the area, sucking up one of my brethren and some enemies from a nearby nest.

I’ve completed only about half of the Tribal stage, and it’s been a lot of fun too.  Some people have made hay of the fact that your creature doesn’t change anymore.  Well no, it’s not supposed to.  The game changes gears from millions of years per evolution to hundreds or thousands – that’s not enough to show evolution.  But my creature, once I finalized the design at the end of the Creature phase, kept its attributes and inherent scores.  My Creature, the Etophore, is a sneak-charger: Sneak up on Sasquatch feet up to a lone enemy, then charge and finish him off with my claws.  The Etophore is a herbivore – the attacking is purely in defense.  After reading some reviews, I expected this behavior to vanish in the Tribal phase – until I sent a war party to a nearby village and the whole tribe went into Sneak mode and charged the opposing villagers, popping up out of nowhere – all on their own.  Beautiful.

Now to my quibbles with the game.

First of all, you have to collect all of the available parts for the Cell and Creature stages, meaning that as a herbivore, I was only going to find about a third of all the bits.  As a Carnivore, you can collect parts by killing and eating – herbivores have to find skeletons and kill Alphas of competing species.  It’s slow going.  In the Cell stage especially, herbivores are at a disadvantage in that they can only get bits from pieces of meteor (the game is based on panspermia!) – I only ever found a single one, leaving me to get almost none of the Cell parts for my next creation(s).  While it’s interesting to find a new bit and use it, the collectible factor leaves me a bit dry.

My second quibble is that ‘evolution’ is all in the hands of the player – it’s possible to completely alter your Creature from one evolution to the next – everything from body-shape to diet to number of limbs is completely alterable.  This undermines the Creature phase a bit, unless you put artificial restrictions on yourself (which I did/do, and my daughter didn’t/doesn’t).  The game should restrict the number of bits you change with each iteration, either as a limit to the number of parts added/subtracted or by introducing a DNA (i.e. currency) debt.  This debt is present in the Tribal stage, but not in the Creature or Cell stage.  Maybe a mod will introduce it.

Lastly, the implements in the Tribal stage aren’t alterable, unlike the bits from the last two stages and the various creators for vehicles and buildings in the Civ and Space stages.  This is a bit disappointing.  Again, maybe there will be an expansion that allows you to make implements that suit your tribe’s temperment.

The game works exactly like Wright said it would: By introducing the player to larger and larger scopes of action, it scaffolds you into play in a way that few games of this genre do.  At the same time, it’s not as heavily structured as a similar game like Black & White was.  By the time I reached the end of the Cell and Creature stages, I was ready for more – which the Tribal stage provides.  Your scope expands – not until the Tribal stage can you move the camera off of your creature.  By the time you’re at the stage, you’re more than capable of managing the extra complexities.

Spore is enough of a cipher that I’ve seen more than a dozen reviews of the game that have completely conflicting views of the same features: the open gameplay, the simplicity of the opening stages, etc.  I’ve read that the later stages become uncomfortably difficult – time will tell.

The Current Bucket List

Sunday, June 15th, 2008

Here, for my own benefit mainly, is a complete core dump of all the game ideas that I have either on the front burner, back burner, or in the percolator:

Front Burner:

Back Burner:

Percolating:

A game design Challenge, and other notes.

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

I’ve been challenged at Story Games by Jonathan Walton to a design challenge:

 Kuma: Write me a game set in a country that you’ve never heard of. Like, go find a world map and find some nation-state whose name is totally unfamiliar to you. Then read about that place and write me a game set there.

To which I responded:

As the winner of more than one geography bee in my day, there’s no nation-state I haven’t heard of (modern ones, at least). So instead, I did a random walk through Wikipedia until I hit an entry that referred to some nation outside of the US/Europe, etc that I hadn’t heard of before. The result: Makuria! Here’s the Wikipedia article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makuria

I’m already imagining something to do with the ‘Six Cataracts’.

The Kingdom of Makuria was a pretty neat place.  It was Christian (as was most of Ethiopia at the time), and was bordered to the north by the rather large (and I’m sure threatening) Umayyad Caliphate, an Islamic empire that stretched from Persia all the way along the north of Africa and into Spain.  At the time, it was the largest empire in the world, and ranks as the sixth largest in all of history.

But that’s not what the game’s about, it’s about Makuria, a kingdom of a different religion, a neighbor to the largest empire of the day, sitting in what is today northern Sudan, a less-than-hospitable piece of land.  This sort of screams ‘it’s about being the underdog!’, but where is the game in that?

On the upside, the ‘Six Cataracts’ refers to six massive waterfalls that the Nile takes in this region.  Symbolically, this is awesome.  Perhaps the mechanics of the game could incorporate an Agon-like track for conflict that is six spaces long – or the game could progress between these six different states with different conditionals placed on play for what Cataract is currently in play.

In other words: I’m working on it.

GC08 Update

Friday, April 25th, 2008

My design is going apace – at this late stage, I’m thinking that I just have to start freakin’ writing and let the chips fall where they may (so to speak).

Part of the trick with the game is that the resources at hand for the players are extremely limited.  Everyone gets one hand of 13 cards per age, and all of the mechanics associated with the play of one age must fit with, or emerge from, the simple play of those cards.  I’ve been tempted more than once to go over to dice, and I think if I get enough validation to redesign I’m going to use Tarot cards instead, or perhaps just give them as an option.

As it is, just the raw writing of the game is going to take some time at this point, so I have to get started.  Examples are going to be key.

I’m also considering changing the name of the game to Acts of Creation.

Oh, and for a chuckle I went over the list of games that have influenced my design.  Here’s the list:

Polaris, Carcassonne, Eye of Judgement, Primeval and Black & White.

There are more, I’m sure.

The core system finally has a name …

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

Cairn.

After much deliberation and a lot of searching, I finally have a name for the core mechanic that is underlying DEAD, Cold War, Merchant and a lot of other ideas these days. It took a long time, but now it seems intuitive and simple: a cairn – a pile of stones infused with meaning.

Awesome.

I tinkered with the idea of using the Inuit word inuksuk, until I realized that I’d be the most recent in a long line of white folks co-opting the term. Inuksuk are fascinating, though – check out a scholarly paper here, and some photos on Google Images. They were used in some instances as hunting blinds and ‘beaters’ – fake humans that would confuse caribou being herded into a slaughter area by Inuit hunters. Inuksuk means “something which acts for or performs the function of a person.” Which is something to take to heart for the games: That the cards and tokens themselves act like an additional player in the game.

Speaking of which, Tycho on Penny Arcade was talking about the function of raid decks for the World of Warcraft TCG, particularly the Molten Core deck. I’ve been studying the WoW TCG for a while now – mechanically, it’s pretty standard, but the execution is very cool. The Raid decks are an excellent extension of both the gestalt of online play to the TCG, and a fun idea in and of themselves. They’re essentially ‘dungeon decks’, played by a separate player, which have highly synergized and powerful cards. Defeating a raid deck requires that multiple players act cooperatively to defeat the challenges within.

This is the same idea as with DEAD – an antagonist deck that the other players cooperatively are trying to defeat. DEAD simply rotates the roles of the antagonist, and adds some suspense to the game by giving the antagonist some bonuses against the players.

There’s one in every crowd.

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

Matt Snyder doesn’t give a crap that Gary Gygax is dead.

Well, at least not in the abstract – he’s not inhuman, after all. But he doesn’t see the point in giving Gygax the credit being lauded him in various remembrances, obituaries and eulogies. Eulogies being delivered, by the way, by such media darlings as Stephen Colbert, no less.

There are more fiery paragraphs, but I’ll quote the end:

We laughed. But, you know? He’s right. Clinging to Gary so you, the self-conscious gamer, can avoid feeling alone and awkward in your nerd shame is giving Gary a lot more credit than he deserves. You and your friends earned that by what you did. Gary didn’t even order the pizza for Christ’s sake.

He made a fun game. He had a life and a family and did lots of stuff. He died. He was just a guy from Wisconsin. Ok? Ok.

I’m not half as sad that Gary died as I am sad that the hobby still defines itself as a lifestyle rather than as an activity.

As the author of Nine Worlds and Dust Devils, among others, you’d think that Snyder would, at least, be able to acknowledge the debt that he has to Gygax and the rest who came after him for the creation of the hobby that he has, at least marginally, profited from. Gygax is, at least in the realm of the RPG, one of the giants on whose shoulders we all stand, to borrow a phrase. I’m assuming that there’s a tacit acknowledgement there, but if there isn’t, then Matt needs a serious reality check. Yes, we’d all be “doing something else” – but we’re not, and Snyder isn’t.

The broader question that I’d like to explore is the entanglement of RPGs as ‘activity’ and RPGs (and gaming) as ‘lifestyle’. Snyder finds it sad that people identify this closely with gaming and RPGs. I can only imagine that I’m one of the people that makes him sad, since my second-to-last blog post states very clearly that I believe that D&D, and the creative outlet of RPGs in general, saved me from doing something stupid with my life when I was 13 – either ending it, or wasting it on drugs or some other, far darker, ‘lifestyle’.

Why this is a surprise to Snyder is a mystery to me. Games, and RPGs in particular, are a quintessentially social medium. You can’t (I’ll qualify this as ‘couldn’t', actually, since I’m sure it’s possible now with CRPGs and MMOs) play an RPG without being immersed in a miasma of social interaction with your fellow players. Even if it isn’t the explicit, tree-hugging ‘the system is within us and without us’ notion of the indie scene, RPGs require the formation, manipulation and exposition of social discourse among the players. In other words, even if you’re an asocial bastard, you still have to meet your fellow players in a space somewhere outside yourself in order to facilitate play. If you don’t, you’re not going to be playing for long.

Mix this together with the identity play that is the core of the RPG experience, the ‘I am Giigor Redweave, Rug Merchant to the Sultan of Zum’ transference that takes place during the course of play, and you have a heady concoction ripe for transference of all kinds. Including the incorporation of the idea of ‘gamer’ into the idea of oneself. Apparently, Matt’s never made that kind of transference, and that’s all well and good. But for a great many people, perhaps socially or physically isolated from people who shared their interests at a critical juncture in the formation of their personal identity, made that connection with a something, with a percieved ‘someone’, even if that someone was a fantasy character of their own device.

Now, I will be the first to say that I think that game (and RPG) culture has its flaws. They are legion. But I don’t see Mr. Snyder’s refutation of the impact of Gary Gygax’s work on the lives of those of us who played, still play, and have embraced the game as part of their identity as separate from this culture. Instead, it rings to me as exactly the sort of myopic, unempathetic, asocial caricature that Matt Snyder wants to divorce himself from.

Instead of dismissing it, I think that we can take a look at the grief being expressed in the gaming community and try to take from it some lessons on the power of playing with identity and community – a power that I think gets taken for granted in game design.

[cross-posted to Story Games]

D&D 4th Edition is a MM(P)RPG.

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

John Kim put up a link to a 4th Edition set of character sheets that were provided by WotC at the D&D Experience in Arlington, Virginia.  This is my first look at the new system (I’m not tracking it closely because I want to come to it relatively fresh when it’s released in June), and it stuck me very suddenly – just as D&D birthed the MMORPG, the MMORPG has now wrought changes in D&D.

Very interesting.

Most of the sheets are the same as usual, until you get to the feats, class features and spells.  Now, instead of spell lists, you have ‘Powers’, which are further sub-divided by type: At-Will, Encounter and Daily.  At-Will is like it says – as a standard action, use said power.  Encounter powers are used once per encounter, and Daily are used once (or more) until you rest.

Looking closer, the mechanical breakdown of spells, feats and skills have reached an all-time minimum.  Most powers have been stripped down to their mechanical roots, and those roots are laid bare.   For comparison, check out the text blocks on those sheets again this list of Warlock spells and abilities from a WoW site, or even this list of Elementalist skills from Guild Wars.   The similarity is striking.

So why am I writing about it here?  Well, first of all I find this sort of feeback loop very interesting.  If you want to lure WoW players into D&D, make D&D more like WoW.  Basic marketing logic.  Secondly, this provides a very interesting test basin for Elsewhere.  Whereas modelling D&D was always a chore for previous editions, this one should prove a snap.  I’m going to start working on some basic diagramming this weekend.  I’ve modeled WoW and Guild Wars using Elsewhere as a framework for a while, and D&D 4th seems like a good way for me to transition into ‘traditional’ RPGs.

E. Gary Gygax : 1938-2008

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

There are plenty of posts circulating out on the web about Mr.Gygax’s death and people’s moments with him. This post is a bit different than all of those, because my single (direct) interaction with the man was confrontational, if not negative.

I reviewed the World Builder, by Troll Lord Games, and I panned it. Severely. Probably more than it tuly deserved. Since his name was attached to the series, Mr. Gygax was pointed towards the review over on ENWorld (or as I like to call it, the House that d20 Built). What transpired was a relatively terse conversation of a few posts, followed by the general sentiment of ‘oh well, let’s get on with life’.

Sometime after that review, I moved to Wisconsin and spent an afternoon wandering around Lake Geneva looking for Gary’s house. I found it, and even though I could tell he was home, and even though he famously welcomed wandering geeks like myself to sit down for a few.

So here’s what I should have said to the man that day in Lake Geneva: Thank you.  Not only did the game you helped create change my life, it has guided it ever since.  It’s also not much of a stretch for me to say that your game saved my life.  The 7th and 8th grades were not kind to me.  Braces, acne and a curve-busting IQ marked me as an outsider in my small, rural town.  Without the diversion and the mental floss that D&D and its brethren provided me, I may not have made it to the 9th grade, when things got much better.  I was alone, and yet I wasn’t.  I felt a kinship with gamers all over the country (or the world) who I knew were delving into the same rich well of imagination that I lived in.

Thank you for my Fortress of Solitude.

Not so much with the worldbuilding.

Friday, February 29th, 2008

It wasn’t until this evening, some long hours after posting my bit on the Encyclopedia of Life, that I realized that I never actually expressed the fact that it would make a great worldbuilding resource.  It suddenly struck me today that I haven’t done much worldbuilding for the last couple of years.

Time was, I defined myself (ludically, I mean) as primarily a worldbuilder.  I have a couple dozen notebooks and burgeoning data files attesting to the amount of time and energy that I’ve invested over the years into becoming a decent world craftsman.  I still consider it a high art – but why don’t I do it anymore?

Part of the answer is that I dont’ play regularly – or when I do play, it’s with other established settings rather than ones of my own design.  While there are certainly aspects of the craft that I apply to a game of Buffy, there isn’t the same level of intensity needed to create verisimilitude that there is in running a D&D campaign in a whole new world.

The other part of the answer is that I’ve become far more interested in the creation of tools than in the creation of any sort of end-product.  I’m more interested in making ways to help other people create better worlds than I am in simply crafting another of my own.  This impulse has its apotheosis in Elsewhere – the meta-metasystem.

The wheel keeps on turning, however, and given that I’m currently reading Iain M. Banks’ latest Culture novel Matter, the raw material of worldbuilding is being piled in my mental warehouse, waiting to be used again.

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