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How’s it going? My name’s Malcolm. I produce games and ideas. I’d like to share them with you. Take a look around. If you see anything you like, read and/or purchase it. You’re probably here about roleplaying games, either in the form of freelancing I’ve done for clients like White Wolf or things published through Mob United Media/Mobworx. This site is constantly in flux, so check back often. I’ll also be blogging here, but content still appears at:
I’m a martial arts nerd and a novice grappler (about a year of BJJ on and off), so one thing that hit me is how gameable a lot of the theory behind grappling is. For instance, teachers often use flowcharts to describe transitioning from one position to another. The goal in a legitimate grappling art is to attack from a dominant position — “position before submission” is the slogan. For instance, while you can crank someone’s arm while you’re in their guard you will almost never succeed because your opponent has more leverage – so you want to protect yourself while transitioning to side control or mount. What if we integrated BJJ’s grapplingv flowchart concept into RPG combat systems? If I greatly simplify sub grappling strategy I get the following flowchart — a map that shows the relationship between positions and how the influence attacks.
Again, this really simplifies something that can get really elaborate. There are a whole lot of guards, an “attack” can be a hit or submission, I’ve folded knee on stomach into side control and not differentiated between mount and back mount. If we turned this into a game system success and failure would move you around the map. You can always try to attack from a less optimal position but it’s weak. Mount is the best posture from which to deliver attacks (standing and kicking the guy works too, but I omitted that because it crosses over into standup, which I’ll talk about in a sec). The danger is that stops along the way get borning ot the weak/medium/strong split don’t balance well. It also gets confusing when the defender also attacks. What if we took this beyond ground grappling? The clinch has its own positions (double-under, under/over, Thai clinch, dirty boxing clinch, etc.) and striking as both range considerations (kicking, in and out of the pocket) and specific tactics that flow well or badly. We would ultimately end up with a huge map of tactical relationships — maybe too huge for an RPG without electronic assistance. Maybe this would work well for a game that’s all about martial arts, or could be automated and hidden in the background. In any event, mapping tactical relationships takes combat out of the "point and shoot" realm or the inheritance of unit-based wargaming. I’m not sure I’m up to the challenge myself. This may be the kind of thing I want someone else to design. To be fair, I have worked with zoning and transitions through range in some recent designed for White Wolf, so I’m not fleeing the idea completely, but you’d get one hell of a tinkertoy if you extended this chart to cover everything. My old blog Shooting Dice has been mostly reproduced here, and going there will take you here instead. That means we’re now hosting dozens of articles. Keep in mind that some of them don’t reflect my current thinking and are here for historical reasons. It’s simple. Here are five things I think have been overdone and five that deserve another go.
Yes, the Mythos is literature. We all love it. And if you love something, set it free from numerous RPG rehashes. maybe Ken Hite can kep doing it but everyone else should just stop. And don’t do that faux-Lovecraft thing where you bang your head on the keyboard to get random sounding names. (Mage: The Ascension, I’m looking at you!) But whatever happened to the Devil? Not the post-Miltonian by way of Gaiman sympathetic dude, but Satan, the ultimate BBEG? Nobody’s used him as a threat in a while, and gamers, frightened of the 80s come again, generally shy away from classic Old Scratch. Let’s bring him back in all his modern pop culture-confused medieval-Baptist mishmash glory.
Yes yes nerds, Faeries are alien and strange and crap – except that this whole thing is now a huge cliche that gamers expect. My work on Changeling was a subtle critique of it. In it, the Gentry can’t be incomprehensible because they’re made of stories – and incomprehensible stories are dead stories. Fairy tales, where magic is a collection of whimsical special cases and fairies aren’t otherplanar gods but just well hidden, haven’t been used so much. The challenge is making them relevant and not merely aping a romantic childhood approach. Phil Brucato’s Deliria gave it a try but was hampered by a stream of consciousness presentation and odd system. There’s room for a new game.
There are just too many dungeon fantasy games out there, and none of them will ever beat D&D. At most, they’ll be a valued second fiddle. On the other hard, there’s room for new games in the tradition of Harn and Runequest. I know we all like to pretend that Runequest was all about Glorantha, but I was there nerds – it’s about nasally arguing over “realism.” You can’t have true realism, but the type of verisimilitude in these designs has been missing from recent RPGs. There’s definitely a demand for it.
This one is leveled at White Wolf – with love. Back in the Old World of Darkness, every other supernatural type was born of some form of sophisticated possession, with fae souls and Tem-Akhs and all that. I think Geist (which I worked on) is the last decent implementation to be had before it’s time to say goodbye to this one. On the other hand, nobody’s done a good psychics game in a long time. Psychic powers are a tradition in occult literature, SF and some fantasy, have lots of associated myths and are even described in gameable power chunks. Many games have ancillary rules for them, but nobody’s put the spoon benders front and center in a while.
Exalted did the job well. Eberron? Well, it was a handy place to dump ideas, I guess. Dictionary of Mu marked the final degeneration from “trend” to “affectation” and finally, “masturbation.” By and large, strangeness for strangeness’ sake (mixed with pulp pastiche as part of a male-nerd thing) is getting monotonous. “It has a noble title as long as your arm! Mighty thews. Steam power. Spider vaginas!” Yeah, just shut up. Games set in a region based on the Chinese cultural sphere (places where Chinese customs, religions and written languages had a powerful influence) have never been done well. They’re either too blandly historical, even when the history is violently remixed, or you have Legend of the Five Rings which drops many worthy elements for its CCG-based setup. There needs to be something Lord of the Rings-like – a mythic-historical work that doesn’t try to sell exoticism within the millieu. Note: This is an old sketch from my personal journal. It occurred to me a while ago that those lifestyle shows really are one of the closest, non-nerd analogs to superheroics around. Thus, Fab Force: The RPG of Style! What You Need At least two Fab Force experts, one person to play the client and one for the judge. You need lifestyle magazines appropriate to each expert, magazines representing the client’s current unsatisfactory lifestyle, pencils, paper (optionally, some of this can be thick paper to mount collages) a manila envelope, scissors and glue. Lastly, you need a digital camera. Setup Fab Force is a TV show devoted to providing lifestyle makeovers to random dowdy people. Fab Force expert players should choose one area of expertise each. The client’s player picks a current goofy lifestyle as a a guy with no style — a guy in a D&D t-shirt with a combover, maybe, or somebody who never takes off his goddamn ballcap. The judge doesn’t come into play until the end of the game, but should choose a point of view. (The judge should be a casual player or even somebody who doesn’t care about your game, really. They just show up at the end.) The judge could be a spouse, a panel picked off the street, customers (if a business is involved, a la Restaurant Makeover, though I should emphasize that unlike that show, the experts should be able to succeed. The experts and client grab magazines that represent their lifestyle fields (in the client’s case, his actual lifestyle). Now they can start. Game Play Lame Phase The client creates his current lifestyle with a collage from his chosen magazines. Each element in the collage should represent something an expert can help him with. A cheeseburger represents a pedestrian approach to cuisine, for instance. The central collage should be a composite figure representing the client himself. Bitchy Phase Here, the client walks the experts through his life, his likes and dislikes and so on. This is where it’s time for the experts to tell him how lame he is. The client takes notes about the reasons why he’s lame. These need to be concrete observations, not mere insults. Each one earns the group (client and experts)a point — two points if it elicits genuine laughter — to a maximum of a single 1-2 point bonus per expert. Makeover Phase Now, the experts provide advice in order. As they do so, they map out an alternative collage. They do *not* glue the collage together — they just place it. They may not add an item without providing a justification. While this is going on the client may make a map of the collage on a separate sheet of paper to help jog his memory. He can also write down the experts’ justifications. Once the collage elements have all been placed, one of the experts takes a picture of it. Then it’s time to put all of the cutouts in a the manila envelope and shake it around, to randomize them. Presentation Phase Bring the judge in. Now it’s time for the client to try and carry off his makeover. The group decides on a scenario (a housewarming or a big date, for instance). The experts get the picture of the collage printed — and they do *not* show the client. It’s the client’s job to glue his collage together so that it resembles what the experts put together as much as possible. The experts watch but make no sign of the client’s accuracy until he fixes a cutout with glue. If the client’s right, the experts celebrate. Otherwise, they sling catty barbs at the client. We assume this is either a post-facto meeting being edited in or the experts are watching a video of the client’s misadventures. Each correctly placed piece (don’t be too much of a stickler) earns the group a point as long as the client narrates and accompanying story (he talks about cooking the recipe or doing his hair). If not, no points. If the client screws up but makes the experts laugh doing so, he gets a point anyway. At each placement, the judge marks down (without saying) whether she likes, dislikes or is neutral about a style element. If she likes something, add +1 point. If she dislikes it, remove a point *unless* she or the experts laugh — this makes her attitude effective neutral. She may play the character’s reactions, but doesn’t reveal her mark sheet. As usual, all laughter must be genuine. Evaluation Phase Once all the cutouts have been glued on, the experts reveal the photo of the pre-collage and compare it to the actual collage. Each one dresses down the client for inaccuracies according to specialty. The client can defend his mistake by coherently referring to one of the experts’ justifications. The judge decides whether or not this is total bullshit. Finally, the judge reveals the mark sheet and modifies the total points by the sum of positive, neutral and negative marks. She then gets to modify the score up or down by the number of other players (experts + client). Compare this total to the number of cutouts in the collage and express the former as a percentage of the latter. This determines the degree of success and the client’s fate. Final Marks 0% or less: A total disaster. The judge narrates some terrible consequence. The client’s date bombs, his business collapses, whatever. Here’s a quick idea for a heroic dungeon crawling game. It’s not intended to be innovative — just to play with this: The Main Idea: We all know that in a balanced level-based RPG, advancement is kind of illusory. So why not ditch it? Step 0: Get Dice and Writing Stuff We use d10s in this game. Step 1: Make a Character Okay, we’ll use Might, Agility, Magic, Perception and Toughness as traits. Split 13 points between them – minimum 1, maximum 5. Multiply your Toughness by 10 after setting that 1-5 number to get your Hit Points. If you have the highest Trait in the party you get a special ability — if you have multiple choices, you may only pick one. They are:
Step 2: Equip Your Character Split 6 points between equipment – minimum 1, maximum 3. Equipment mostly adds dice to character traits for certain rolls. Give each type of gear a specific name – it doesn’t boost all trait rolls, just the ones it applies to.
Step 3: Get Spells If you have at least Magic 3 you can pick spells — one point of spells per point of Magic. You can divide points between spells however you like. A spell acts like a piece of equipment, though it might be a strange demon, a bolt of flame, etc. Step 4: Pick Attitudes Split 3 dice between attitudes – as many or few as you like. Give each one a name. It’s a habit or other personality trait. Attitudes can help you by adding dice or screw you by taking them away. Step 5: Kick Ass Okay, you’re ready to go. Rolling Dice 7 or higher is a success. 10 is two successes. More successes wins. Breaking it out:
Use opposed rolls or a difficulty of 1 success (easy) 2 (typical) 4 (risky) or 6 (really hard). Threats and Challenges Your character never advances (though she can change) except to get a level 1 to 10. Whenever you gain a level you can rebuild your character from the ground up. Same person, new emphasis. Challenges get more difficult looking on a 1-10 scale. Let’s use monsters to demonstrate:
None of these creatures has many more traits than any other. Instead, your relative level determines how tough they are:
Stat monsters out as characters, but you can give strange ones one or more special abilities. Basically, the same stat block that represents one goblin for a level 1 character is a unit 100 goblins for a 5th level character. Kickass. Noncombat challenges similarly range from the standard to epic based on relative level, but you can ignore this if you like – ice is always just as slippery, for instance.
One of the big signs that the tabletop demographic is aging is in the way it reflexively refers to things that may have been true when those of us now drifting between 30 and 40, but aren’t true for younger people. I can think of three offhand: Nerds and Jocks and Never the Twain Shall Meet: Except that everyone uses a computer now. Gadgets are in; interfaces matter. The most popular cultural franchises are based in some form of fantasy or speculative fiction. A-List stars attend comic conventions. Roleplaying is Mysterious Minority Activity: Except that World of Warcraft is a household name. Thousands of people play fanfic RPGs using the aforementioned most popular cultural franchises. Our core relationship with fiction has changed to something nonlinear, described by continuity and facts of the setting instead of following a linear narrative. My Scene is Hateful: Except that it’s like every other scene. The Internet promotes incredible fragmentation and specialization. This is a world where people into the fetishistic sex described by one obscure fantasy author can become a community. It’s where minority forms of political discourse flourish, and people use semi-anonymity to reveal more vigorous, problematic things about themselves. If you think any of these things your mind is old; in terms of relevance to contemporary culture, it’s practically dead. But these ideas still taint most recent thinking about roleplaying. People ask how they can make roleplaying “more relevant to a mass audience” when that audience has already embraced it. They talk about getting out of the Geek ghetto when there isn’t one. They design games based on outdated ideas about story and narrative: elements where traditional roleplaying actually stands on the cutting edge. In short, our “progressive” thinking about RPGs is actually retrograde when you compare it to the 21st Century. We are wasting our time trying to appeal to the mainstream as it existed in the 80s and 90s, because we’re old. And our old friends online applaud us for it. They buy books we wrote to make RPGs more like literature as we thought about it in high school, and clones of games we actually played in high school. Even our moral-political problems carry the stink of outmoded values: sex before the rise of easily accessible kink, gender before the demographic switch in everything from readership to education, ethnicity as hard boundary instead of a point of intersection. Part of the problem is that in the Americas and Anglosphere we’re recovering from a step backwards at the top. It really was that bad, and even defensive gestures reproduced the problematic root mechanisms of dogmatism and forced dichotomies. Part of the problem is that our lifestyles have changed, especially for the online scene. We’re getting old, but we have enough privilege to become early adopters of the technologies and movements that are (ironically) making our perspectives irrelevant. There’s something kind of perverse about using these developments to re-entrench dying ideas, something that’s maybe even infantile. The issue isn’t really about making roleplaying relevant, because it is — especially in scenes that have little to do with our little corner of the activity. It’s about reinvigorating our creative lives as roleplayers by learning the root ideas behind what the real neophiles are doing and applying them to our own experience. The alternative — playing that same old tune, or engaging in a oneupmanship contest to see how much of our outdated values we can reproduce — will win us short term social and financial rewards, but also inevitably lead to a greying, inescapable niche. Let’s end this dismal sounding post with three constructive things I think you can do to become a more relevant game designer and player — and a better, happier one, too. Play What You Hate: People talk about what “works for them” and how they know their tastes, and are looking for that one game to satisfy them. You know what? Fuck that. You should be trying new games and exploring new ideas all the time. This whole “I’m grownup and don’t have to eat my broccoli” attitude is stupid and needs to die. I had serious doubts about D&D4e but I made myself play it and it’s been incredibly rewarding. These days I only draw the line at things I’d find morally objectionable, and few games are that bad. Stop Looking for Principles First: Pattern recognition is a powerful drive, and combined with social rewards it can damn you to thinking inside the box. Have the experience first. Take note of what’s happening, not the box you think it’s happening in. To take an example out of my own experience, developers who’ve worked with me know I’m skeptical of the “toolkit” trend as an Internet fad driven by cliched, you-can’t-tell-me-what-to-do gamer values — but I abandon that as soon as I’m called to work on one. Instead I playtest, bring the results back and then try to consciously reconcile it with my toolkit hate after the fact. When something works and I’ve seen it work I can’t exactly bullshit my way out of it. (I still think toolkits are overrated, by the way. Sorry.) Play to the Now: It’s fun to reminisce about the good old days and you’d be remiss not to take your own experience into play, but you have to cut reproductions of the past — even an idealized version of it — out of your diet in favour of experiencing roleplaying the way it’s happening now. This is probably the toughest one for me. I’ve done some fanfic-style games but I’m still alergic to full-on MMORPGs (though I did try EVE Online after White Wolf hooked up with CCP). Part of me — a strong part – would like another kick at the can with Mage: The Ascension, and I do like talking about it. But I ended my Ascension game as definitively as possible for a reason: It was the past and I had truly pulled the last bucket of good water from that well. The aftermath is still pretty fun, but I want to look for inspirations that are less reassuring and familiar. That means exploring new media for play, new emphases and idea that I did not make, but will help me dig a new well. These suggestions are not really about being creative. Creativity comes after. They’re devoted looking, listening, and putting yourself in some unfamiliar situations. This is hard and it’s not a full time thing. I’m running a semi-experimental game right now but I year to get back into a Big Campaign again. Maybe I will. In the meantime, I’ve got room for one more novel thing do do. I wonder what it should be? Splats (your clan, tribe, toastmaster society, etc.) are excellent tools to get players involved it the setting. Like them or not, they’ve proven that fact in play. I’ve worked with splats for a long time — they’re kind of my thing, I guess, particularly over both versions of Mage. This time around I’d like to share my ideas about them. These have naturally evolved on my end for a while and don’t necessarily represent what people think over at White Wolf|CCP, but I do think they’re reflected in successful examples. So here’s what I think makes for good splats: Good Splats Are Easy to Remember I think people underestimate this one. I hesitate to say it, but it’s one element where in many cases, the new World of Darkness doesn’t do as good a job as the old. Your splat needs a name that people feel comfortable writing and pronouncing, but that’s not so basic that it’s easy to forget. “Ventrue” is a decent one, but I think “Bone Shadows” is a bit difficult. The image it evokes is abstract but the words are simple — it’s an easy to forget combination. “Shadow Lords” doesn’t make as much sense (werewolves have feudal lords?) but everyone gets an immediate, cheesy fantasy image out of it. You’re Furry Sauron McElric, yo. Sometimes the concept conflicts with accessible naming and you have to make a tough choice. If the concept is engaging enough it can overcome a silly-sounding name (see “Toreador”). The logo’s a big deal too. Basically, I think you need a symbol somebody can sketch in his high school notebook when nobody’s looking. That promotes fan art, opens the window to future variation (see Vampire: The Masquerade vs. Dark Ages: Vampire) and makes it easy to remember. Good Splats Have Identifiable Roles — and Ways to Undermine Them You need one splat that can be the fighter guy, one for the lordly jerk, the mystic and so on, right out of the book. We often talk about character concepts before splat choice in the books, but in my experience the reality is that “Daeva Badass” is a typical starting point. Mage: The Awakening is often criticised for cleaving too closely to the idea of functional roles but when I’ve seen people play the game they tend to get into the thick of things right away. That’s not just because of some mechanical benefit, but the power of feeling that this is your place — that the setting encourages you to be That Guy. But if the splat is hyperfocused on its pickup role it’ll lack depth. All the fighter guys have their fighter meetings and talk about how great fighting is. A splat needs more to flesh out its internal culture. Mage’s Adamantine Arrow members talk about all being Spartan Samurai dudes but they have game theorists, merchants and diplomats too (and guys who can’t fight). Some of these variations come from playing with the core idea (what does “Existence is War” mean, anyway?). Others are practical social roles that allow various members of the same splat can find support for their differences. You have to strike a balance between supporting heterodoxy and avoiding vague, weak roles. If too many players come in with “He’s not your typical Elfpants” that’s a problem, because those same players will discourage strong adoption of the splat’s pickup concept. Mage: The Ascension had some excessive “He’s not your typical . . .” elements in there, and I always worked hard to try to legitimize the stereotypical character enough to keep it in play. There were lost of different Euthanatoi, but not at the expense of the Spooky Tantric Death Ninja. Good Splats Feature Ideologues and Rebels One of the flaws in the old World of Darkness books was that you’d be introduced to a splat from a true believer’s perspective. Real social groups have reformists and rebels. This was the very first big idea I had about splats and comes into my work as early as Akashic Brotherhood. You need people in there who believe that their group is full of shit, at least to some extent. “My Elfpants, right or wrong!” Nevertheless, the splat needs a strong core ideology, if one filled with internal contradictions and plenty of room for interpretation. It’s a prime motivator for players. When you combine the orthodox and heterodox you give players lots of room to create personal perspectives without making the whole thing so vague there’s nothing to commit to. Good Splats Have Parallel and Non-Parallel Benefits From a game design perspective, splats hard-code character specialties. One splat gets the stealthy guys and another gets the strong guys. This plugs into easily identifiable roles. Once again, you don’t want this to be so narrow that it feels like a class system (in the stereotypical sense — I’m not going to define “character class” in this article and yes, many implementations are mighty flexible) but you do want to softly protect character niches and provide in-game motives for members of different splats to work together. Sometimes this can hinge on a single key power. I remember that in the old Mind’s Eye Theatre, the Tremere got a lot of mileage out of a ritual that lowered effective generation because they could use it to bring elder Kindred out of torpor. Still, it feels forced to just split things based on the Fighting power or the Sneaky power. That’s why I think it’s also important to provide another set of benefits that don’t have direct parallels across all similar splats. Vampire: The Requiem does this really well through the Covenant system. Theban Sorcery and Cruac have a similar mechanical feel, but the Invictus don’t have anything like it by default — they’ve got Merit bonuses. The challenge here is to make these benefits feel equally important even when they’re hard to compare. Is your blood magic better than my ability to rezone your haven as a garbage dump? Depends. Good Splats Are Visually Engaging You need cool looking guys. I can’t underestimate this. Hell, I’d say that based on visual impressions alone Mage’s Sons of Ether were a powerful memetic influence on modern Steampunk fashion. Art is important, but I’m talking about vision. How does this guy look in your mind’s eye? Give every splat a sense of fashion. Fashion is so important for real subcultures that you can’t ignore it in functional ones. Vampire (all versions) has always been great at this thanks to having some terrific artists and graphic design, as well as a decent commitment to signature characters. I can see Solomon Birch in my head without much effort. Werewolf: The Apocalypse (especially in synergy with Rage) also did a fantastic job to help me visualize what the epitome of a splat looked like. Your character might not look like that guy, but it’s a strong jumping of point. This is just a quick reminder that Æternal Legends creator Stew Wilson has an official livejournal for the community at http://community.livejournal.com/aeternal_legend/ (remember – no “s”). Over at this post Stew is talking about future expansion for the line. We already have one out — Fight Like a Legend — and more is coming. Drop by, join and give him some feedback – and if you don’t know the game, pick it up! |
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