• Distribute a retro cyberpunk RPG this way.
• You’d get an artist to gussy up the hard drive to look like some menacing bit of futuristic technology according to 80s design aesthetics. I’m thinking of early Walkmans with chunky, battered chrome, maybe with an LED readout — actually, especially with an LED readout. I’d probably keep some of the drive’s steel around just because hard drives look agelessly rugged and cool by themselves.
• The game would be written in a user-editable web format (maybe an offline WordPress installation and crosslinked wiki) with the option to print a version or see it in PDF.
• It would of course be graphically rich, with all kinds of art I can’t afford, but it would also include a bunch of tools such as a dice roller, a character creator and sheet, maps and so forth. Of course, if I’m indulging a fantasy maybe an engine for graphical netrunning that automatically implemented skills.
• The offline web format provides the means to port it online as well. Perhaps a hosted chat system should be thrown in there too. Ideally, you should be able to just move the whole thing to a server with minimal tweaking.
• Not many ideas systemwise. It would have a light setting, perhaps with an annex about how to “modernize” it for those who want cell phones, more than three megabytes of hot RAM in the Hitachi, and posthuman pretensions, though I think gripes about the aging tech kind of miss the point.
• It would only be available via hard drive — maybe in cheap old 6GB drives (I was looking through my old Quantum 6GB drive from 1998 when the idea hit me, and looked them up – 5 bucks each on EBay for good ones, 99 cents for maybe-dodgy ones).
• The super crazy and impractical option would be to integrate the game into a dedicated operating system, such as a build of Chromium OS. You would “boot to RPG” when it’s time to play. Chromium is designed to primarily boot from SSD if I’m not mistaken, though, so it’s not my first choice. The *click* *whirr* of battered steel is just too cool.
• . . . and the craziest option of all would be to only ship the game in full computer form — probably an ASUS Keyboard PC because it has the cyberdeck form factor. It would need some case modding to make it look right. Yeah, not gonna happen. But if you’re dreaming, may as well dream big . . .
• There would be some kind of home site for each drive/game to talk to and share resources with.
• Of course, you’d make the game open source, though you’d sell the physical artifact for some outrageous price to cover the costs. In my fantasy I saw one option of using this format to release an official Cyberspace Trilogy RPG (it’s a fantasy, after all) with proceeds going to charity (because of course this would convince William Gibson’s representation to not charge me any money! — and because I am actually considering ideas for a permanent RPG for charity right now) via the inflated price of selling an RPG in an artisan-modified hard drive.

I could actually do 90% of this (not get the license, do the art or do some of the cooler UI mods) if I had a spare self lying around that wasn’t busy, or somebody to pay me a truckload of money to drop everything I’m doing. Maybe a wealthy patron can order it done or a network of nerds can work on it.

Of course, it’s more doable once you scale back expectations, but once you commit to the hard drive format I think you’d need to throw something pretty damned special under the hood.

So what happened?

The Rise of the Practical Tablet Form Factor: Tablets are nothing new but tablets that don’t suck? That’s 2010. Sensitive resistive and inexpensive capacitive touchscreens with multitouch combined with software that works for a change (Windows 7, Android 2.0 to 2.1) made it possible to finally release practical general purpose tablets — previously, this form factor was mostly limited to specialized industries. Virtually every major company presented a tablet. Many were obvious responses to Apple’s rumoured iSlate, but recent patent applications from Apple indicate that the iSlate may end up being released with some dodgy mobile subsidy a la the iPhone, and might feature limitations similar to the ones that prompt people to jailbreak their iPhones. Basically, you want alternatives.

Tablets are important because they let players and GMs use machines at the table without the antisocial barrier of a screen and with natural game table actions such as written notes, page turning and more. Would a pure tablet suit gamers best? I’m not sure about that. HP did showcase an inexpensive convertible capacitive multitouch netbook however, meeting 75% of my requirements for an good next gen tabletop gaming machine.

Lots of E-Readers — Crappy, Crappy E-Readers: It’s easy to look at the abundance of e-readers at CES and conclude that they’ll be the best way for tabletop roleplayers to interact with books. That’s confusing popularity for practicality. CES’ ready for market e-readers don’t suit RPGs graphics-intensive qualities or gamers’ need for supplemental utilities such as character creators and dice rollers. They’ll get better, but will tablets get better first? I think they probably will, and e-readers may end up being an intermediate device.

Pixel Qi (and Maybe Mirasol): As Gizmodo put it: E-ink is dead. I’ve been watching Pixel Qi for a while. The technology lets you switch from a full colour backlit LCD screen to a non-backlit, power saving reader mode just by turning a dial. In reader mode you can still access normal applications and even watch video, though the colour is washed out. Screen response is far faster than e-ink. But the real killer behind the technology is that as a form of mature LCD technology it’s ready for mass production using the current LCD manufacturing infrastructure.

The only thing with a hope in hell of beating Pixel Qi is Qualcomm’s Mirasol display technology. It doesn’t piggyback on standard LCD but it does do colour and video (even 1080p HD) and it’s supposedly going to be installed in next gen Kindles. Basically, if you’re thinking of buying a Kindle for gaming (not standard reading, where the current versions work fine) don’t bother until the model with Mirasol and prepaid 4G shows up. Even then, you’ll want a mature app selection for any such e-reader to match a tablet-form general purpose machine with Pixel Qi installed. Otherwise, you’ll get the books, but not the tools (dice, campaign management) that really make going electronic worthwhile.

Androids in the Cloud: After a few experiments in the Chinese market, Android jumped into netbooks and tablets. This is probably a stopgap, as we all know the Chrome OS is coming (and Google has said it may eventually merge Android and Chrome) but it demonstrates that once again, tech companies want us to try (quasi) thin client computing. Unlike past initiatives, it looks like this will actually work because we can do pretty much anything remotely now. Companies should definitely think about serving tabletop RPGs this way, though it may only be viable for the top of the market.

Slow but Graphical – NVIDIA Tegra and Mobile Flash: One of the most interesting trends to come out of CES is stupid machines — that is, mobile-ish devices that run more slowly than traditional desktops and laptops but work just fine for the Web. The only problems with this approach were that ultramobile devices (smartphones and MIDs) struggled with video and couldn’t read Flash (Youtube on current devices uses an emulation script, not straight Flash video). The NVIDIA Tegra chip is set to augment devices to the point of playing streaming HD video and the Flash problem has been fixed for many devices. That means 2010 is the right to to roll out all of those funky graphical RPG applications like virtual tabletops.

Let Me Tell You What to Do

How should you respond to these developments? Here’s what I think:

Gamers: Buy a capacitive multitouch convertible tablet that uses Pixel Qi display technology. This will give you a flexible device that doesn’t interfere with face to face gaming, allows easy reading and saves power. They aren’t available yet but they should be soon. Find web apps that you can use with a glance and swipe. Unless you have money to spare, don’t buy a dedicated ebook reader for gaming purposes alone. The technology isn’t good enough yet but it’s okay for conventional books.

Game Companies: Develop touch-friendly web applications and get back to graphically ambitious tools such as the virtual tabletop. Look at how magazines are developing new content delivery methods for the iSlate and other tablets. Try developing games in the cloud and get past the idea that a pretended book is the best way to present content electronically.

Bureau Announcer: This is a thought construct from your Bureau of Records. To receive a balanced, accurate dream of the following report please clear your mind. Thought transmission will commence in 10 seconds.

Bureau Anchor Valdyn Trad emerges from the clouds. His silver robes, finely chiselled, ochre face and double-irised green eyes radiate convey concern, wisdom and trustworthiness.

Valdyn Trad: Galactic harmony suffered a grave challenge today when the pirate Bartholomew Deth’s so-called “Black Fleet” jumped into Tuldekath and severely damaged its orbital defences. Military sources indicate that his fleet consists of 63 heavily modified Second War dreadnoughts, 38 of which were sent for the assault.

You are in the observation deck of an Archonate transport. You slip and catch yourself as the vessel lurches wildly to avoid a golden bolt from a huge basalt vessel. Fade out to clouds and through to the office of General Than. You stand before her.

General Than: They took us by surprise. One moment, it’s Sovereignty Day. The next, disaster – but we rallied to prevent an even worse crisis.  We lost so much in that instant that if we hadn’t responded, Tuldekath would be ashes and stone, nothing more.

The General and her office fade into the bridge of an emergency response ship, soul detection spires extended. Valdyn Trad beside you, right behind the captain.

Valdyn Trad: The pirates’ primary target was the cruise ship Serendipity, where Speaker Alice Chant was attending a charity gala. With orbital defences neutralized, Black Fleet marauders looted the ship at their leisure and scuttled it. The Bureau has confirmed that Deth personally assassinated Speaker Chant before binding her to a think disk.

According to reports, defence fleet fragments appeared to be falling stars from Vindicun City’s ground level. Emergency personnel say the number of ghosts in orbit make it unlikely that the Black Fleet took hostages.

Deth spared one solider to deliver a message via think disk. Forensic examination confirms that the disk is powered by Speaker Chant’s soul.

Bureau Announcer: The following transmission been altered for content.

Bartholomew Deth wipes his blade with the hem of his cloak. A chill wind roars: air coursing through the shattered crystal of the Serendipity’s recreational deck.

Bartholomew Deth: Hail, sheep of Roaa, cowards. You’re fit for domination by a superior force: a predator to thin your ranks and teach you to adapt or abide in misery. I will grant you that which you so richly deserve. Know this: No star can hide you. No army can protect you. No matter what you do or where you go, I shall sup upon your suffering.

The image dissolves into blue clouds and the Bureau sigil.

Bureau Announcer: End transmission. Alteration of this thought construct is a major infraction of Archonate Law. Please report any discrepancies to the nearest Galactic Security office.

*   *   *

I admit it: I’ve been tardy posting progress updates on Chris Challice’s Knights of the Hidden Sun. I actually finished developing Chapter One at the end of October. Chapter One is the history and current affairs section. Chris did some fantastic work here that underlines one of the challenges of developing setting-focused material: taking a cool idea where it demands to go.

In KotHS, people on civilized worlds use strand stones to fully immerse themselves in runecrafted media. This network of dreams allows people to fully experience events on other worlds (subject to editing, of course). Consequently, literacy is uncommon except among the highly educated. You don’t need it to dream, and most other interactions only require spoken words and images.

Chris included several examples of these thought transmissions, so my job was to reconcile them with established facts, (literacy is uncommon) highlight their role as forms of popular media and make it feel like these dreams flow right into your mind. That’s why I expanded the text into a script style, with imagery to immerse the reader in each transmission.

Chris also wrote most of the chapter from an in-universe perspective. I love this technique because GMs can take material right from the book to use as-is. I developed this chapter to cleave to that perspective whenever possible. Chapter Two will have a similar focus as we move into descriptions of daily life, important people and the other information players need to feel like they live in Roaa.

RPG E-Book Interface

This is probably a Flash application. You can resize, minimize or dismiss each pane in the interface above. The book screen is actually the second screen you’d get after opening up the game, after going to your library from the start screen (and seeing options to click through to campaign management, communities and play tools), though you’d be able to bypass that if you want.

I can visualize a lot of options, and a real danger in giving them near-equal standing that destroys the benefits of a minimalist interface. Funneling people to the most common functions without making it a total pain to go somewhere else is the challenge, and would require some experimentation to get right.

Let’s take it pane by pane:

Book Media Pane: Your book’s images appear here. They fade in when you hit an appropriate part of the text. Additional media plays here too. You can set images to appear in the text body instead, or link media to particular sections, so that clicking on them summons them to the media pane. If you want pure text, just dismiss the pane. Layout/design may configure the pane to automatically resize based on certain cues, to maintain its functionality while taking advantage of the aesthetics of traditional layout. You can also break out of the book completely to add media from your own library, that of the community, or any other mashable media object.

Book Text Pane: The game text goes here. You can select page by page layout, but the default is continuous scrolling, though not in the same sense as a big browser window. It may or may not have embedded media depending on the book and your preferences. The navigation pane makes it easily to find the content you want, but the text itself includes hyperlinks to other relevant sections, tutorials/FAQs, a as developer comments and community content (one touch brings up options and two goes to your default). You can also add your own comments in text regions to build in house rules.

Book Navigation Pane: The basic options here let you tab between text and gallery-style media navigation. In text navigation, the pane lists your current “page” (scrolling spot), chapter and heading, and lets you either navigate back and forth in each category, or pick from a pop up or drop down list. You can also perform a text-based search here. This sticks to the book by default but you can set it to search the entire game-as-service.

Tool and Community Tabs: Your tabs illustrate a major concept: Your book is never just your book, but one emphasis in the resource cloud. You really only need two tabs here because these can “rotate” through a list of options, including play tools like a dice roller, community forums and your campaign notes.

I’ve been aware of what was coming for a while and suspected it since 2008, when I heard some serious shifting of the tabletop release schedule, ranging from the EVE RPG being shelved to some other developments which were leaked to the tabletop gamer public, but as I found the rest out in confidence I’m not going to repeat them here.

Can I tell you exactly what’s going on? This is difficult as there are some things I know which I think give me a somewhat informed opinion, but which even couching in weasel words would make for a breach of ethics. But I can use it as a way to comment on trends I think apply to the situation and are relevant to a wider audience.

Tabletop RPG Producers Are the Best Open-Ended IP Developers in the World

Is this a hubris-ridden statement? Maybe — but it ain’t braggin’ if it’s true. There are multiple occasions where RPGs have had a drastically positive influence on intellectual properties. Star Wars is the best known example. As an open-ended property, Star Wars essentially owes its chops to West End Games, which managed the thing while it lay fallow and turned what was a closed, small story into a possibility-laden narrative field. Oh, and you know how Enterprise turned from a lousy series into something passable by the end? You can in part thank Paramount sending an intern to the Merril Collection to photocopy its Trek RPG archives. They didn’t keep them around at Paramount.

(That last bit of info comes from the collection’s curator, by the way, when I toured with Justin Mohareb a while back.)

Also, about ARGs? You’re welcome.

Now aside from these examples (which I’m sure will spark their own special nerd war) this particular skillset has managed to earn me a fair chunk of change for clients outside the tabletop gaming field. Fans tend to believe that this kind of work is at its best when done by the IP management team with the most money. These fans are wrong.

Unfortunately, well-heeled IP management teams tend to believe this too — and so do tabletop RPG developers who would really like to have as much money and prestige as folks in mainstream media and games. So with the exception of some visionaries, this kind of thing isn’t well known. On the Big IP side you get closed concepts without backbones. (Terminator, anyone? Yes, I am really saying that a Justin Achilli or Matt Forbeck could make it a bajillion more dollars.) On the RPG side you get creators learning the wrong lessons because they mistake a fat wad of cash for an applicable creative style.

(This is one reason why licensed games often under-perform. Game designers and developers are at the mercy of people who really do know less about how to transform their IP into an enduring success than they do.)

What does this mean vis a vis CCP? They’re pretty smart guys who seem to know the kind of talent they acquired. Do they know how to fit it into their own culture? The folks who were on the White Wolf side seem to be doing okay and I trust them. But this is a fragile situation. When you’re trying to show how a process that moves thousands of copies is legitimate in a culture used to a few orders of magnitude more, you have to be really goddamn convincing. And if you do convince them, why would they want you earning them beer and toilet paper money from tabletop RPGs? Even if you win, tabletop gaming doesn’t.

Converged, Mashable, Hackable Content — and Confusion

Think of DDI. It sucks — and it looks successful. It’s an underwhelming set of tools and resources but it still meets a need. We feel the need because familiar technology has primed us to do so. We’re reaching a convergence point right now where cheap ebook readers, mobile applications, netbooks and PoD technology are poised to radically change tabletop gaming. I currently have the rules for all of my go-to games on a tiny touchscreen MID that cost 150 bucks. Want a book? High quality PoD is simple and cheap; OneBookShelf nearly has the option ready for its merchants. It’s already easy to hack together exactly the game book you want, use it in multiple forms and share it if you’re an early adopter of the necessary tech. By 2011-2012 a physical RPG book may well be an affectation and right now, it’s only a marginal convenience.

(And let’s not forget about piracy. It matters. The tabletop RPG business isn’t the music business, folks, and it’s not the work of Cory Doctorow either.)

Here’s the rub: Nobody really knows what this means yet. My feeling isn’t that this isn’t a new way to play tabletop games but a new type of game — a “third way” of gaming that isn’t a managed electronic property or traditional RPGs, but draws a lot from self-organized social networking — something that White Wolf fandom adopted early.

(You know those chat games everybody craps on? Rough and tumble stuff like that is called “innovation.”)

The community is primed for a new type of game, and letting loose the reins on fans will help CCP understand what that is as long as management doesn’t listen to attractive, high level prognostication that tries to force it all from the top down. That’s always that danger when there’s a big difference in the monetized accomplishments of one group (CCP) compared to another (the nerds running a zillion chat games and fandom RPs).

And if you can’t get into this new game there’s always PDF and PoD. With piracy rampant, CCP probably has to emphasize the convenience of their own option by building better fulfillment and exerting some fearsome downward pressure on pricing. The price of an OBS-hosted game is already approaching bottom-tier smartphone app levels and CCP already has plenty of content in the system. Adding new content that lacks additional features isn’t cost effective unless it exploits fan contributions (always risky) or uses a new scheme to draw them into the sales funnel gracefully.

I don’t think anybody really knows what the next step is here, but let’s make one thing clear: LARPing with an iPhone or Droid isn’t going to bring back the earthshaking Mind’s Eye Theatre hordes of the 90s any more than a slide rule App is going to replace your calculator App. But is CCP going to give it a serious shot? Making money off of this sort of thing isn’t easy, and social media-based schemes are vulnerable to fads and fan refusal to participate in the moneymaking side. (Most Facebook ads and apps have a shitty most desired action rate, for example). Plus, some successes are bad example from a creative point of view, a la Mafia Wars.

Come on: We all know Mafia Wars blows. But it sure makes bank.

Ehm-Ehm-Oh

Yeah, a lot if it probably is about that — after all, it’s probably coming next year. The question is whether CCP will use its assets properly, or kill off what made White Wolf’s in-house style special. This is not to say the rest of CCP should just learn, since from what I’ve read, the tabletop staff seems to be get real inspiration out of their current roles.

The Unsolicited Advice

What do I think CCP should do? Aside from finding some excuse to pay me significant sums (which I am qualified to receive — email me!) I think they should stick to some form of traditional gaming as a form of rapid IP prototyping. Tabletop RPG design is an ideal technology for developing and testing intellectual property with a minimal budget in a short time frame. It’s inherently social and provides a way for quick, meaningful feedback. Plus, you’ll build fans and anticipation cheaply, and might even get a new idea or two about game design.

But about that feedback: Let’s filter the online RPG community. If we map by fan/non-fan and player/non-player we get a nice set of quadrants we can use to figure out what matters. I can’t help but suspect that the New World of Darkness reacted to the wrong quadrants — guys who want to fantasize about certain structures in games (5×5 splatitude!) instead of having a vivid participatory experience. We all know that there are very vocal folks out there whose opinions don’t really have bottom-line relevance. You want to make retired gamers happy, but you want to see what compels people to play more. On the fan/non-fan axis . . . that’s tricky. Some fandoms are toxic and closed, but some are open, and draw people from the non-fan category. The boundary between the two types isn’t fixed. Open fans identify with closed fans. The Games Workshop approach is to fire fans likely be in the closed category by demographic (defined as “boys with hair where there wasn’t hair before”). Use RPGs to fine tune an IP for an open fandom, but see if you can grab the odd grognard.

I’m not saying this as a stuck in the mud tabletop guy. I love that medium, but I’m working on my third electronic games/media project now and it’s awesome. There are substantial differences in presentation and practical role. Still, I think the tabletop (or wired post-tabletop) medium can enrich every stratum of IP development. Use it intelligently, respect its assets and keep its budget sane, and it won’t steer you wrong.

Those of who’ve been following my thoughts on RPGs know that I think that online roleplaying represent an important “parallel” hobby. People are taking roleplaying and running with it in directions that didn’t really exist before because of the advantages of the online medium. Let’s go over these:

Avatar Embodiment: Though it’s romantic to think about the importance of raw imagination, the ability to completely disconnect your character’s appearance and style from yourself is a huge advantage to those who want it. In chat games this began with the “textual avatar:” a block of descriptive text. With the advent of easy image uploading and web design we’ve moved to self-made graphical avatars. Combined, these two methods create a powerful vision of the character. Not only that, it’s easy to refer back to, where verbal description can twist and change over time in people’s imaginations.

Distant Intimacy: This sounds contradictory, but isn’t. With the strong player/character disconnect, right down to physical location and OOC socializing, there’s a much braver approach to certain themes: sexuality, characters’ personal lives and so on. In the White Wolf chats, this struck me petty strongly, especially when settings designed to support “safer” play sometimes acted against the interests of players exploring these themes. This became apparent after being involved in a scene where a character gave birth. There was a *lot* of handwaving past the setting to make this possible.

Now you do get some cheesy and objectionable things coming out of this, as well as fringe elements like cybersex. But these aren’t flaws, but examples of what the process can support. You can have dumb things in any game, but you can’t have *these* dumb things happen as easily outside of online play, and these dumb things are aspects of things that can be used to construct powerful scenes.

Fluid/Negotiated Spaces: Online play usually falls into a bunch of forums/channels which are easily conceived of as “rooms” — but they don’t have set *spaces*. A room can be a vague physical location, a theme or a class of spaces. Players enter these rough templates and make them their own. The room is the basis for communication, so it always has *some* thing to direct play, even if it’s just the pubs of early Usenet-based play.

Parallel Interaction: Related to this are tools that provide multiple contexts within the same space. It’s easy to label OOC conversations and even take them to a parallel space, allowing people to interact on multiple levels explicitly instead of interrupting. Parallel conversations are extremely useful, especially when it comes to clear communications about scene objectives.

You can also use this to easily provide information on multiple “meta” levels by, for example, posting interior thoughts. This is a matter of choice. Back when I played on other chats I had a “play hygiene” rule where I *never* made interior thoughts exterior, but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t benefit from people who didn’t follow that rule.

Next: How we harness these benefits in the Venice Chronicles and how we wanted to go to the next step and allow uses to define their own level of commitment to roleplaying.

Mob United Media has completed the first stage of content creation and development for Inter-Canel’s Venice Chronicles: the first application to integrate roleplaying and social networking.

Our story is set in a continuous Masquerade, incorporating inspiration from the classic La Serenissima period, when Venice was the de facto center of an empire. You portray members of one of the city’s seven ruling families, competing for power and influence over the night. And behind the masks and plots, the mysterious force of Fortuna gives rise to strange events and unnatural abilities.

Interact with story content on many levels. Live entertainers – professional actors – portray major characters. Users can delve deep into the story by interacting with them, even earning Venetian Credits (the Venice Chronicles currency) when they successfully uncover clues and add their own stories to the ongoing narrative. Videos, images and hidden web pages all reveal Venice’s secrets. Plot with other nobles or investigate the clues and fragments provided.

The Venice Chronicles contains all the features of a fully integrated social networking application, including blogs, image hosting, webcams, conferencing, chat features, friend listing tools, VOIP and advanced functions like cross-platform SMS and true telephony. All of it is bound into a converged, user friendly interface. Use the service to explore the story, use it as straightforward social network, or do something in-between. The Venice Chronicles supports users doing what they want to do – not what a GM or administrator thinks they should do.

The Venice Chronicles begins with an open Beta. Grow with us as we unlock the potential of the service. Register your own account or try one of three sample profiles at: http://www.venicechronicles.com.