Who to design for?

As sort of an outgrowth of last week's postings, I was reminded how many people are off designing new rpgs. Print on Demand, word processing, PDFs, etc have all made it possible for just about anyone to toss their two cents on to the growing pile of rpgs.

And there are a lot of them.

And almost all of them will fail.

That is they will never reach a wide market nor attract much in the way of significant attention. That's a given. I could go out on a limb (a very strong one IMO) and say that they *all* will fail. This is true even of internet 'famous' games like... oh let's pick FUDGE or Dogs in the Vineyards.

There are three ways I can see to avoid this fate, the first is to have D&D to die off creating an opening for a new rpg of note. The second is to dumb down the meaning of success to the point where just getting it into print counts as a win.

I'm not a big fan of the second, and while I'd like to see the first- it won't happen. D&D may slack off (as it did with 2nd edition), but someone will buy it up and it will retake the market leaving whoever took that opening looking like yesterday's news (White Wolf anyone?).

Oh, the third way...

You could be the next Mearls and basically pull a bait and switch with the 5th edition of D&D and slide your game into its place. You have to keep some of the terms, and you likely won't have a free hand. And you may kick off a new OSR, but hey. It works. That game you're working on now, a stepping stone to pad your resume for that big shot at taking the helm of D&D.

Myself, I'd rather skip all the above.

Independent game design shouldn't be an effort to make the next big thing. It shouldn't be Greg over at the Synapse Design Blog firing the fans and designing for women (just to pick on one guy as an example).

Independant game design should be for the designer's own group. A labor of love, to meet their needs. Not that of the market, not that of the theorists. A very personal goal for a handful of people you know very well.

There you will find success, and it will be success that matters.

Also I'm certain of one thing, if there is a 'next big thing'- it will come from a designer like that. The rest, well you can just tell the rest have no soul. They're too busy looking pass it.

Designing for Women- It may not work like you think

There's been a bit of back on forth on the subject of females and gaming this last week as a number of blogs tackled it from various directions.

One of the more interesting posts I came across is this one from Greg at the Synapse Design Blog. The reason it's interesting is that it's based upon some work in differences in how males and females approach games and for me that's just plain an interesting subject.

And besides, the author didn't come across as the typical crusading "this hobby treats girls badly and needs to change!" fanatic in his blog, but as someone a bit more reasonable- i.e. a designer who wants to match a design to a need.

So, Greg is going to run with this. Naturally my first thought is "is that a valid thing to do?"

That question raised two others. Let's look at them.

1. Is the core idea (i.e. Carol Gilligan's assertions) valid?

Oddly enought the Psyhology Today link didn't source its references other than dropping some names. Searching online I came up with this article about Carol Gilligan's work.

That short overview I linked above certainly has it's issues. How does "Women... consider hurting another immoral at all costs" fit in with real world behavior that includes what I'd call massive psych-warfare intended to reduce its target to emotional mush. Watching groups of girls at High School will quickly reveal that there are other motives that most certainly include 'hurting another'. Nor does my gaming experience with females indicate avoiding inflecting injury as a high level goal, they tend to be if anything even more dangerous than the male players IMO.

I think those granted the title 'feminist' often carry a mindset with too much baggage to be completely honest. Negitives tend to be downplayed to say the least.

Now that overview may have simplified things too much. And like all such things, individuals are always individuals and thus rules are made to broken. I'm not going to dig deeper into it unless I have a reason or time. But color me doubtful on the details while agreeing that there are (from ten thousand feet) differences.

However for the sake of debate, let's accept that the differences are those noted by Greg as reason for his direction in design. Everything starts as a leap of faith, and he has chosen this one as his.


2. Plan Meet Need, does this direction in game design make sense?

Here was my first thought on reading Greg's post: So, boys like rules and obey them while girls play socially and will adjust or ignore the rules to meet social goals...

...and Greg's response is to design a game with lots of social and interaction rules...

...that boys will follow and girls will adjust or ignore.


So in design, Greg is thinking like a boy and designing like a boy to meet his view of the needs of girls who will do basically what they want anyway.


Now that's rather harsh, but it's how it came across to me. And it's what my own experience indicates.




Still, I'm rather interested in what the result will be, maybe Greg has hit on something and it is possible to design to the female mindset. I'm all for letting him try. There's something to be learned either way.

Stop treating girls like they're weak

It looks to be the week for finding foolish bloggers. First we had gaming will save the world and now we have this over at Fame & Fortune.

The assumption in all this is the girls are weak. Oh that's not he said, but it's certainly what he implied. That from a market PoV they have no impact on product sales and thus the only thing being made is various 'objectification' products that only service a small part of the total market.

I call BS, on both claims.

The author of the post had no trouble presenting four popular counter examples (including one of my favorite fantasy characters) to the Buffy/Xena ones from his linked presentation. Nor did he have trouble finding an example of a woman who's into D&D while wearing plunging neckline fantasy costumes- thus nicely wreaking both sides of that point.

Further, this statement: "Offending a third of your audience to provide just about half with cheap thrills is poor design" is foolish in the extreme. Ford didn't outsell GM this year by avoiding offending people who think trucks and SUV are wrecking the planet- they did it by selling trucks and SUVs to people who wanted them.

Sales is about niches far more often than not. Niches always offend some, and appeal to others. That's life, get use to it.

If girls are an important part of this hobby (they certainly have been in my gaming life), and if they want a different type of product that what is being produced- they can make it themselves or buy it from someone who does. They don't need us to do it for them. And it's insult to women to suggest that we need to.

I'm sorry, but gaming won't save the world.

Came across this over at Game in the Brain. Seems a game designer thinks games are so wonderful that they will solve the world's problems.

Read that last again.

Someone who does X thinks X is the solution of all our problems and some others that also do X can't help themselves but agree. Doesn't that trip anyone's suspicion meter out of the box? You were issued one of those useful devices weren't you?

It would seem that one thing lots of gaming certainly does is make people naive.


Now they may have a point if all the world's problems can be resolved with easy pat answers and strats off the internet.

Or maybe life is more complex than that.

Or maybe... just maybe, teaching people that anything they think is a problem is problem that they can and should resolve is itself something of a problem. It may lead to such things like.. oh I don't know... perhaps something like faking data because the problem just *has* to be real and it just *must* be solved.



One other interesting thing about the McGonials of the world. They will quickly jump on the idea that games teach wonderful things, but I'm rather certain that they would immediately oppose the idea that they teach anything negative. So in their view Grand Theft Auto won't make little Johnny into a whore using, murdering car thief- it will however make him into a genius.

I think it's far more likely it will do neither, at least to the extent proponents would claim. There may be a case that it will (like any activity) affect certain types of thinking and/or attitude to small degrees. But such effects are likely be a mixed bag of negatives and positives.

Unless of course one does an activity too much. Like say increase a gaming generation's gaming time by a factor of seven. Then you get people dying at their game cafe.

But maybe culling the herd of people stupid enough to think gaming will save the world is the best way... of saving the world.

A day for Quotes

It's a downer of a day due to political developments that foreshadow a depressing future.

Rather than write about that, I thought I'd list some quotes that served me as inspiration when building the background for another depressing future- that from my Shadowrun Campaign, a setting which in my timeline leads to the near destruction of the world and the post-apocalyptic Morrow Project Campaign.


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"Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.", Abraham Lincoln.


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“It is ever so with the things that men begin: there is a frost in Spring or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise.”, Gimli from Lord of the Rings.


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"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.", perhaps George Santayana.


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"Wealthy Republics do not last long. Wealthy Republics that try their hand at governing subjects soon cease to be wealthy republics. Often they cease to be either.", Jerry Pournelle*

*paraphrase slightly as the orignal quote ended with "neither" rather than "either" and seems to be in context a typo.

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"For it is the doom of men that they forget.", Merlin from the move Excalibur.

Passing Comment- Death: Style vs. System

Came across this blog post and thought I'd give a quick comment here. Quick because life is busy and I have to plan and arrange for kittens that will arrive in five weeks...

The basic point that Carl is attempting to make is that system is very important in deciding if the characters live or not. The debate is with Faustusnotes who claims that play style is more important.

My comment, Faustusnotes is correct. Carl is wrong.

All the crunching of systems numbers means nothing in the comparisons Carl attempts, for the simple reason that for such crunching to be decisive- the play style must be held constant.

However Faustusnotes' entire point is that play styles aren't constant.

Carl point thusly fail to even address the question put before him, and are instead misdirection (intended or not).

Carl can claim that a given play style may require more... let's call it bias... to produce given level of deaths. But no more.

How people choose to the play the game is always more important than the game.

Random Thoughts- Cats & Sci-fi Settings

It's been a while since my last blog entry, things have been busy.

Worse, my wife tempted me with Maine Coon kittens (just before she jets off to Paris for a week's business trip). This about a year after we lost our cat of 17 years. These days there are websites such evil wives can use, they have 'kitten cams'. Most unfair.

And this has pushed out thoughts of RPGs for a bit. In the contest of Maine Coon kitten vs. RPG, the kittens win.

For those not in the know, Maine Coons aren't just cats. They're rather different and special cats, sometimes called dog-cats or the man's cat. They are large (males can reach 25 lbs), playful their entire lives and can be trained to the leash or taught to fetch if desired. They still maintain the cat's independent air, but are highly people-centric while doing so. If you've never known one, you'd find them quite the surprise.

I use them as a model for a fey breed in my fantasy games where they are something like advisors to a familyof white witches down through the generations. Because they are that cool.

Switching gears...

I've never much cared for most Sci-fi settings. Star Wars leaves me cold with its endless cycle of Jedi falling to the darkside and almost destroying everything. Star Trek was ruined for me over the years (as my last series of articles likely shows). Ringworld just didn't give me a reason to care. And so on.

On the RPG side things are even worse. Traveller bored me with it's nobles and empires (I'd rather play fantasy, with its nobles and empires) and low tech jump drive ships. The background of 40K bored me even more, with no good guys there's nothing to fight for- your era of endless war is thus pointless. Faded Suns, yawn.

I had thought that I'd be left with a re-imagined original show Star Trek as my only option.

Then I found the Federation of the Hub series by James H. Schmitz.

Think Space Opera. Think high end Psi Abilities. Think a series where things just happen without explaining everything in huge detail (thus leaving many mysteries for GM and players to fill in).

Think of a Federation that appears to be a true Federation, i.e. individual worlds can govern as they like- but may be better said to be a tyrannical librarian government. And yes, that is possible and it's oh so cool as an adventuring setting.

Just pure fun, and a mindset that I love for sci-fi campaigns. After Morrow Project runs its course, I think I know the next place we'll visit.


Schmitz wrote most of his works during the 60s and 70s, at the time his name will just about as well known as Heinlein or Asimov. But he was mostly a short story author whose works were published in the magazines like Analog. And thus he was almost forgotten as the era of the huge novel came to be.

The whole Federation of the Hub story can be had in four books. I seriously recommend them.

Telzey Amberdon
TNT: Telzey Amberdon & Trigger Argee Together
Trigger & Friends
The Hub: Dangerous Territory

The last contains the short novel The Demon Breed, which is perhaps my favorite written sci-fi story of all time.