The Endless Search for a Game System

Saw this article over on the the RPG Blog II. I respond there, but thought I'd put my reaction with just a bit of expansion here as well.

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I agree and disagree.

I agree in that once you find a system that matches your needs- just stay with it.

I agree in that if you don't find a system that matches yours needs- create your own, in whole or as house ruled modification. Then just stay with it.

A different system is only required if the needs change. Most often some changes in your existing choice can meet those new needs just fine. I haven't changed game systems in 30 years save for version updates.

I disagree however that this is possible for most people. That's because they keep picking poor systems, but they never realize it. Dissatisfaction  builds, and off they going looking for a new game.

Wasn't as bad as I feared

Only took me the weekend to redo the layout after Lulu changed their paper size and requirements. Went from 138 pages to 155 due to the change. Oh joy.

At least now I'm back to doing new stuff. Got the disease rules in. Progress once more.

And a Good Swift Kick in the Backside from Lulu

Well, this is something of a disaster.

Was trucking along and doing rather well on getting my homegrown rules together and the layout done so I can order myself a bound copy. Decided to review all my various options, candy store like you know...

...seems the template I download so long ago for letter sized books is out of date. Changed margins and all, and not in a good way. They want larger ones now. Worse, you can't get letter-size in hardback anymore (could one ever? maybe I didn't read it right back in the day). Nope, you're stuck with something smaller overall.

So the whole layout is blown. Have to redo it all. A number of the tables will have to be rebuilt with few columns. Sets me back about a month I think. Just about on the edge of giving up on it, thinking it's no longer worth the effort. Never really was truth be told, hell of a time sink just to avoid using binders.

It's really all my fault. I should have finished this back when I started it.

Sigh.

Are we too whipped to call a shovel a shovel?

Sigh.

The phrase used to be 'call a spade a spade', back when spade meant a type of shovel and before we were trained to be hypersensitive to... well everything. The old days weren't perfect, but today is if anything heading towards something worse.

This here is a case in point. This is a typical example of someone who can't bring himself to label the art in Lamentations of the Flame Princess the vile and disgusting trash that it is. Instead he has to celebrate the pushing of boundaries. The publishing of a horrid and repulsive thing in our hobby is seen as a chance to display not one's moral and artistic standards- but how open minded one is.

So here we are. A world where we basically remove an old and harmless saying from usage due to fears of racism, but we celebrate graphic art showing a woman being ripped apart from her vagina out...

Gives a whole new layer to the phrase "you've come a long way baby" doesn't it?

And I find that there are days when I hate this hobby, or rather what is becoming the face of it.

The Good and Bad of Published Settings

Did a lot of work on the rules for the new campaign over the last week. Things are starting to come together and we even rolled up characters Sunday. We'll likely be able to start play this weekend, although the work on the rules will continue in order to make the materials at least approaching complete.

While doing this, and the research that goes into it, I encountered some old friends. The advantages and disadvantages of using settings created by other people.

One big advantage is that it's easier to hook people by showing them the source material. With that comes understanding of what the feel of the campaign is going to be.

The big disadvantage is that you don't own that material, and the people who do will without exception screw it up badly.

Using the Claymore anime as the background for this campaign has proved that disadvantage once more. I was able to bypass some rather uncomfortable things in the anime and ignored some stupid things (the sidekick) easily enough. Keep all the really good stuff and was ready to go.

Then in my research I came across the Manga. Not nearly as easy to ignore some of the stuff in that. Oh it has good parts too. But I can see why plans to do a second anime season based on it were dropped.

That brings be back to another advantage of basing campaigns on published material. You can change things and do them better.

This Week I"m Enjoying Working on My Rules

More prep work is going into our new campaign than I've done in a long time. This is due to our selecting Age of Heroes (a home grown set of rules) for it. Much of that is clean up, as I insisted that I get our notes and draft rules into shape so I can toss it up on something like Lulu and get myself a hardback copy of the (core) rules. I'm done with binders, it's time to have a real book.

The other part is doing the campaign supplement. Age of Heroes is a game first, but still a rather strong simulation second. It was originally created for Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Prydain style gaming. That's a long way from Claymore. So it needs significant rule additions to manage that.

What has been gratifying is the fact that no rule additions have been needed. Back when I did a test for using these rules for Star Wars, I found that they were far more adaptable than I would have given them credit for. Right now I'm trying to work out the core mechanical concept for the setting- Yoki.


So far things are going well, and everyone is looking forward to the first play test of the supplement. Currently it looks like we can do the first of those this weekend.

Are MMORPGs going the way of PnP?

I've been looking to replace the MMORPG I've been playing for the last four years or so. Typical reasons, the game is moving away from the play style it started with. The people in charge move on, new goals appear and core concepts change. It's the way of things, when it happens in Pen and Paper you just don't buy the new edition and keep playing. But that isn't possible with an MMORPG, so you find a new game.

MMORPG game design (and PnP too for that matter) has effectively been stagnant for years now. Modified D&D style combat with rare (and rather unsuccessful) exception. And that looks to continue. The online world never experienced the explosion of different approaches that was attempted in the 80s. And given the costs of development and marketing for even a small attempt- likely never will.

But while the core game play remains very familar, they are playing with stuff around the edges.

I've been watching three games in development with an eye towards one of them being my next waste of time: Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, and The Secret World. All these talk about radical changes in game play- they lie. The new stuff from that point of view is little but minor changes or additions.

What is new is the focus on Story. The first two promise individual and personal storylines. Frankly, I think that's a lie too. It's really just a choice between whatever handful of character arcs *they* allow us. In the case of the Old Republic, it's even worst than that- as your storyline choices may not even be yours when in a group, but instead is owned by a random member of your party.

But still, this is quite new for the MMORPG scene. The Secret World doesn't promise an individual storyline, but does promise mysteries and investigation arcs into the storyline of the world and your place in it. Not individual, but still a major feature of the setting.

After more than a decade of playing D&D, it seems the MMORPG world is now ready to try World of Darkness. Let's hope they do a better job than White Wolf did.

The Second Issue of the International Journal of Roleplaying

Well, I almost thought I wouldn't see it, after all it's been over two years since the first issue. But here we have it. This is something of a theory blog, so of course this is of interest.

The International Journal of Roleplaying is... might be best just to reference their website. My understanding was that it is a place to collect RPG theory and thought with a bit of peer review and the like. Not as exclusive to academia as some journals, but more than just a blog like... oh... this place.

Besides, I was at one point invited to write something for this Journal. Heaven knows what, I'm just a hobbyist with a few thoughts about game design. Not an academic with a ton of letters after my name (well, there are letters there if I wanted to show them- but I don't consider them impressive or related to game design).

So I downloaded the 71 page PDF to see what they had. Here are the titles of the included articles:

• Defining Role-Playing Games as Language-Games
• Playing House in a World of Night: Discursive Trajectories of Masculinity in a Tabletop Role-Playing Game
• Immersion as a Prerequisite of the Didactical Potential of Role-Playing
• Stereotypes and Individual Differences in Role-playing Games
• Sadomasochist Role-Playing as Live-Action Role-Playing: A Trait-Descriptive Analysis

I don't quite know what to say.

On one hand, some of this (after stripping away the fancy language) is the type of stuff you see all the time online in RPG forums. Heck, they even note those same forums as references. It's just, well fancied up and made more colorful.

On the other, I don't recall ever trying to do a Trait-Descriptive Analysis of Sadomasochist Role-Playing: be it live or dead. Although now that someone has, I do wish a bit more for the release of death.

I'm sure those are all interesting subjects, to the authors and likely others. Eye opening to some even. So I'm really not calling their usefulness or relevance into question here. Nor even the IJoR itself, it is after all the sum of what articles were submitted. They have a rather open policy if anyone thinks they can do better- they are invited to try.

No, what I find interesting here is that these were the articles submitted and approved. And I wonder what it tells us of the hobby as a whole. Or maybe not the hobby really, but rather how the hobby is seen in the type of circle that would write for and  publish the journal.

I don't think I like the picture.