SETI, The Joy of Wishful Thinking

Sc-fi fans in general are big believers in ET. They pull out the Drake Equation (forgeting that the equation has little to plug into it besides made up numbers) and dream of little grey men with rather odd probing habits.

It's an attractive idea (not the probing part), and when I was young and wishful I spent some time researching the fringe areas of science. The foolishness I found there made me a skeptic of such things forever after. Oh some of them would be cool if true, but coolness doesn't make them real.

Even when they are chased after by people who should know better.

SETI being the example currently on my mind. I hold a degree in Electronic Engineering Technology (stone age stuff, early 80s), and the whole idea seemed iffy to me back when it started. The reasons are nicely summed up in this article. In short, the reason they haven't detected anything likely has nothing to do with the question of something being out there not- it was just a stupid idea fueled by wishful thinking. The physics and reality of the problem indicates that failure is nearly certain.

The neat things about stupid ideas however is that they can be really fun in game campaigns.

Greg Bear for example wrote a book with the idea that the reason SETI didn't detect anything was because ET learned it was best to be quiet- or you could end up dead. From a rpg point of view, that's a cool idea even if the book itself was rather dull.

Marvel comics ran with a very similar idea, although it started much better than it ended. A common problem especially in comics which in this day and age is basically a dying medium.

I've used quite a number of silly fringe ideas in my campaigns, because campaigns aren't made to be serious. Nothing wrong with that.

Unless people start believing them for real. The millions of dollars SETI have spent indicates to me that too many people let fantasy bleed over into reality.

So what fringe ideas have my readers used in their games?

I can be Achilles

Came across this post at one the blogs I normally read, Zack is fun even if he plays silly games.

My first thought was "this is why the OSR doesn't inspire me". Such limits on what you can do. A well designed heroic adventure game should allow for both Odysseus and Achilles. Old School to me means the search for a better game than D&D.

My second thought was, you can certainly play Achilles in those old games. As long as the party leader was Odysseus.

My third thought was, both those guys were screwed in the end. Given that, I'd rather be killed by a random arrow in a battle than by my own son*...

*In one version of the story

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.