Greg Sanders

Blood on the Clocktower Review

The town storyteller has been found dead in this twist on social deduction games. Use your powers to root out the identity of the demon or hide your villainy. Even if your character dies you can still talk and retain one last vote as a ghost.

Yesterday was my first time playing Blood on the Clocktower, all four times as the game’s storyteller. This party game works similar to Werewolf or Mafia. In those two games there are alternating day and night turns: a small evil team secretly chooses a player’s characters to die at night, and during the day all the players vote to execute a player’s character they think is on the evil team.

Turning to Blood on the Clocktower specifically, the good team must kill the demon that leads the evil team to win. As in many of these games each player has a hidden role, in addition to being good or evil, that may grant helpful powers or unhelpful abilities.For example, the Empath knows the number of adjacent evil characters, while the Drunk’s player believes they have a different role but is in actuality powerless and being passed misinformation.

The storyteller is like a gamemaster in RPGs and is a key differentiator for Blood on the Clocktower from other social deduction games. They are empowered to shape the scenario to maximize in-character drama and out of character fun. So for example, the aforementioned Drunk player might have drawn the token for the Inspector and believe they know one of two players has the role of a specific evil minion. But the Storyteller is operating with full information and instead points to two innocent players chosen to seed an interesting conflict.

Another key change to the game is that players with dead characters retain the ability to speak in the game and hold a single last vote they can cast from beyond the grave. I think this is a pretty good fix to the classic problem of player elimination, because saving your vote for a pivotal decision could turn the tide and win the day for good or evil.

We played four games. The first two had 11-12 players and ended in climatic last days before team evil clinched the victory by reducing the number of living characters to two. The third and fourth games had 8 players and both had victories by the good side, once with a clever deduction by the Slayer who used a once per game ability to eliminate the demon and then once with good taking a fairly early lead and rolling on to victory. There was also some first day weirdness. I made a few rule mistakes with thankfully minor consequences as well as a few judgments that I regret because, while they complied with the rules, they were not the most fun choices.

On the balance, the game lived up to the hype for me. My mistakes aside, most people had fun, and I greatly preferred it to other social deduction games I’ve played. Being the storyteller was a different experience than playing, but came with the delightful dramatic irony of knowing who is lying and the being able to partially see through their tactics. The game also provides a fair amount of guidance on how the storyteller should use both the rules and social engineering to increase the odds that a good time will be had by all and avoid the bullying or other unpleasant manipulative tactics that social deduction games can inadvertently encourage. I specifically liked the traveler roles, which can be added for a late arriving player or be given to a player that may need to leave early without disrupting the game.

My pleasure comes with a few caveats:

Review: Journey

Journey, by thatgamecompany, has already been well considered by adoring critics, but we wanted to briefly interrupt our travelogue to give our impressions. I played it for the first time on Saturday and had a chance to watch Kate play last year. We both loved it. One playthrough is about the length of a film and the name is quite accurate; the game is a pilgrimage through wondrous and at times frightening lands towards the glowing mountaintop on the horizon. There are challenges to unravel, secrets to find, and threats to avoid. However, they are all minimalistic to focus on the core themes of the game and make it accessible even to those often neglected by high profile video game releases.

So does it even qualify as a game? Yes, for two reasons. First, Michael Abbott argues that the mechanics serve the aesthetic and help the player achieve flow, a meditative sort of enjoyment that videogames are well-suited to deliver. In addition, on a less theoretical level as Jason Killingworth discussed the jumping is just delightful.

“Psychology has proven that the behavior of our physical body directly impacts our emotional state. Test subjects who were tricked into arranging their facial muscles in the shape of a smile were more likely to claim to find a cartoon amusing. In the same way, a game that effectively imparts a sense of physically lifting off the ground will engender in the player a sympathetic emotional response of uplift and inspiration. Journey’s leap has a frolicking grace to it. Not only do you lift into the air, but your character will occasionally even twirl playfully like a sea otter before drifting back to earth. You may even grin while doing it.”

Going into a little more detail, your character can make small jumps just by navigating the world, but with the power of their elongating scarf or the help of the various friendly fabric creatures that inhabit this stricken land, you can for a time bound into the air. Your ability to do this is limited by geography and the charge on your scarf, but in either case is readily charged by visiting with the wildlife or spending time close to your traveling companion. In this way, the leaping is moderated but unlike power pellets or a time-based recharge, the way to replenish the power ties you closer to the world and your companions.

The companions are where the real wonder of the game comes in. After the first stage, you will often be paired with another player, elsewhere on the internet, but given only the most rudimentary means of communication. Perhaps surprisingly, this results in interaction that is entirely different than the hostility that too often defines online interaction. This was entirely intentional. Jenova Chen, one of the designers, discussed his influences and motivations with Simon Parker of Eurogamer.

"I believe that there are only three ways to create valuable games for adults. You can do it intellectually, whereby the work reveals a new perspective about the world that you have not seen before. The closest thing I can see to this is Portal. The second way is emotionally: touching someone. You can touch kids emotionally very easily, but it's far harder to touch adults because they are so jaded.

"The only way you can touch an adult is by creating something especially relevant to their lives, or by creating something that is so authentic that it becomes empowering. In order to reach those heights you have to reach catharsis. So that after the strong emotion the adult can begin to reflect on his own, start to find meaning in his own life. That's how I can see I can make games for people around me. The third and final way is by creating a social environment where the intellectual or emotional stimulation could happen from other people. Those are the only three ways."

Earlier in the piece, he noted that that third piece is often challenging because most multiplayer videogames are about killing one another. It’s well worth reading the entire piece, about how they choose to take out many of the puzzles, elaborate interactions, and even collision detection while working to reinforce the loneliness of the places.

And it works. Scott Juster discussed how this changed his outlook to fellow players. So many of the discussions of Journey focus on what happened with their companions, be it Jamie Love’s and Brendan Keogh’s reviews or the collection at Medium Difficulty and the Journey Stories Tumblr.

We shall post a discussion of our own Journeys on a future night.

Image credit: Promotional screenshot from thatgamecompany.

Quick Review: Hamlet's Hit Points

Hamlet's Hit Points by Robin Laws is a book that proposes a system for analyzing fictional works as if they were story-oriented role-playing games. The core system is breaking the story down into beats which involve procedural and dramatic ups and downs for the protagonists. There's more breadth than that summary implies, but on the whole it's a fairly simple system and along with the commentary is definitely inspirational. The phrase 'hit points is more there for alliteration, the system does not examine any such values for characters but instead looks at the ebb and flow of their fortunes.

Are you interested in the theory of RPGs? If so, do you think of the system as primarily a conflict resolution mechanism in a cooperative game? Are you unsatisfied with your ability to emulate some of your favorite stories using present tools and want to understand the why (if not necessarily the how)? Then I'd say buy Hamlet's Hit Points. It's a fairly swift read, available in print or a variety of electronic forms, and a fairly unique form of criticism to boot.

For more, including applicability to running RPGs, check out the Hamlet's Hit Points entry on the Inherent in the System wiki.

[Updated: Grammar fixes.]

Deadly Premonitions: Horror Game Critique

Deadly Premonitions is a trailblazer. The genre is a new medley: open-world horror. I'd say the medium was No More Heroes driving and Laura Bow (or Sleep No More) adventure games voyeurism on a bed of a Shenmue style of world. The feel was David Lynchian, I think; I'm not actually a big David Lynch fan. I saw Inland Empire with friends for much the same reason I played this game and I'm glad I did but I haven't felt any desire to repeat the experience.

So why play the game? Well, it's more fun than the one David Lynch film I've seen. That doesn't compel you? Well try this on for size:

So who should play this game (or more likely wait until March 2013 to play the director's cut)?

 

Extra Lives by Tom Bissell: Review

Tom Bissell's recent post on Dishonored reminded me that I should stop taking the easy road with books I had mixed feelings about and actually review something I loved. His book Extra Lives qualified. This review comes perhaps a bit late, even the backlash against Bissell, or at least his imitators, is now a fading memory over at Critical Distance. Nonetheless, I devoured his book of essays about video games and I  wanted to specify why.

First off, the man has style. The book's nine essays each using a different game as a framing mechanism and say something different about the medium. It is perhaps warrants a demerit that he tends to write about his experiences with games rather necessarily critiquing them in the manner of a game designer, but I think that better positions him to write out about larger questions that designers by necessity put aside. The most extreme example is the essay that ends the book and is available from the Observer on Grand Theft Auto and Cocaine, but this book should not be mistaken for a memoir and while that essay entranced me when I first read it, it was not my favorite.

What drew me to the book was Bissell's firm command of why I enjoy game but also why they are problematic. Even most of the best games often use violence as a crutch and have their stupid moments. As a English major, he naturally has a particular interest in those games with poor writing, but he also works through the wide array of reasons for that. Comparatively few of them, at least amongst the better games, could be solved simply by hiring more and better writers. That said, he certainly does not wish to abandon story:

Yes, as difficult as it sometimes is to believe, games have authors, however diminutive an aura he or she (or frequently, they) might exude. What often strikes me whenever I am playing a game is how glad I am of that hovering authorial presence. Although I enjoy the freedom of a games, I also appreciate the remindful crack of narrative whip–to seek entertainment is to seek that whip—and the mixture of the two is what makes games such a seductive, appealingly dyadic form of entertainment… I want to be told a story, albeit one I happen to be part of an can affect, even if in small ways. If I wanted to tell a story, I would not be playing video games.

Ultimately, the book raises more questions than it answers and undercuts itself with harsh realities nearly as often as it enchants. That is inevitable, it is the state of the medium. When he does provide answers, I don't even always agree them but perhaps especially when I disagree I feel I've learned from grappling with his suggestions.

The book helped me work out my theory of why I rather enjoy videogames, as well as various forms of RPGs that Bissell was not trying to address but that he speaks to even so. They give experiences, a chance to test out strategies towards living, try out paths not taken, or better yet chase down dreams that were precluded by detail birth or utterly impossibly to begin with. When other players are involved, some of the weaknesses fade away as there is another human that can react directly to the ways you try to affect the story and that can shatter the pleasing illusions of uber-competence bred by single player, particularly when quick loads are at hand. Travel appeals to me for much the same reason, I find that to be a more fulfilling habit on the whole, but also a far more expensive one. Thus, as for my favorite games, I must agree with a line from chapter one: "It was a an extra life; I am grateful to have had it."

Exciting challenges without combat in tabletop RPGs

Dungeons and Dragons, and thus many subsequent RPGs, had their origins in war gaming and traditionally combat is the most mechanically interesting and supported part of many systems. However, I get tired of the emphasis on violence but I still do want genuine challenge, I'm not just playing for a good story. The trouble is that a wide variety of scenes that are exciting in films and stories from heists to set pieces that don't involve combat but that just don't seem to translate well into RPGs. I've long been interested in the topic and tried various experiments, but thankfully this isn't a problem that's just of interest to me. Inspired by a Narrative Control podcast, I've made up a wiki page about the some of the unconventional conflict implementations out there and what common principles they share. I created the wiki because I want to keep this page updated as I learn more about some games and try new ones.

Principles derived by Narrative Control guys.

• Unified Conflict System: They don't list this as a trait, but the non-combat system should use the same sort of rules as the rest of the game.
• Teamwork: Avoiding the classic thief/hacker problem where once character is the only one doing anything. This is often called the rogue or the hacker problem, but it could happen any time on character is the best at something to just have them do everything.
• A Hit Point system: Both the challenge and the characters should have some sort of tracking system as this allow for building tension.
• Both sides must threaten each other: Rather than being a static obstacle the storm or the lock should be attacking the characters. In several systems this is done by doing the same attack, finesse, and maneuver system that is used by the characters.
• Offering Variety: While multiple iterations are key for raising tension, it shouldn't just be the same thing over and over again, as that's boring.
• Cool losing conditions: If losing means blocked progress or all the characters dying, then the stakes often don't feel real. In combat, this is handled by running down resources, which only partially translates over to other sorts of challenges.

I try to apply this approach to a range of games, including some that the Narrative Control team didn't cover. Check it out.

Review: Harold Goldberg's All Your Base are Belong to Us

All Your Base are Belong to Us is an interview driven account of the rise of videogames. Each chapter focuses on a small set of key figures or companies and tells their story in a manner that reminds me of long form pieces in the Washington Post's Business section. I don't think it breaks new ground when it comes to well known feature such as Nintendo's Miyamoto, but most of the industry does not hold such a celebrity status so I learned more even about companies and designers I'm quite familiar with. For those that aren't newcomers to games journalism, I'd recommend skimming the selected notes chapter in the back to determine which chapters are most likely to be of interest based on who is interviewed.

On the downside, the prose of the book was more likely to push me away than draw me in. It often has an overly-familiar style that can be tricky to pull off, particularly when the videogame invoked emotions and sentiments described in first persons passages didn't tend to match my experience with the games in question. Similarly, while I think Goldberg is probably dead on when he emphasizes the importance of salesmanship by indie game designers, I didn't come away from the book bustling with new ideas or with a notably different take on videogames. He also sometimes falls into the trap up game triumphalism, while he willing to critique the widely acknowledged failures of those he interviews, his description of the strong points of their successes tends to be unalloyed. Picking an example from near the end of the book, his write-up of Shadow Complex makes no mention of the controversy regarding Orson Scott Card. A long discussion was not necessary, but the subtitle of the book is "How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture," the boycott attempt driven by a reaction to Card's social conservative activism seems well within its purview.

So in short, I think this book is a best fit for those curious about the corporate and entrepreneurship side of things; that have a lot of interest but a little information about some of the games and companies profiled; or that enjoy Harold Goldberg's prose in his online game journalism. Those primarily interested in games criticism should probably look elsewhere, although I'm grateful to Goldberg for mentioning Ian Bogost's persuasive games which apparently argues that games have a procedural rhetoric that can be convincing in a different way than other forms oratory rhetoric. That's a concept I'm quite interested in and a book I'll have to add to my wish list.

Source: Borrowed from my mother-in-law. Thanks!

Last Train Home 2012/05/15

I recently rediscovered where to go to get write ups for criticism of video games. the aptly named Critical Distance blog. Game articles are the theme of this round up and if you want a wider selection I certainly recommend checking out critical distance:

• I already mentioned this on my Google+ feed, but I thought Extra Credits did a constructive job of looking at the problem of harassment in online gaming communities and the question of what can be done about it.
• Soctt Juster at PopMatters put his finger on a game trait that I think older games often managed better than newer titles: "One of my favorite aspects of video games is their ability to simulate worlds that reconcile the conflict between huge spaces and quick trips.  Virtual spaces can be big enough to feel large and mysterious but small enough to mentally map as a contiguous whole, even after you get the ability to fast travel via the equivalent of a virtual jet. "
• Krystian Majewski at Game Design Scrapbook wrote a piece noting that the first Suikoden game pull off the team building premise of Mass Effect and in some ways manages it even better. Sadly, many of the later Suikoden games are fairly widely seen as disappointments, although I quite liked Suikoden 2 as well. I'm not sure where the series hit the wall.
• Wondering where the music games have gone and whether they'll return? Adil Sherwani at Medium Difficulty has an insightful discussion on what Guitar Hero and Rock Band did and did not achieve while citing Smule's Ocarina iPhone app as pointing to a possible way forward. I'll have to see if the app is available for Android as well.

Things other games should steal from 4th edition DnD

I've actually been playing some version or other of the venerable system since college. However, I'm not really the target demographic of the next edition as I'm not that into fantasy and quite like non-combat mechanics, and D&D Next aims to be the arch-typical version of the system rather than moving in a new direction. There will doubtless be modules of interest to me, but this seems like a good time to say my goodbyes. The points below are meant to be my favorite parts of the edition, not the best in any objective sense. 

Special powers that can be used freely (encounter powers and at-wills): 4th edition made fairly heavy use of powers that could be used at will or once per scene. If I'm playing in an environment where supernatural abilities are in play, I like to be able to use them freely. The once per scene (or encounter to use the technical term) powers did this particularly well, because they could be substantial without being game breaking. This combined well with 4th edition's encouragement to freely reflavor things: the mechanical effect may be defined but it is easy enough to ascribe the source to anything you desire.

Mechanically meaningful non-attack powers (utility powers and themes): As I mentioned above, I'm not quite a stereotypical story gamer. While I enjoy challenge and conflict, I'm just more interested in confrontations that aren't violent, let alone lethal. 4th edition D&D offered two notable new sources for such abilities: utility powers, which came along every few levels, and themes, which help define how a character starts out. Good flavor and mechanical matches particularly matter here and D&D delivers with powers like allowing rangers to keep someone from falling over a ledge by catching them with an arrow or allowing those skilled in the ways of magic to use technobabble to help get them out of a social problem once a scene. This is a mechanical space that could in theory be filled by feats, a game element that sometimes involves prerequisite but is typically chosen from a vast list. The selection of utility powers is more limited; you have to qualify for them via class, theme, or skill. This encourages them to be more defined, easier to balance, and makes their numbers less overwhelming. Also critically, neither utility powers nor themes are charged with doing the heavy lifting of making a character effective, which gives more room for flavorful selections.

Digital tools: I think the character builder and online rules compendium has been rather game changing. I've paid the subscription fee happily and haven't even minded that much when the character builder went from desktop client to web tool.

Design that draws from a wide range of games: This is sometime mentioned as a knock against 4th edition, particularly in reference to video games. However, I'd say that video games and board games have both advanced greatly over the past decades. Not all changes have been for the best, but I think we have a much better idea of what it means to get the underlying math right. This matters to me as a player, because knowing that I've checked the box when it comes to effectiveness gives me freedom to be playful. This matters far more as a GM, as getting a solid balanced system should be one of the big perks of going to larger companies for games. Playtesting, R&D shops, and system updates all take hard work and are well worth paying for.

Things other games should steal from Mass Effect 2

I just finished the game with my femShep paragon sentinel. I enjoyed it, although I think its best thought of as a series of episodes rather the stronger mini-arcs and main arc of the first game. In keeping with my recent post on pop culture dominance, I'm not going to go with a full review or even a critique. Instead, I'll just emphasize those elements I'd like to see used in other games.

But first, here's my favorite character doing Gilbert and Sullivan:

1. Having a small number of well defined powers with clearly labeled interactions. Some people have complained that Mass Effect 2 was dumbed down; that may be true.  However, having a smaller number of powers and clearly labeling when they would be effective allowed for a wider range of mechanically distinct characters. In addition, I think I actually used all of the powers available in the game fairly often. Similarly, the original game was vastly improved upon by dramatically reducing the number of guns while making them actually feel different.
2. Evocative hacking mini-games: There were two hacking games: one involved selecting matching source code, the other involved linking circuits on a board. They were both quite simple and actually could have used a steeper difficulty curve. However, they were enough to make the hacking feel genuinely technical in no small part thanks to good visual design. The probe mini-game does fairly well too in that regard, but I disapprove of that form of resource gathering because it's ultimately a mechanic that lets you trade your time for more in-game resources.
3. The conversation interrupt mechanic: The alignment system is nothing spectacular: you get paragon or renegade points based on your choices, although nicely enough you often can get some of each from the same conversation. That said, I was pleased by the way the plot mandated that being a paragon required some standing up to your patron. In any event, those points are spent by allowing you to interrupt a conversation; for example, a paragon might convince someone not to do something stupid while a renegade might shoot them before they had a chance to draw. In Star Wars terms, Han Solo was able to shoot Greedo first thanks to all of the mouthing off he does elsewhere in the series.
4. Reasonable chance of a few support characters dying: I hope I'm not being too bloody-minded here, but people die in war and its important to remember that. One of the real strengths of the first two games of the series is that your choices directly impact who dies. I particularly regret the character who died in my playthrough; he might have had an important future, but I think some regret is appropriate for this sort of tale.

(Mild outcome spoilers on my playthrough: lost Grunt, dating Garrus)

Origin: Gift from Ryan, thanks Ryan!

Update: Noted origin and moved spoilers to the end to get them out of the google plus preview.

The overwhelming victory of popular culture

I read with interest a recent cultural piece by Fredrik deBoer in no small part because I was curious to see whether he'd cite Leigh Alexander (spoiler: he does.) His opening sentence does its job well, so while I 'd encourage reading the whole piece, I'll start by quoting it: "Pop culture has become inescapable."

Criticism as a form of writing and entertainment appears to have spread dramatically as a result of lowered barriers to entry. At the same time, traditional print bastions have been savaged by the rise of online alternatives. This reduces the positions and platforms available for high culture gatekeepers, particularly as they compete with mass-market friendly pop culture critics. Thus, as often as Roger Ebert might say that games aren't art or the like, pop-culture criticism has experienced a victorious rise. Thus, I agree with deBoer that the burden of magnanimity should be born by victors and obviously they should avoid self-pity.

At the same, I think his middle-brow vs. high-brow lens misses one important explanation behind pop culture critics' defensiveness. Many of these critics are engaged in the hard work of standard-raising: attempting to weed out misogyny,  homophobia, racism, and other more traditional forms of bad writing. Tough criticism, constructive and not, is common even towards series that a critic may love (i.e. the epilogue of Harry Potter book 7). One of the most common defenses against this criticism is to defame pop culture as mere entertainment and that to analyze it is to miss the point or maliciously ruin it.

Quoting deBoer's post:

I know that people really want it to mean something that they love Community rather than Two and a Half Men. But I’m afraid such a distinction cannot say anything meaningful about you. People cling to that idea because they feel divorced from traditional means of creating personal meaning and identity; naturally, people so committed lash out, unfairly, at those who make different choices in the consumption of art and media.

I am a Community fan, but if I am being fair, I must certainly accept that it is no vice not to like the show and that there are many valid ways to criticize it. Even more so, I think it is safe to say that any discussion of good pop culture art easily drowns out discussion of difficult or high culture art. Part of the definition of a good critic is finding and popularizing lesser-known high quality material and there is a real risk for pop culture critics that they will ignore that part of culture that has not yet hit some threshold of popularity. However, I think this description doesn't leave room for the critic as standard-raiser (see, for example, Alyssa Rosenberg championing diversity in response to comments the creator of Two and Half Men). To be clear, deBoer may not put much weight on this standard-raising function or may understand it differently. This would not be hypocritical on his part; he was not trashing pop culture but instead was saying that the high/difficult art that he loves was underserved.

Finally, I think deBoer may be overlooking the participatory aspect of popular culture consumption. From fanfiction.net, to fan art, to cosplay, to merely discussing one's thoughts on a piece with friends. Having a common frame of reference lowers the barriers to artistic participation. Such work is, by definition, somewhat derivative but I would argue that it still allows some to create who otherwise would not and for others acts as gateway drug into original works. This sort of participation is partially explains why fans may feel so committed to a particularly series: because they have invested some of their own creative output into the product. I think deBoer would argue that it is a mistake to do so, but I would also say that participatory derivative art is as old as sing-a-longs and may have some of the same benefits.

To close, I reserve the right to do political analysis blogging of Legend of Korra, but I think I'll try harder to make sure I write up my experiences with the obscure. I would also glad subscribe to a feed of a blog that recommends difficult or high culture works based on tastes in popular culture. Going from say, Rowling's Harry Potter to Grossman's The Magicians is a fairly well known way to experiment with working one's way up the cultural food chain. However, I'm not aware of many other such connections. Right now, the closest thing I have are the more widely-ranging Washington Post book reviews and my friend Moti's Platform #5 livejournal reviews.

Review: Carcassonne add-on Traders and Builders

Carcassonne is a fairly well-known European-style-tile laying game. The players take turns placing squares to expand a map of fields, roads, monasteries, and walled cities meant to evoke a region in France. As they do so, they place their little wooden pieces, called meeples, to score points based on a variety of terrain features. This review will be most interesting to those that have played the original game, but I'll discuss a few general design features at the end.

This add-on struck our fancy because it fits well with my wife's preferred play style: filling in gaps in the map rather than sprawling off to the sides. This is an aesthetically pleasing play style and one that fits the theme of the game as to my knowledge there are no gaping holes in reality in the French countryside.

Traders and Builders uses multiple methods to achieve this goal. First, it reduces the incentive to block other player's cities by providing a reward in the form of trade goods to any player that finishes a city. Second, it adds a "builder" piece that allows a second turn each round if you lay your tile in a way that connects to an existing city or road. This has the virtue of focusing one player's attention and keeping the game from slowing down despite the addition of new pieces. Third, a new "pig" piece increases the bonuses received from a single field. Fields are one of the mechanisms from the original game that encourage players to play in a concentrated area, either to reap points from ever-expanding pastures or to firmly enclose the grasslands of another player. Finally, the new tiles, in addition to introducing trade goods, seem well-chosen to match up with difficult-to-fill spots from the base game.

Traders and Builders could be fairly critiqued for adding three new elements, and thus sacrificing some of the original game's simplicity. However, I think all the pieces interlock well and show signs of carefully considered balance and play-testing.

I might not have noticed Traders and Builders if not for the advice of a clerk at the Family Game Store at Savage Mills, who broke out the virtues in a way that made the choice over "Inns and Cathedrals," another add-on, an easy one. Typically, I think of game add-ons as introducing a new element to an existing game.  I think it's a far rarer breed that also reinforces the core game while adding a fun new aspect.

Fellow players for the review: Kate, Andrew, and Monica. Thanks all.

Image from BoardGameGeek.com

Source: My mother given to Kate. Thanks Mom for the gift and Kate for letting me play!

Quickie review: Indie RPG buying

Both Indie Press Revolution (IPR) and Evil Hat are good places to get a variety of Indie RPGs and unlike many other sources will often include a PDF at the same cost as a print purchase. In both cases I went with the low end shipping option.

With Indie Press Revolution I placed the order on 12/16, got the PDFs nigh instantly, shipping notification email received 12/20, and it arrived via media mail on 1/4. 

With Evil Hat I placed the order on 12/16 as well, got the PDFs nigh instantly, I got the shipping notification email on 12/20, but the package arrived on 12/21.

When I checked in with the Indie Press Revolution guys, they were fairly responsive and apparently it had accidentally been sent media mail by USPS rather than UPS (or priority mail with USPS). So apparently the length of the delay was a fluke, although in any event they didn't send tracking info which has been sadly reminiscent of the bad old days of having no idea when a package would arrive.

I'm up for using IPR again, but for now I'm definitely going to err towards Evil Hat on future orders if time is at all sensitive. Particularly since the interface is a bit less glitchy in the later case.

Review: Assassin's Creed 2

I'm well-suited to the core gameplay concept of Assassin's Creed: it's a sandbox where you get to use major historical city, in this case primarily Florence and Venice, as your own parkour playground. I'm not actually so keen on the Assassin part, but there's enough fun running, climbing, racing, and exploring to keep me interested.  Speed and stealth are both fairly effective ways to avoid combat and in a pinch you can always beat someone up with your fists, although it's fairly tedious.

The game wasn't particularly hard. I never really got frustrated although as a downside I didn't always feel challenged. I've yet to finish the puzzle-oriented 'truth' unlocking session but I'm likely to soon enough. Similarly, one of the biggest delights of the series is climbing up to high points and looking around and I've got about a half dozen viewpoints left to find. I can live with games that are this forgiving; I think the key is trying to play with style rather than simply achieving your objectives. The dialog feedback from passersby and the notoriety system both do a reasonable job of docking you if you get too sloppy.

Assassin's Creed probably won't make my all time top 10, but I think the gameplay in many ways takes some of the mechanics of Thief while making them a lot more fun. I'd rather play a Thief than an Assassin, but I'd take Assassin's Creed's jumping and climbing over the jumping puzzles in Thief any day of the week. Also, amusingly, I think the death toll in Assassin's Creed is still a fair amount lower than in Uncharted despite the latter being about a fortune hunter and not nominally a killer by trade.

If I could add one thing to the series, it might be to provide a bit of parity between the deaths of assassin targets and the nameless guards that you may kill on the way. The targets all get a benediction, specifically set up as the way your character shows respect for the dead. However, no such privilege is extended to the average guard, who presumably is actually a better person than most of your targets. There's already an option to loot bodies; I don't think showing respect for them would be all that hard and it would decrease the disconnect between the gameplay, characterization, and story.

Source: Loaned to me by my friend Ryan, thanks Ryan!

Review: Starship Catan

Like many people, we are Settlers of Catan fans. A few year a game store clerk advised me that while he was not a fan of Seafarers of Catan or Starfarers of Catan, somehow their elements combined to make an make a great two player game called Starship Catan.

This is a classic Eurogame: the production values are good, you're vying for victory points, and most of the competition is indirect. Specifically, you can forcibly buy resources off each other and compete to get to upgrades or missions first but your ship's beam weapons are just aimed at space pirates. As a Catan game, your main path to victory is accumulating colonies that can net you resources, but buying unique upgrades to your ship, getting trading colonies, and meeting the objectives at adventure planets all offer alternate paths to winning. I'll leave additional summary to the experts over at BoardGameGeek.

Leading with the bad news, the game does take a bit of time to set up each time. There's cards to organize, the two shipboards to setup, and enough rules that you'll probably want to refresh yourself if it's been a while since you last played. I will note that the game provides a great tutorial to ease you into the first play through. Our games tend to play over an hour or two, although we may be slow. So there's a bit of time investment for a two player game for each match and the way the cards work you'll have to re-sort when done. Happily, I think the time is well worth it for three reasons.

First, the game has many of the benefits of randomness without feeling too swingy based on luck. Each game is different because instead of having a game board to explore, there are four quadrants of 10 cards each. After each trip through a quadrant the 10 cards are reshuffled and any removed cards, such as newly acquired colonies, are replaced. As a result, you learn most of the make up of a quadrant over time, but you don't know which planets you'll get to in a given turn. For example, in our most recent game one of the quadrants had two mission planets and another was known for being a good place to buy cheap resources. The roll to determine your speed also determines economic production. The die ranges from 1-3. As in Catan, you can have multiple colonies producing when a 2 is rolled, but you only get resources from one of them each turn. Thus, unlike Catan, there's not much room for attributing the outcome of a game to the unusual number of 4s that came up. The small value on both the engine and the pirate fighting die also mean that the attributes of your ship, which starts with two blasters and two engines, are more important than the roll of the dice.

Those ship attributes are also what I really like about the game. The ship boards are well put together and have excellent labeling making it easy to tell what various options cost. More importantly, the six different modules allow players to pursue markedly different strategies. I tend to go for sensors that let you look at and reject the first two cards in a given quadrant. Kate likes going for logistics first which allows her ship to carry three of each resources type rather than the default two. The other four modules are similarly useful and while the level 1 version of each component is available to both players there is only one version each of the upgraded modules. As a result your ships differentiate themselves fast and stay different. Happily,different strategies seem robust; both Kate and I have won two matches and despite my faith in my approach I never really got my economy going and lost our most recent match.

Finally, I just like the theme. While more mercantile in feel, the game is probably going to appeal to Star Trek fans. There's fighting with space pirates, but exploring different parts of the galaxy and solving problems is a big part of the game. Science is a resource that becomes more valuable as the game progresses as it helps with key missions and is necessary to upgrade your blasters or engines to their second level form. My only objection with the theme is that they don't quite manage to provide a solid technobabble exploration for the randomized navigation. It's a critical part of the gameplay, but it still is a bit odd. Perhaps instead of being so planet-oriented there could also be other ships you are encountering who thus would not stay still between visits. The shipboards add a great visceral element that's really handy when playing without a game board. In theory, the game could benefit by taking that physical feel of modifying your ship even further, but most any ideas I can come up with would unnecessarily add to the cost.

On the whole, if you want a two player game that's challenging without being highly confrontational and has a great space theme, I'd definitely recommend Starship Catan.

Origin: Bought it myself thanks to good game store advice. Sadly, I'm not sure which store. Side note, the nice thing about losing to one's spouse is that it's a reminder that you found a smart person to marry. Box art grabbed from BoardGameGeek.

Apollo Justice: Defending… now more than ever

While the Ace Attorney games are known for primarily for over the top cases,  Fintan Monaghan has convincingly argued that it can also be seen as a parody and critique of the Japanese justice system:

If you are charged with a crime in Japan and brought to trial, statistics show that there is a 99 percent chance that you will be convicted. This alarming statistic reveals the highly dysfunctional legal system from which the Ace Attorney series clearly takes its inspiration; a system where even a victim of false allegations finds it impossible to escape conviction. Phoenix Wright, the eponymous lawyer of the popular Capcom games, constantly battles seemingly impossible odds as he fights to defend his falsely accused clients. While the fantastical anime nature of the games gives rise to outlandish courtroom antics and bizarre scenarios, the core concept of a lopsided legal system weighted against the accused is an exaggerated parody of Japanese society and their courts.

In effect, the games have a presumption of guilt and a requirement for decisive proof of another's guilt to get a verdict of not guilty. To achieve that mighty task, the virtues praised most directly by the series are seeking truth and believing. The truth-seeking sometimes results in the prosecution and defense effectively teaming up to figure out what really happened. That outcome seems odd, but given the need to effectively prove someone else did it, the defense attorneys often effectively become prosecutors in their own right. Thus I'd say that in the first three games the prosecutors and police are parodied but idea that even the guilty deserve a competent defense isn't addressed.

However, I'd argue that Apollo Justice, the fourth game in the series, does the best job of the ones I've played at actually getting at the importance of legal council. In the second case, your client is an outright mobster who obnoxiously tries to establish his gangster cred with almost every thing he says. There's also a few points where a sympathetic character plays some sketchy hardball in a way that seeks the truth by a fairly twisty path. Finally, the last case involves a possible reform to the judicial system that would introduce juries who would not be bound by the decisive evidence standard. Now, in both cases, our hero is still first and foremost concerned with finding the truth rather than ensuring the client's defense. Nonetheless, I think this valuably adds to the picture in the prior three games which instead focused on problems of overreach, fraud, and by the police and prosecution.

Even though they do just scratch the surface, I think the games all should be commended for taking on a real issue. And to be clear, while our conviction rate is lower, some of the problems do apply in the U.S. as well. See Ta-Nehisi Coates on Texas "justice":

In 2000, an investigation by The Chicago Tribune found that almost one-third of court-appointed defense lawyers in capital cases in Texas had, at some point, been publicly sanctioned by the state’s trial board. The Tribune uncovered cases of lawyers falling asleep at trials, engaging in extortion and assaulting teenage girls. Prosecutors and police were found concealing evidence or worse. In 1980, Cesar Fierro received the death penalty on the strength of a confession secured after an El Paso sheriff colluded with police across the border in Juárez, Mexico, who arrested Fierro’s parents and threatened to attach an electric generator to his stepfather’s genitals. Fierro is still on death row.

Review: Ace Attorney Apollo Justice

The Ace Attorney series of legal adventure games has long been a favorite of mine because it offers the logic puzzles of that long-dormant genre while avoiding some of the silliness that results from a focus on inventory. As with previous games, our defense attorney hero uses items of evidence from investigations and trials to find contradictions in the testimony of witnesses. The series benefits from the move to the Nintendo DS, as was shown in the add-on mission to the first game, "Rise from the Ashes." As with that game, some of the puzzles involve checking for fingerprints or trace evidence using the touch pad. The tactile sections barely even qualify as puzzles but they're used sparingly and are just fun. While the four cases of this game aren't particularly long, they have a very handcrafted feel. Puzzle elements like a soundboard or manipulating a 3D model of the crime scene may be used only in a handful of times but they're highly appropriate when they are used.

My wife had been a bit dissatisfied with the sheer amount of plot development thrown at you in the first case. It's been more than seven years since the previous games and a fair amount has changed in unexpected ways that are not initially explained. I didn't have that problem, perhaps because I was warned or perhaps because it has been almost a year since I finished the last Phoenix Wright game. I'd even go so far as to say that Apollo Justice handles the transition from a beloved character pretty well. At this point, Phoenix is a cool and collected vet and (most of) his friends have started to work out the key issues in their lives. Apollo is starting from scratch with a new set of plotlines which gives the writers more to work with without having to undo the victories of previous games.

When it comes to the story, I still like the third Phoenix Wright game the best. However, in terms of actually thinking about criminal justice system issue I think Apollo Justice is the series standout. However, that's a discussion I think I'll save for a future post. To close out the review piece, I'll just say that once again the series finds ways to enhance the trial gameplay and if they ever decide to make more courtroom-based games I'll gladly pick them up.

Source: Borrowed from Kate. On her DS no less. Thanks Kate!

Video Game Art at the Smithsonian

Kate had been the first to show me the exciting news about a video game exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. Based on the description, it sounds as if the curators know their stuff and it should be an excellent exhibit. They are doing a public vote about what should make it in, which is a promotional gimmick that forces some tough choices for nostalgia–ridden voters like myself. Similarly, Kate long agonized about the choice between Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts II. My advice to her was to vote for the one she actually played through, given that she liked the art in both cases.

My only complaint of note is where the hell are the PC games for the Bit Wars! (1989-1994) era? As a result a lot of the early history of the classically defined adventure game genre was completely absent. Was Lucas Arts and Sierra's successor company just being really stingy with the rights? Believe me I didn't have a console in that area but I still played a lot of games. Too many games really.

Gaming: Doing more with skills in 4th edition D&D

The main tabletop RPG I play is Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition, in large part because it dominates the market but also because of the perks it offers because of its size. Notably electronic tools and the level of product testing and support that comes with a high market share. In any event, this edition is fairly tactical combat-oriented, which makes for interesting game play but also results in a focuses the story end on combat, in sometimes problematic ways, which isn't particularly my thing. The system also has skills, which allow for a broader range of options when interacting with the world, and structured skill challenges which attempt to aid game masters in requiring their players to use their wits and their character's abilities in settings other than the battle mat.

Unfortunately, I don't think skill challenges really achieve this goal even as the math underlying them is refined. After speaking with friends and reading a mix of RP design blogs and listening to a lot of Paul Tevis's  Have Games, Will Travel I think I know why. Skills are a sub-system that as Ryven Cedrylle explains doesn't quite mathematically match up with the rest of the game. Thus skills are most often used against easy, medium, and hard DCs rather than the defenses of monsters or other player characters. Making skill challenges substantially more sophisticated would thus set up more of an alternate system that some characters would excel at but may simply bore the rest. If I want the rest of the game to be as robust as the combat, I either need to switch over to other games or find ways to integrate the core math of combat and of skill challenges.

So, for those who actually know 4e, here's my shot at the latter. I think the core problem is that the ability to rapidly raise skills is critical to allow player characters to be at all effective with skills that their stats don't naturally support. It also means that there's not really a reason to chase flat bonuses for skills a character is naturally good at which would hopefully redirect attention towards feats that allow use of the skill in more interesting ways. Once the systems actually align, I think a logical next step would be to introduce skill attack powers, which could be substituted in like skill utility powers but that would make sense outside of combat. Here's how I'd do it:

Could games switch perspective like film directors can mix up types of shots?

Stephen Totilo of Kotako says yes in his coverage of how the new Metroid game mixes things up:

Let's check back in in five years, but I got the sense while playing Other M that I was playing a game from a future. Specifically, this is a future when game designers don't stick with one or two styles of presentation ("This is a third-person fixed camera game" "This is a first-person game"). Metroid: Other M has been constructed as if it was a movie made by a filmmakers bold enough to use all of the different types of cinematic shots needed to best express his or her story and themes. In action, Other M is mostly viewed as a third-person game, with the camera placed in a fixed overhead or sideline position, the better to let you run Samus around a room and shoot enemies. At any time, the player can activate a first-person mode that locks Samus in place but permits more precise targeting and looking (if you're trying to find a hidden passageway, for example). Surprise: sometimes, the game tightens into a behind-the-back Resident Evil 4-style camera, mostly for moments that are more talky and story-driven. At other times it forces the player into a first-person perspective and won't let them out until a condition is met. And at other times, the game is a non-interactive cutscene. The various camera styles blend together marvelously, improving on experiments seen in the spring's God of War III, which also borrowed perspectives from other genres. This is Other M's best accomplishment as it prioritizes the expression of content over the rigid dedication to one or two methods for depicting it.

The whole review is worth reading. The game apparently does suffer from interface issues, but Totilo attributes that to the choice to limit controls to the Wii-mote.

I'd guess two factors restrict heavy use of this sort of technique: 1) each new playable perspective involves a series programming cost in terms of graphics and interface; 2) heavy direct, as I commented in my discussion of Uncharted 2, requires a lot of attention to detail which works best in shorter games.

I suspect this sort of experimentation is going to be easier with older video game systems where the toolkit is well established and you don't have to spend time reinventing each wheel on the tractor-trailer that is a multiple-perspective game. Thus I think this technique may be increasingly popular in the next few years but may drop off when we hit the next generation of consoles.

DnD thoughts: Can the game support all ranged parties without losing sophistication?

I think it is uncontroversial to say that melee combat is in many ways crucial to sophisticated DnD 4e combat. Shifts, attacks of opportunity, aiding another in combat, bull rushes, grabs, defenders (with the possible exception of swordmages), and to a lesser extent forced movement all provide an exciting mix of options for combat. Stealth and many classes do work well or even exclusively at range, but in many ways they work best in concert with melee allies.

This is of course a legitimate choice on 4e’s end. Dungeons and Dragons, as the name implies, is fantasy oriented. However, for those of us that like the system but prefer steampunk, pulp, modern, or sci-fi settings the melee orientation can be limiting. Dune and Lensmen both show that these settings can work in a melee oriented way, but it would be nice if that was an option, not a requirement.

So what would it take to get DnD as robust for a primarily ranged party as it is for a mixed or primarily melee party? First off, additional defender classes/alternate builds for existing ones), but this can’t just be about defenders, many of the melee options discussed above are viable for a range of classes. To really get there, I think cover-based fighting is the ranged equivalent of attacks of opportunity.

By this, I don’t mean cover as a technical term in DnD, I mean the general feel of cover based first person shooters and the like. Here’s a broad outline of what I’m thinking after the cut.

Updates: Persona 4 and exercise gaming

I’ve finally gotten a bit of free time and so have been playing more Persona 4.  I still really love that game, despite, or perhaps because, it manages to psych me out with some of the social choices and various quizzes.  Most of the answers could be easily googled, but I’m going with just the knowledge I have on hand and I’ve had an embarrassing wrong streak.  All the more so since I’m normally good at tests.  In some ways it gets the high school vibe down cold, it’s a lot more fun, but it still feels easy to screw up and embarrass yourself. 

I hope I didn’t deny myself a social connection by being a jerk to someone because I was confused about whose younger brother he was.  If I did, such is life, but it’s still embarrassing.  I’m actually a bit reminded of the first No One Lives Forever which rewarded you for taking the professional dialogue choice and not the one that just made you sound cool. 

I’ve been playing in combination with Wii Fit Plus.  While the free step mode doesn’t net that many calories, free running actually seems to have a similar burn rate as does EA Active Life.  We just picked up the add-on for Active Life, the creatively named More Exercises.  I’m not going to make the transition just yet, because the 30 day challenge isn’t offered in the sequel, instead it’s got a six week thing.  That’s fine, but after running into some initial trouble, my pride is on the line on getting through the challenge this time.  That said, I’m not that proud, I’m entirely willing to change the clock so that I don’t get burned get bumped to the next day for finishing at 12:05 AM.

Anyways, good weekend on the whole.  We’ve been working our way through Avatar Season 2 and have loved it.  The story gets steadily more into mini-arcs as time goes by while still retaining an episodic charm.  The only downside is that there’s only three seasons so we’re now more than half way through.

Ta-Nehisi Coates gets me excited about Dragon Age

I've been a bit meh on Bioware's new game Dragon Age despite being a big fan of the company.  I think there's two main drivers:

1. I'm basically sick of conventional western fantasy as a setting.
2. The marketing has been pretty low key so it hasn't caught my attention aside from some Penny Arcade comics.

I'm really enjoying Avatar: The Last Airbender right now, so I won't go so far as to say I've entirely soured on fantasy, but at this point I tend to see it as a net negative as a setting.  There's just so much that's either been done to death or is problematic.  I prefer settings that deal with issues that we are presently wrestling with or that are unfamiliar.  This is why I want to figure out ways to do more modern settings in DnD.  DnD does fantasy well and has some settings that do work for me such as Eberron, Planescape, maybe Spelljammers, our current tabletop game campaign settings.

Anyhow, Coates has one of the best communities for discussing my cultural interests that I've ever seen.  I tend to get along well with people that are drawn to his writing and he also puts in the work to maintain it.  If you want a place to talk about some of these issues, I really recommend it. I don't actually usually hang out on gaming site boards (with the exception of Brainy Gamer), but if you want to talk about the cultural aspects rather than the mechanical aspects I can't recommend his comment threads highly enough.

Anyways, here's the bit that got me excited about Dragon-Age:

As a fan of Bioware, I've been waiting on Dragon's Age for a long-time now, and it really doesn't disappoint. It reminds me a lot of Oblivion, but better. I think Oblivion offers more options, in terms of customizing, but the game was just too big for me. It felt really lonely, and combat felt non-intuitive. The thing about Dragon's Age is you can actually see people doing cool shit--like ripostes etc.

My one beef with the game is the gore--it's way too much.. But the gore actually makes the game look less mature. It makes it feel like it was built for twelve year olds who want to feel like their doing something forbidden...

Back on story, It felt right to play the descendants of slaves (What can I say? Even when I'm role-playing, I'm hood.), so I picked an elf. I don't want to say too much about the game, but the sequence where you have to storm the castle and save your betrothed is really intense. I'll have more to say as I get further in. But for right now, color me impressed.

Up from comments: Persona in 4e

My friend Todd Harper had raised an interesting point in comments a bit back, one that was reinforced when I listened to an old Brainy Gamer podcast that discussed Persona 3.  Michael Abbott was a big fan of Persona 3, I haven’t played it but I quite like the sequel, and mentioned how it’s choice to eschew realism was refreshing.  This makes me wonder if I’m showing a poverty of imagination to want to implement guns in 4e.  I still think it’s a worthwhile project to put a light amount of work into, but in some ways Todd’s idea is more interesting.  As a bit of background, in Persona 3 and 4 (and probably earlier games) each character has a “persona” that is attached to them and has a combat powers set.  The main character multiple personas, can get more from combat, and can fuse them to make more powerful personas.  That out of the way, here’s the comment:

Random thing that may or may not be to your taste: I know an idea I bounced around for a bit, and which other friends I know took and developed quite a bit more for their own use, was a modern game with a Persona theme. You simply used the basic classes and for the most part, your powers and class features were a function of the Persona you were using.

If you're fighting monsters instead of primarily other people, I think the MODERN = GUNS AKIMBO thing is a little less necessary; you can run in and swing your short sword at whatever all day if it's a shambling monstrosity with six legs and a face that's nothing but a set of giant Angelina Jolie lips.

Plus if you want to have someone like Jin from P3 (who used grenades), you can adapt alchemic items from stuff like Adventurer's Vault and either up the damage or tweak the effects.

You know, now that I think about it, there's another advantage here: in the current 4e game I was in, I started as a sorcerer but switched characters midway through (because with two other meleers, as a Dragonsorc all my powers were useless since they were constantly in the way). But if you have a character switch a Persona, they can effectively try a new class or build with a relatively plausible in-game explanation.

This makes sense to me.  I’d earlier commented to some friends that in some ways a main character in the Persona games was a meta-rpger with a stable of characters.  The question raised by such a proposal is how to handle skills.  In Persona the protagonists skills/attributes completely distinct from the combat power-sets.  Social links are used to build more powerful combat options, but that link also goes one way.  Some sort of dual-world system, a la Persona, may work well to both play off the combat strengths of DnD while at the same time having a less violence driven storyline.  The DnD approach would necessarily be different than the Persona console RPG approach, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t good ideas worth stealing.

Quick review: Wii Fit Plus, 2 steps forward, 1 back

Wii Fit Plus is priced as an expansion pack to Wii Fit.  It includes a few new yoga and strength building exercises plus a fair number of balance games, some of which provide some aerobic benefit.

In terms of unalloyed goods, here’s what you get:

1. Estimated calorie tracking.  They aren’t tracking your pulse, so this is really a guess, but it’s still good to know the comparative burn rates of various exercises.  
2. Good new exercises and games.  I’m oddly enamored with the one where you flap your arms to fly a giant chicken avatar.  The handling is very tricky, but there’s just a cool level of immersion there.
3. A night owl option under user options, so that if you weigh in at 12:01 am you aren’t chided for missing a day.
4. A quick test button, for when you want to weigh in and get going.

So what about the one step back?  I had high hopes for “My Wii Fit Plus,” which is basically designed for the power users.  First and foremost, it allows things to go faster by cutting out a lot of the end of exercise commentary and allowing for swift transitions between exercises. You can work off existing routines, create your own, work with a more in depth favorites list that also tracks what you’ve done most recently and what you do most rarely.

So what are the problems:

1. You can’t set the number of reps for strength building exercises, it will always be the minimum possible.  You can select the same exercise twice or three times in a row, which helps, but it would have been fairly trivial to offer some options there.  I’d be content with just setting a switch somewhere for “minimum reps” vs. “maximum reps.
2. While the standard routines mix in aerobic and balance games the custom does not allow for it.  Also the standard routines mostly seem kind of on the easy side.
3. There’s only one custom routine, which is just a bad idea as I’m told there’s minimal benefit for strength building on the same muscle group for two days in a row.

I still am glad to have it, but I’ll probably also check out some of the competitors.  I doubt they’ll match the polish on Wii Fit Plus, but I hope they’ll be more focused on giving power-users options to help them get an efficient work out.

Thinking about how to do DnD 4e in a more modern setting

I’ve been pondering how DnD 4e could work in settings like steampunk, westerns, modern, or sci-fi.  I tend to find those genres more interesting and have rather been liking our current pirate themed campaign.

I think a lot is doable with a few small addition, some hybrid classes, and a lot of changing flavor.

First off, most of these settings have guns.  To get them right, particularly as you get to modern and sci-fi, it probably makes sense to have them usable as both ranged weapons and implements.  However, I’d still probably want to keep the damage comparable to other weapons.

Second, giving defenders ranged options is tricky.  Sword mages have it, but the rest, even when hybrids, take a bit more thinking.  Melee characters are fine in more modern settings, but I think ranged options do make sense.  Part of the solution might be more powers that use ranged basics.  For flavor purpose, I’d call ranged marking “covering fire.”

Third, in part to allow for mixed ranged and melee combat, some modern settings involve being less tied to a particular weapon.  Going all out with a light sabre is fine in space opera, but with modern and sci-fi it probably makes sense to use the variant rules where you get extra hit and damage bonuses when leveling rather than from equipment.

Anyways, something to think about, if anyone has any ideas they want to share or critiques, please let me know.

Doctrine and the Zombie Wars

Pallab Ghosh of the BBC reports that researchers in Canada have done a mathematical model of a widespread zombie outbreak and evaluated possible counter-strategies.  Dan Drezner has done excellent work in postulating what various systemic international relations theories would predict about the outcome of such an undead crisis [Update: link fixed].  Inspired by his analysis, below is my attempt at providing an in character explanation of how advocates of different U.S. military doctrines would suggest we face the zombie peril.  This analysis is in good part a response to the work of premier writer on this topic, Max Brooks, with particularly attention paid to the excellent fictional social history World War Z. 

Conventional warfare: Some elements of conventional warfare have been widely derided even before facing a threat that can neither shocked nor awed.  Similarly, against zombies decapitation strikes are no longer in any sense a game-changing euphemism but are instead a constant operation requirement.  However, while weapons and munitions must be modified, the solution to a zombie outbreak falls is still a matter of properly applying force on a massive scale.  Proper use of the Weinberger-Powell doctrine would ensure that the zombie menace is met with overwhelming force rather than the sort of half measures that could get U.S. soldiers killed or worse zombified, 

It is the job of the military to secure borders and when going abroad clear territory of zombies and then implementing an exit strategy rather than getting sucked into a quagmire of nation building.  As a side note, while the A-10 and AC-130s may be the most useful platform against the zombie, it is vital that we restore funding to the F-22 to deter hostile nations from exploiting the outbreak and U.S. distraction to expand their territory.

Counter-Insurgency: Critics of COIN doctrine argue that zombies lack hearts and minds, they only possess brains that must be splattered.  However, this facile argument overlooks the fact that counter-insurgency has always understood that zombies; the ultimate irreconcilables, cannot be won over.  What conventional warfare advocates fail to understand is that zombies, much like violent extremism, cannot simply be cleared via overwhelming force. 

Vectors for reemergence will always be prevalent, the undead are nothing if not patient, and long-term defeat of ghouls requires the cooperation of local populations abroad or heaven-forbid at home.  If a local has seen the military apply indiscriminate force they will be unwilling to report if their neighbors, let alone friends or family, have shown signs of infection.  We may have to occupy failed states that have become persistent sources of zombies, but we will largely act in a supportive role by training and equipping local anti-zombie forces.   Ultimately, resources must be put towards putting skull-crushing boots on the ground although there is a also a role for national guard troops and civilian agencies rebuilding communities ravaged by the zombie plague.

Net-Centric Warfare: World War Z was pointedly skeptical about the use of technology deeming the Landwarrior system as good for little more than watching the death of comrades from their point of view.  The book’s faith in simple rifles, lines of soldiers, and even melee weapons overly romanticizes earlier periods of warfare.  Cutting edge technology is expensive, but in the event of a mass-casualty zombie outbreak, the lives of survivors are all the more precious. 

Ingenuity and invention can substitute for manpower by using sensors to detect precursors of outbreaks in populated areas or to keep an unblinking eye on wilderness, abandoned settlements, and even the oceans.  Anti-zombie squads can use unmanned ground vehicles to scout out urban areas and perhaps even to target ghouls remotely.  Unlike humans, robots cannot be added to the ranks of the enemy.  This technology can also save lives, infrared scopes can be used to differentiate between the heat signatures of living creatures and the undead.  Best of all, the against zombies net-centric systems of systems do not have to worry about enemy eavesdropping, cyber-terrorism, or anti-satellite strikes. 

Intervention-Skeptic: The flaw of all the above perspectives is that they view the military as the solution to a zombie outbreak.  The ultimate solution to a zombie outbreak is a cure or at a bare minimum a vaccine.  As we work to develop such a solution, our first priority must be securing the United States, although many suspect that the actual risk to developed nations is overstated in the first place.

Yes, some violence may be necessary, but there is a reason most military anti-zombie sorties result in disaster.  Taking the fight to the zombie ultimately only depletes our resources while adding to their ranks.  Even the less violent counter insurgency approach is delusional.  Do we honestly expect citizens of other countries to accept a U.S. soldier killing their mother, even if said ghoulish mother was craving brains a few moments earlier?  We are not capable of effectively developing other nations under peacetime conditions, how can we expect to do so during a zombie outbreak?

 

I wouldn’t spoil the actual doctrine used in WWZ, but it makes more sense than the above while and still is quite horrifying.  If you enjoyed this, or if you thought you might have enjoyed this were I a better writer, I’d strongly recommend the book.

Quick Wii Fit review

This was my 26th day of using it.  On the whole I’m pleased because it’s helped me get about a half hour of exercise a day.  I had achieved some similar effects via DDR which gave a bit more intensity I think but was largely limited to aerobic exercise.

Since the Wii Fit is fairly well known, I’ll skip the description aside from saying that its largely based on a balance board and occasionally supplemented with use of the wiimote.

The yoga and strength training exercises feel rather good, although in some cases getting a perfect score is far too easy or score doesn’t even apply at all.  This is a bit of a problem as the score is the a key support to telling if your form is right.  You do still get the onscreen instructor, which is really the main guide, but aside from avoiding the hokiness of some exercise videos it isn’t a huge advantage.

The aerobic exercises are fairly fun with a hip gyrating hula hoop game, a backdrop for running, and a rhythm game.  Some of these are designed to work by giving you cues through the wiimote speaker, which means you can watch TV or in my case play Persona 4 while doing the exercises.  Finally, the balance games are fun, but while they do help your reflexes and posture I’m not sure how beneficial they are relative to the other three categories.

Problems:

• There needs to be an option to do sequences, ideally with recommendations from the game based on weakness or parts of the body you want to focus on.  This is particularly an issue because you can easily spend a quarter to a third of your play-time going between options.  They seem to be implementing some form of this in the sequel, so that’s a good sign.  One obvious fix for the current version would be allowing navigation directly from one related exercises to another in the workout sets suggested by the game.
• On a related note I twisted my knee ‘running’ a few days ago.  They should really incorporate stretches as a suggested option for the longer exercise if a person hasn’t done any yoga yet that day.
• There’s a fair amount of repetition in fitness advice, instructor sayings, and the like.  This is the biggest problem in terms of music.  There’s only really one rhythm game song per version of the game.  In addition, it be nice if you could copy over a workout soundtrack or something, other sorts of game manage this.
• There should be way more unlockables.  They seem to have largely petered out by day 26.  I’m not sure what exactly they should offer, but just unlocking them would be something to aim for in addition to getting higher scores.  These could be available through mods holding purchasable downloads .  The motivation benefit might well be enough to get me to buy them, assuming what was unlocked was interesting in the slightest.
• Finally, the 'personality’ of the balance board can be a bit passive aggressive and sometime the scale disagrees with other digital house scales.  Instructors aren’t bad though.

On the whole I’m pretty happy and hopeful about most of these being addressed by the sequel.

Cork Arrival 2009-07-11

Hi there!  Once again, I steal my husband’s blog account to bring you more tales of interest!  (To me, at least.)

Our original plan was to meet up with a friend of mine who lives in Cork.  We were going to head to Cobh (pronounced “Cove”), departure point for many of those emigrating from Ireland due to the famine, and also the last port of call for the Titanic.  About half an hour before we were due to arrive, we get a text from my friend asking if we can change plans since the weather had gotten so horrible.  Sure enough, we looked out of the train window to see that the increasingly cloudy weather had turned into a driving rain.

Said rain kept on as we arrived in the city.  In a rare departure from using public transit, we took a cab from the train station to the hotel since we weren’t familiar at all with the bus routes and this was no weather to be walking around in.  I can safely say that it was one of the two worst weather events we encountered on the entire trip.  (The second would be some sporadic but heavy downpours to and from the Cliffs of Moher the next day.)

After checking in at the hotel, we rested up a bit, then headed down to the hotel lobby to meet up with my friend.  This would be our first face-to-face meeting, as we’d only ever communicated online before.  To my extremely pleasant surprise, another friend of ours who lives in the UK had come over to meet up as well.  Totally unexpected, and really great to meet her.  We then headed off for dinner at No. 5 Fenn’s Quay, which offered a nice selection of traditional Irish dishes.  Much geeky conversation was had (we all play the same MMO, and Greg has absorbed way too much from listening to me babble).  Afterwards we walked around for a bit, then headed back to the hotel so we could prepare for all the sights we were planning on seeing tomorrow.

Finished with DnD third edition

Just wrapped up my last game on Monday.  I greatly prefer the new edition so I handed off a good number of my remaining book immediately after that.  Bit of a shame to end on a total party kill, but such is life (or death in this case).

My main thought on ending is that DnD really needs a strategic level set of game mechanics.  Particularly as characters get more power they are going to do things that have far reaching implications.   This can apply for any role playing game.  The open world stories tend to allow a wide range of approaches and even variant storylines, but the impact on the world at large tends to be very localized.  Games with more linear plots often change the world in dramatic ways, but player choices matter little.  One exception is Suikoden 2 and to a lesser extent 1.  Those games had a strategic element that was influenced by which of the 108 characters were recruited.  The grand strategy was set in stone, but controlling the higher scale level was very satisfying.

More after the cut.

Question of the Day: Is windows solitaire a video game?

Stephen Totilo raises the question after having a friendly argument:

If someone claims to have not played video games since they were a kid — BUT this person has played solitaire on their computer recently — then, are they, in fact, wrong? I say they have played video games lately. The person on the other side of the argument tells me that computer solitaire doesn’t count as a video game.

I'm against Totilo on this one.  Sure as commenter Jake points out, computer solitaire does add a timer and scoring and such, but I think in its essence it is still a card game.  I'd qualify online poker and electronic Settlers of Catan as card and board games respectively rather than video games.  Chess against an AI I might consider a video game regardless of whether it was a physical or an electronic board.

The question is really what dividing lines are useful.  I do think the term video game has some meaning other than just a game on a computer/console.  The hard/casual gamer divide is overrated in my book, but I think there's a useful cultural line to be drawn between native games and clear unintigrated transplants.  Can there be hybrids?  Sure, although absent a critical mass of "Bridge plus" designers/players I'd probably just qualify the hybrids as occupying both camps.

Is multiplayer the key to engaging serious games?

Last was week the Games for Change festival where designers of serious games got together to discuss their nascent industry. One regular topic for discussion at such gathering is whether serious games need to be fun and what fun even means. Michael Abbott of the Brainy Gamer summarizes the discussion:

Perhaps games, and the audience for games, would be better served by design that emphasizes values beyond fun, but it’s clearly a difficult assignment. A notable undercurrent at this year’s festival was a sense that the current crop of games for change aren’t reaching their intended audiences. Most of these games are perceived by players as preachy, and even their developers admit they often fail to match the engaging gameplay offered by commercial games.

He also casts doubt on the idea that a new generation that grew up on games would be more inclined to take games seriously given his experience with some freshmen regarding his class on video games. That said, Abbott found hope in the increasing awareness of the value of connections with commercial developers. From my experience with documentary films, I do think production values definitely matter. This doesn’t mean that serious games should be high budget, that’s impractical, but they should have a professional look.

On the fun breakdown, I’m inclined to think engaging is a better word. To find an audience beyond the equivalent of textbooks and corporate training videos people have to want to play serious games.

Making serious games engaging gets to the mention of multiplayer in my title. Economics and political science both heavily involve themselves in game theory with the classic example being the prisoner’s dilemma. The mechanics there are not particularly impressive, cooperate or betray, but I recall little grumbling when people paired up to experiment with it. I think that’s because the challenge and competition of playing with another person can up the engagement value substantially. This could even be faked I suspect, but probably only for one-off games.

Blog roll addition: Hathor Legacy

Hathor legacy is a cultural criticism site with the tagline “in search of good female characters.”  They recently revamped things by consolidating their multiple feeds into a single one (they also have a LJ feed), so this seemed like a good time to link.  The design of the core site doesn’t excite me, the text is a little big and you need to read more to get the details on any post.  However, that’s not an issue with the feeds, so I don’t really care.

My favorite discussion has been one by guest author Audra on Laura Roslin, the female President in Battlestar Gallactica.  The write-up does a good job of both addressing her strengths and acknowledging that she does make a fair number of iffy decisions.  The discussion went off topic some, but added more analysis and kept the things interesting well after the initial post.

A second post I enjoyed was one I disagreed with put up by Kris Ligman.  She thought Portal did more to advance female protagonists than Mirror’s Edge because the latter’s marketing was really driven by its main character.  Loving both games, I disagreed, as did other commenters, but while the discussion was a bit harsh on Kris I think she handled herself well and updated her views as new info came to light.  Potential for good discussion really is key in my view to a good criticism site.  Another fun series by the same author is a salutary set of pieces on the women of Metal Gear Solid.

The site was started by Jennifer Kesler who both gets a nice mix of writers and wades into comments as a moderator when appropriate, which is key to getting the commenting community that I enjoy.

Indiana Jones and the Residents of Evil

Resident Evil 5 (RE5) rightly garnered some controversy for setting a zombie-like game in Africa with a white protagonist.  Emphasis on “like” because the original trailer left out many of the safeties of the zombie genre.  The protagonist wasn’t defending home turn, the ‘zombies’ were intelligent enough to communicate, and they looked like normal, albeit furious, people.  These safeties were already off when RE4 came out, but the pseudo-Transylvania with Spanish speakers setting lacked any context and thus avoided controversy.  In part as a response to the controversy the situation improved through the inclusion of an AI-controlled African sidekick playable in co-op and made the bad guys look more alien via bloodshot eyes and post-decapitation tentacles.  These changes underline the importance of the initial protests, if not for a reaction to the trailer they may never have been made.  At this point, for the record, I’ve played about a quarter to a third of Resident Evil 4 and the demo of RE5.

So where does Indy come in?  He gets a mention in N’Gai Croal’s the column in the June issue of Edge Magazine.  It’s supposed to be out now, but my local Borders just had the May one.  So in this case I’m turning to Stephen Totilo for the preview which quotes Croal:

And as Takeuchi went on to explain that the enemies with the grass skirts and spears were seeking to defend the ruins from intruders and that he'd been inspired by Indiana Jones movies, I felt like I once again understood where he'd been coming from. That a two-to-three-week trip to unspecified African countries and looking at a number of movies set in Africa alongside pop-cultural inspirations like the Indiana Jones series simply hadn't been enough to sufficiently educate him or the team about he legacy of the imagery that they were tapping in to and, as a result, they'd lost control of their message. That's my take on it, of course; I doubt that the man who sat across from me and thoughtfully answered all of my questions would agree.

If Takeuchi had used Indy as inspiration, he rather severely messed up the execution. Put simply, Indy doesn’t slaughter natives.  In Raiders of the Lost Arc and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull he flees mobs but doesn’t engage them.  He does kill at times one-on-one, including a swordsman while he’s wielding a gun, but those examples have nothing to do with the madness of crowds that Takeuchi is trying to invoke.

Arguably, the most relevant analogy might be the Thuggee cult members in Temple of Doom that are mind controlled via the Blood of Kali.  The Brits do open up on them, but ultimately they’re captured and not massacred (the first minute of this video is from the actual film).  Notably the Brits are fairly pompous in the piece and its the natives who Jones take delivery on the treasury.  Another contender for the most apt scene are the tomb guards in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  However, in that case Indy’s group gets by them with the film’s artifacts, it’s the Soviets who perpetrate a massacre.

I don’t claim the Indy films are perfect by any means, but Indy generally treated the locals respectfully and was favorably contrasted to characters that didn’t.  I don’t know how this issue was treated in all the Indy games, but that’s not what Takeuchi is talking about in terms of inspiration.

The problem seems to be that zombie films, guerrilla war flicks, pulp, and real far-flung locations were all raided for visuals and set pieces without any consideration for the moral content of the sources or of the result. The Resident Evil series was never really known for deep thinking or making sense, so this isn’t really a huge surprise (as compared to the Metal Gear series which still often doesn’t make sense but is quite philosophical about it).  The closer this approach comes towards real world settings the more likely problems are to occur.

In short, I’d be rather hesitant about this director making any story or genre innovations without adult supervision.  Not that he doesn’t have a right to make what he wants, but without that input the ‘innovative’ product is going to reflect badly on him and his publishers.  The original controversy wasn’t overblown, it provided the needed supervision because neither Capcom U.S. nor anyone more knowledgeable in the lower ranks seemed to have spoken up prior to the trailer. 

Review: Gamer Symphony Orchestra (Univ. of Md College Park)

Thanks to a heads up by my friend Matt, I went to the Gamer Symphony Orchestra’s spring show this afternoon.  They hit a lot of the staples (Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Halo) but notably had a pre-encore finale with a medley from Katamari Damacy which made me quite happy.

The show was free, as are their recordings. I may well do a song by song discussion when they put up MP3s or video for this concert.  They’ve definitely got some talented people, but they’re also quite open about being a club that’s happy to take inexperienced people.  As a result, I did definitely notice some slips, and I’m no pro.  This didn’t prevent me from enjoying the concert and I would be willing to buy a CD (they weren’t available, presumably for licensing reasoning).

The arrangements they did were fairly original.  For example, their Metal Gear medley had a jazzy version of the theme from three.  I don’t think I’d pick that as my mainstay version, but it was a fun change of pace with the caveat that I’m not sure what a Bond audio reference was doing in there.  Similarly, I’m rather fond of the way they played around with Still Alive (although that’s a version from a prior concert, possibly with a different lead).

On the whole I enjoyed it and will gladly catch future shows, particularly in UMCP’s lovely Clarisse Smith Art Center.  If the presence of some less polished musicians is going to bother you, then probably not for you.  These days you can get a show with fully professional orchestras, but I think their choices of music and arrangements benefit from intimate knowledge and enthusiasm for the material.  Thus aside from being a terrific value, they also do pieces that I think tend not to be done even at the game orchestral concerts.

Blog roll maintenance: Games Journalists

A few game journalists have been moving around lately.  Stephen Totilo is moving to Kotaku and also will be maintaining his own personal gaming blog.  I’m going to keep around MTV Multiplayer for now, although it’s on hiatus, because I’ve grown to like Tracey John’s commentary.  I guess I’ll link to Totilo’s personal blog for now.

N’Gai Croal has left Newsweek to go into consulting.  He doesn’t have a personal website up yet to my knowledge but he does have a tumblr blog.  I wish him the best of luck advising designers, if they listen to him at all I’ll have more fun with their games.

Finally Patrick Klepek was another good commenter on MTV Multiplayer and I don’t think he’s yet found a new home.  He’ll make my blog roll when he does, until then fans can follow him over at his twitter account eXxy.  I’ve got my own twitter account with my usual creativity in naming things: http://twitter.com/gregorysanders.  It’s entirely public, but not particularly exciting unless you want vaguely daily updates on my life as well as notifications when I’ve got new posts up.

Also, I finally beat the boss in world 3 of Henry Hatworth.  It required improved tactics on my part as well as replaying an old world to get money to buy an upgrade.  That done, I’m still enjoying it on the whole, but even with puzzle game add-ons, Mega-man style platformers really aren’t my strong point.

Review: Locke’s Quest (DS game)

Locke’s quest is a tower defense game.  It’s a fairly common genre for web games, but I hadn’t actually played one previously.  That said, I always enjoyed trying to fortify my bases in real-time strategy games, despite the fact that in most that’s not actually a particularly effective tactic.

The game itself pits your character, Locke, against wave upon wave of clockwork enemies.  The build and combat modes are split.  There’s typically two to three minutes to first set up your base, a few minutes of attacks, and then the cycle repeats with a bit less time for maintenance.  Survive a number of days and you then go on to a new map, with conditions sometimes changing mid-map. I’m not normally a big fan of time limits, but in this case they kept things moving nicely.  Interestingly, time is the only real sunk cost in the game.  You have to repair/replace towers damaged in the combat phase, but you can sell off anything you built at full value.  During the combat phase Locke can spend his time on a mix of repairing your walls and turrets and attacking the enemy.  There’s multiple types of attacks and each has its own little mini-game, although I tended to use the acid attack in most any circumstances.

The building involves laying out auto-firing towers, cheaper walls to surround and directly strengthen them, traps that only last a round, and buffing segment that add special abilities to the towers.  The traps might actually be a little cheap when it come to balance, I found them a highly affordable and effective option even on early, easier, day.  One other interesting variant, you can pick building materials which makes each tower and wall stronger but also more expensive.  I was often flush enough with resources that I didn’t need the cheaper options, but I do think it added something to the game.

The core game play is a fun and thanks to good map design and mid-map scenario change it stays varied and interesting.  There is a good mix of clockwork baddies, although some with special abilities, like invisibility or flying, only show up on certain maps which makes countermeasures very hit or miss.  I’d have preferred less gimmicky baddies and defenses and instead having them be more like the burrowers who influence design tactics but don’t require special equipment.  The AI is fairly dumb.  It will exploit holes in your defenses, but only if the holes are fairly close to its default path.  This is mitigated some by pulling in enemies from multiple start points who have different paths.  When the holes are exploited though, it’s rather scary as all your defenses are weaker from the sides and back.  Also a bit annoying is that using walls that are pre-built in the map are indestructible but don’t increase the defensive value of your towers like walls you build do.  This sometimes results in building walls in front of the pre-builts on the map, which mostly bugs me because it’s just inelegant.  I’d accept if they existing features were destroyable so long as I could fully exploit them.

The story ha some interesting twists, I liked the supporting characters even though the protagonist sometimes did not.  That said, I found the ending unsatisfying and pseudo-profound.   It involves a fairly common error, endings should not involve that much discussion of the mechanics of souls in your particular universe.  Speculative theology, unlike science fiction, tends not to be well thought out or insightful into the human condition. The supporting mini-games, one involving you controlling a tower, one ‘design’ screen where you used parts to copy a picture of your next turret, were cute though not hugely exciting.  The design game made me wish I could actually customize my turrets, but there is a good mix in the game so that’s not a huge problem.  Although I haven’t used it yet, one great addition is that once you beat the game, you can replay any of the levels at will. 

On the whole, this is a fun game about making tradeoffs with time and resources.  The multiple wave structure allows for fixing early mistakes or building on good ideas.  There’s often a satisfying feeling of desperation near the end of a later wave as you frantically work to get your defenses to hold.  There’s some complaints that the game lets you carry over too many resources, that’s probably true, although they give you the map minimum in replay so it’s less of a problem for the hard core.  I’d say the main missing element to the game play is an incentive to defend more than just the ‘source wells’ the clockwork enemies are trying to get to.  Sometimes you have allies, and if they’re outside your walls, they’re probably toast.  They aren’t that useful on the inside, but they do help if your defenses are overrun.  However, that incentive is mostly present in earlier levels.  There can be advantages in plugging up enemy entry points or setting up secondary front, but on the whole the time efficient thing to do is just to build the best towers out of the best materials in a limited space.  More tradeoffs here would add to game play depth in my view.

Finally, I’d pick up a sequel, but it would also be interesting to see the premise played with.  In some ways, responding to natural disasters, floods in particular, seem to be highly relevant to this kind of game play. But what really might rock would be a zombie variant.  In that case, require allies to man the fortifications and to give the supporting bonuses.  If a turret goes down you don’t just have a breach, they’ve got another zombie.  Trying to save as many people as possible and needing those people to man your fortifications would add the strategic depth I was talking about before.

Source: Impulse buy.  I think I heard about it first from MTV Multiplayer and Stephen Totilo

Classic Gaming: [Chrono Trigger]

[Chrono Trigger] is a Japanese RPG produced by the company that created the Final Fantasy series.  It's widely beloved for good reason and is now available for the Nintendo DS.  If you like classic JRPGs and haven't played it, definitely pick it up.  Since it's so widely praised, I'll focus on those elements that I think would bear repeating in other games.

First off, there's a time travel plot.  I think time travel is a rather useful trope for games even if it's overplayed most everywhere else.  While the story is linear, albiet with side quests, it's still very satisfying to see the long term consequences of your actions.  That sort of reward typically only comes in at the end of RPGs, if at all.  I was particularly pleased that side quests allowed the PCs to bring peaceful relations between humans and various 'monsterous' races (although there's no real precense of people of color as frogs don't count).  Another benefit is that the big bad comes into view relatively early in the game and can be fought at any time without losing a sense of menace.  The system is an old style save/load, sadly no Prince of Persia or Braid style time tricks, but I think that tends to be another advantage of time travel related plotlines.

Second, the combat is relatively interesting for a JRPG.  There's combos available between most all of your party members which makes party selection more interesting and meaningful.  They also incorporate the map to an extent, there's attacks that travel in lines and in circular bursts.  This isn't a highly meaningful mechanic, but it encourages actually paying attention to what your enemies are doing.  The boss battles tend to require some tactical finesse and while sometimes overlong are highly varied.  This isn't to say that the combat is terrific, but it's a good deal better than I expect from classic JRPGs.

The main character, Chrono, is a classic cypher lead, but I definitely liked the other party members.  Particularly of note is Lucca, a mad scientist who despite being female is actually a bit unbalanced because she lacks healing abilities.  However, I do recommend sticking with her if you like her, as she can do ridiculous damage by the end.

As a side note, Stephen Totillo recently had a piece where he praised a feature Chrono Trigger and to a greater extent the Final Fantasy series could really use: fastforwarded special attacks.  The crazy graphics of special attacks is part of the fun of these games, but invariably they get old fast.  Skipping them is sometimes an option but that seems like a waste really.  Fast forwarding could be a nice middle ground.

In any event, I've actually played a fairly silly time travel card game [called Chrononauts by Looney Labs, maker of Fluxx; thanks Matt!].  It involved setting up a timestream with interrelated events.  For example assassinating Hitler had definite implications for WWII. However, some ways of changing the time stream had a mix of good and bad consequences.  I'd be interested to see a game like that, unlike Chronotrigger where most of the changes you make are reliably for the better.  It coudl be fun to see the impact of your intervation on the world at large, ideally with a great range of options that could interact in a rule base rather than a scripted manner.  Time travel wouldn't necessarily be required, but it would let you to see the full consequences quickly and even to rethink actions.  In any event, many games suffer from endings that are primarily determined by the final choice the player makes and not everything leading up to it.  The more consequences that emerge pre-ending, the less the risk of this problem.

Origin: Borrowed from Fiancee

[Update: The title is two words: Chrono Trigger and not Chronotrigger.] 

Social games: Emotions as status effects

So how could a characters emotion be best expressed in a roleplaying game?  Normally this is just a matter for acting or storytelling.  For some point buy systems, characters might pick up phobias or love-interests to protect, but even then things are often kept fairly mechanics light.  That’s fine for a certain style of game, but trying to manipulate other peoples emotions is ultimately part of the tactics of social conflict.

Reading over Mike Mearls’ blog, he had an post on adding some flavor to NPCs:

I've been thinking of doing something similar for my NPCs in 4e. Sure, they'll have the typical spells and tricks to make them daunting enemies, but I'd also like to insert a few powers that are a mechanical expression of the NPC's personality and role in the campaign, built along with quotes or other material to go along with the attack…

I like the idea of these "scripts" because they make a fight different. Sometimes, the tactically smart play for an NPC is boring and flavorless. If every NPC fights as well as the DM can run them, you lose a lot of what makes an NPC unique. Ideally, the players think of the fight in terms of the NPC's personality ("That dwarf was crazy! He ran across a pool of acid to get to Baldar.") rather than in terms of powers ("That dwarf had a nasty sneak attack abililty.")

The specific examples he gave were all rather combat oriented but got into confidence, love, anger, and hatred.  Mearls was talking about special powers to emulate these feelings, but in some ways they could work just like being slowed, blinded, or stunned.  This isn’t to say that powers couldn’t key off emotional statuses, barbarian rage is a classic fantasy trope and could fit well with such a system.

The first question I’m pondering is whether emotional statuses should be fairly neutral or negative?  Hatred might give you penalties when attacking someone other than your rival, but should there be a bonus for hitting the rival?  Anger might make you more prone to leave yourself open and thus give a defensive penalty, but does it make your combat or social attacks more biting?  I’m prone to think a mix of advantages and disadvantages is best, but that makes the states more complicated.

Here I think I’d like to do more research.  Social mechanics should ultimately be a bit more real than combat mechanics.  It’s an area where most of us have more real life experience, so it’s easier to get it wrong.

The inherent morality of gamers

So, many games let you play as a good guy or a bad guy. What do people prefer? Morality systems tend to be encourage fairly ridiculous extremes, but that doesn’t make the question uninteresting.  Stephen Totilo interviewed Brian Fleming who heads the studio that produced Infamous:

He’d heard this from Peter Molyneux, the outspoken head of Lionhead Studios, who said that players of the Xbox series “Fable,” tended to steer their characters toward the side of angels. Technically, they could have made their characters evil and gained just as many benefits. But Molyneux said players ultimately preferred to complete their adventure as a good person.

“I thought he was lying,” Fleming told me during a demo of “Infamous” last week in San Francisco. Then Fleming saw a survey, which indicated that gamers want to save the world, that as little as 20% of players of games like these finish evil…

Play-testing of “Infamous” has indicated to Fleming that many gamers don’t want to flip-flop their moral standing. “People blindly steer hard in one direction,” he said. I suggested that they did this in order to maximize their skills in the game’s good superpowers or evil superpowers. To balance that, he said, out-of-character actions in the game will net players double the standard experience points for the other moral path. A bad guy who does some good gets more credit than a good guy who just does more good. Such is life?

I like doubling the experience points for exceptions, but on the whole I generally think encouraging extremes makes for uninteresting morality.  If it’s a Star Wars game, I can see the logic, but I’ve always found the Dark Side/Light Side dynamic to hold fairly little insight into human nature.  Similarly, I really don’t have time these days to play through games twice so that aspect doesn’t appeal to me either.

I’d be happy to theorize about how to better have morality systems add depth, but I think the best way to start is to go where the players are.  Sure off the ridiculously bad options, but most of the effort should go towards the good side.  Apparently Infamous does offer variety on each side, although that part didn’t really show in the trailer.

Great interview on game design

There's a terrific interview on game design for DnD up on the Wizards of the Coast website.  At a few point it discusses how a single role could kill a character at full health, either because a monster got a critical hit or because of a failed saving throw.  They largely have done away with that in 4e, much to my pleasure.  As the piece acknowledges, that's appropriate for some systems.  I don't doubt many old school DnD players prefer that.  Their right certainly.  It certainly happens in real life, but for me it just isn't that fun. 

There's also a good discussion about the nerfing of wizards in an attempt to implement the principle "all classes must rock."  This is a nigh universal system, although the Buffy system in some ways incorporates inequality in character abilities.  The way it does it is to give some really good bonuses and abilities that can be used rarely as well as powers to force plot twists.  I don't think Buffy is quite there yet though.  Rare bonuses are effectively just a different power setup that's more oriented towards dailies than at-wills to use 4e terminology.  Going a bit off the ideas of my friend Matt L., it's really about sharing storytelling responsibility.  For something like Buffy to really work, I think you need to get more into the theory of having half-players half-game masters.  The half-storytellers also should probably have a range of different options, from controlling specific NPCs to influencing world building.

A final interesting point from the article is a peek at design ideas 4e abandoned.  I'm paraphrasing a bit in the descriptions where I think elaboration is useful.

• Power Keywords: Classify powers by key words and allow variable access to key words.
• Powers Every Level.
• Condition Tracks: Consistently requiring lesser conditions on the way to nastier ones.
• A Weird Damage System: Difficult to summarize.
• Too Many Renewable Powers, Not Enough Attrition.
• Multiple Power Acquisition Schemes.
• The 'Traveller-style' Character Generation System: Difficult to summarize.

I love these discussions because it both provides good ideas that might work for different systems and notes tricky ideas that perhaps should be avoided.

Google Documents Experiment

This is a bit of a follow-up to some of the gaming stuff I was doing last month. No real new information here, but I'm trying out some formatting tricks for use in the future. If it doesn't work for you or you have any thoughts, feel free to comment.

Random gaming thoughts

Inspired by this Yglesias post:

Dave Weigel has a neat piece on the “going Galt” fad currently reverberating through the loony-bin known as the conservative movement.

With all this Atlas Shrugged talked going around, Bioshock 2 is really going to be incredibly topical.  Here's hoping they can exploit it properly.

Sweet little lies

Last Sunday there was a fascinating article on lying in the WPost (not to be confused with the not so fascinating lying in an op-ed column).  It was prompted by the new series "Lie to Me" based on the professional work of Paul Ekman.  Sounds like a fun series, but I think I may check out his books first.  The article draws on his work as well as several other field experts. 

The main argument of the article is that we're bad at detecting lies.  Only about 1% of people are truth wizards and great at doing it.  They have to be able to live with uncertainty. Even those good at spotting lies tend only to be capable of doing it in a professional capacity.  We theoretically could get good at detecting lies in our personal life, but it would mean abandoning trust and it's not really worth it.

So, for the fun stuff, here's the unconscious tells:

• Smiling often means you're hiding your emotions.
• Emblems, e.g. giving a thumbs up, can be useful but only if you can notice it mid-gesture and not the final results.
• Illustrations, e.g. talking with your hands, tends to decrease when you're lying as you're more actively controlling your gestures.
• Manipulations, e.g. biting your nails, are not a good way of detecting lies but are widely thought to be the most obvious tells.
• Leaning forward, nodding, speaking at the same speed and volume as the person you're talking too tends to inspire trust.

There's more including neuroscience. It's worth reading the whole thing.

I think I may study some of these articles before I try fooling with social mechanics for RPGs.  Realism is an unattainable and ultimately unwise goal.  However, social mechanics should at least evoke how these things actually work.  Alternately, one can make a system based on evoking how they tend to work in film and such.  However, I do believe in learning via gaming, so may as well get it right.

RPG Mechanics Workshop: Target Numbers, Take 2

After Mecha kindly pointed out that the numbers that I was assuming were play-tested had changed substantially after release. As a result, the numbers I used earlier today were quite off.

Here's my second take:

In fourth edition DnD (DnD 4e) the basic mechanic is to take a d20 and roll while hoping to roll equal or higher than the target number (TN). The standard target numbers are 5 for an easy difficulty roll, 10 for a medium difficulty roll and 15 for a hard roll. If the roll deals with something your character is good at, you'll have a bonus. For the purposes of this exercise, those bonuses range from -1 (no skill and you're below human average at the stat) to +8 (you've done everything possible to boost that number).

The above paragraph is an over simplification. It doesn't deal with the level "treadmill." As characters get more powerful, their challenges get more difficult. This is meant to keep things from getting boring. I factored out the treadmill to deriving the 5, 10, and 15 values mentioned above.    The base numbers are available in the DMG errata in the section under the header page 42.

After deriving what good target numbers for a uniform distribution d20 system, I had to figure out the equivalents in a normal distribution 2d6 system.  The match-ups aren’t perfect.  In a uniform distribution, if the target number increases by one, the probability of success goes down by a constant amount.  This is because every number is equally likely to be rolled.  That isn’t true for a normal distribution because with 2d6 there’s six ways to roll a 7 but only one way to roll a 2.  

Even with two different distributions, the curves match up reasonably well. 

• The DnD 4e D20 range from –1 to +8 translate to +0 to +4 in 2d6
• Easy 5/medium 10/hard 15 translates to a TN of 6, 8, and 10, respectively.
• There’s one key difference between easy rolls and medium/hard rolls in the DnD 4e table.  The medium/hard rolls  rise at at a rate of +2 / 3 levels.  The easy rolls rise at a rate of +1.5 / 3 levels.
• This means that the game assumes the characters are not specializing in the skills they’ll be using to make easy rolls.  This seems like a sensible trick, and I’ll steal it for Besm 3e’s benchmarks.
• I’m still pondering what to do with static targets a la DnD 4e defense values.  I’m thinking I’ll go with 7, so between medium and hard.  I haven’t made my mind up on that yet.

This all gets more complicated once I factor in tier-based expected minimums.  However, that can wait for another week.

RPG mechanics workshop: Target number math

[UPDATE: Forgot to check the errata.  Apparently the numbers have been seriously adjusted downwards and now adjust for stat boosts.  Taking this one down for now until I get the new numbers up.  I’ll leave it up after the break for the record.]

Resident Evil 5: Follow-up failure

Downloaded the RE5 Demo and so far my main impression has been that I agree with Patrick Klepek that I don’t like the controls at all. (As a side note, I was sad to learn that Klepek was leaving the MTV Multiplayer blog, sounds like budget cuts.  I’ll miss his writing and hope to follow him elsewhere.   Here’s his twitter feed for any other fans out there.)

So far I’ve died a several times on the marketplace scenario and had the game crash twice.  Not the most auspicious beginning.    Part of the problem is probably that I don’t really know the RE4 controls, so I’m starting from scratch here.

I’d remembered to download the demo because the controversy around the game is flaring again.  I do like Coates rejection of the “it’s just a game” defense.  If games can’t handle critiques they don’t merit respect.  Having already critiqued the trailer, I’m withholding further judgment until I can get through the bloody demo.  That said, I do think the addition of the Sheva Alomar character certainly does help some.  It’d help more if both she were playable in single player mode, though at least she is available in co-op.  I do love the rise of co-op gaming even though I don’t tend to have guests over to play shooters with.

That said, even if things are better, I don’t buy that it means the original complaints were overblown.  I stand by my critique of the trailer for one.  For the defense, here’s a L.A. Times article that quotes Karen Dyer, the actress that played Alomar:

"When the clip came out, Sheva wasn't in it because she hadn't been created yet. Once people get to hear the whole story and meet Sheva, I think they'll see that there's nothing racist about it. In the game, she gets together with Chris Redfield to try to help her people. I think it's a balanced portrayal" of black people.

I hope she’s right, but even if she is, the fact that her character wasn’t created yet when the protest broke out shows the utility of complaining.  They may well have planned a local guide character anyways, but the criticism was early enough to have the potential to influence those decisions.  Raising warning flags gives developers the chance to correct course earlier in the design process.  The idea isn’t to score points, it’s to make a positive change.

RPG Mechanics Workshop: Core [mechanics]

So here’s the Mecha quote from last week:

'Let's make a secondary [conflict] system that is about half as intricate as the main one, that you cannot possibly even hold your ground for a millisecond against someone trained in it.'

This describes a common mistake in game design.  Designing a secondary system is easier than incorporating new ideas into the core system.  However, that just passes on to gamemasters and players the puzzle of how to make them work together.  There are a variety of ways to avoid this problem: sit out some fights, pick up abilities to cancel the system, become an expert yourself, or introduce wholesale immunities to the system. Most of these approaches either force everyone to deal with the system or minimize its impact (nerf') it.  In either case, the objective is increasing variety fails.  Sitting out is a simpler option, but it comes at the cost of fun and should be avoided whenever possible.

The real problem here is defensive and not offensive.  For abilities not emphasizing conflict, lacking expertise isn’t a problem because non-experts will stay away from those abilities.  Similarly on the offensive, a sword fighter need not worry if they are inept with an axe.  The problem is defensive because a characters weaknesses will intentionally be targeted.  Teamwork abilities can help with these problems, but should not be so demanding that the weak character is effectively sitting out the conflict or that the defender' doesn’t have a role other than protecting the weak character.

Thus I suggest the solution is that defensive systems should all overlap.  Each characters should have strong points and weak points, but there should be a minimum standard for non-extraordinary weak points.  This applies to combat but also any other situation where characters face consequences for failure and cannot necessarily rely on their strong points.

Happily, both DnD 4e and Besm 3e make real strides over their predecessors on these issues.  I’ll discuss Besm 3e after the cut.

Role playing game mechanics workshop

The main tabletop RPG I play is Dungeons and Dragons.  Currently I’m in a 3.5 edition campaign, though I’ll be jumping over to fourth edition as soon as that’s done.  I do this because I find the mechanics themselves fun, in terms of setting and play style it isn’t really a natural match for me.  I credit my enjoyment of the game to the hard work of the designers and tests, it didn’t happen like that by accident. 

So, I’ve been thinking a bit about how I’d do a game with fun mechanics as well a setting and play style that I would enjoy.  For this experiment, I’m going to be working with BESM third edition. 

Why Besm 3e?

1. I’ve played and enjoyed its prior incarnations.
2. It handles the setting and play style thing fairly well.
3. I already own it.
4. I have spent some time thinking into how to fix it.  

For these posts, I’ll discuss general principles in the main text but save the Besm 3e specific stuff for after the cut.  I’m not going to get as mechanics heavy as say this set of fixes to one prior edition but I do draw inspiration from that work.  If anyone else is interested, let me know and I’ll be happy to have your input in more than just comments.

First post later this week, inspired by this quote by my friend Mecha who writes at geeks.rate(food) which review Omaha area restaurants:

'Let's make a secondary combat system that is about half as intricate as the main one, that you cannot possibly even hold your ground for a millisecond against someone trained in it.'

Race and DnD: Responding to the medievalist defense

Last week James Edward Raggi IV over at Lamentations of the Flame Princess listed my old post on Race and Dnd among a few he was responding to.  Not sure if he puts me in the “thought provoking” or “thought suppressing” category. He’s an old school first edition grognard (war-gamer) type whereas I am quite pleased with the newest edition, but there are enough similarities that some aspects of his defense to hold over.  His post is a long one and I don’t particularly agree with much of what he says, but he anticipates common critiques which makes his points easy to engage.

To start with, he argues against racism in the real world.  There aren’t real differences between the races, so acting as a racist just doesn’t make sense.

In a fictional world, that often isn’t the case. Humans are different than elves are different than dwarves are different than orcs, and objectively so. Good and Evil exist as objective forces, and certain races are predisposed to a certain moral outlook. This does not mean that authoring, playing, or accepting this as objective fictional fact means endorsing or accepting this as truth in real-world ethnicities or that it's at all related to how the real world works.

This single paragraph gets to my problem.  Objective fictional facts are fine in the mechanics of the game or in non-normative aspects of the game.  Super powers and floating cities are part of the fun.  But I think incorrect objective fictional facts regarding morality are problematic.  At best the player simply ignores them, at worst it negatively effects our outlook.  Long version after the cut.