The Worst Game Mechanic

Your friends have all gathered to play a game.  There are five of you, but the game is only 4 players.  Someone has to sit out, and it's randomly decided that that's you.  Ever had that feeling? It's a sinking frustration, because you can't really blame anyone but the randomness that chose you, and the game that put you there.  So you feel helplessness, and all alone.


Fortunately, this doesn't actually happen because people aren't jerks (eh, usually). They'd instead choose to play another game, because they don't want one of their friends to not play.  So why then, do so many games have mechanics that do exactly that: have people not play the game?!  The worst game mechanic in the world is any which causes a player of the game to do exactly the opposite of what a game design should strive for: having fun by playing the game.

The most simple example of this is the lose a turn mechanic.  The affected player has to sit out for a round while everyone else plays past them. That's not at all fun!  Likewise, take an extra turn is almost as bad.  This is essentially forcing everyone but one player to lose a turn.  This is almost obvious, yet game after game include it as an effect of some card, some ability, or some reward.

This gets me to the important part for RPG mechanics:

Never give a player more "actions" than another in any given "round".

Period.  I don't care about attack speeds, injuries, or status effects.  This problem can be much more subtle: an extra attack here, a bonus action there, a loss of your movement action.  An extra re-roll.  Any mechanics that lets one player play more than the other players means that one player is hogging the spotlight.  They are taking up more of everyone's time than any other player.  Even if a wizard's fireball blows up the entire room, the fighter with ten attacks will be rolling for minutes, while the wizard sits back and waits for the next day to roll around (don't even get me started on 'encounter' or 'daily' powers...).  Equally cool in terms of fiction, and even balanced in terms of power. But the bottom line is that the wizard just doesn't get to play as much as the fighter.

Major edit after a lot of people have pointed some things out to me:
This is not a major issue, if an issue at all, in most role playing games.  Extra actions can be a lot of fun - for those who get them.  But it rarely impacts the other players.  In fact, the 'human factor' is a much larger contributor to players waiting around than a player's extra actions ever are.  But these arguments don't disprove that such mechanics have a core problem.  For science, you really have to focus in and look at things individually as well as within the big picture.  Narrowed down, these mechanics have the potential to lag a game down.  In the big picture, it's only a 'real problem' when one or more factors are also put on top of it: such as that one guy who takes forever to decide what he's going to do.  The issue is multiplied if that guys is also the one that has multiple actions.

The idea behind the spotlight being equal per 'round' could in fact be drawn out over multiple sessions.  I'm perfectly okay with games that shift major spotlights game to game, especially when it's story/fiction based.  But that's not one of these mechanics that I'm talking about.  The problem is that a mechanic such as 'lose a turn' could completely destroy someone's spotlight day (e.g. they get turned to stone by a Medusa), now wasting multiple game sessions for that player, rather than just one or so rounds of a combat.

The bottom line is that these types of mechanics prevent player engagement, and that's why they are not "good".

**End Edit**

Next up is stuns.  My friends and I have a saying:  "Stuns win games".  If you've ever played a MOBA like DoTA, LoL, or HoN, you know how true this is.  But it's equally true for every other game genre as well.  When someone cannot act, cannot play the game, the other players have a 100% pure advantage.  Sure, this can be balanced (e.g. the cost of the stun is high enough to offset the time lost), but the key here is that it is not fun.  The player that is stunned gets aggravated, increased in direct relation to how long they are stunned for.  Steer clear of these mechanics, and balance your game in other ways.  For example, don't have "ice" stun - make it "slow".  Detriments are interesting; you have to play around them, usually calling for a change in strategy.  But you're still playing.

In RPGs (and other co-op games), an important thing to remember is that when players are not against other players (e.g. a GM, cards, or computer AI), these types of mechanics are okay for the players to inflict on their enemies, because enemies aren't there to have fun.  It's not about them, it's about the players.  So have your mage freeze that dragon; just don't let the rogue sprint, jump, attack, backflip, and attack again all in the same go.

Stuns Win Games - OPifex Gaming

Mechanics that force you to not play the game you sat down to play are the worst mechanics in game design.  And there are plenty of shitty, broken, unbalanced, disruptive, un-intuitive, complex, confusing, nonsensical mechanics out there.  There are things that just don't work.  But none can top the mechanics that do exactly what they're intended to do: stop people from playing.

Another major edit, for more examples:
Companions/pets give players complete extra turns. They are doing more per turn than other characters, and I've seen plenty of games bog down to a crawl because of it.  This is generally why we don't give the same person multiple characters to play within an RPG, unless everyone also gets multiple characters.  It's hard for players to control that much - i.e. it takes too long in comparison to everyone else.

Magic: The Gathering has "take an extra turn" cards that, when stacked, can make opponents walk away from the table, because they don't want to sit and watch someone play solitaire cards for 10 minutes.

Dominion is a game where "extra actions" per turn is a core part of getting players' engines going.  But the key to dominion is that everyone starts with an equal opportunity to gain these extra actions.  The game is about that, but is not the major selling point of the game.  I'd argue that strategies that get more actions are more 'fun' to play in dominion, but that doesn't stop other strategies from also being viable/fun, because the game centers around figuring out the 'optimal' card strategy, not necessarily the turn-by-turn play.  Arguable - I know - and I'd then start to argue that the extra actions make some strategies more enjoyable than others, which isn't good game design.

Lastly, my favorite example from people's comments: there's an obvious line between a barbarian having a couple of extra swings with his axe and the druid who summons 8 great owls to control for the next six turns. The point - when it comes down to it - is to be careful with your game designs.  These types of mechanics are awesome for the player, but generally not so much for the other players.

Mistborn: The Big Book of "Rules Lite"

When I sat down to play Mistborn, I had skimmed the rules.  They seemed pretty light, with some uniqueness mixed with familiar concepts from games like FATE.  But from reading just the first few pages of this big RPG book, I had been sucked into the awesome world Brandon Sanderson has created, and was excited to explore the world he presents.  After playing, my opinions have been flipped dramatically.

The book, as I understand it, has quite a bit of "spoilers", so if you haven't read the books and plan to, I'm warning you now that I don't know enough to differentiate, so anything below this point could potentially give you more information than you should know.  I'm not sure whether to dock points off for this issue or not.  On the bonus side, it not only explains but expands on concepts introduced in the books, allowing followers of the series to explore the world in greater depth.  At the same time, new players (e.g. friends of people who've read the books) are given a huge amount of information, which is great, because it helps them dive into the world and join their friends in understanding how the world ticks. So the only downside is some spoilers... which I think is just fine for a 'series' RPG.

The system most closely resembles "Lady Blackbird" (which if you haven't played, you should!).  You use d6 dice pools, created with base stats plus any number of attributes and traits that may apply, giving you either bonus dice or taking some away.  However, the system of success is fairly unique: you try to get pairs of dice, with 6's being extra bonuses regardless of success.  Without going into further detail, the result of this is that the action resolution is very quick and easy to determine the outcome, while hiding the probabilities behind otherwise familiar d6s.  It seemed to work, at it's core.

However, the system has hard, artificial limits.  You can never have less than 2 dice, and no more than 10.  I generally don't like rules like this, because even though most systems have reasonable limits on their dice and numbers, rules that define limits are in your face about it.  Really, it bothers me because of other rules in the system - the ones that say you stack bonuses and subtract penalties.  What this means is that if I have enough bonuses to get myself to 10 dice in resources, "the empire", who is supposed to have magnitudes more resources than myself, also only has 10 dice.

Challenge ratings are from 1-5, which is not a very fine gradient for GMs to play with.  But, it's simple, which I liked, up until the point where the game introduces opposed rolls and relative outcomes.  Now the 1-5 scale changes based on who and what is participating.  Add on 6's being "nudges", which are more or less completely undefined 'extra bonuses', and the scale at which action happens is blurred to the point where our GM was having trouble interpreting the results of our die rolls.

Unlike FATE, where aspects can only be used with the FATE point economy, and unlike Lady Blackbird, where attributes are clearly and explicitly defined, Mistborn uses a much more loose mechanic called "traits and burdens".  They are more like FATE aspects in words, describing broad concepts about the characters, but act like Lady Blackbird's bonuses, where as long as you can convince the GM that a trait applies, he may reward you a bonus die.  Or not.  This, while good in theory, results in a lot of banter between players and GMs.  While not aggressive, this slows down the game considerably, since nothing is clear-cut, and everything must be discussed.

Character creation was simple and relatively quick.  Our group spent a lot of time on it, but I think that's because the general questionaire the system uses opens up for a lot of discussion on who your characters are, where they came from, and what motivates them forward.  The stats, traits, and powers were easy to come up with and understand.  Plus, the book has great examples that fit right into Sanderson's world.  I really appreciated that character's are tied into the world with a tragedy and a destiny, which sounded overkill at first, but really adds the right splash of color that this world is asking for.  And in the end, I was very happy with the outcome of my character (despite being grossly under powered compared to the rest of the party, since he had no magical abilities).

The magic in Mistborn is what it's all about.  Non-magical characters may have uses, but in reality, half the fun of this game is playing with the very well-defined abilities of Allomancy (metal magic).  Sanderson's magic is well-received as it has a set of rules that are easy to grasp yet extremely powerful and flexible.  The best part is that they are, for the most part, limited in scope.  The vast number of examples included help ground the players in the possible vs. impossible, which in my understanding also lines up perfectly with the book series.

But... for all the fun it provides, the magic doesn't translate well into an RPG.  First and foremost, magical power can be 'recharged' by eating/drinking metal, usually in the form of carried vials.  So basically "mana potions". This is a nightmare for an RPG, since the limit of magic is then tied directly to limit of economy.  This works out great for the stories of intrigue and power struggle told in the Mistborn series, but when it came to the RPG, it's almost as if the designers didn't even try to tackle the problem.  Instead, they introduce an awkward props system that is, again "in theory", a simplistic approach to items.  Instead, it only serves to confuse players as to why they can only have so much on them at any given time, and why it's auto-recharged after any given "scene".  Taken abstractly, it actually works fairly well, but feels very gamey, which distracts from the otherwise immersive world.

Which brings me to the world itself.  It's exciting, for sure.  Magic is a fantastic mystery, and the heroes are generally powerful, unique beings that are trying to stand up against oppression.  But... once I really dug into it, I couldn't help but to feel an overwhelming amount of helplessness and depression.  The Lord Ruler, oppressor of all, is an untouchable, ancient god-king.  So from the start, anyone who stands against him is screwed.  Then, the nobility of the world has everything under hand and foot.  They breed slaves and murder them for fun.  Worse yet, at any time any number of ridiculously powerful creatures could be sent to kill the players. And they would have no hope.  The world is dirty, both physically and mentally.  It's just not a nice place for anyone (except maybe the god-king?).  This is - the point - if you will.  But it's hopeless.  No matter what I do as a hero, will I ever really make a difference?  I can't help but to just want to put the book down and walk away.  It leaves me with a gross feeling, rather than any sort of experience I'm glad I had.

That all said, one of the best parts of the game is the 'group template'.  It's easy to get the players together, because you're a crew.  And a crew naturally works together towards a common goal (something you decide when creating characters).  This idea is fantastic - basically an "Ocean's 11" gang in a fantasy setting.  Add in uniquely known secrets that each player keeps to themselves, and you can't help but be pulled into the world of Mistborn, with all of the wonders it holds (You know - despite the awful, depressing setting where murder and rape are commonplace, and your god-king sends magicians to make everyone feel OK about it.  Yeah.  Except that.).

TL;DR - The game is often called "Rules Lite" because of it's easy dice and simple trait system.  But when you add a tome of supporting information for the world and it's magic, and all of a sudden you're left with a game that's not exactly easy to play, in any sense of the phrase.

No seriously, this book is huge:

Stats (Part 2): Combining Body & Mind

In creating a new RPG, I wanted to make sure that the character stats I chose were a solid foundation for the rest of the game.  This post follows my first post about stats: narrowing the scope.  

It's all about the feel.  Choosing game mechanics isn't just about how well the mechanics flow together, or how well they enable characters to interact with your world; it's about how each mechanic contributes to the overall emotional pull it has on your players.  In Hostargo, I want the players to feel directly connected to the world, where each choice matters, and all people, places, and events are tied together.

Everything about us is connected; our mind, body, and soul.  And that's why single-use stats just don't cut it for me.  You're strong, but do you have the will to back it up? You're funny, but I will laugh if you try to intimidate me.  You're sick, so your muscles are weak, your vision is blurred, and you're having trouble remembering your own name. 

I want my stats to represent this connection between mind and body.  I also want to use stats as a representation of health, both mental and physical.  When you get shot, I want the pain to cripple you.  You can't walk, you can't think, and you certainly have trouble socializing.  So instead of using the standard body and mind, what type of aspects can I use?

Stats describe characters, so let's describe them.  He's not just physically strong, he's hardy.  She has keen eyes and cracks a mean joke, so she's witty.  That kid has incredible self-control; he's a star athlete and also top of his class.  He's certainly got a magnetic spirit.  Long story short, these are the general categories I've landed on (after a good long time of debating this stuff, of course).  Interestingly, but I suppose not surprisingly, these descriptive categories are not all that far off from the standard body and mind.

But the trick to what I'm about to propose is that each of these stats can represent a character in a physical, a mental, and a social way.  Oh, and Hostargo is largely a wild-west setting... so...

True Grit

WIT can describe a character's ability to think quickly.  But quick thinking also applies to one's reflexes; acting before thinking even.  A character who is high in wit would also have a sharp tongue, able to throw insults left and right.  But if your wit is damaged, your sanity decreases.  You become skittish and off-put, often unable to accurately perceive that which is around you.

GRIT represents a person's general hardiness.  Strength of muscle, strength of will, and strength of character can all be wrapped up into one, beautiful word.  And when grit is damaged, that's your actual physical health.  Your strength declines, your drive slows, your companions no longer see you as an indestructible pylon, and your enemies grin knowing that you're on your knees.

SPIRIT represents a character's self control.  High spirit means high energy, and the ability to manifest that energy into movement, thought, and emotional connection.  It's the ability to mobilize yourself, feel the world around you, and control your actions accordingly.  Damage to spirit results in a temporary loss of this control.  A shock of pain, a blow to your ego, or an exhausting run will all hinder your ability to aim a gun, solve a riddle, or reason with a hostile.

Wit, Grit, and Spirit are a whole hell of a lot like mind, body, and soul, and I will use them as such to represent health in their corresponding areas.  They're still not as connected as I'd like, but what gives us the "trick" mentioned above is Hostargo's skills, which take these stats and break them into our three categories: physical, mental, and social.  I have three stats, and three categories for each, so in total I will have 9 generic skills that will flesh out our character's abilities, and complete the theory of combining body and mind.

But, that is another conversation that we shall have, on a post somewhere down the road.  So until next time, cheers!

Adventure Hooks: Shipping & Receiving

It's a mysterious void in space-time, that place where things go, exchange hands, and <maybe> come out again.  All manner of checkpoints have it, from simple packages being loaded onto a truck, to a country's customs office recording each face that passes through.  It's always where the trail ends cold.

Bookkeeping is the key to running a successful Shipping & Receiving.  Everything that comes in, gets recorded.  Everyone who works that day, gets recorded.  Everything that's loaded up and out, gets recorded.  We need to know everyone, everything, and everywhere that's involved in our area.  If we don't, the void creeps in.

What happens when a receiver slips a letter into his pocket? What happens when the scanner doesn't recognize those vials in that unmarked package?  Why was this shipment late?  How did no one notice the demon that came through the hell portal?

Traveling is a natural part of adventure, and checkpoints can act as a natural plot pinch.  They're a great beginning to a story (e.g. that shipment of nukes didn't come into port), great sources of trouble (e.g. one of our heroes ordered a magical trinket... but it never got here), and a great way to bring the party back together (e.g. we all need to get fake passports to get through customs).  They are a source of power and mystery, and as such make for great roleplaying scenes where the heroes can explore the people and places around them, learning valuable information about the world and events surrounding them.

Things and people go missing, and the records never tell a straight story.  There are so many opportunities for investigation, stealth, heists, and intrigue.  How will you use checkpoints to further your NPCs goals? What simple slip up could have devastating effects for the PCs?  There's a reason everyone meets in a bar: it's a hub of free information as it's shipped from one receiver to another.

Addressing Min/Maxing

"We're starting at level one for my campaign." - GM

There is a low grumble from the group of players, who reluctantly start to fill in their character sheets with the minimal stats, skills, and abilities presented at the start of most games.  Each looks longingly at the higher levels, and plots their eventual growth to real power, and real fun.

Min/maxing is a term used to describe when players stretch their character building resources in order to maximize efficiency in one area by sacrificing efficiency in another.  The most common example is a barbarian reducing his social abilities to get just a few more points into his strength.  Or, a sneaky thief might sacrifice any usefulness in combat in order to ensure his pick-pocketing skills are top-notch.  In both of these situations, the players focus on one thing they want to shine in, and sacrifice nearly everything else.

 

But specializing is good! We want to be awesome at something! So is this a bad thing? Actually yes.  While it's just fine that players want their characters to excel in areas the characters should excel at, there's two major problems with min/maxing:

First, characters who only do one thing (e.g. I cast fire magic.) are generally considered 'flat'.  They do not have that multi-dimensional mix that makes for a good story character.  At first these characters are fun, but they quickly grow old as a game goes on, because they are a 'one-trick-pony'.

Second, by sacrificing usefulness in other areas, this means that it's harder to get any sort of group teamwork.  If the 'enforcer' can only fight, and the 'face' can only talk, and the 'hacker' can only hack... it means no one is actually playing the same game together.  They might be physically present - but they're not useful.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is one of many reasons why Shadowrun, while brilliant in setting, is a horrible game to actually play.

So how can we create a game that "minimizes", if you will, this issue?  Let's start by looking at some mechanics that encourage min/maxing.  The first gets back to my initial example; if characters do not feel special right off the bat, there's a tendency for players to min/max in an effort to make them special in some way (e.g. I have more strength than everyone else, yay!).  Obviously this has a lot to do with setting (e.g. slaves trying to escape the coliseum vs. god-slayers looking to conquer the world), but its definitely a problem in a lot of games.

Games do this to 'teach' new players; ease them into it.  But I would argue it's more important to make new players feel awesome about playing, than to ensure they know every little detail of the rules.  RPGs are complicated, and they are not going to get it all the first time anyway.

"When you want to play a wizard, you generally don't want to play him as a fumbling trainee." - Peter Wallis from the RPG Brain Trust Facebook Group

Another mechanic to look at is prerequisites for skills and abilities, which can be a huge source of min/maxing.  This is a mechanic that says I can have X, but only if I have Y.  Well, what if I don't want Y?  Why can't I have X because Z also makes sense?  Prerequisites can add strategy to character-building, which is normally a good thing, unless it pigeon-holes players into only going down one path.  If you're going to have prerequisites in your games at all, ensure that they are generic, such that there are multiple paths available to achieve the same end goal.

Lastly, RPGs that use XP or some other point-buy system encourage min/maxing by letting players only buy one thing at a time.  Initially these systems seem great, because you can customize your character to whatever end.  But this almost always boils down to players "customizing" all of their points into a single area.

Sigh... it's okay Shadowrun... we still love you.

Players can help themselves by purposefully trying to not min/max, but that can have just the same effects as min/maxing!  If you are mediocre at everything, you're now useful in none.  This creates dull characters to play, which is rarely fun for anyone.  What we're really looking for is multi-tiered characters, with many strengths and a few different weaknesses.

So I believe it's up to the game to help. Let's look at some mechanics that actually help alleviate min/maxing. The most common one is surprising "levels".  Character levels in RPGs allow characters to grow both in combat abilities and non-combat abilities.  Dungeons & Dragons 5e (so far) has done a great job at giving players both choice in their levels and balance in the abilities presented.  Usually, there is both a combat bonus and a non-combat bonus within each character choice, including the generic 'feats' used at higher levels.

Another mechanic that helps our cause is not rewarding XP for individual situations.  It's easy to pick on combat, and say that because we give XP for killing elves, the players are always going to kill elves.  But the same is true for any system which uses a 'use-it-to-up-it' system.  If talking to the bartender gives you XP towards your talking skills, I'm going to sit there and talk to the bartender until I'm actually good at it.  A lot of GMs already realize this, and often give out an equal amount of XP at the end of any given session or major plot point.

D&D brings about balance by ensuring that the combat focused abilities are all equal in power (as much as possible anyway).  They've openly declared that they do not balance non-combat abilities, as this would be not only extremely difficult, but simply not that interesting.  For a combat-focused game, this makes sense, but I think we can do better.

I suggest that, much like generalizing character 'stats', that we categorize XP into common groups that make the most sense for our game.  For example, we could have combat XP, which is earned through combat, and spent towards combat-focused abilities, and then have 'role-play' XP, which is earned through solving issues or completing quests, and spent on non-combat abilities.

This system balances power with utility.  It keeps the power gamers happy by ensuring they can min/max their combat abilities without sacrificing some of the extra fluff, and it keeps the role-players happy by ensuring they don't have to suck at combat to be awesome at diplomacy.  As an added bonus, it more or less forces players to have the multi-tiered characters that usually make for a well-rounded story, where everyone at the table is doing something no matter what is going on.

We know that we could make every skill individually level up (Oblivion style), but that'll end poorly, as we've discussed.  Instead, let's just take it one step further and look at the three "Pillars of Adventure" defined by D&D: exploration, social interaction, and combat.  I would argue that these are excellent categories for XP, and that if we want everyone to be useful everywhere, that this would be the way to go.   Of course, we have to be careful, or no one is going to feel special against anyone else in the party...

For Hostargo, action/combat is going to be a large part (at least 50%) of the game.  As such, I believe I'm going to implement a double XP system: one combat and one non-combat, to be spent on their respective areas.  However, to minimize having one area excel over another, I'm going to give out a "star rating" at the end of each adventure (1-5), and give each player that much XP to work with in both categories, effectively forcing them to spend the same amount in the two different areas.

If you've stuck with me through all of this - thank you. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the best solutions, or if I'm out of my gourd on any of this.  Cheers!

Playtest Afterthought: New Years

My beautiful and talented girlfriend Gabby and I ran separate adventures of Hostargo for our friends this New Years.  Both of us had an overall good experience, but a also certain amount of trouble - not unexpected since Hostargo is in a very rough draft stage.

TL;DR version:

What went right:
* The basic dice system
* Creative use of abilities
* Human character classes

What went wrong:
* Roleplaying the "Awakened" (dogs with human intelligence)
* Magic explanations
* Balance of abilities

Plan to address issues:
* Move Awakened back to only being a single, "abnormal" class.
* Hammer out details on magic.
* Continue fleshing out character classes

Longer Explanation/Ramblings/Notes:

The core system worked as expected (it's been playtested quite a few times before).  Everyone was happy with the stats & skills system, and it didn't take long before people were rolling dice.  The most important thing I noticed this time around was that people enjoyed knowing what was going on with the dice and numbers - especially those couple players brand new to roleplaying.  I think it is easy to see what the numbers result in, and how they were affecting the GMs decisions.  The more I run it, the more I like having open rolls.

That said, a pretty consistent feedback has been that the challenge ratings we were calling for felt slightly arbitrary.  Not totally unexpected, as this seems to be the main weakness of open rolls.  The arbitrary numbers in other games, however, are just hidden behind a GM screen. To help with this issue I showed some of the players the GM guide's list of challenge ratings, where I have descriptions next to each number 0-7 (any higher is usually impossible for most characters).  This simple table made them go 'ooohh' as some of it started to click.  Note to self: add such a thing on a playtest player-aid.

There were mixed emotions on the stat spreads: 7-8-8 or 7-7-9.  One person said they didn't feel that the difference mattered as much, since the difference in dice sizes was more mathematically significant.  Another said that he really enjoyed the difference, and being able to be "smart" but potentially arrogantly so (flawed in the social department).   Unfortunately, my table rolled exceptionally high (which is bad in Hostargo), resulting in a lot of failed rolls, so I didn't get a great feel for how the spreads were working.  For now, I don't believe there's any changes required to this area.

I felt the character classes were working - for the most part.  There were great examples of using abilities for creative purposes: attacking birds with thorny vines, doppelganging as a gang member, setting up camera surveillance with drones, and force-pulling a shotgun right out of someone's hands.  But the biggest issue was the animancer, and all of the magics revolving around "soul magic" (awakened, inspector vision, manipulating objects).  Long story short, I really just need to buckle down on the fine details of how that stuff works.  And this playtest has given me lots of good ideas on how to do so.

Some people were having trouble roleplaying as the Awakened.  This is partially my fault, as I handed out characters to some people rather than letting them choose what was best for them.  But, it still brought to the forefront that while the Awakened are interesting, they are probably best left as a single 'weird' class.  I had instead split them up into four distinct classes, so we had nearly half of everyone playing as an Awakened.   This poses a multitude of issues, so I'm going to back-peddle on this idea.

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and the games ran smoothly for the most part, so I'm very happy with the results and am motivated to keep making progress.  Cheers!