Hell On Wheels is a great show. Watching is has reminded me a lot of what I wanted to capture in Hostargo; that wild west adventure, with its danger and never ending hardships. But its people endure, and have shown me true Wit, Grit, and Spirit. If you haven't caught it on AMC or Netflix, I would highly recommend checking it out.
We also live in a wild west age. Only our age is one of technology, power, and cyberspace. Like it or not, our internet networks are only a paper thin barrier against a whole universe of cyber threats, and the more we trust in it, the more we open ourselves to both it's wonders and horrors. And that's exactly what the west is about: risking everything, in return for something. Following the dream, and riding the wave of challenges that - might - get you there.
I believe tabletop RPGs are one of the best mediums for capturing this feeling. Gambling is the built in mechanic - risking your character's life against all manner of danger. Every time the die hits the table, the stories changes, and the epic unfolds in ways we can never expect. Unlike books, there is no predetermined fate. Unlike video games, there's no saves or retries. Once that die is cast, there's no turning back.
The trick, of course, is actually making a game that fully expresses that awesomeness. I will keep this in mind with every step forward; with classes, items, abilities, and most importantly, story hooks.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Simplicity vs. Depth
Over the New Year holiday I got a chance to run a couple games that I've grown to love: Dr. Magnet Hands and All Out of Bubblegum. These are excellent party games where you can literally just sit down and play (okay, AOB requires a story, but we have plenty of those). These "micro-games" are so much fun that I am often left baffled on why we would ever need more elaborate rules.
But then I'm reminded of many conversations with friends and designers alike where we talk about the difference between a good snack and a full meal. Sometimes, we just want some salty potato chips - and that's exactly what micro games provide. A short, but delicious burst of enjoyment. The problem is that it doesn't actually fill the roleplaying need that a lot of us feel. For that, we turn to our super in depth and crunchy games, like Shadowrun or The Burning Wheel. These games, with their thousands of pages of printed material, provide us with deep, rich roleplaying experiences that micro games rarely give us.
Swinging back though, we're now all busy adults, with very little time to game, much less prep for said games that will give us the rich experiences we desire. Instead, it's much easier to turn to professional video games, that gives us hours of carefully constructed content in a relatively short amount of time. Alas, these games take their toll too, eventually, as we realize how we're stuck in our basements instead of spending time with our friends.
So the target that I suppose a lot of us are aiming for is that perfect balance of streamlined gameplay and depth of content. Some would say it's a fools quest, but damn it we're proud fools. I can't play micro games forever; they just don't stand up to the test of time for a campaign. Yet at the same time I can't push myself to commit to huge games of Shadowrun when I know easier games like D&D exist.
For Hostargo, a design goal that I have is to create a game with enough campaign content, adventure hooks, and interesting things to play with that both the players and the GM can have fun without having to pour tons of their precious time into it. I have a long way to go, but I'm willing to climb the mountain.
But then I'm reminded of many conversations with friends and designers alike where we talk about the difference between a good snack and a full meal. Sometimes, we just want some salty potato chips - and that's exactly what micro games provide. A short, but delicious burst of enjoyment. The problem is that it doesn't actually fill the roleplaying need that a lot of us feel. For that, we turn to our super in depth and crunchy games, like Shadowrun or The Burning Wheel. These games, with their thousands of pages of printed material, provide us with deep, rich roleplaying experiences that micro games rarely give us.
Swinging back though, we're now all busy adults, with very little time to game, much less prep for said games that will give us the rich experiences we desire. Instead, it's much easier to turn to professional video games, that gives us hours of carefully constructed content in a relatively short amount of time. Alas, these games take their toll too, eventually, as we realize how we're stuck in our basements instead of spending time with our friends.
So the target that I suppose a lot of us are aiming for is that perfect balance of streamlined gameplay and depth of content. Some would say it's a fools quest, but damn it we're proud fools. I can't play micro games forever; they just don't stand up to the test of time for a campaign. Yet at the same time I can't push myself to commit to huge games of Shadowrun when I know easier games like D&D exist.
For Hostargo, a design goal that I have is to create a game with enough campaign content, adventure hooks, and interesting things to play with that both the players and the GM can have fun without having to pour tons of their precious time into it. I have a long way to go, but I'm willing to climb the mountain.
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
The Vessel - Playing with Portals
I only got a small glimpse at the idea of a Vessel class, but I had a player over the New Year try out one of the options: the Animancer. Their choice was largely due to the obvious power of having teleportation portals.
As you'd expect out of magic portals, the possibilities are nearly endless; they can be used for so much more than just getting from point A to point B. But portals are fun, and thinking about using portals is fun (with or without cake). So, rather than remove the option entirely, I want to restrict them in order to prevent the power from being a "too easy" solution to basically every problem. On one hand, rewarding creative use of one's powers is exactly the type of thing I want out of my callings. But on the other, the key to that fun is limiting those powers in reasonable and interesting ways.
My first thought was that I could limit the portals to "ritual" speed - essentially preventing their use in action scenes. While such a restriction certainly is reasonable, it is not interesting. Doing this sucks nearly all of the fun out of being an Animancer Vessel (assuming that portals are your "go-to" thing).
One issue with the physics of magic portals is when they change the world's angles, as in, going from a hole in the ground to a whole in a side wall. Flippy floppy worlds can be fun to think about, but are nightmarish to declare rules for. The core of that problem is also the problem with having floor or ceiling portals at all: the acceleration of objects moving through those portals to ridiculous speeds. So, while I hate to simply sidestep design issues, this seems pretty straight forward: we could only allow our rifts in space-time to exist parallel to gravity.
But this of course is now not very reasonable. Your current question is most likely, "what about in space?" And you're absolutely right. However, this is where we are going to allow the setting and memory-style magic to wibbly-wobbly-timey-whimy explain it away. Basically, we'll say that portals are inherently very unstable (edits to space-time seems like they should be), and that if put at an angle, the gravitational force of one side of the portal would pull on the other, and much like a stretched spring, snap back into place, quickly balancing the two sides until they are both aligned. If the force of the gravitational differences is too great, the portal will simply be torn apart. Either way, only portals completely parallel to gravity will be stable enough to be functional.
So far that's all I've got. What kinds of fun (or broken) things can you do with these portals? What kinds of other limitations could we put on portals, so that they are interesting RPG tools, yet no so easy as to solve all problems?
As you'd expect out of magic portals, the possibilities are nearly endless; they can be used for so much more than just getting from point A to point B. But portals are fun, and thinking about using portals is fun (with or without cake). So, rather than remove the option entirely, I want to restrict them in order to prevent the power from being a "too easy" solution to basically every problem. On one hand, rewarding creative use of one's powers is exactly the type of thing I want out of my callings. But on the other, the key to that fun is limiting those powers in reasonable and interesting ways.
My first thought was that I could limit the portals to "ritual" speed - essentially preventing their use in action scenes. While such a restriction certainly is reasonable, it is not interesting. Doing this sucks nearly all of the fun out of being an Animancer Vessel (assuming that portals are your "go-to" thing).
One issue with the physics of magic portals is when they change the world's angles, as in, going from a hole in the ground to a whole in a side wall. Flippy floppy worlds can be fun to think about, but are nightmarish to declare rules for. The core of that problem is also the problem with having floor or ceiling portals at all: the acceleration of objects moving through those portals to ridiculous speeds. So, while I hate to simply sidestep design issues, this seems pretty straight forward: we could only allow our rifts in space-time to exist parallel to gravity.
But this of course is now not very reasonable. Your current question is most likely, "what about in space?" And you're absolutely right. However, this is where we are going to allow the setting and memory-style magic to wibbly-wobbly-timey-whimy explain it away. Basically, we'll say that portals are inherently very unstable (edits to space-time seems like they should be), and that if put at an angle, the gravitational force of one side of the portal would pull on the other, and much like a stretched spring, snap back into place, quickly balancing the two sides until they are both aligned. If the force of the gravitational differences is too great, the portal will simply be torn apart. Either way, only portals completely parallel to gravity will be stable enough to be functional.
So far that's all I've got. What kinds of fun (or broken) things can you do with these portals? What kinds of other limitations could we put on portals, so that they are interesting RPG tools, yet no so easy as to solve all problems?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)