I’m going to write the Battlestations RPG.

Here are the parameters.

1. Be true to the boardgame

2. Go beyond the boardgame.

3. Roleplaying is make-believe made real.

4. Quick entry

5. Deep as you want to get

6. Intuitive

7. Story

8. Characters

9. Mechanics

That’s enough thinking out loud for now.

Everybody wants to be the king of France.  However, unfettered fantasy is ultimately unsatisfying.  One needs a context and a challenge.  Try being the king of France while there is a Queen of England opposing you and a revolution brewing in the streets of your city slums and things get interesting.  Rules provide a framework for interacting with that fantasy world.

Gaming is making decisions and taking actions within the parameters of a system.  Roleplaying is immersion in an environment through a personal avatar.  People can roleplay in theater as a castmember or vicariously as the audience.  Improvisational theater allows for a limited range of free will.  Writing is probably the closest analog to roleplaying gaming but it is extremely deterministic and generally solitary.  Even writing with collaberators is done in collective isolation and the outcomes are chosen.  No character in a novel dies without the author’s permission.  The fate of characters in games is governed by their choices and their fortune.

When I roleplay, I want a story to emerge that combines elements of the world and of the players in a way that is exciting and dramatic.  The best in fiction is when the unexpected takes place but in retrospect it seems obvious.  I want my referee to set a rich feast at the table with personae of all strata represented and then be prepared for when I flip the table and insult the host.  

The game part of roleplaying needs to have enough tactical options to be interesting but it shouldn’t be so involved that you need to know how to play it.  I want to play in a system where my fellow players are Robert E. Howard or Arthur Conan Doyle and they announce their actions in a way that makes sense to them (crush the enemy or find the connecting thread of the mystery) and those actions translate intuitively into the game system.  “I swing recklessly”.  “I’m examining the footprints.”

I feel like the advent of special abilities in 3rd edition and moreso 4th was inspired but I also think it has boardgame-ified the roleplaying out of the game.  “Adventure” has become the opposite of its true definition.  Adventure means something extraordinary happens to take the participants outside the realm of their expected worlds.  Now, the expected world is three interesting combats and a skill challenge.  It has become kabuki theater.  Players spend their “once per day” actions to maximize their combat advantages.

I loved Burning Empires but I played it with the wrong people with the wrong mindset.  I think the game itself had a few flaws in connecting the fantasy to the rules but I really like where it was headed.  I want a game that scales up or down depending on the players.  I would love to be able to have a hundred years war last a few seconds or a few seconds last all night depending on what was most important to the players.  Can I get a special ability that gives me +1 on “hundred years war”-ing?

Other than Agricola and Spider Solitaire (and my novel) this is where my mind is these days. 

My holy grail is a roleplaying game that:

1. Can get up and running in minutes
2. Is rich enough that you could spend hours on it
3. Takes into account differences
4. Is intuitive
5. Moves at the right pace
6. Has simple enough mechanics but more depth available

I’ll think of more, I’m sure.

 

 

 

I’ve got Bot Wars on the way, Free Trader cooking away and Fleet Action up in the air.

I’m also publishing Lifeboat in 5 different languages.

A lot of stuff is happening this year. 

I’m excited to be working.

 

My dear friend Lawrence Sheffield passed away last week of heart failure right in front of my eyes.  He was 46 years old.

I dedicated the planet of Dr. Moreau to Lawrence because he had been such a great friend that he was family.  Whenever I went to a convention, Law was either at my side helping out or back home helping with my kids.

Lawrence was a great buddy and a great friend.  This world is larger for his having lived in it and sadder for his leaving.

His motto was Honor First, Courage Always, Family Forever.

My brother Lawrence will always be in my heart reminding me of my courage and honor.

 

Gaming is make believe with enough rules to tie up your left brain so your right brain can have a good time. 

It isn’t enough to be the baddest swordsman in the world (or the richest sultan or prettiest, prettiest princess).  The world you are in has to be worth being in.  I’m often surprised to hear that all-around gamers are the exception rather than the rule because I feel like this is universal.  Everybody wants to be cool.  Most non-gamers just lack the ablity to convince themselves that being cool in this pretend world is enough fun to make it worthwhile.  I think this extends to boardgames as well.  If you suck World War II out of Axis and Allies, you could make it about gathering toys in a sandbox and it would lose a lot of its appeal.  Mind you, if you do the sandbox thing right, you can draw in a whole different crowd.

One of my gaming buddies summed up roleplaying as energy balls reducing the energy of the target energy ball.  Not coincidentally, he doesn’t game any more.  His connection to the imaginary power rush of pretend greatness failed him.  He is still my buddy but we’ve lost that connection.

I’m going to design a roleplaying game.  I’ve come to realize the following:

1. I want to make a difference in a cool world.

2. I don’t want to be in charge of (or know all the secrets of) the cool world.

3. I want a balance of tactical and strategic action along with personal time for my character.

4. I want the other characters in the world I’m in to be on the same wavelength.

5. I don’t want the other characters in the world I’m in to be in lockstep together.

6. I want the crunchy rules to work.  They need to be interesting enough to provide texture and simple enough to be playable.

7. I want real consequences.

8. I want dungeons.  Some of the stuff my character will do is going to be within the framework of a situation with objects, obstacles and objectives that behave realisically.  Those places feel real.

9. I don’t want dungeons. I don’t want nonsensical situations or situations that are specifically scaled to match the party’s strength.

I’m going to come back to this.  This is who I am as a gamer.  A gamer is who I am as a person.

I just reallized that I’m not blogging often enough.  I’m really not sure what this blog is about.  I’ve got some radical political and religious views I could espouse.  I’ve got game ideas and rants. 

It is bizarre to have a forum and not know what to say.  I’ve got a lot to say but maybe I should have two forums or three.  As this is on Gorillaboardgames.com, I’ll stick to the gaming stuff.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about roleplaying games.  What is the sweet spot for me between tedium and frivolous hand waving.  Does this sweet spot change over time or fluctuate.  Sometimes, you just want to put down the thug and get to the next bit of story.  Sometimes rolling the dice anyway leads to an unexpected result that creates a great substory.

One thing I’m thinking a great deal about is tactical relevance in roleplaying.  I’ve heard the new Warhammer RPG allows you to choose a defensive or aggressive stance.  I like this distinction.  I want the crunch to be intuitive and generate results that are both flavorful and crunchy.  This is what I think about when I go to sleep at night.

Last night I dreamt I was hanging from a hot air balloon and landing in hostile territory.  I’m going to write a game “Adventurer’s Club” about this kind of stuff.  It might even be a kid’s game?  I don’t know.  I usually get excited and make it for me.  The problem is that there aren’t enough “me’s” in the world to buy the games I write for me. 

Never trust people who don’t write for themselves, though.

September is slipping away and what do I have to show for it?

I’m working on “Bot Wars” and planning for Essen.  I’ve also got “Free Trader” in the works and I’m waiting on “Star Fleet Battlestations”.  All of this is taking so much time that it is taking its toll on me.  I’d like for this to be a happy blog about how much satisfaction I get from creating cool stuff and making a living at it but sometimes (especially when I have Sciatica) it is hard to be up.

I’ve been blowing up my playtesters 5 out of the last 6 weeks.  I’m dialing down the difficulty on Bot Wars but I hope I don’t go too far.

I”ve been writing a page a day of my novel set in the Battlestations Universe.  It is hard to write.

I just got back from Napa this weekend.  I visited my father in the hospital with pneumonia. 

Perhaps, this blog entry will be the last of a disjointed bunch.

I made the distinctive blunder of scheduling games on the Saturdy of my wife’s birthday but Jacob Sprunck and Jim Pinto were able to bail me out by running my events for me.

I was able to get to the show on Friday night and Sunday and enjoyed some Lifeboat as well as some other stuff.  I was pleased to get in a playtest of Jim’s Gondolier game and his Dominaria.  There is a lot of interesting stuff going on in Dominaria and the Gondola game looks like it will be light tile-laying fun.

I really enjoy going to game conventions.  I’m going to have to do it more often.

Yes, I am back from GenCon but of course, I’ll never be back.  It was a long, fun, grueling week with lots of games, setting up and working the booth and demos.

This year I didn’t get enough time with my friends.  I saw everybody but didn’t really get a chance to hang or game because I was running demos until 11 every night.  I’m going to have to fix that for next year.

Deep Ones debuted here and the fans loved it.  Jason ran packed games (even overfilled and overflow games) every day and everybody just went er, crazy for Deep Ones.  (sorry)

I went off to Carpinteria with the family to visit my dad right when we got back so I still haven’t had time to recover.  School starts for the wife and kids in a couple of weeks so maybe then I’ll have time to finish Bot Wars or Free Trader for Battlestations or put in the next round of fixes for “Delusion”.  Of course, I’ve still got my top secret project in the works and I need to reprint the sold out “Lifeboat” and there are preparations to be made for Essen…

 

I am back from Origins where I earned much and learned more.

Running the huge balloon game (5 foot diameter balloons soaring 25 feet over the miniatures hall) was a whole lot of hassle for not a lot of response.  The 8 people who played in the event were very happy with it but we just didn’t generate the kind of amazement I was anticipating.  To top it off, convention halls don’t want helium balloons getting sucked into air conditioning ducts so we had to restrict the regatta to half the room.  I’ll post pictures as soon as I can figure out how to do so.  It was amazing but it isn’t likely to return.

“Who Would Win?” debuted to rave reviews.  It was great to be able to give a one minute demo and have people either love it or leave it.  I’d rather play Battlestations but it is easier to sell “Who Would Win?”

Jason ran the Battlestations events and pumped up the “Deep Ones in Deep Space” fan base.  We’re excited about our August release.

That’s enough for now.