It was great to commune with my people at GenCon.  The gaming community is a wonderous collection of misfits that fit together perfectly like flagstones.

Some of the highlights:

Meeting artist Tegre Layne.  I had the privilege to run the game for the “Bot Wars” artist who showed up unexpectedly for one of my Bot Wars sessions along with an entourage.

Jason Siadek showed up.  He hadn’t planned on going but the pull of GenCon is too great to resist; even from New Orleans!

N-Con.  The folks I stay with in Indianapolis are the best.  Imagine a hot chick, a gamer, a gracious hostess, a costume geek, a sweet little girl, a microbrewer, and a professional scientist and that was just Nicole!  The rest of her family was lovely as well.

Sales.  I sold out of “Lifeboat” and “Who Would Win?” on Sunday and sold a ton of Battlestations.  Sean of Baksha games sold out of his Good Help and Todd of Ninja Magic had his best show ever.  Yoyo of Swan Panasia didn’t have the same retail success but he was always buzzing around generating connections for his pan pacific gaming empire.

Sunday Morning Disc Golf with Ben.  I finally get how to throw a golf disc.  It will still be years before I’m competitive with Ben who was kind enough to teach me even though I’ve been throwing discs since before he was born.

Booth Babes.  Bryan was kind enough to reconvene Mark and Pete for Setup and Teardown (did I say booth babes?).  Liz and Katrina did a great job of hawking the wares while I ran events.

Now I just have to get ready for Essen.

 

 

I had a blast at Origins.  The fans were great and the games went well and sales were good.

I even had a chance to play a few games that weren’t my own but still were a lot of fun.  Baksha Games released Sean Garrity’s “Good Help” about mad Scientists building a monster to wreak havoc on their village.  It was good fun. 

I also got a chance to play “Lords of Vegas” by James Ernest and Mike Selinker released through Mayfair games.  I enjoyed it thoroughly.  It has a lot of dice in it but is much more of a eurogame than it appears on the surface.  A last minute grab enabled me to win which nearly always colors my view of a game favorably.

I’ll write more soon, I’m sure.

 

 

 

 

One of my most popular designs from my early career with Gamesmiths was “Monster Derby”

I recently had an idea about how to fix a couple of problems with it that bugged me so I’m going to republish it. 

The first problem I had was that with a random first player each turn, you could go several turns without a chance to take a meaningful action.  I fixed this by adding the option to take the First Player Marker instead of moving a monster.  This means you’ll always get to do something you want or at least be further up the pecking order toward getting first crack.

The second problem wasn’t a problem for me and my playtest group.  In over a hundred plays it never came up for us but on the Boardgamegeek a couple of different groups mentioned that players sometimes picked the same monsters in the same order.

My fix is to have each player draw a random monster at the start of the game as their tiebreaker.  This doesn’t count for points but counts as a tiebreaker for the endgame if they have exactly the same score.  This gives you a slight but personalized stake in selecting one monster over another.

I’ll have to get Lifeboat off my brain before I go to press with this one.

Admiral Siadek Out!

 

I had the pleasure tonight of playing Knizia’s “Digging” and Borg’s “Hera and Zeus”.

Digging is supposed to be 4 player with rules making it viable for two players.  I played it as two player and was unimpressed.  I think Knizia suffers from the fact that he is so good and so popular that he can publish things that aren’t publishable by more stringent standards.  Maybe I’d have to play the 4 player version to pick up on the nuances but I doubt I’ll ever get the chance.  There are too many other promising new games or tried and true favorites out there vying for my attention.  The theming of mining was poorly applied and I felt more like I was playing a card game than mining and it wasn’t a very good one.

“Zeus and Hera” was much better by comparison but still left me a little flat.  I will play that one again.  I feel like I’ll have to play it a few times just to understand what is going on.  The special powers on the cards were confusing.  There are 4 or 5 different ways to win the game but it is tough to figure a clear path to most of them.  The way I eventually won was by blasting my opponents cards of the table.

I want to build a catalogue of games that people can look over and say, “Wow, I love those games!”

(and by people I mean especially me).

 

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.