Victor and I played a quick game of Kingdom of Bluuud!!1.
(The rules for it are here: http://www.princessbill.com/kingofbluuud.html )
(And if you didn't know, it's a parody of Empire of Satanis. Do a search for it. I'm not linking to it.)
Victor totally killed a tentacle monster, and I totally put bees in his toothpaste, and made some die rolls of the beast.
The system, by the way, is perfect as-is.
You know, I'm just not really that impressed by Beliefs or Instincts. (People tend to clump them in with Traits in some sort of "OMGORZ GAME MECHANICS" trifecta, but really now, Traits are nothing new.)
(I predict that right now many readers, such as Daniel, will be yelling at their computer screens, or possibly throwing things at them. If you aren't you might want to start. It'll be cathartic.)
Beliefs are good, I guess. They're a mega-Flag. I like Flags, at least on a theoretical level.
Instincts are okay, but there's issues. For one, the idea of Instincts-as-Action-Macro gives some a mechanical edge, ("When suprised, I draw my sword" gives the owner a number of free actions, which is quite advantageous in Fight!), but there's no hard and fast guideline for what's a legal instinct and what's not.
(Example- an instinct "I always hit him in the head," which would ignore the standard wound-targetting system. More powerful than many of the instincts given as examples? I don't think so. Legal? Certainly a legal die-trait, but I don't know if it's a legal Instinct)
But what it's really about, is what I'm looking for out of Burning Wheel, and that is Exploration of System. BW's got a massive, massive ammount of System to Explore. However, when you make characters and go from spending skill and trait points to picking Beliefs, you've jumped from Exploration of System to Exploration of Character, and for every character I've burned up this has been like suddenly shifting into reverse while going 60 down the freeway. Unless I had some ideas already in mind, it all just stops and chargen shuts down.
There was a draft event down at Netherworld games today. My first SF draft event ever, a blast and a half. We drafted 3 packs of Standard, 2 of Netherworld 2, 1 Red Wedding, and 2 of Two Fisted Tales. Everyone got 9 basic Feng Shui Sites and 2 foundation pods, as well as an Elephant Gun(!) and a Sword of the Master(!!!!) to start out with.
I knew this going in, and I know it more going out:
Big characters win games. Big characters are not so easy to find.
With the exception of my Queen of the Ice Pagoda (!- she was in a pack with ANOTHER Queen of the Ice Pagoda- she's easily the best card in Standard edition, and when I passed the pack to Chris, I told him he'd be wondering all night what the hell I drafted that was better than that!) I didn't have a base fighting above 4. I drafted heavy Ascended early, hoping to soak up classic Ascended power cards later on with no one drafting that faction. Unfortunately, even with 12 packs of Standard to go around (and 8 packs of Netherworld 2 for a Bite to show up), I only managed to get one Mole Network (there was an Covert Op out there, but Jim drafted it, but didn't play it.) That's right, no Operation Killdeers, no Shadowy Mentors, no Bites of the Jellyfish. Sigh. Official Harrasment was awesome, but it's not from Standard.
I *did* get two Family Estates, which were sort of the core of the deck, except I only ever saw one between three games of play!
For 'hitters' I had the Queen herself, G-Man (4+ fight), Lucius Centares (4+ Fight), Butterfly Knight, Morphic Spirit, Ogre, Shadowy Horror, and Liquidators. I had a Self-Made-Man but later subbed him out for a Muckracking Journalist to slow Jim down. Note how many of those are foundation characters. I was running mostly Ascended dudes, with a splash of Monarchs, and some Purist and Lotus beefy foundations.
All in all, I feel I did well with what I had to work with. I learned a lot about draft, and had a great last Shadowfist event before going out of town.
I orginally wrote Council of Magisters as part of the Game Chef competition. You can find a PDF copy of it here: http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/Council_of_the_Magisters.php
Anyway, I'm gearing up to write a totally new and better version. I thought I'd do a Power 19 to get me focused on what's what.
1.) What is your game about?
A group of politicking fantasy wizards, each trying to get their way. Parliamentary procedure with mind control spells.
2.) What do the characters do?
Bicker, vote on one of their own to lead them, vote on various side topics, cast vote-influencing spells on each other.
3.) What do the players (including the GM if there is one) do?
Bicker and talk in character, cast their characters votes. Track their character’s Emotional
State. There is no GM.
4.) How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?
The only defined aspect of the setting is the presence and role of the player characters. That’s all there is.
5.) How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?
Character creation really only involves picking a superpower, a motivation, and determining the relative ages of the players. The game is about spellcasters, what they want, and the ages is a bizarre pseudo-parliamentary thing
.6.) What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?
Shrewd political maneuvering and deal-making, and decision-analysis.
7.) How are behaviors and styles of play rewarded or punished in your game?
There’s a definitive winner at the end of the game. To get there, you’re going to have to be clever, make and break deals and friends, and blast those who get in your way with mind-control spells.
8.) How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?
Everyone has (almost) complete control and agency over their character, and is expected to be responsible about their character’s motivations. Actor stance is encouraged. For anything outside the characters themselves, any differences are solved, as always, by voting on them.
9.) What does your game do to command the players' attention, engagement, and participation? (i.e. What does the game do to make them care?)
There’s the carrot there of ‘getting to win,’ and ideally the mental problem of analyzing the Emotionally-influenced decisions of others to figure out your own decision will be a really weird game-theory problem that people will enjoy over-analyzing.The Issues are there to make sure defeated players still have some stake in the outcome.
10.) What are the resolution mechanics of your game like?
Everything, and I mean everything, is solved by a majority vote. There’s no room for ties or tie breakers, which means that the game only works with an odd number of players. (I’m looking at either 5 or 7.) Some of these votes give other people voting constraints, which makes future votes more bizarre.
11.) How do the resolution mechanics reinforce what your game is about?
The game is about politics and voting, pure and simple. The game mechanics are also about voting. When you vote, you’re simultaneously doing so both in and out of character- it blurs the line between player and character.
12.) Do characters in your game advance? If so, how?
They don’t advance, but characters who lose big votes get screwed up with Emotional States- basically a spell that influences how they have to vote.
13.) How does the character advancement (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?
It only comes into play when people are voting, so that’s highlighted. On a very large level, the Emotional States are a big part of what the game is about.
14.) What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?
Bizarre wonderment at the absurd nature of things, coupled with cutthroat backstabbing. Hopefully both at the same time.
15.) What areas of your game receive extra attention and color? Why?
Optional old-timey-style protocol get a lot of attention, because I think pomp and circumstance is fun (think Silent Football, which is neither Silent nor Football) and it brings to mind images of the British Parliament.
16.) Which part of your game are you most excited about or interested in? Why?
I’m really excited about the whole thing, but then it’s a short game. But I’m especially enthused about the whole, “Ok, I have to guess how player A is going to vote so I can cast mine. But player A has to guess how I’m going to vote so he can cast his. Aaargh!” situation.1
7.) Where does your game take the players that other games can’t, don’t, or won’t?
The resolution system lends itself towards mindfuckery. You don’t see that a lot.
18.) What are your publishing goals for your game?
Publish a decent looking free PDF. Have a Lulu version available. Make enough money to take myself somewhere nice for lunch one day.
19.) Who is your target audience?
Indie gamers looking for a weird read, and an odd game they might play once or twice.
Just finished GMing my first Dogs conflict ever. I'm really feeling the awesomeness.
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=267439 (Just the first two pages, if you're reading this far in the future. Also, you have to log on to rpg.net to read that thread.)
Victor's going to be playing in it, which will be keen. Way to keep in touch despite moving!
I just beat FF1 for the GBA. It's a fun little game to while the time away, but the ending makes no sense at all. Anyway, when you beat it, you can open the Bestiary and see which monters you fought, and how many times you killed them. It's kind of interesting.
Willow's Top Ten Dead Final Fantasy I Enemies:
#10: Ogres- 135
#9: Pythons- 137
#8: Goblins- 156
#7: Wolves- 161
#6: Death Elementals- 174
#5: Desertpedes- 197
#4: Sahagin- 250
#3: Skuldiers- 274
#2: Gloom Widows- 330
#1: Black Goblins- 799: They're only in four specific dungeons, but those dungeons have random awesome loot and you can't kill all the bosses in just one time through. Still, I'm suprised that the number was so high.
If you can see this site, you probably don't have WeBlocker.I finally have been given the master password, and its tyranny is over. It functions on somesort of wordfilter tallying, with different scores for different words- but I know there has to be some sort of percentage chance in there, because it often alternately blocks/doesn't block the same site, even if there's no change in content.Anyway, I took a gander at the master blocked word list, which, as you can imagine, was nastier than anything that was on anything that it ever actually blocked. As it turned out, only the 'Adult' and 'Pornography' categories were turned on. If the 'Gambling' or 'Firearms' categories were turned on, lots of cool, gaming related words, like 'bookmaking' and 'sniper training' would be on the block list, and I'd never get to read rpg.net, let alone the Forge.
Anyway, here's my "favorites" out of We-Blocker's word-block list.
Amateur
Anonymous
Bonner (I think this is supposed to be Boner)
Fantasy (Blocks rpg.net all the time)
Hard (Also blocks rpg.net. More than Fuck, actually)
Hardcore
Model (blocks the company’s corporate website)
Transgender
I find it hilarious that Hard and Fantasy are the words that block rpg.net and this site (and probably just about any rpg site) more than anything else. Even the copious swear words that get tossed around over there, and conversations about “big vagina island.”
I'm currently reading Mathematical Carnival, by Martin Gardner. The topics have a wide range of complexity, but all have a certain bizarre unintuitiveness to them that I find charming.
One such topic is that of Alephs, or levels of infinity. Essentially, the idea is that there is a number higher than infinity. This is Aleph-One. (Infinity itself is known as Aleph-Null.) Yes, this is provable, and theoretically useful acording to Set Theorists and other people who don't do real work. Luckily for the field of mathematics, I have found a practical application.
Have you ever had one of those arguments along the lines of "yuh-huh" "nuh-uh" "double yuh-huh" "nuh-uh infinity!" "yuh-huh infinity plus one?" We know this is folly; the value of infinity and infinity plus one are the same, thus making the yuh-huh no better than the nuh-uh.
Instead, you would be wise to reply "yuh-huh aleph-one," which is greater than your opponent's response by an entire magnitute of infinity! That will show them who's boss.
Of course, using principles of game theory, one can see the logical result of such a stragem. The opponent will indubidably respond with something to the effect of 'nuh-uh aleph-two,' or more effectively, 'nuh-uh aleph-infinity!' To which, of course, one can respond with something to the effect of 'yuh-huh aleph-aleph-infinity!'
The truly astute reader will note that such a non-terminating argument will end the same way as all other non-terminating arguments: in a fist fight. This is where the true viability of higher order infinites is shown: while your debate opponent is standing confused at your mention of alephs, you can take the opportunity to punch them in the face.
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=267293
Oh, but some (minor) expansion actually happens in this post.
Despite my post over there, I'm actualy mulling over throwing in my hat for GMing. I think DitV's resolution system would work interestingly for PbP, and I'm brimming with ideas (and time). My hangups are that I don't quite grok ceremony and sorcery, and would like to play the system in the flesh another time or two before trying to run it online.
Edit: After re-reading the rules, I realize that I already pretty much got sorcery. I was looking at ceremony as being a superpower, and it's not really, it's more of an extra option (similar to Mountain Witch abilities). Now I get it.
(This post can be summarized as "system matters.")
What is your game about?
Think about games you play, and compare that answer to what the game is supposed to be about according to the back of the book, the hype, the introduction, and the GM's section. Now compare that to what the rules actually support.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is alledgedly about investigation, mystery, and grim fantasy. Does it have rules for investigating Chaos Cults or corrupt watchmen? No, but it has rules (very gritty rules) for fighting them. So Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay seems to *actually* be about fights that end up with savage dismemberments, or running away from fights. However, most of the adventures I've seen over at blackindustries.com are based around putting the PCs in a situation with several NPCs with conflicting motivations and sorting it out.
Compare this to Dogs in the Vinyard. Does that last sentence sound like what Dogs is about? Yes, because that's what the game-setting support, and its also what the rules are designed to do.
The traditional roleplaying games fall into the trap of combat. This is a pitfall of certain design ideologies (Sim-realism among them) that dictate that combat must be the most detailed ruleset in the game, or even the only detailed ruleset in the game. Compare Dungeons and Dragons (any edition of your choice) and a World of Darkness game (any line or edition of your choice.) Think about what sort of play the game is "supposed" to support. Then look at what portion of the rules in each book is devoted to killing people (and/or taking their stuff).
You'll find that WoD tends to have less rules per book, and cramms in alot of setting information. But for both games, the majority of the rules are combat related, and the non-combat rules leave much to be decided by the gamemaster, making noncombat actions often being GM-fiat.
Now, if you're looking for a game about high fantasy politics, is D&D the best choice? If you want to play a game about how Vampires relate to other Vampires, is the World of Darkness really the best choice?
Willow Rants 