Foundations

Every once in a while, it's important to go back to the formative ideas that shaped your thinking, just to keep them fresh and vital in your mind. I realized it had been a while since I'd talked about the ideas that bubble under the surface of our play style, and that maybe it was time to return to that well for a bit. If you haven't read some of my earlier stuff on the High Trust, High Drama style, this will tell you how we got there.

I grew up playing first edition Dungeons & Dragons, or Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, as we called it back in the day, and over the course of the next twenty years played a lot of traditional roleplaying games. In my thirties, I began to feel like the old style games weren't giving me the same thrill any more. I wanted more than I was getting from the likes of D&D 3rd Edition (and the many d20 games that budded off from it). As an adult gamer, my time was limited. I needed to make sure that our play time was as rewarding as possible.

A BLUE ROSE By Any Other Name...

I don't usually do this, but today I'm writing to tell you about a new roleplaying game I'd really like to see more support for. It's currently Kickstarting, although if you've been in the hobby long enough you may remember the first edition. 

The game is BLUE ROSE, from Steve Kenson and the good folks at Green Ronin Publishing. And it's an important game, folks, in an industry that is often clannish and slow to change.

Cover image by Stephanie Law from the original Blue Rose paperback.

Game Chef 2015 - The Long Sleep

Check out this gorgeous cover illustration by my buddy John Matthias!

So I decided that this year I would dive right into the deep end of the game design pool and put something together for Game Chef. It was intimidating putting something together so quickly, over just ten days, but I had a good time doing it and was satisfied with the results.

If you've never heard of Game Chef, it's a yearly contest with pretty wide-open parameters. You have ten days to design a game using the theme provided (this year it was "A Different Audience") and at least two of the ingredients (this year's were abandon, dragonfly, stillness, and dream). What kind of game and what format it ends up in are completely up to you. My entry, "The Long Sleep", is somewhere between storygame and American Freeform LARP. It's about people who are struck down by a disease that puts them in a comatose state. Their minds are not quiescent, however - the Sleepers find themselves in a vivid dream world, and somehow their minds are connected. Together, they embark on a journey Within...

Reflections. Ten days doesn't seem like a lot of time, but this is actually a do-able thing. I was happy with the game I got at the end of it, although there was stuff I wish I'd had the space for. 4000 words is not a lot, and you have to keep things simple and compact. I could have easily written another 4000 words if I'd had the space. I was very lucky to get an idea that had legs early on, so I didn't spend any time spinning my wheels. I thought about it for a couple of days, then wrote it down, caught my breath, and finally revised.

You can get the finished game here.

Review: TIANXIA - Blood, Silk & Jade

A couple of years ago, through the magic of social media, me and a handful of my players had the opportunity to playtest what was then a new game from Vigilance Press, TIANXIA. I was so flattered by the offer that I accepted, although I should have known that we were probably the last people who should have thrown their hat into the ring to playtest a game. It took us way longer to play through the game than would have been useful for our feedback to help the creator with edits, if we had engaged with the mechanics of the system for our game (and we really didn't). But our experience with this game was a very good one, and although I've already talked about it at some length on the podcast, it's worth a mention here - if only to say a belated thanks to Jack Norris, James Dawsey, and Vigilance Press by giving their excellent game a bit of signal boost. 

The Sound of Music

Just try and remove from your brain the image of a plump, bearded man in a dirndl spinning around, Julie Andrews style, in the meadows below a soaring mountain. You’re welcome.

Music has been a big part of my games for a long time. I’ve been a big believer in playing music in the background since I was spinning Tangerine Dream CDs during high school dungeon crawls, although I’ve not used it quite as much the past few years. These days I’m more of a believer in playing the right tune at the right moment, to underscore something that’s going on in a scene, rather than as wall-to-wall carpeting. Not that atmospheric background music doesn’t still have a place, particularly in genres like horror where it can really help set the mood. Even soft music that strikes the right note can do something to players, setting them on edge in a scary game, or underscoring the wonder and awe in a scene of fantasy.

Push

High Trust, High Drama play can be rewarding, but it’s not without its problems. One of these is that drama requires, by its nature, characters that are motivated – they have to want something, badly. Drama is all about situations where not everyone can get what they want, as the Rolling Stones would have it. The problem is that although player characters often have a goal of some kind, players sometimes come into a scene without a particular thing in mind. They’re not sure what they want right now, and that means long, aimless scenes that might go nowhere at all. This is not interesting for other players to watch, and it puts an inordinate amount of pressure on the other players in a scene – if one player is just casting around waiting for something to happen, then they have to bring the energy and the drive to the scene. 

This is bad form.

It's Hard Out Here for a VTT Game Master

Some incidental music. 

It’s absolutely a truth of running games online that players don’t feel the same feeling of obligation as players who are meant to show up for a face-to-face game. If you don’t have to go anywhere further away than a comfy chair, with your laptop, a headset, and possibly a beverage close at hand, that’s the kind of thing people often either forget about or decide they can comfortably skip in favour of more pressing things. If you combine this with the twin dragons of adult gaming – important commitments to family (especially when there are children in the mix) and jobs – this can be a game-killer. Suddenly your crowd of five hardy adventurers raring to tear up the dungeon has turned into two, or worse, one and a GM, who twiddle their thumbs and chat for half an hour or so before finding other diversions.