On Odd Possibilities

In my browsing, I've come across a publishing site by the name of Lulu.com. It is a site that helps you publish paperback and hardback copies of your stories and other books, which would allow people to go and buy them even if you aren't picked up by a major publisher. It seems to be a pretty classy site, and I have been impressed by the services they are offering.

Besides the major possibilities for self-publisher authors, I've also started to wonder if I could use the site to publish a rule book for the Game. I know it is just a kind of odd side project, but it would still be fun for me to see the Game's rules in print, not to mention whatever side stories and such that I would include. But would the effort be justified by the payoff? Hmm....

All Good Things Must Come to An End

So as of today, my laptop is on its last legs. Due to various circumstances, it has started to forget that it has a bootable hard drive when it starts up. Though I’m not a big computer guy, I can sort of tell that this is a bad sign for its future health. It may be time to replace it before I lose everything.

In other news, which I’m sure you’ll all enjoy, I’ve decided to figure out a way to post the Game stuff on the blog, but not in the body of the post. That way you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to, and I can start trying to put together a guide book of sorts.

Also, my body is very upset with me right now. I spent a lot of yesterday afternoon moving two families into our ward, and my scrawny, cross-country runner frame did not appreciate it. Grumble, grumble, grumble…

So, yeah, that’s how life is going. More of an update tomorrow I think. See ya round!

The Game--Physical Skills, Part two

So I made some changes to the Physical Skills system that will hopefully help me resolve all of the problems I mentioned last time.

The first step is to allow for the system to be applied to more than just warrior. Instead of limiting things that way, I’ll widen the skill set to any particular craft that uses mostly physical skills, such as blacksmithing, trapping, etc. It will help my players branch out a little more, and allow for some interesting skills to be learned.

The next change is to modify the way levels are gained. Instead of instantly learning a new level each time someone teaches you, I’ll make it so that it takes a certain amount of in-game time to learn at a school. I’ll make it possible to learn from books as well, though the amount of time and practice will be doubled. I also want it to be possible to learn through ‘on the job’ type training, so that people who go into battle often tend to grow more skilled with their abilities than those who just practice in safety all the time. I would probably figure out a simple system where so many hours gives you so much of a percentage of the next level, while so much time in combat gives you a comparatively larger amount.

I’m also going to make it so that each level comes with a particular skill attached. Rather than just having the warrior skill apply to all weapons, for example, I’ll have it specifically applied to swords. I’ll make it so that players can use the skill they get from each level to develop personalized techniques as well, if that is what they prefer. For example, say your player has a particular move they prefer to use in battle. They can specialize in one technique per level gained.

The last big change I’ll make is allowing the players to develop a style after a certain number of consistent levels. Say a player specializes in offensive techniques and weaponry, they can develop an offensive style to go along with it and boost their offense. Alternatively, a person who works at making a particular craft with certain tools will develop a style along those lines for noncombat stuff. I’m also going to allow the players to retrain their skills and styles if they start to shift their preferences.

So those are the changes I’d planned up to this point. I’m not sure it’s very clear, but I’ll keep tinkering with it as time goes on. Hope all of you are doing well, and I’ll see you later.

The Game--Physical Skills, Part one

I’ll continue in my quest for eternal nerdity today, so those who are bored by these posts, please forgive my little indulgences.

The way physical skills were once handled in the original Game was fairly straightforward. You gained a ‘level’ of weapons training and such simply by learning it from someone new. You could only learn one level from one person, which encouraged players to travel or meet new people in order to learn more levels. Each level granted another bit of speed, skill and strength to the player in combat. Once enough levels had been gained, the player could start to specialize in various skills or techniques. There were no limits on how fast or how strong a player could get. As long as they dedicated themselves to learning the steps, they would continue to increase until the day they died.

In actual fighting, a player would merely describe the technique they were going to use, and I would match it up to what their opponent was going to use. If a player came up with a way to outmatch their opponent, they would win. If their opponent tricked them, they didn’t.

Unfortunately, while it was a good system to start out with, the physical skills system has so many holes in it that it needs a pretty hefty refit. First off, the players quickly figured out that if they could learn a level of warrior from anyone, they could just wander around learning weapons techniques all day long until they had about a hundred levels. I had to keep bringing up reasons out of nowhere to prevent them from taking that route. Also, long range skills such as marksmanship always seemed fairly awkward by comparison.

Another large problem is that it depended heavily on my imagination to direct how a hand to hand fight I imagine that most GMs are not interested in choreographing every fight on the fly, and that they would like a little more structure to combat. Further problems were found in the fact that everything was very generalized. Other than chosing a particular weapon, there was little specialization or customization involved in the process. It got very boring, until there was little difference in the skills of any particular physical fighter. Uninterested players who started off focused on physical skills soon moved to other techniques like Enchanter or Psychic once they were bored with getting level after level of bland warrior.

However, the physical skills also embodied a very important part of the Game, a part I don’t want to lose while I am remaking it: the cinematic feel of the combat. Many of my players enjoyed feeling like they were in an actual fight with an actual opponent, rather than continuing to roll dice to determine the outcome. They seemed to enjoy having to come up with their own moves and skills as well, rather than relying on a predetermined set of feats or techniques, especially since they could come up with a spur of the moment move to bring their enemy down. I have to come up with a balance that serves all these needs, so I will get to that in the next part.

The Game--No Dice

Now that I’ve given off a burst of indignant rage for the week, it’s probably time to cool things off with a surge of pure boredom. Might as well talk about my plans for The Game, then. :)

One of the chief problems I have facing me as I try and hammer this system together is how I used to resolve combat and other such things. Rather than rolling dice, for the most part I just matched up what I thought the enemy was doing against what the player was planning on. While it worked well for me, I don’t think other people would enjoy a system like that since it requires a lot of planning and effort that a casual GM wouldn’t want to deal with.

At the same time, I don’t feel like putting things into a full on dice system. I don’t like the idea of having to use specialized dice or complex math systems just to figure out what happens next, especially when it comes to combat. The last thing I want is for the cinematic feel to be broken up by somebody having to roll like thirty dice.

What I’m thinking of doing is allowing the resolution of the various encounters play out a bit more with quick comparisons between skill levels. For example, if a player encounters someone who is far less skilled at hand to hand fighting, the enemy will telegraph the attacks and blocks they will make. The player can then figure out a way around them, say by feinting or dodging, or use more specialized techniques to counter them. If the levels are more equal, then the guesses are less sure, while if the player is at a disadvantage, there’s little chance that they will be able to figure it out. That way there is some math, but it won’t involve dice rolls to determine everything.

I think I will remain stubborn about not using hit points, though. That aspect of some games always seemed like it broke the realism too much to use. I’ll stick with a realistic damage system, where if you get stabbed in the arm, you can’t use the arm, etc. It tended to give players more pause about just throwing themselves into the enemy if they knew a chopped off arm wasn’t just going to come back with a little sleep. Besides, other games like Dwarf Fortress seem to use it effectively without too much loss.

So those are my thoughts on that. Feel free to contribute your suggestions if you want. I’ll just keep tinkering with this as I go in the meantime. See you round!

The Game--Battle Magic, Part Two

So, here is how I’m planning on fixing this system. You know, for all those people who are actually interested. :)

The first move would be to get away from the linear progression in terms of development. I want to give each magic type three different paths of progression, built around Attack, Defense and Special Effects. That way each magic type can be free to develop the types of spells that most interests them, whether that be primarily defensive techniques, offensive spells, castings based around more odd-ball effects, or a mix of all three. Now instead of just grinding through the spells you hate to get to the ones you actually want, a player can choose the path of their own progression. Hopefully that would lead to more interest and more connection to the techniques they get.

The second move is to change the energy base the magic is based off of. Rather than having each spell run out of juice individually, I’m going to have a central pool of Magic Points that each player uses up for all of their spells. That would force them to choose during battle between the spells they are going to use, maybe even hold back a bit so that they won’t find themselves out of juice during an important moment. A small fix, but an important one.

Finally, I’m going to take out the late spells that were basically stronger versions of earlier spells. I think players always grew a bit bored when things like that happened, and it made them less excited for a new technique. Rather than having that, I’m going to make it possible for the players to use the Tech points they gain from spell usage to enhance the spells they already have. That way if someone likes throwing a plain bolt of lightning, they can upgrade it. Someone who doesn’t can just save the Tech points and get a new spell. I’m also going to make it so that Tech points can be used to increase the pool of Magic points available to the user, or to increase the recharge rate of those points.

Along with some changes to spells and such, I also decided to work in some item creation. Another, unmentioned issue with Battle Magic is that you could never make anything with it. While other abilities gave you access to items and enhancements and such, Battle Magic was only about firing shots. To make it more interesting there, I’m going to make it so that Battle Magic users can create magical artifacts, materials and spell books. This way Magic users who reach the rank of Channeler can have a lot more in the way of crafting when they aren’t blowing things up.

One last random change is that I am going to include something new in the system. In each of the branches of this revamped version of the Game, there will be a point where you will be able to choose to advance on either the side of Good, or the side of Evil. In Battle Magic, that choice will come up fairly late in the progression, as the first two ranks (Caster and Channeler) are considered neutral. Once a Magic user has reached the third rank, they will be able to choose to become either a Mediator, who uses Peacecrafting spells to further the cause of good, or a Necromancer, who uses the chained spirits of slaves to access Death Spells for their own ends. The highest rank, that of Mage, will also be associated with either side, and will still be able to design and create their own spells.

So those are the new ideas that I’ve had concerning this part of the Game. Let me know if you guys have any way of making it better than it currently is. If there is anything interesting about it to you guys, just let me know as well. Thanks for your patience, and I’ll see you around.

The Game--Battle Magic, Part One

Alright, so I thought I’d start this analysis off with Battle Magic. It was one of the more distinctive systems of the Game, so it’s a decent enough starting point.

Battle Magic was partially based on the magic system in a game called Chrono Trigger. It was a Super Nintendo RPG, and one of my favorites as a kid and even now. One of my first efforts at writing involved writing a corny fan fiction for a Chrono Trigger sequel. The game had four different magic types (Fire, Lightning, Water, and Shadow), and seven characters, some of whom had no magic and some of whom doubled up on one of the four. I didn’t think that was fair, so in my fan fic, I added three types, Sonic, Wind and Earth, to make up for the deficiency. When I started the Game up, I transported that concept over to make up the basis for Battle Magic.

Anyone who played was automatically assigned a magic type based on how I viewed their personality. Extremely independent types got Lightning, Shadow went to people who were focused on having really cool abilities, Water went to people comfortable with stable social situations while Fire was given to people who constantly tried to shake things up. Wind went to people who cared a lot about imagination and ideals, while practical people got Earth. Sonic, which was kind of a grab bag, went to people who wanted balance, or who were balanced themselves. It worked out alright, and gave me a pretty good mix of players and magic types.

I included a few other extra bits and pieces to it as well, though they didn’t all work out. I gave Battle Magic a weakness, so that if it was used at extremely close range it became as harmful to the user as it was to the enemy, and perhaps more so. I made it so magic could pass through friendly troops without harming them, and made it so that the players could learn new spells by using their old ones. There were a total of thirty one for each magic type, and each type had its own characteristic spell set. I made it so that you could run out of ‘shots’ of each spell, to encourage them to use them carefully. I even included combination techniques that two magic users could join forces to use, a kind of homage to similar techniques in Chrono Trigger.

Unfortunately, there were some problems with this system. First off, the players never used the combos, and they were soon dropped simply to avoid having to deal with them any more. A much more severe problem was the limit placed on the player’s progression. I’d set up the list of spells so that you had to progress in a linear fashion through them, which meant that it was more or less a grind for the players to earn each new spell. There was no real personalization of the techniques, and the players usually just wound up saying ‘I use my most powerful attack, then my next most powerful…’ and so on until they were out of spells. They didn’t really care about conserving their attacks or using them tactically, since spamming spells always rewarded them with advances towards the next level of spells, and most spells were just a standard blast attack. It just wasn’t as engaging a system as it could have been.

It didn’t help that between the seven types, I had more than two hundred spells to organize and remember. Keeping track of them all was difficult, and nearer the end even I lost interest in memorizing the exact effects of all but the highest level. What I needed was a more customizable system with interesting spells, one that allowed the player’s progress to be based on their own choices and encouraged them to be more selective in how they employed their powers.

Next time I’ll get into the details of how I am planning on fixing these flaws. I promise. :)

On Myths

So I just wrote a creation myth for a completely fictional world. The world itself is a background for a game nobody plays, and likely won’t even contribute to any future stories for something like years in the future. Yet I still wrote it. Does that make me crazy, or just really, really nerdy?

I’ve always found the concept of a myth to be useful when I’m planning the background to something, though. It helps set up the culture of a setting in a very significant way, and helps me to get a definite feel for how the people would react to the situations around them. Some of the most interesting settings have always had some form of myth or something in the background that held them up.

One of the times I enjoyed it the most was during the Larinia project we worked on in the Quark writing group. Just the origin myths for the different elf tribes there were fun to write for some reason, and I felt like it gave me a really good grasp on each of the societies. Their characteristic feel just seemed more unique after that, so maybe I should do it for more of my stories.

So should I post it on here, or just let it gather dust in my document bin? Just wondering if anyone’s interested in it, if only to mock it. Hahaha. Hope all is going well for everyone, and I’ll see you Monday. Hopefully there’s some news about life by then.

The Game--The Original Setup

So, since I can’t come up with anything else interesting to talk about, I’ll just babble on about a game system that nobody cares about anymore :) It’s my blog anyhow, and I can rant into the void if I want to.

In any case, the original setup for the Game was meant to provide as many options for players as possible without overduplicating abilities. I wanted them to be able to combine different branches of skills or focus on their favorites enough to create unique characters, but I didn’t want enough that it would consume whatever grey matter I have in between my ears just trying to keep up with it.

There were six original “Lesser” powers, though each of them continued to mutate and change as the Game grew more and more complex (As I suspect many of my more experienced players noticed). I organized them in pairs, each pair corresponding to a particular bent. There was Magic, divided into Archmagic and Battle Magic. Mind powers was another pair, divided between the telepathic area (Psychic) and telekinetics (Enchanters). Normal abilities, such as Technology/Strategy and Physical Combat were also grouped together.

Each of these fields had their own limitations and advantages. In my Game, Physical Combat skills, if studied enough, allowed a player’s character to move faster, be stronger, and endure more than any normal human. Psychic allowed players to communicate over distances, scan opponents, and even assault an enemy’s mind directly. Technology allowed access to untold horrors of machinery that I failed to anticipate, and Archmagic provided them the chance to create and build on hordes of magical constructs to do their bidding. Enchanter allowed them to manipulate the elements around them and turn them to their tasks, while the slightly more rigid, yet more intensely powerful Battle Magic allowed players to nuke the crap out of anything that opposed them. (Those of you who’ve read my stories can probably stop noticing the similarities to a certain work of mine; your suspicions are correct).

Of course, in addition to these Lesser abilities, there was another tier that I referred to as the Greater powers. These were split along Light and Dark, and were mostly based around moral choices when compared to those above. The Lesser powers were like fire; morally neutral and capable of serving either side. The Light powers, however, only corresponded to morally good characters, allowing extra abilities and powers beyond the Lessers’ capability to give. Dark allowed access to corruption and evil untold. There were sub-abilities within these opposing sides that gave each character a whole new and unique field of skills to play with as well.

So that’s how the whole shebang was originally oriented, though near the end it had grown to such a convoluted mess that I don’t dare explain it fully in one post. As I go through the changes I’ve made, I’ll refer to each of these fields and how they either succeeded or failed, and how I’m going to fine tune the whole process. Should be interesting—to me at least. :) See ya round!

The Game, part two

So last time I told you about some of the fun things about my former gaming habits. Unfortunately, the time has come to reveal some of the less enjoyable aspects.

The first, and largest, problem that the games I made developed was that nobody besides me could run them. Since it lacked the system of numbers and highly defined rule system, everything kind of depended on how much attention I could pay to it, and nobody else really developed the knack for running it. That pretty much limited its wider appeal to only those who had direct access to me, which meant The Game was never going to become any more popular than I was. Given my social skills, that meant it wasn’t going to be very popular. It also meant that I was responsible for providing that entertainment to whoever wanted it, which grew old quickly.

The second problem was that some of the abilities and skills the players could develop ended up being unbalanced or uninteresting compared to others. The manner of learning physical combat was very much a bland process compared to Archmagic and Battle Magic. Psychic was a little too straightforward as well, and while Enchanter tended to be interesting, at the higher levels it too got overshadowed. Technology rarely even got recognized as a separate field. So even the final version I came up with needed a lot more tinkering to make effective.

Combined, those flaws eventually convinced me to set the game aside during college. The fact that I didn’t want to seem like a total nerd to the girls around me might have had something to do with it as well. (Though I met my wife at a nerdy writing group anyway, so my efforts were in vain. Typical.) Yet lately I have been looking at it again and wondering what I could do to correct some of these faults.

Unsurprisingly, my crazed little mind has actually come up with a few ways. The best way I could see to correct the first problem would be to actually write up a game manual so that anyone with the time or inclination would be able to use it. Of course, the second one will take a lot more tinkering to fix, so it will probably take a lot longer.

So over the next little while, I will probably occasionally post up some of these ideas and corrections. I’ll ask you to repress your horrified reaction to my nerdy behavior. :) If a principle of it interests you, just let me know so that I get some feedback. Otherwise, just bear with it, and I’ll exhaust my material eventually. Until next time!

The Game, part one

That’s right, I’m posting twice in one day, since I just finished with the GRE and now have a bit more time. I’m sure it’s not the best way to go about posting three times this week, but oh well, you’ll just have to deal with it.

So, remember how I tend to get obsessed with gaming systems and the like? I mentioned at some point that after my initial encounter with Dungeons and Dragons, I started to make up my own role playing games. It was an enjoyable habit that I kept up over the years through elementary, middle and high school, though once I went to BYU I let things come to a close. There were various iterations of the system I worked with, but they all shared some common characteristics.

First off, I did away with the whole ‘class’ system that defines a lot of character roles. I didn’t like the fact that the fighter character always had a specific job to do, or had to choose from a set of skills, and that he couldn’t up and choose to be part wizard instead. I guess my limited experience hadn’t taught me about cross classing or whatever, but in my games I made sure that no matter who you were, as long as someone (or something) was available to teach you, you could build up pretty much whatever skills you wanted. It led to some interesting characters among the people who played, and gave me a lot of challenges as the game master to keep up with the different players who customized their characters effectively.

Secondly, my system didn’t involve any dice rolls. That is fairly weird, but it made sense to me. After all, things don’t always get determined by only luck. A lot of the time, things happen because of the choices people made. So before each player decided on their action, I planned out their opponents moves, and had them compared. For example, I knew the guy facing somebody was going to swing an axe at their head. If the player decided to attack, unless they were faster than the other guy, they would be hit in the head. If they blocked or dodged, depending on the angle or direction, they could escape.

Similarly, there weren’t any hit points involved. People got injured or incapacitated based on where their wounds were. Take a hit in the arm, and it was injured. Hit to the head, you had problems. Scarring and permanent damage was handled more or less the same way. Put together, it kind of helped make everything a bit more cinematic and fun to describe, rather than what felt like a bunch of math. Clever players could think up some pretty cool tricks, and we never had the experience of having to roll a bajillion dice just to figure out what happened next.

Another aspect of the games I came up with involved the campaigns. Players often didn’t have a specific objective, and they tended to have to wander in order to find something they found interesting. It gave them a lot more freedom than a focused campaign, and allowed them to have a kind of sandbox feel to what they were doing. There were enemies who built up forces and came after them, and plots that they could uncover or thwart, but how they did it and what order they faced them was up to the players, not me. It also allowed them to avoid any railroading on my part, though if they missed some of the hints I left lying around they occasionally got surprised by attacks from nowhere. They also occasionally wandered into places and situations where they could get killed easily, but I typically left them a way out after they faced the consequences of their actions.

Next time I’ll probably go into why I’m spending so much time talking about all this. Suspense! Or not…