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[RR] Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine Review

This review is based on the ePub version (i.e., Kindle), which is currently available for $10 at DriveThruRPG. A PDF version with art and print layout will be out later this year.

This is a roleplaying game. It is possibly the roleplaying game. It is genius. It is horrifying. It is a beautiful balance of everything that would drive a story forward. It is diceless. It is filled with meta-game moments. It is quite a task to understand. If you are on a path to better understanding how to grow as a gamemaster (GM) or as a player with a player character(PC) in tabletop RPG’s, I’d tell you to buy it. If you are on Pathfinder this RPG might as well be in ancient Martian.

This game was to play Studio Ghibli films. Perhaps not as adventurous as Princess Mononoke, which would easily fall under a standard RPG system. This system was designed to play Ponyo or Spirited Away. There’s one scene in Ponyo, where the boy takes Ponyo out in a boat to explore the submerged world. It’s such an interesting slice of adventure, but without much purpose. How would you create a game like that where the player is involved? Continue reading [RR] Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine Review

[GW2] The Four Winds Carnival

Guild Wars 2 has updated with a content patch – Festival of the Four Winds – after the last, big feature patch. The content is mostly a rehash combining the Queen’s Pavilion with the Labyrinthine Cliffs. The combination creates an eerie yin and yang effect. It’s uncanny how stark the two places are with Guild Wars 2 players. Continue reading [GW2] The Four Winds Carnival

[TT] Origins Bleg

As part of turning my attention from MMOs, I will be attending Origins and Gen Con this year. This will be my first time at either, and I am working through the Origins business model. It seems a bit like what we’ve called the “carnival” model in MMOs: you buy a badge (box), which gets you in the door, but many/most events require one or more tickets (usually $2 for a game), and you can buy bundles with ribbons, after which you do not need tickets for events/games covered by those ribbons. That sound about right?

With more than 4000 events listed, time is probably a greater constraint than cost, but so is just figuring out what is of interest from a pool that big. And I’m told that Gen Con events registration is also going on, so I should probably start sorting through that, which is likely to be a larger list.

Any tips or recommendations?

: Zubon

[Windborne] World Traveler Update

Last night after a full day’s ride of the devs chugging energy drinks and sacrificing woolies to the gods of a bug-free launch, the first major update appeared for Windborne. Unfortunately the gods do not want woolies being sacrificed and the update is not without bugs. Things will get fixed, but the crux of the update is live.

The first thing that everybody should notice is the new lighting model (now with sun). I did not expect this change, but I know the past week where I’ve been working on my subterranean desert temple (screenshot has old lighting), I’ve been thinking the darks aren’t dark enough. There are no need for torches (ala Minecraft) beneath the surface since the ambient cares for all. Now, things are bit darker. There is more contrast (screenshot has new lighting). A good change.

The other functionality changes of note are that the first-person hands give way when players walk around the world. I feel like the devs directly responded to some of my feedback regarding trying to get the large material orbs out of the way while I explored. There’s a third person mode, which is nice with the new character generation. So good stuff, but let’s get on to the meat. Continue reading [Windborne] World Traveler Update

Spam Update

The flood continues. I was gratified to see spam comment from a gold-selling site, which is at least on-topic. If you post a comment that does not appear for a while, feel free to shoot me an e-mail, because we may be getting trigger-happy on the “yes, that’s spam” button.

This week, one of the spammers must have noticed that none of the comments were making it through, so they tried to brute force through the login link until I was locked out. And if the default for suspected spam were not “wait for approval,” that might have even let some spam links get through.

It annoys me at times that links from posts on this site to other posts on this site require approval as possible trackback spam, but given the ratio of real comments to spam seeking moderation, I am becoming tempted just to have all comments require moderation before appearing.

: Zubon

I cleared out the “potential spam” folder before writing this post, and more arrived before I was done with the first paragraph.

Edition Wars, Critical Mass

In D&D that is known as the edition wars. Psychologically that is the same well-known effect as people being angry about somebody playing a different MMORPG than they are. Pen & paper games as well as MMORPGs consume so many hours, that they become akin to a lifestyle choice. And somebody choosing a different lifestyle than you are is perceived as a threat, as it calls into question whether your choice was the right one.
— Tobold

While one might have trouble overestimating the inferiority complexes and senses of entitlement on display in many online discussions, another take is that choosing a different MMO or edition is a threat because it diverts resources away from your choice and increases the threat that your game will fall below the critical mass necessary to maintain support for it.

The fewer people that play your game, the harder it is to find people to play with. It also means less developer time and effort being spent on your game, because there are less resources to support them. In MMOs, that can lead to games going offline, at which point you cannot play anymore. Pen and paper games do not have that risk, but to the extent that there is value in having a supporting gaming community, you need them to support your game.

And the closer someone is to your game, the more problematic it is that they are not playing your game because they could be. They face the exact same problem that you do, in terms of needing attention on a particular game, but they are making that exact same problem worse by going with you 90% of the way and then diverting attention at the last moment (and of course the fools see you as the one causing the problem). Maybe this will be the expansion that radically expands the playerbase, as WoW did for MMOs, but most games are competing for the same pool of players. The scarcer resources are, the uglier the fights over them tend to be.

: Zubon

[RR] Investment in the Game

Personal investment in a pen and paper roleplaying game is one of the most important factors in the life and death of a campaign. It doesn’t matter through what medium the game is played (tabletop, forum, Google Hangout, etc.), the range of investment in the players matters.

The biggest investment in a conventional game is the gamemaster (GM). This is the player that tells all the other players “hey, come play in my world!” They are the rules arbitrator, worldkeeper, and general destroyer of fun. If the GM doesn’t have a strong vision or investment in the game they want to run, the game is not off to a great start. Continue reading [RR] Investment in the Game

Easy Spring

On the MMO side, I’ve been taking it pretty easy this spring. However, I’ve not been lazy on the game front. Most of my creative juices have been towards revising UNE and also creating two other system- and setting-agnostic TTRPG supplements. One supplement is aimed at quickly creating character histories or downtime stories, and the other one is a GM-emulator. They are nearing draft completion, and I’m going to have art and layout done professionally. The goal is have them up on DriveThruRPG under the pay-what-you-want model.

Guild Wars 2

The only MMO I’ve touched this year has been Guild Wars 2. I’ve slacked off big time since the feature pack. If I sign on it’s either for Tequatl (or the Wurms) or WvW hijinks. I am pretty excited about the upcoming Festival because it seems like a better way to ease back in to the game rather than start Living World Season 2 right away. I do hope that Season 2 starts pretty soon thereafter though. ArenaNet has been silent on that front, except for the mention of potato cooking times and gravy. Continue reading Easy Spring

Time Investment

Phillip II: I can’t lose, Henry — I have time. Just look at you — great, heavy arms, but every year they get a little heavier. The sand goes pit-pat in the glass. I’m in no hurry, Henry. I’ve got time.
Henry II: Suppose I hurry things along. Suppose I say that England is at war with France.
Philip II: Then France surrenders. I don’t have to fight to win. Take all you want — this county, that one — you won’t keep it long.
— The Lion in Winter

How do we feel about games whose competitive balance privilege the investment of time?

I do not mean games where you become better with experience. “Easy to learn, hard to master” is a classic design goal, and games without that learning curve often become dull quickly. Instead, I mean games where players can spend different amounts of time on the field, with points accruing to players/teams that invest more time. This includes bringing more players, playing for more time, or often both.

In contrast, think of a round of an RTS, FPS, MOBA, board game, or sporting event. The temporal bounds of the game are fixed, and the rounds are generally distinct. I can play as many games of StarCraft as I like, but I start each game fresh. If the other players are not there, I cannot keep rolling the dice in Monopoly to keep going around the board, nor can my football team show up at midnight to score unopposed while the other team is asleep.

Many computer-mediated games allow and even encourage this sort of play, especially where territorial control is involved, and the economics of the game may create this on a smaller basis if you can farm during off-hours to create an advantageous starting position. For example, your server’s score in GW2 WvW is largely driven by how many players you field over how much time, whereas GW2 sPvP at least tries to have equal players for equal time. EVE Online, Darkfall, Shadowbane, and Ingress are other games where bringing more players or continuing to play before/after the other team does allows you to win through superior time investment. You may be really good at the game, but you only have two hours per day to play, while the opposing guild might be college students who just finished finals (although you dominated during finals week).

On the one hand, it seems like something is wrong with such a game if superior time investment does not yield results. If you are trying to simulate a war, great ways to win a war include bringing more allies, bringing more economic resources, and sacking your enemies’ cities while their troops are elsewhere. On the other hand, now that I am long past the age where I have time to kill, why would I want to engage in competition where my competitors can score while I am not even playing?

: Zubon

To say nothing of the general MMO incentive to keep grinding.

Spam

We have been getting a flood of comment spam lately, and I am tempted to post about how we, in fact, have the lowest prices on the assorted products being advertised, but I’m scared that having those keywords in a post will summon more comment spam seeking SEO links. Heck, I’m scared that “lowest prices” will do it, the way that old posts observing that people found Kill Ten Rats through Google searches for porn led to more people finding Kill Ten Rats through Google searches for porn because “porn” was in a recent post.

I just did it again, didn’t I? Maybe the spam will become more interesting.

: Zubon