From West To East

I was watching an episode of The Wild Wild West recently and got to thinking about how to run it in a RPG.  While I could just focus on the one show, I thought I’d look at other shows from the era as material for role-playing.

The Wild Wild West

James Bond as a Western.  Oozes cool, even kind of dark, giving it some edge.  Why in the world did Will Smith have to crap all over it by casting himself as James West?  I didn’t see the movie, so I don’t know what else is offensive besides the image I have in mind of running from a giant mechanical spider.  Nothing wrong with giant mechanical spider in the technoweird world of TWWW, but Robert Conrad would have climbed it, face punched a guard, planted explosives, and dived off as it blew up … which may very well have happened for all I know, not that I will ever know due to Will Smith’s casting as James West.

I can’t shake the idea of using Savage Worlds for the system.  As much as I don’t entirely get SW and as much as there are other systems that handle normals well at least at a character sheet level – WoD, Unisystem, etc. – that Solomon Kane wasn’t that painful to run and that I actually ran it some gives me more of a feel for how to model the game.

Would it be a good campaign to run for more than two players?  Maybe three, but I don’t really see more than that to capture the same feel.  That’s not a bad thing.  A lot of games aren’t that great for just two players without rethinking how to run.

While I’m rarely a fan of actually playing characters from source material, there is the important question of whether to play characters just like James West and Artemus Gordon or let players create different archetypes (probably two characters like Jim rather than more characters like Arty).

Bewitched

It has been ages since I’ve watched Bewitched.  The set up for the show might suck for RPing, but the world might suck less.  There were gatherings of witches and warlocks …

… nah, it would still be dumb.  The idea of witches in the modern world is already covered by Witchcraft, Mage, and other RPGs, so there’s no real point to drawing from Bewitched.

Get Smart

I love Get Smart.  I’d even be willing to watch the movie, which I’ve heard good things about, overcoming my strong reluctance to waste time and money on movies.

However, it’s a terrible RPG world.  While (intentional) comedy is possible in role-playing (unintentional is the norm for my groups), I deplore the lack of subtlety it routinely has in the RPG industry, such as Paranoia.  Then, I don’t think people realize that Maxwell Smart is not just a buffoon but a combination of Bond and buffoon.  The serious aspects help keep it from dissolving entirely into juvenile humor.

Far better, though my recollection of the show is so much worse that I can’t be sure, is probably Man From U.N.C.L.E. for the spy genre.  Of course, James Bond already exists and there are plenty of RPGs based around spies, so “why bother?” looking for inspiration from a TV show is a cogent question.

Perry Mason

Very formulaic.  But, why not RPing normal detective work (taking the detective work aspects from this courtroom show)?  Pure detective is not something I recall doing.  It’s almost always supernatural detective or investigation activities in miscellaneous genres (Vampire, L5R, etc.).

Even the courtroom focus of the show provides a hook that other games wouldn’t have.  I am just very fearful that playing this repeatedly would be incredibly redundant.  Not like, say, doing a Sherlock Holmes style campaign might be, even if ACD’s Sherlock Holmes stories tend to fall into only a few categories.  Though, how do you play Sherlock Holmes without Sherlock Holmes as the star?

I don’t know that system should matter much with such a game, though any system that makes skill use or perception rolls lame would be a bad choice.

Hogan’s Heroes

I have often thought about how to do a Hogan’s Heroes game.  Not only do I love the show – some of the best comfort TV ever, but the ensemble cast and WWII setting both scream role-playing.

Of course, the obvious issue is being in a POW Camp and that the threat of being discovered is not a credible threat when gaming since it destroys the genre.  I suppose that there could be some sort of penalty involved in the threat of discovery that never results in true discovery – Fate intervenes but you lose XP or bad things (TM) happen or whatever.  Or, you can even come up with a victory point system where “discovery” causes a massive loss in VPs to track reduced XP/rewards or sucky stuff happening (e.g. successful mission -> sleep with secretary, “discovered” -> secretary is too “busy” covering up your mistakes).

The system here should be easy and heavily skill-based.

Daktari

I had never heard of this show until today.  It ran four seasons.  The premise is okay.  I don’t care anything about it, even after reading a bit.  I just was amazed that I ran across this while looking for lists of shows from the 60′s as it’s actually the sort of show I could have seen watching back in the day – guess it wasn’t syndicated like the 50′s and 60′s shows that predated my birth that I did watch.

 

Anyway, if anyone is wondering about the likes of [insert Western here], Star Trek, The Saint, The Avengers, [insert cartoon here], et al, the point was to take a look at shows I watched enough to remember and that weren’t obvious choices that people had already done.

Certainly, the Western genre, without weirdness, is a rare enough choice for people to play, and I did watch a variety of Westerns when I was young, if not all from the 60′s.  But, The Wild Wild West is such a good variant.  The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. might be another take on variant Western that could have some legs.  Sure, there’s Deadlands that supposedly people play though I only recall witnessing people playing the CCG, but the supernatural elements are a different flavor.

For cartoons, none of the 60′s ones really grabbed me as a world I’d choose.  I’d expect there to be more such offerings from the 70′s and onwards.  I don’t remember much of Blackstar – I wonder how many people remember it at all, I only mention it because I do – Thundarr’s world would be far better for gaming.

One thing about TV shows is that they are very possibly better constructed for campaigns then movies/books are.  Ironic?  I don’t tend to think of episodic play when I think of campaign play, so why episodic source material rather than serial material?

Overwhelmingly, the nature of books and movies having an ending, a completed narrative, is what makes them problematic.  While there are series of books and movies, I tend to think of an entire book series as the source material where the episodic nature of so many TV shows makes them more consistent whatever time period you take such that sampling the show covers the source material.  Or, looking at it another way, a book/movie is about what happens, while a TV show is about the premise.  Many a RPG campaign wants to retain the basic premise rather than evolve a story far beyond the initial premise.  Even a five-year, designed campaign like Heroes of Rokugan may see very little change in the nature of one’s character.  Though, not every TV show is alike, as we can see with a five-year, designed story in Babylon 5 that was very much about what happened when looked at in its entirety and not just “we are diplomats from various races on a space station”.

Old Time Fan

I’m not going to do another “here’s what the new year will look like” post as last year’s was boring and I couldn’t validate predictions in a number of cases, anyway.

I was visiting family recently.  An interesting thing about visiting family is that the region where they live is one where I know a decent number of people who play games.  I can play V:TES (which I’ll get to in a subsequent post).  I almost got in a table of Heroes of Rokugan.  A friend of mine here grew up there, and I’ve gamed with his friends, playing Magic and boardgames.  I have in the past played the Babylon 5 CCG out there.

Then, there’s the actual possibility of gaming with family.  A recent present for one of my brothers was a Kinect.  I only tried two of the games, but one of them was a winner.  We played a lot of Kung Fu High Impact.  By we, I mean every sibling but one, a girlfriend, a family friend, and maybe others when I wasn’t around.  The room set up wasn’t great, so we were too close to the camera by a bit, which may or may not have mattered for game play – did cut our legs off at around the knees.  I know that it was exhausting to the point where I’d lose my ability to make the requisite motions for Power Punch, one of two key maneuvers in the game.  The other being backflip somersaults where I never did learn how to do multiflips.

Then, because one of my brothers and his girlfriend had a Nintendo, the name of the one that allows you to play two different generations of games escapes me, and because another brother mentioned how good River City Ransom is, a third brother and I played a bunch of River City Ransom.  Apparently, the twins had never won at the game.  After doing some online research on how to play the game better, mainly intended to find out what stuff to shop for since there are a ridiculous number of options, we found out about the cheaty “take me out and run off the screen fast” system in two-player play that allows you to recharge your stamina while not losing any money.  After doing more research and finally realizing we weren’t facing a boss because we kept not clearing the warehouse, we conquered the game … on novice level … without even stopping to find Ryan’s girlfriend before punking the end boss.  While the fighting is only okay, the shopping and attribute manipulation in the game is crazy.  I certainly would play it again on normal mode to see how efficiently it can be beaten once you know what you are doing.

“Ah, but videogames are totally not your thing.” – Random person talking to me (probably myself).

As with many things, movies for instance, I make no effort, but I’ll partake.  In fact, I only play Wii at my grandparents’ old place.  Only played old school Zelda, Megaman, et al when visiting relatives.  Etc.

Of far more interest was getting some Mahjong* in.  One brother always talks about playing when I visit, but it’s rarely the case that it happens.  I don’t recall the last time I played.  I did show the old South Bay V:TES group that morphed into a boardgame group how to play years ago.  I played while living in Shanghai in 2007 a funky variant with a coworker’s family.  I played a bit at an old company’s holiday party, which might have been later in 2007.

*  Because it can be spelled so many ways and I have little idea what the preferred spelling is, I’m going to go with the simplest spelling going forward, even though I find it silly that it’s capitalized and even though I’ve spelled it differently in other posts.

One wonders why we don’t play more.  If one were to wonder how I got started in gaming, it wouldn’t be hard to explain.  At around 8 years old, I was playing Mahjong with my grandparents, their siblings, my parents, and other family and family friends in Hawai’i.  These days, I like to identify younger folks who have played so I can tell them I’ve been playing longer than they’ve been alive.  Meanwhile, on the mainland, my mother and I frequently played rummy when we went out to eat.  I learned poker, chess, and I’m not sure what else back in those days, as well.

I loved playing so much when growing up that I would do all of the set up of the table, the tablecloth, the chips, the walls long before people arrived.  At some point, it lost some luster.  I believe it had to do with changes in getting together with family.  By far the people I most commonly played with were my grandparents and my grandmother’s siblings (and their spouses).  By high school, that generation was slowing down.  By college, not only that but I far less frequently visited my grandparents.

Its importance as a group activity declined and I developed other interests.  But, perhaps contrary to perception, I never lost interest.  We played a few rounds, not bothering to keep score, and I was reminded how interesting the game remains for me.  At its heart, it’s a simple rummy game.  Actually, the complexity in the game and much of the depth comes from playing to a scoring system.  We have a family system of scoring that is old style Chinese with all of the peculiarities that come with a regional system of scoring.  And, we aren’t even consistent with that – sometimes a hand qualifies for additional fans and sometimes not, for instance.  Or, how to score Seven Sisters will vary.

Even without the depth from how to play to a scoring system, I was engaged by the flow of probability calculations that comprise the decisions in the game.  There’s even a psychological element to what to discard, if a subtle one that only occasionally comes up.  The level of complexity is where it should be with the basics being easy enough and the analysis not being overly paralysistic.

An advantage to not playing for money was that I could screw around, like one hand going for 13 Orphans, which I think I’ve done once or twice ever, possibly never.  On the other hand, I do see money being essential to getting the most out of the game.  It’s not so much to make it more competitive as it is to make it more strategic how to play.  Well, then why not just track points?  Can do that, but actually, yeah, making the points turn into dollar dollar bills does make it more competitive.  I was certainly gambling by the age of 9, which I think helped immensely for making me a better player.

Our family style is very aggressive with no reward for playing defensively and giving up on hands except in the most extreme endgame situations.  I would rather see the rule used by the Japanese and common in Chinese play that discarder pays for everyone.  I would rather eliminate flowers as they just add a massive randomness element to the value of hands.  The wildness that I found attractive when young is less interesting to me than proper strategic/tactical play that possibly playing other games has instilled within me.  On the other hand, it’s also fine the way it is.  It’s a good style for learning how to win.  And, there is a tactical element to changing posture based on the visible value provided by relevant flowers.

Once upon a time, I would say that there were only two things I believed I was good at.  Mahjong being the other one.  At least in the last 20 years, I have found I could hang with anyone I played with.  Unlike other games, like V:TES where I’m not ruthless enough, I think I can hold up as a player, at least as long as my mood doesn’t veer towards recklessness as it so often does when gaming/gambling (there’s a reason I don’t gamble virtually at all anymore).

I do think it’s unlikely I will see much play outside of family get togethers as there are so many other things to play – many boardgames have way less investment of time.  I certainly have no interest in playing online where the pageantry gets taken out of the game, making the game an overly mechanical exercise, much like online poker or even JOL.

[Classic] Weekend Assignment

Continuing with finding old posts to the Wheel of Time CCG playtest list, in the Summer or 2000, the playtesters were given an assignment to try out various errata for cards identified as being problematic.  Not a very common playtesting request, in my experience.

“Weekend Assignment”  [July 31, 2000]

Dark CotL v. Dragon
Pattern: 1/7/12
LB totals: 6/31

This game was played using the discard to use for Lines and with one Decrees per challenge, though no Decrees were played because only one was drawn and B&A was in play.  Light wins by 29.

Same
Pattern: 0/6/14
LB totals: 34 dice to 88 dice

Lines banned. One decrees played for 22 support on top of whatever would have been rolled.  We were already sick of these decks to bother rolling.

Dark Illian v. same Dragon
0/8/12
37/30

Lines banned.  Decrees played for 14. Light 3 damage away from all of its characters dying (ignoring using Pattern for damage prevention).  Light won by 5 … with Decrees (14 point).

Same
0/11/11
32/37

Same match up with Lines back in deck.  Decrees for 22.  Light wins by 38, 16 without Decrees.  First turn Genocide by Shadow important.

In the last two days, the Light has *averaged* 12 Pattern during the LB.  The Shadow has averaged ZERO.  Thought I’d mention this before taking an interlude to comment on the seven cards *we* considered errata for.

Decrees – 1 support/opposition per target, once per challenge.  Or, this has got to go.

Lines – Mixed.  I’m still concerned about selective use of the discard to use version.  That option certainly changes my deck.  Enough that I’d probably pull it for some other way to draw cards.  Not having Lines in that deck at all was an incredibly important change.  Lines allowed for searching for the important characters – Elyas, Prophet – who search for most of the troops.  Without it, the deck had a lot of problems achieving critical character mass.  Good.  Means that I’d have to find some other way to exploit Pull openings.  Wasn’t like a deck built around the card lost or anything without it.

Elayne – General dislike for removing text, removal is considered counterintuitive.  Couldn’t really agree.  Not the first change we’d make with DP cards as trying to test the proposed errata is virtually impossible as it completely changes the opening hand and tends to mean building a completely different deck.

Pull – In anticipating future replacements based on Pattern, we didn’t have a problem with reducing the blow up ability to either search or reduce – the prepostplaytest version.

PwP – Shouldn’t go get itself.  Couldn’t agree beyond that.  Bill’s feeling was no card should be able to search for itself.  He finds Rahvin for Rahvin as annoying.  Suggests a blanket rules change to that effect.  A card we could use more time looking at.

Genocide – Where to begin?  How about that Genocide may be the Shadow’s only chance.  That it is better for the Shadow out of the opening hand.  Though, Decrees gives the Light the ability to shoot down midgame Genocides, which is interesting.  Suggestion that we could live with:  remove from game after it resolves.  A complete thematic failure no matter what is done with it in my mind, but limiting it to the Shadow may help the current game and Bill thought it was more thematic.  In its favor, Genocide’s effects give a strong reason for both sides to participate in the same challenge.

Invasion – Remove from game once it finishes resolving seemed to be the most popular fix.  Other suggestion called for reducing the third ability to 1 card to prevent infinite Invasion combos.  But, remove from game seems more elegant.

As a result of our discussions on the state of the game, we concluded that a good idea for a card would be a starting Forsaken that reduced Pattern requirements by 2, to give Shaidar a chance to see play, to give some reason to play Draghkars, etc.  Another idea was an event that temporarily reduced Pattern requirements.

I liked Bill’s Dark Illian deck a lot.  Opening hand of Sammael, Genocide, Brend, King.  I’ve commented before how I felt Illian was too midgamish.  He fills out the deck with Forsaken for long term punch.  In the early game, Genocide slows the Light.  City of Illian in combination with Invasions and Genocides is a bitch to deal with.  “Oh no, you put all that effort into stopping my Genocide and all I did was win the Pattern and pull back an Invasion which I’ll use to get back the Genocide.”  Pretty good synergy on a number of levels between Forsaken and Illian.

We are all trying to figure out how far Genocide/Invasion goes towards giving the Shadow a chance.  We have yet to build the Light G/I deck.

The no Lines Illian v. Dragon game was incredibly interactive [note:  wrong game, corrected in a later post].  Tough decisions had to be made and challenges were incredibly important.  That the Shadow had 0 Pattern, though, is still rather ridiculous.

I think I’ll post my Dragon deck soon, just to give an idea of what we were using for the vast majority of the games.

[Classic] Perpetuity

I was reading my posts to the Wheel of Time CCG playtest list, which still exists amazingly enough.  On the one hand, by this point, I knew how to playtest.  On the other, wow, I was incredibly arrogant at times; plus, I had a vast number of opinions on the flavor of cards, suggesting that, *sigh*, I really was/am a fan of the Wheel of Time series.  Anyway, this was the first that I found that seemed to be interesting in a “this is what CCG playtesting is like” way.  Some of the others, especially from playtest days where we played a bunch of games, are likely more interesting, but unless the group (and my saved sent e-mails) go away, I’m going to try to post more of these.  I enjoy reading them, at least.

Perpetuity [June 29, 2000]

This was a great deal trickier.  I had a sense before playing the card that Perpetual Conflict had the potential for breaking the game (broken in the true sense) as its mechanic allows for different deck designs.

The deck I built was just one of the possible uses for PC (which should probably change titles so that not every challenge is abbreviated PC).  This concept was to initiate anything and everything to slow or cripple the opponent out of the gate.

The deck list …

Sammael
Liandrin
Perpetual *
Into the Fight

A reasonable combination of threat and support to push PC through.  Originally Be’lal, but decided that the one combat wasn’t all that important, whereas bringing C&T out when drawn was.

Battle Hardened x3
Aura of Death x3
The Art x3
Momentum

BH is more for the characters, whom I expect to take damage.

Draw Him Out x2
Genocide x2
Incite Rebellion *
Political Prisoner x2
Prolonged Campaign
Rallying Cry
Rampage x3
Skirmish x2

This probably isn’t the optimal choice of challenges.  I did tinker around with them after rediscovering Assassination Attempt is useless and the like.  Also, playing them in the right order is not a skill I’ve mastered yet.  Generally, I like to get Incite Rebellion in play first to stop card drawing.  Rallying Cry frees up my characters. But, the Light usually isn’t *that* slow.  The most effective was Political Prisoner by far.  DHO didn’t work in killing off Thom like I hoped, though a bunch of these are just good for keeping the Light in the battleground (Genocide, which never won).

Darkhound x2
Eyeless x3
Barthanes
Shaidar x2

Eyeless – good synergy with strategy.

Decisive Tactics
Guarded by Fate x3
Healing x3
Into the Fight x2
Personal Growth x3
Portal Stone x3

Figure Sam and Liandrin will usually be in, so they need all the protection they can get.

Fist x2
Footmen x3
Horde
Raiders x3
War Band x3

How to win, eventually.

So, we got into a disagreement as to what caused my opponent to concede half way in.  I contended that it was the unrelenting pressure (ha ha) of perpetual conflict.  Bill thought Eyeless were ridiculous (got two in play).  As the game played out, the Light had a bit of an edge in recruiting (Aes Sedai), but Thom and eventually Moiraine both got imprisoned.  The game played the way the deck was designed – attack the opponent’s resources, especially the ability to recruit and draw cards, while eventually bringing greater force into play, except I never found out if I was going to bring greater force into play.

This is definitely a rough draft, I wanted to post this to try and give some ideas for something better.  Not having DP cards in front of me in card/proxy form also makes building the best decks difficult.  Anyway, even the concept may not be optimal as it may be preferable to just use PC to go get elite challenges.  A Light version would also be interesting.

I would like to restate that PC in its current version makes any restriction on challenges in the opening hand – Rampage?, Find That Which Is Hidden – meaningless.  The other deck I’ve begun to sketch out has Lanfear, PC, Liandrin, Into the Fight as its opening hand with the idea of using PC to get the 3 Finds.  Given a choice between which challenge I’d bar from the opening hand, I’d choose PC over Find (obviously).

Also, PC will only go away when there aren’t any challenges left.  Five turns of not playing a CBC, when you are playing PC, is not realistic.  Much better would be something like “If you don’t initiate a CBC this turn, discard PC.”  It requires, then, for someone to think about how they will use it. Not that you will consider this as I believe the intent was to get people to play CBCs, which this certainly does in its current (I consider possibly broken) form.

Ah, but with the other hand, something is taken away.  Though hardly a game breaker type card, Incite Rebellion does seem to go way too far as a hoser.  My Premier Dragon/Mercenary deck would have no chance against any sort of real deck if IR hits the table early on.  It’s mostly built around Taking Advantage, the card that is supposed to be fixed.  Two Pattern may be trivial to some decks, but I think this card mainly hurts the decks that can’t easily gain Pattern.  Might consider an additional or a different mechanic for getting rid of it.

2010 …

It actually didn’t occur to me until a few hours ago to take a look back at the year.  It’s still a few hours until 2011 here, so here I go with my look back on my 2010 gamingwise.  No top 10 lists, no deep thoughts on theory or strategy or astrology, no particular cleverness at all – just some things to ramble about.

Biggest Story

I watch a lot of ESPN/ESPN News, and they had a poll of the top story for 2010.  LeBron’s decision led.  I understand that; it was the story that had the most that could be talked about and was really intended to be a media frenzy thing.  It wasn’t the most important story, but it was the biggest.

Heroes of Rokugan.  I got invested in 2009, but I was involved in 2010.  I did most of my fictions, played in the final events, scrambled to try to get all the mods in, planned things out, and completed my (main two) characters’ stories.  HoR3 hasn’t been that big of a thing, yet, I still don’t know what I want to do with characters, but I’m still looking back at HoR2 both for the stories and because of my running it for others.

Most Notable Event

V:TES going out of production.  While I actually don’t care a lot that there’s no cards expected any time soon, which is a complete reversal of my views on CCGs I played in yesteryears, it’s akin to Tiger Woods (the most important sports story of 2010) in that what it precisely means is unknown, yet is disturbing in its implications.

It’s not just about V:TES, which, really, has already had a period in which it looked like production was over.  It’s also a general sign of the decline of CCGs.  Where have all of the niche CCGs gone?  Oh, not being plugged into the CCG market like I once was, I’m sure there are ones doing okay out there.  Just had a conversation with a store owner where L5R seems to be hanging on.  The market isn’t likely to die as enough CCGs have gone mainstream and (even more ludicrous) Yu-Gi-Oh! episodes keep getting shown in the US.  But, I don’t see any effort to publish new ones.

As for the major release of 2010 – Heirs to the Blood – I have such mixed feelings.  On the one hand, the starter thing was painful.  On the other, the set overall was quite pleasing.

I must rant about Visionquest, however.  There are plenty of horrible cards in V:TES, astronomical numbers in all of CCGdom, so why single out this, rather harmless, card?  I get offended by certain cards because they are such a mindboggling failure of design and/or development.  There’s no rational reason for how bad Visionquest is.  Sanguine Instruction isn’t technically, strictly better, it’s just “strictly” better, which is absurd when you consider how bad a card Sanguine Instruction is.  When SI was first published or maybe when we were playtesting the set, I don’t recall, I couldn’t understand why it was only a 1 stealth action.  That Visionquest does far less *and* has a drawback suggests to me a few possibilities.  One is, of course, that maybe nobody read the card, something I highly doubt if it was provided to playtesters since even niche playtesting sees a high enough level of scrutiny that how bad it is would have been caught.  My preferred theory, at the moment, is to think that the card was stronger in playtesting and got nerfed after the playtesters were done, something that happens quite often in my experience.  I don’t prefer this because I think it’s the most likely scenario, I prefer it because playtesters often get blamed for things that aren’t their fault.  There’s always the niche CCG playtesting problem of not having enough time to worry about underpowered cards, but that would still mean that people found it acceptable as it is currently written, which would be discouraging.

Conventions

Gen Con was a major mixed bag for me.  The lack of comrades on the trip had a huge impact both monetarily and in terms of enjoying my downtime.  DunDraCon was awful, as it has been for years.  KublaCon was okay.  ConQuest was virtually nonexistent.  I had more fun going to the Vegas Qualifier and the LA Storyline events, events where I didn’t game a whole lot, than I did most of the local cons.  Hell, I tend to get more enjoyment out of a casual gaming day than most of the local cons.

The question is whether this is the cons’ faults, my fault, or both.  I certainly don’t make much of an effort, anymore, at local cons.  The first ConQuest near my house I rather enjoyed as I played a few scheduled events, and that was only a couple of years ago.  On the other hand, a reason I don’t make much of an effort is that the cons don’t really offer much that enthralls me.  I’d rather play HoR online than virtually any of the RPG offerings at local cons.  A lot of that is due to a “been there, done that” view of things.  CCGs are all but dead at cons.  Boardgames …

Here’s the thing about local cons – they no longer provide something I can’t get elsewhere.  I can play boardgames probably like 5 times a week if I wanted.  Right this second, I’m not playing as many RPGs as I’d like, but I could be playing more, and I’m GMing my limit.  And, with CCGs being a nonfactor at cons, RPGs are the only things left.  Where are the special events?  Where’s the diversity?  Oh, right, have to go to Gen Con to find those.

Order or Chaos

I actually have very little consistency in my gaming schedule.  The only consistent thing these days is my running HoR2.  In general, though, the average amount of gaming seems fairly normal.  Maybe V:TES playdays pick up and Pleasanton slows down or South Bay RPGing picks up when HoR slows down or whatever.  No doubt, the amount of time spent gets fairly consistent due to filling up my free time with the sort of things I enjoy doing.  If I were busier, I don’t think I could continue running HoR2, for instance.  Should be interesting to see what happens in January.

Grade

What’s the grade for 2010?

I see discouraging things in the RPG industry and I’ve mentioned many times my views on the decline of CCGs.  I find a lot of boardgames popular with others rather tedious; those I don’t, I tire of reasonably quickly since boardgames are so inferior to CCGs in variety.  Campaigns have been inconsistent.  We have far too few V:TES tournaments.  I haven’t gotten terribly inspired by something new.

On the other hand, gaming leads to meeting new people and doing some different things (hadn’t driven to SoCal in ages) and gives me far more things to think about than I ever write about in this blog.

C?  C-?

2010, still

I should have time tomorrow to write about 2011 – what I predict, what I hope for, or whatever comes to mind.  Still thinking about 2010, is there anything I really would have changed?  I would have, of course, preordered HttB starters like I did for every set prior that WW published, but that’s not really what I mean by the question.  Should I have made more effort, whether it was with cons or getting people to play things I wanted or whatever?  Should I have tried more new things (or just more things in general)?

I give this year a mediocre to poor grade for gaming, but one thing that has struck me quite a bit in recent years is the idea that gaming should just be fun.  At the point where it is more of a chore or a downer or whatever, it’s kind of failing.  Now, gaming to me is more than just actually playing games, so I enjoy things that others can’t comprehend, like horrible RPG sessions and terribly designed boardgames that nevertheless have strategic options that are up for analysis.  I don’t have the mentality that some do that every session/experience should be enjoyable, but I see 2010 as being more of a year of just letting things happen rather than being as driven.

And, somehow, I taught people Ultimate Combat!

Desire

Talked about fear.  Let’s talk about desire.

At the simplest level, what is it I desire out of games?  Ultimately, they are probably the same sort of things, so maybe it’s more interesting to start with specific desires in various genres.

Boardgames/Card Games/Other

I can’t say that there’s much that I desire out of these categories.  My favorite boardgame is HeroQuest, which is my favorite because to me it’s a (very simplistic) RPG.  Actually, in reality, dungeon crawl RPing is really more of a boardgame, but whatever.  I don’t care if Dominion comes out with expansions, I don’t care what the hottest boardgame is, I don’t care if I ever play Power Grid, I don’t care about attempts to continue to make cooperative boardgames.

If I had to put down anything as a desire here, it would be for some nostalgic gaming.  I haven’t played mah-jongg in ages, for instance.  It was amusing that someone in my fitness class asked me if I played.  I wouldn’t mind playing some bridge.  HeroQuest would be great, too.

I can think of one thing that might be interesting – playing some straight BattleTech since our Mechwarrior campaign has reminded me both that the game exists and that I’ve played very little of it.

CCGs

The easy one.  A desire to play a two-player CCG.  Magic is probably out, which doesn’t leave much in the way of options.  Even though Ultimate Combat! is the best CCG ever, people don’t take it seriously.  Wheel of Time never had much of a player base to begin with.  It would be an amusing time to get into L5R, but why bother playing a game I never thought was worth getting into previously?

Amusingly, I continue to notice Dragon Dice at Gen Con.  I was trying to explain the game recently and remembered that the game does actually work.  It just has the big problem, for me, of being a CDG rather than a CCG.  I like hidden information, and I’m sure there are some other differences that make CCGs better.

What do I desire for V:TES?  I almost don’t care whether more sets come out, which is a very interesting place for me to be.  I’m just not obsessed with newness like I once was with CCGs.  It has increasingly become a house game for me rather than a “public” game.  On the other hand, I desire to build decks, lots of things I haven’t done.  If I were building more decks, I could see caring more about expansions.

RPGs

I desire a HoR3.  I desire taking a serious look at L5R 4e, which seems likely as I plan to run HoR2 for people not previously exposed to it.  But, why?  I think HoR satisfies a couple of things.  One is the sense of a greater community.  I’m seeing less and less people at cons.  I’m not deeply involved as a volunteer for anything.  I don’t even see much of the V:TES crowd in the area outside of the South Bay group.  The other has to do with my recent philosophies on objectivity in gaming.  I was just talking to various people about how HoR is relatively objective, so you have some sort of context for your character where a house game has no baselines, no common language that has any real meaning.  I can talk about my 15th level Conan character, but it means jack to anyone, where some (few) people will grok what my HoR characters have gone through.

I desire having supplements for games.  More specifically, I’m talking about things like the Solomon Kane supplements or L5R 4e supplements.  I could have bought them at Gen Con, but two things stifle such desires.  The one that probably matters more is realizing how many gaming things I’ve bought in my life that I didn’t get use out of.  Now, admittedly, there are many products I never used directly that I ended up using for fluff or ideas or whatever, but a lot of books I’ve barely looked at.  The second is that I have extremely elastic demand curves, so I wasn’t going to pay full price just because they were in front of me.

I desire to build characters.  At the moment, that’s mostly L5R 4e because that’s where my head has been this year.  But, it could end up being all sorts of things.  Not Mechwarrior where the creation process is incredibly goofy, but if I got into something else.

I desire to write.  To finish my HoR characters’ stories, to write up sessions where major stuff happened in Conan, to write about a minor character in that campaign, to write up what’s going on in SK so that the players feel more immersed.  Unfortunately, as with many desires, the desire to rest and relax when not working typically wins out.

I desire to find sources of inspiration (for RPing).  I’m thinking books – I have some I haven’t read; movies – I never know which to go see; TV – I watch little anymore.

Core Desires

What are the common desires that have nothing to do with the genre of gaming?

Number one may be to have cool stuff happen.  I was talking to my Conan GM today about Conan and SK.  As a player, his primary motivation is survival.  My primary motivation is to experience cool things, not even do cool things though doing is probably better than having been done to.  Run a camel up a ziggurat while fighting a ghoul horde is cool whether it was all that effective or not.  Blowing up an Assault Rifle with Shattering Blow – stunning. 

Which brings up expectations and context.  Cool is unusual.  That means there has to be a usual.

A desire for ideas and scenes.  I put these together because ideas I get so often produce mental scenes.  Even with CCGs, I envision blowing people’s minds by playing horrible cards in high level competition.  Speaking of CCGs, I have the chronic problem of having good enough (fresh enough) ideas for decks to cause me to produce the level of deck-building I desire.  Ideas don’t necessarily have to be cool, but they should be distinctive.

Time and money.  I game a lot.  I’ve gamed a lot in my life.  I can’t really argue for having more time to game.  And, money isn’t really necessary to game, though, as with all things, it helps.  I’d like to be able to just pick up something and not feel guilty about its cost, and I’d like to be able to just pick up something and play it and not have to give up something else to do so.  Kind of dumb desires as I think these things have more to do with regrets than desires and that’s a different topic.

Desire for everyone to have fun.  I’m willing to sacrifice many of my interests if it means everyone else will enjoy playing something.  Similarly, investment.  That is, I desire everyone to be invested in the game.  My greatest enjoyment from games isn’t from playing them, it’s from thinking about them.  Then, there’s talking about them.  I don’t push people on my favorite games, such as UC! or (back in the day) Immortal or whatever, because I desire to see people invested and that comes from their interests.

Fairness, balance.  My frequent rants (in the past) were on issues of game balance.  Much of this desire, however, is really a desire for variety.  Balance in games produces a greater variety of decks, of characters, of strategies.

Health … of the hobby/table top/whatever gaming industry.  I look around and see CCGs dying, RPG companies folding.  Sure, boardgames seem to be doing well, but I care about my top two gaming types far more.  Conventions don’t seem to be doing too well, either, whether small or large.

Uses

I’m not going to get into personal uses of people’s desires.  I’m talking about industry uses.  Mark Rosewater often brings up what people desire when talking about what Magic players desire.  While this topic is way too big for me to ramble on about sufficiently, a couple of thoughts come to mind.

The desire for rewards.  I see this being a frequent marketing failure on CCGs’ parts.  Yes, CCGs reward with ratings, promo cards, maybe even money.  But, I don’t think the companies I’ve cared about were aware enough about how to reward the player bases to keep them ardent.  Take V:TES and its system of coming up with your own prizes.  Does that keep costs down for a small company?  Sure, but it also sends a message that the game isn’t important enough and your playing it isn’t important enough for the company to care if you do play it.  There’s a reason companies market.  And, having tournaments and prizes worth mentioning and making players feel like they are getting something they didn’t pay for are ways to do it.  Interestingly, B5 got a bad rap because its promo system was out of control.  But, that has to do with a desire not to have unique promos ;) …

Other gaming types can have rewards, as well.  Living campaigns can do that.  There are boardgame tournaments.  But, I’m mostly concerned with CCG marketing.

Speaking of which.  I’m kind of surprised at how poorly CCGs seem to be faring when you consider what a brilliant money-making model they have.  The desire of people to gamble was satisfied with random packs.

Many of the things that people desire are not satisfied by V:TES and I’m not sure they can be at this point.  Grokability?  Intuitiveness?  Flavor?  Mechanical potential?  Nostalgia?  As unlikely as I think it would be to work, one wonders whether V:TES could be rebooted.

Note that many of the things that “feel right” or inspire for CCGers are the same that you want out of RPGs.  I see many attempts to make weird stuff when I’d be happy if there was some sort of good, basic fantasy game – no generic (aka Tolkien) fantasy races, no overly mathematical mechanics, no “we don’t need mechanics because we aren’t D&D” pretensions.

Some day, I’ll finish this series.  Regrets, the most painful sin of them all.

Pisces I – Zodiac I

Late as usual, but I get to the end of the series, finally.

Pisces
“I believe”
positive qualities:  humility, compassion, sensitivity, spiritual awareness, psychic comprehension, philosophic insight, healing potential
negative:  timidity, apprehension, masochism, idleness, lying, weakness of will
- Linda Goodman’s “Love Signs”

Masochism & Idleness …

Or, more accurately, masochism or idleness.  One or the other seems to be where I go with deckbuilding these days.  When I generate the energy to build decks, I seem to end up with exercises in masochism while on some bizarre search for something different.

Pisces is the last sign of the Zodiac, the symbolic old soul who has been through all of the other signs.  I don’t know that that quite applies to me when it comes to deckbuilding – there are plenty of concepts and metaconcepts I haven’t tried.  But, the driver behind so much of what I do is to see something different.  Well, there’s also trying to be humorous, but telling the same joke over and over doesn’t exactly produce much of a payoff.

Timidity, apprehension, lying – too timid to really do different things, too apprehensive about the possibility of finding nothing there, lying about the idea that doing something different would be any less fun than masochistically trying the same old, same old or not trying at all.

Well, anyway, what do you do when you always want to do something different?  No, that’s not quite right.  What do you do when you want to do something different from what you’ve done recently?  Is that right?

I look back with fondness on what I did long ago.  Is there a point to revisiting old ideas?  Would an updated “I block crosstable superior Night Moves” deck really be all that compelling?  How compelling is revisiting vampires from Jyhad?  Library cards from that set that I’ve hardly considered in the last 8 or so years?

I played a new deck recently that was an all Jyhad library and it was far more interesting than most of my recent decks.  But, it falls into the same masochism trap when played in my usual environment.  I’ve been thinking about how little I’ve used the traditions in forever.  In particular, why not 1st, 3rd, 5th?  There’s always revisiting group 1 vampires, but eh, not a lot changes for them.

What of Dark Sovereigns and Ancient Hearts?  Why not Vial of Elder Vitae?  So many more disciplines to fiddle around with.

When’s the last time I built a Dauntain, The Black Magician deck?  Actually, I don’t think I ever built a deck around the card.  I have Mind Rapes – why be so timid about playing with them?  Sure, I have *a* Shotgun Ritual in a deck, but why not more?  With Eldritch Glimmers?

Free States Rant is reasonable for a new Trujah deck.

Improvised Flamethrower … oh, that was an Imbued idea.

Aren’t I the one who keeps saying Baltimore Purge is underplayed?

When’s the last time I did anything with Black Hand?  Was it really that 4cl Tzimisce bleed deck?  Surely, finally getting around to some sort of Thuggee deck can’t be that bad.

So, I built that Camarilla PRE deck when Gehenna came out.  What happened to trying some other Gehenna-y crypts?  What’s keeping me from pulling the cards for that Una deck I wrote out last(?) year?

I think it was Kindred Most Wanted when I really started losing enthusiasm for novel ideas.  Trophies never did it for me.  Good stuff was too good.  Bad stuff was too bad.

The Tupdog set …

The …

I keep thinking of doing 3rd only decks since, then, all of the cards will be marked and all of the backs will go the same direction.  And, there are those cards I haven’t really examined, too.

Dum de dum dum.  Black Hand.

Sheepdog, Zurich, hello cards I’ve done nothing with (well, with Zurich, in constructed play).

There was something about Twilight Rebellion, but I don’t recall what it was.

Must kill retainers.

Why is it so hard to build a Tunnel Runner deck?  Just because it’s strictly better than Ananasi Vampirephile?  Just because Akunanse are so dull?

Everything old is new again.  Except for maybe my stretching out a simple concept – that astrology makes for easy personalities for RPG characters – into a year long series of posts that actually don’t have a whole lot to do with the theme.

[Classic] Durga Syn

I’ve posted a lot in a lot of CCG forums over the years.  One of the reasons I was motivated to do a blog was to consolidate my more verbose thoughts.  I’m currently looking through the UK V:TES forum – http://www.anarchfreepress.com/vtesuk - for my favorite posts.  Here’s the first “classic” post.

In response to Shroudfilm‘s post about the preview of Durga Syn …

“Yeah LSJ,why hasn’t she got votes?!? Or Necromancy?!?!? Or Flight?!?!?!?! Why isn’t she 12-cap?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Why can’t she have an ability which wins me the game in one turn?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? I hate VTES now, this one card means the game is doomed!!!!!!1111one!!”

… http://www.anarchfreepress.com/vtesuk/viewtopic.php?p=1729&highlight=#1729 …

I imagine the discussion went something like this:

[LSJ.1] Why don’t you give Durga some votes?

[LSJ.2] Too hard to become an anarch which would waste all of those disciplines. I’d piss off millions of anarch lovers.

[LSJ.1] You could make Orpheus happier if you gave Durga Necromancy.

[LSJ.2] Then he might notice how good Chimerstry is when you don’t pay full cost for it and would want highly flexible Necromancy cards … with no cost.

[LSJ.1] Durga seems to be lacking flight.

[LSJ.2] Does anybody even remember what any of the flight cards do anymore?

[LSJ.1] She could be a 12 cap.

[LSJ.2] Without PRE? Are you insane? Uh, don’t answer that.

[LSJ.1] Durga is a good choice for one of those win in one turn decks. You know, turbo, et al. You should give her FOR, a capacity increase when she’s in play, and NEC. And, the ability to play Baali cards.

[LSJ.2] What makes you think she can’t win in one turn? Besides, the text box font would be so small that no one would know that she would combo with every card in the game.

[LSJ.1] Aren’t people going to hate the game because of cards like this? Won’t Durga doom the game?

[LSJ.2] I keep trying, but they keep playing.

[LSJ.1] Local 1111?

[LSJ.2] Should be played by !Trem with Rutor’s Hands to see if it doesn’t suck. But, Eric Chiang keeps travelling.

Dead CCGs – Ultimate Combat!

By dead CCG, I mean one that doesn’t see any new cards printed.

What is it?

Released in 1995, Ultimate Combat! was a shameless mechanical ripoff of Magic: The Gathering. The theme was wild martial arts with a core of real world martial arts. Intentional humor is obvious with cards like Bad Sushi and Body Odor.

What was wrong with it?

Most of the art (all of the technique that I can recall) was of real people.  Little of the rest of the art was appealing.  UC! came out about the same time as Shadowfist, which also had a wild martial arts theme (among others).  The two games were often confused even though they are completely different mechanically and have significant differences thematically.

But, the biggest problem was being a Magic clone without a hook that could compete with Magic.  If it survived longer, it would have fallen under Magic’s patent.  Nevermind that the designers couldn’t think of what else to design after the first expansion.  Should have asked me.

So, what was it good for?

I have tremendous respect for Magic.  I realize it’s human nature, but all of the haters who are playing some other CCG should realize that Magic is why other CCGs exist.  I have even more respect for Magic’s management, design, and development.  I have only one major problem with Magic – I don’t enjoy playing it.

Ultimate Combat! is missing many of the good things about Magic – great art, clever mechanics, variety.  Where UC! wins is that it’s fun to play.  Sure, I’ve had good games of Magic – I figure about 20% of the time.  And, I’ve had bad games of UC! – harder to get a sense of a number.  But, my sense is that more than half of my games of UC! were fun.  That may sound like a low number, but actually, that’s quite high with CCGs in my experience.  I estimate that a typical CCG one enjoys has about a one-third fun to two-thirds not fun rate for games. 

People who think the number is higher, in my view, are just forgetting the many, many bad games they play.  That bad games are more likely to get ended prematurely certainly has a factor in that.  To throw other “who knows?” numbers out there, I’ve explained the difference in playing Magic to UC! as:  in Magic, if I’m losing, I’ll end up conceding 90% of the time; in UC!, if I’m losing, I’ll end up conceding 10% of the time.

Given that UC! rips off most of its mechanics from Magic – I tell people that UC! is 75% Magic – how does UC! end up being more fun?  The core interaction in Magic is creature combat.  The core interaction in UC! is using techniques to attack and block with.  In Magic, creatures are permanents, may have wildly differing abilities, and creature removal is rampant.  In UC!, techniques are one shot, didn’t do anything special until the expansion, and technique removal is scarce. 

It’s very easy for Magic to get away from its core mechanic in constructed play.  Combo decks are common.  Creatureless decks are easy and sometimes highly effective.  Creature combat is rare in constructed play.  UC! has a harder time getting away from the basics of bashing people with technique.  There are so many more angles of attack in Magic, that it’s not difficult to have poor interaction.  Rarely in UC!, do I find poor interaction.  For all that technique are usually just an attack number and a defense number, it’s very important to know how to play and use technique.

In Magic, single cards and card combos are often heinously powerful.  UC! has powercards.  Shake Up can devastate a board.  Mental Domination existed long before Magic’s Mindslaver and Mental Dom is far more brutal in certain ways.  But, as an example, in Magic, if you can get one card to stick, say an early Hypnotic Specter, you can ride that to victory.  In UC!, there are very swingy cards but there’s little of the inevitability that one feels in Magic, whether because one card can’t be dealt with or because some combo locks you out of the game.

Both games have similar issues with resources.  In Magic, it’s called lands/mana, in UC!, it’s called foundation/power, but they work the same – even more so now that Magic is eliminating mana burn.  Mana screw is a huge feature to Magic.  It’s not all bad for reasons that would take too long to explain in this post, but it’s the number one complaint heard.  Power screw exists in UC!, too.  But, where Magic has no built in mechanism for getting a player out of mana screw once the game begins, UC! took Magic’s “lay one land a turn” rule and changed it to “play one foundation or discard any number of cards and draw that many cards” which enables someone to find foundation when needed but also has tremendous tactical importance later in games when you don’t need foundation or when you need a specific card.

It’s a good time to mention that Magic’s card drawing mechanic is one a turn where UC!’s is to refill the hand to 10 every turn (or draw 1 if at 10 or more).  I’m not bothered by the importance of card advantage in Magic.  I’m bothered by how often you can’t recover or have to play off the top of your deck in Magic where UC! has a good balance of what you do mattering while having strong recovery potential.  By the way, my problem with Shadowfist and similar games is that I don’t see where what you do matters a whole lot because removal and recovery is too easy.

War stories.

UC! is the first CCG I ever played.  Really.  I don’t think many people in the world can say that.  I was in a game convention volunteer phase of my life when I heard about a convention I had never been to before and decided to sign on as a volunteer.  I didn’t realize until later it was a CCG only convention, a type of gaming I avoided as it sounded faddish and too popular for the likes of me.  It didn’t take too long for me to break down and actually try a CCG, so I played in an UC! sealed deck tournament.

UC! plays just fine starter vs. starter.  Every limited event I ever played of it was just starter vs. starter.  I do so want to draft one of these days.

I learned several things.  I learned why CCGs are awesome.  I thought it was kind of weird when the judge went over to his buds and talked about how I did 19 damage in my (first) attack, leaving my opponent at 1.  I learned that strategy and tactics matter in good games … my opponent ended up winning that game.  I learned the addictive nature of CCGs when I went on to play in a constructed event with my virtually nonexistent collection and got annihilated by real decks but wanted to buy/play more anyway.

I could talk about my other CCG experiences at that con, but I think I’ll save those.

I went on to become a sanctioned UC! referee.  That’s not too exciting – somebody had to given that the game survived long enough to have an expansion.  It’s still the only CCG where I had to take an oral exam to be a judge.  I so wish that I had e-mails and documents from those days like I do with other CCGs as I can’t remotely remember the rules questions I asked and the answers I got.

The only tournament I ever won was sealed deck.  I had a strong defensive deck.  I was a much, much smarter player by then, so I knew how to play the deck properly.  My biggest scare was an opponent who had Speed X, a disgustingly powerful card in limited play.  How did I deal with one of the game’s equivalents to Fireball?  How did I deal with it when he got it back with another powercard? 

Banana Peel.  May not come as a shock that Banana Peel’s effect is to turn a Speed bonus into a penalty, so that +12 or whatever becomes a -12.  Also, conservative play.  I decked three opponents on my way to tournament victory.  I got three of the best prizes I’ve ever received for a CCG event:  pewter damage tracker that eventually broke; playmat which I still use; real black belt which I still have.

The biggest event I ever played was a San Jose one where the game company’s president was my first opponent.  He wrecked me.  My second game is one I often use as an example of what UC! is often like.  My deck was too slow.  I learned that in my first game.  My opponent came out and kept beating me down.  I had no recourse but to throw any technique I put out in front of his attacks.  I built up my power generation and put some power talismans into play, but it looked like I was toast before I could ever get an attack off.  I had to blow my Bear’s Jaw – one of the most sought after cards in the game - for hit points just to keep playing.  I finally got an attack off … and won.  My one and only attack was for 26 damage, even with a bit of defense, it did the necessary 20 to knock my opponent out.

There was the tournament that my father drove me to New Jersey (from Virginia) to play in.  I played a techniqueless deck designed to deck my opponents with Bad Sushi, Mental Domination, and support.  I had to dig deep to get my Mental Dom off before my opponent got his off and I ended up decking first.  I played another game with a more standard Adrenaline, Dragon’s Fire deck and crushed my opponent.  I traded for Amulet of Kwai Chang, the Speed counterpart to Dragon Fire’s Strength doubling ability.

I still have decks built.  In fact, they are decks I made pretty much after I stopped playing.  I tried running some events at local cons in recent years because I badly miss playing a two-player CCG.  I think the game is not as balanced as I used to think it was, but I still haven’t found a CCG as balanced.  Of course, given how unbalanced the popular two-player CCGs are, being balanced probably only hurts the game’s appeal.

I’ve been thinking about the game recently because the next local convention has the game’s top player running CCG events and we always talk about bringing cards.  I still have a ton of unopened product, including the much more important starters, that I can try to infect some people as a nonserious side activity.  It would be the giant pineapple in the sky if I played enough to rebuild my Earthquake deck or to find the next “Ax Kick” deck.