I made good use of the Games on Demand room where I got to try a steampunk RPG which is in early testing. It had this very neat resolution mechanic where you rolled 3D6 and assigned each die to one of your scores. You effectively resolved multiple actions with one roll. I also tried out Inspecters. It was a fun game, but I find that I really don’t like comedy games that much. I just feel like they don’t really work. They always fall flat for me.

I have started reading the Smallville RPG and it seems like it is a really sharp piece of work. Character generation alone is amazing. I can’t wait to actually play it. As I get through the book, I will post updates about it. I plan on doing a detailed review since superhero games are my thing.

With Gen-Con over, I am really disappointed that I haven’t finished my games yet. I have to get to work on my D&D supplement and my superhero game. There really isn’t any excuse for not completing these by Gen Con this year. I plan on scheduling writing days and attending every writing event I can find.

I found some more great deals on the dealer floor. I found Cave Troll. Its a great game and I found it for half price. I also picked up Freemarket and the gameplay seems pretty interesting. I also broke down and purchased two starter armies for Mercs. Just from looking through the basic rule book, I can tell this is a solid game. The designer put in some really sharp rules with things like bounding movement, and the ability to pop around cover to attack the enemy. I also found some cool indie games including a mecha and a cyberpunk RPG that look really sharp.

List of Items I have picked up so far:

• Freemarket
• Cave Troll
• Remember Tomorrow
• Sorcerer
• The Adventure Burner for Burning Wheel
• Mecha

The highlight for the day was when I stopped at a booth to check out Sorcerer. The designer of the game is really well respected in the industry, and after a bit of conversation we got into talking about the super hero game I am trying to design. After telling him what I was looking to do and the design philosophy behind it, he asked for my contact information. He told me the game idea sounds really solid and once I get it more fleshed out, that he would love to see the game. It was a nice validation of my ideas and has convinced me to work a bit more diligently on it.

I have my entire day free tomorrow, so I plan on hitting the dealer floor to take advantage of the game demos at the various booths. I am hitting the sack early tonight to get a better night sleep.

After day of wandering the convention I am pretty exhausted. There is a lot to see, and thankfully I had the time to see most of it. I played my one game, and then I headed out to see the dealer floor. Its pretty much what you would expect from a bunch of nerds all packed into one place. I think the ridicule has really had a good effect, because there just weren’t a ton of smelly dudes. Though, I did encounter some clouds of funk here and there. I can’t imagine I smelled too good by the end of the day though. When I finished for the day, I stayed at the hotel for the evening to relax. I hung out in the restaurant and wrote, but not before I spent about 30 minutes in the pool and jacuzzi. That really helped my sore muscles and will make tomorrow much more tolerable.

Starcraft Board Game Quick Review

I had only one game, which was the Starcraft board game. My initial impressions were a little negative, but it wasn’t because of game mechanics. It had more to do with the environment and the person trying to teach it, which were both universally bad. The environment was way to loud, and the person teaching the game spent too much time trying to entertain rather than explain rules. It took us over an hour to even start playing.

Once play started, the game had this neat flow. One of the core mechanics is placing secret orders on the board for where you want to move, technology research and building units and bases. Normally, this wouldn’t be anything special except when I place an order, the next order placed on the board in the same region goes on top of the previous order that has been placed. So, I can’t execute my order until the order on top is played. It creates an interesting strategy where a player can lock down your actions on basic level. Also, the game encourages players to expand rather than fortify and wait the game out. The game is played to 20 Victory points and points are earned every round by controlling conquest points on planets. So, if I have three conquest points in round one, then I have earned three points towards victory. If I take another planet with a single conquest point in the next round, then I gain another four victory points at the end of the round for a total of seven victory points. These were both very interesting mechanics. Also, the game doesn’t use dice, instead you play cards with values on them.

The thing I didn’t like is the same thing that almost every Fantasy Flight game suffers from: too many pieces. There are about eight different units per faction, plus counters for base upgrades, workers, and special technology advancement cards. While this simulates the play of the computer game, it creates far to many things to track and manage. The game also takes a bit of time, though not as long as some Fantasy Flight games.

Overall, I would give the game a 3 out of 5. It is a good game. I would certainly play it again, but I can’t see myself buying it.

Other Stuff

I had a great time on the dealer floor. I spent far too much money, but it is all stuff that will be hard to find outside of Gen-Con. I thought about trying to pick up Dark Sun and Deathwatch. Unfortunately, Wizards of the Coast was only selling 100 copies of Dark Sun per day. Also, the Fantasy Flight Games booth had a line that wrapped all the way around the booth for purchasing throughout the day. I decided these were games I could simply buy off Amazon for 30% off and save a ton of cash. I decided to just focus on harder to find products, random indie games, and good deals.

There have been some great deals at the con this year. I managed to pick up a bunch of Battletech books for five dollars each. Quite a nice discount. I also grabbed the new version of Ironclaw, The Dresden Files, and a few other random games. There are a few more products I want to pick up, and then I am done for purchasing for the con.

Schedule for Day 2

Tomorrow I have a game for the new Battletech RPG called “A Time of War” and I am going to play in the Smallville RPG. Outside of that, I am just going to try to get my hands on a few other games, and maybe give into some impulse buys. I really want to get Freemarket. It is this odd indie game by the people who make the Burning Wheel. The basic concept is your people living in a space station that is a utopian society, and you have decided you want to shake things up a bit. It seems like it could have quite a lot of potential. I also stumbled upon this interesting miniatures game called Mercs. It is a science fiction game, but it is designed to be played with teams of five miniatures. The designer is ex-military, so he has put in stuff there that simulates modern military tactics. So far I am quite impressed, and I plan on getting up early to try out a demo… at 8 am. Ugg. Outside of that, it will just be hanging with friends and chilling out. It should be a good day tomorrow.

For the events that I have planned so far, I am pretty excited. I am getting to try out some new board games and RPGs that I haven’t gotten to play before. I also plan on spending a ton of time in the Games on Demand area where I get to play a ton of indie RPGs. I have tons of these types of games and never get to read them.

I am also looking forward to a number of new products. Dark Sun is one that I am really interested in, but I might not pick it up at the convention. Deathwatch is a similar game which I may pass on until a later date. I am also looking forward to hitting up the indie RPG booths where I always spend far to much money on games I rarely get to play. Overall, I expect this to be a fun and laid back convention.

My schedule is:

Thursday

• Starcraft Boardgame: I have seen this game quite a bit in the stores and have always wanted to try it.

Friday

• Mechwarrior: A Time of War: picked up the PDF of this a while back. I haven’t gotten the chance to read it, mainly because I hate reading PDFs on my computer. I am really excited about playing this game.
• Smallville – Blockbuster: I have been hearing really good things about the mechanics for this game. Finally a superhero game that isn’t focused around building powers, but rather around the relationships that superheroes have.

Saturday

• Ad Astra: this is another board game that has peaked my interest a lot, and haven’t been willing to buy. The art for it is beautiful and I am really looking forward to giving it a shot

The system seems sound enough, and there are some interesting meta-game mechanics that I look forward to trying out. The aspect I am excited about is the game requires players to be leaders, rather than followers. The characters are in charge of thousands of men, and control resources that pale in comparison to people in the rest of the setting. There is a lot of potential for some exciting intrigue and action. I am already formulating a nice storyline revolving around an ancient artifact sought by a Chaos Space Marine and protected by an Eldar Farseer.

The designers created this very interesting mechanic called the Party Card. The party card represents the demeanor of the party. The players can elect to be “Intrepid Explorers” or “Swords for Hire”. Each of these party cards provides the players with some special abilities and advantages. Not a bad idea really. It sort of clues the GM into what the players want to do. On the other hand, every party card also has a tension track. The tension track is supposed to signify the tension that is created when divergent cultures (i.e. humans, elves, dwarves, etc.) come together. Any time players bicker in character like an elf and dwarf would in Warhammer Fantasy, the tension goes up. The GM is supposed to pay attention for when characters bicker and waste time, and in turn move the marker along the tension track. The tension track varies in length but all have two benchmarks where negative effects happen. When the tension track reaches the end, it loops back around to the beginning.

Do you see the problem here? Notice how I haven’t mentioned the positive effects of role-playing and moving the tension track forward. Well, there aren’t any. This is where the designers failed very badly. Effectively, this game mechanic punishes the players for playing the tensions that exist between the races of the world. It literally causes players to stop playing those fundamental conflicts, and specifically those conflicts which create drama. It punishes players for role-playing their characters. Effectively, the designers have put a mechanic in place which stifles role-playing rather than encouraging it.

Of course, its easy to look at a game mechanic and just say it doesn’t work. The tension track is an interesting idea, but it has to be reworked a bit. What is my solution? My solution is to encourage the players to increase the tension track. It is still a rough idea, but the concept is to provide an additional experience point for each benchmark on the track that they meet. As players push the party tension higher and higher, they do suffer some ill effects, but they also gain something out of it. Additionally, if a player does something to lower the party tension, then he gains a fortune point for the party’s fortune point pool. This encourages players to push their party to the breaking point, and then bring the tension back down. It obviously isn’t a tested solution, but I think it has potential.

It is design reflex to start with what your attributes will be for characters. As a designer you try to quantify what makes a person. You try to come up with interesting names that set up apart from other mainstream games. I mean do you really want to have your attributes be Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma? You want to be original. I look at what a lot of role-playing games have done, and try to learn from that.

For example, Heavy Gear has ten character attributes (not including the five secondary attributes): Agility, Perception, Creativity, Knowledge, Build, Fitness, Psyche, Influence, Willpower and Appearance. Each represents a very small aspect of the character and don’t always come into play. For example, Psyche has no skills associated with it and represents luck and love of life. It literally has no bearing on the game at all. It is effectively a role-playing attribute. The same goes for Appearance. Unlike games such as D&D or World of Darkness, attributes in Heavy Gear do not have equal weight. There are attributes that give you more bang for your “character point buck.”

It could be argued that Heavy Gear’s attributes are poorly designed. From a system design standpoint, they are on some level. The nature of the system encourages players to have consistent “dump stats” such as Appearance or Psyche. One of the key aspects of Heavy Gear’s design is to simulate reality and military combat. So, there is going to be weight put into those favored areas. The system succeeds, but not because of the attributes, instead the die system makes Heavy Gear shine.

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, on the other hand, has made a concerted design effort to give each attribute equal weight. While only one skill is associated with Strength, that attribute plays an important role in combat hit success. Attributes such as Charisma govern more skills. This in turn makes each attribute useful and players have to make a choice where to put points. There isn’t a consistent “dump stat.” The “dump stat” is based on the build of the character. The attribute system is successful because of how it is designed, and that in turn makes the system successful.

What point am I trying to make? Well attributes need to be designed with the system in mind. Attributes will communicate theme and style to the player. If you are doing a game about teenage girls and their infighting, having Strength and Dexterity really has no bearing. It is pointless to have in that game, but having attributes such as Influence and Confidence would certainly be important.

The purpose of rules is to influence behavior. That is the core goal. As a designer I always make an effort to zero-in on that. How do I want people to play the game? Even something as simple as the attributes drives how players will use the tool set you have put in front of them. Design your attributes to fit the game. Also, don’t try to make universal systems. In my experience, both as a player and designer, universal systems tend to do nothing well. They can do everything okay, but rarely do they bring every game into their own.

Now let’s actually talk about attribute design with a practical example from one of my recent projects. One of my current projects is a super hero game. I have always been frustrated with super hero games because they try to define too much about the superhero. For example, Spiderman doesn’t have one of his listed powers as “Blinding Webs.” His powers are “Web Slinging” and he uses that power to create that effect. Most super hero games would require the former rather than the latter. It discourages players from thinking heroically and brings them down to playing a tactical game. Not a bad thing, but not the game I want to create.

So, I started to address the attributes like any game designer might, because that is what makes up the raw, untrained, normal person. I started with the standards of Strength, Agility, Endurance, etc., and started to realize that it felt wrong to me. One of my core concepts was players could create powers on the fly, and that was the primary way the player manipulated the system. This was all done through a die pool that provided resources for actions. The last thing I want to do is define the strength of player’s Incredible Hulk knock-off. He’s the Hulk because that is his power theme, and he does Hulk things like smash things and throw heavy things at people. That is what we need to know; he’s the Hulk, except blue and an alien. We want to be original here.

So with this realization, I stripped out traditional attributes completely. They just don’t exist in this game. Instead I focused on skills. The skills are the core for every action in the game, from fighting to invention. The player can then use their powers to define, and improve the way they are doing it. So the player doesn’t need put points into his super-intelligent mutant’s Intelligence attribute because we know he is a super-intelligent mutant from his power description, but we do need to know how good he is at doing something scientific. We know he is even better at it because he is a super intelligent mutant.

So, while designers will often focus on the raw attributes of characters, the thought process above shows that we don’t really have to go the traditional route. It is easy to fall back to that, because it is familiar. The problem arises when the familiar method doesn’t encourage the kind of game play you want drive players towards. Be willing to take risks with your design, and step away from the standard and comfortable design methods. There is nothing wrong with failing at your design, just makes sure you realize what it doesn’t work.

A technique I have developed is to have a stack of red poker chips on the table. If a player provides a cool description, adds something interesting to the setting, or generally enhances the game, I toss the player a chip. It is a reward for enhancing the game.

The reason for this is two fold. The first, it takes some of the description off of me and makes my job easier. Secondly, it allows the player some control over the results of their acti0n, and I even allow players to even narrate their failures. The primary thought process on narrating failures is nothing has every frustrated me more than to have a GM narrate a failure that makes my character seem foolish, stupid, or ineffective. My character may fail, but the character has a certain style to it. When my master swordsman hits himself in the groin with the hilt of his blade, it ruins the style of my character. That should only happen if I want it too. Players get to narrate how their character performs based on the roll, which allows them to communicate their character’s personality and style to the other players.  In turn, the game is more exciting and action packed for the players.

These chips are a technique to reinforce behavior; hence the nickname “Skinner Points” proudly bestowed by one of the players. The players should be aware they are awarded for things you want them to do. These points are rewards to players for maintaining the theme and style of the game. For my current game, the color of the chip was even specifically chosen to maintain theme. I am currently running a very gruesome, sword and sorcery style D&D game. There is nothing nice about what happens when swords are pulled. The world is brutal, and the players are thugs and thieves. I provide chips for players who provide very “Conan-esque” descriptions. When blood flows, the red chips flow even more freely. I encourage this theme through player rewards.

So, now that players have all these wonderful red chips; what can they do with them? The players are able to turn those chips into experience points. Each chip is worth 10 XP at the end of the session. The more participatory players are at adding description and making the game better. They earn more chips, and their character advances faster.

This is still being playtested, and 10 XP is a good value at Heroic tier in D&D 4th Ed. If a player earns five or ten of these in a session, it adds up quickly. The experience point value may need to be adjusted proportionally as characters advance in level to take into account the increased advancement cost. The characters in my game are still 1st level, and 10 XP is a nice bonus. I expect when they get to around 5th – 10th level, I will increase the XP bonus to 25. Around 10th level, I could see the bonus increasing to 50 XP. We will see when the players advance to higher levels if this is necessary.

Corruption takes on many forms, from avarice to sloth to pride to greed, but its primary goal is to destroy those who try to wield it for their own purposes. Those who tap into the power of corruption often bring pain and suffering on to those who surround him, because that in turn destroys the user and causes even greater harm.

Players Tapping into Corruption
Any time a player needs a little extra help, a player may elect to take a point of corruption. The player may immediately spend the Corruption Point on the action they are attempting. Once the action is resolved, the player gives the corruption point to the Dungeon Master. A player may take as many corruption points on a single action as they see fit, there is no limit per encounter, but the limit on action points still applies.

Lisa has spent an action point on a skill check in order to avoid the final failure on a Skill Challenge. Unfortunately, after re-rolling, she still has not exceeded the Difficulty Number. She elects to take a Corruption Point re-roll her current roll and succeeds on the roll. Once the check is resolved, she hands a token to the DM, who now has a corruption point to spend against the players.

Dungeon Masters Tapping into Corruption
Once a player has completed their action using a Corruption Point, they hand the point to the DM. Corruption Points act as Action Points for the DM and his monsters. Any time the DM wishes, they may spend a point to gain the benefits of an action point for the monsters opposing the players.

The other option for the DM is to compel the player to perform a specific action. This cannot be something that will harm the player directly. It can be used to encourage the player to do something that indirectly harms himself or another character, or benefits the monsters (i.e. fall asleep on watch, forget to check the locks on the doors, etc.). This is the nature of corruption. A compelled action does not always have to be harmful in some way. It is also a tool for the DM to push players in a specific direction. The GM may want to the players to take a specific path, and this can be accomplished with a corruption point.

If the DM elects to compel a player, the character must take the action the DM compels. A player may resist the urge of corruption nagging at his mind and soul if they spend an action point to resist it. When the player does this, the action point is spent, as is the corruption point. The DM may choose to up the ante and spend a second corruption point to compel the player. The player may then elect to counter with a second action point. If the player does so, then corruption has been resisted, and the action and corruption points are spent. If the player is unable to resist the influences of corruption, because of a lack of action points or accepting the DM’s compel, then the character must take the action the DM described.

The DM does not have to spend the corruption point against the player who used corruption. In fact, it is more dramatic and thematically accurate if the corruption point is used against another player. Corruption’s influence often effects those who surround themselves with corrupted individuals, and there is only so long that a character can resist its siren call.

When a DM compels a player towards a specific action, players may vehemently disagree. Some discussion is appropriate, and the action must fit with the personality of the character. Actions decidedly out of character can be argued against. If the DM insists, then every player at the table, including the DM, may vote. If the majority say it is an unacceptable compel, the DM must change the nature of the compel until the majority rules with the DM.

DM’s must be careful with the use of corruption points. It is easy to abuse the power granted by compel. They should be careful to use them in ways which enhance the story and create better drama. The corruption points should never be used vindictively or simply to abuse the players. Corruption points are powerful tools, and while players know the risk of taking on corruption, they also expect the DM to be fair.

When a player spends an action point they may choose one of the follow. The player may re-roll a failed. The new roll stands, regardless if it is a lower roll. The player may also choose to add a +5 to a single skill check. This bonus may be added before or after the roll has been made. Finally, the player may claim a +2 AC bonus until the end of their next turn.

Action Point Uses
•    Take an Extra Action
•    Re-roll a failed Roll
•    +5 to a single Skill Roll
•    +2 to all defenses until the end of your next turn