So many games, so little time

I admit it: I suffer from gamers ADD! In my case that means that I am so easily distracted when I find a new shiny (or not so shiny. Just today I was reading about Don't rest your head) game. It's not just limited to new games. Sometimes it's enough with a new neat idea for an old game.

Problem is that there are so many nice games out there. If I were to write a list of games I've considered just this year it wuold propably at least ten games long. On it you would find games like changeling, DC universe, hunter, mutants &masterminds, true20/ Freeport,castle fallenstein and nobilis, just to mention I few.

I try to focus. There are definite plusses with playing a game a little longe. That way you get a stronger connection to your character, the world and the game itself. This is especially true if the game has a slightly unusual premise like nobilis, dogs in the vineyard or castle fallenstein.

So, how do you solve that dilemma? How do you stick with one game long enough to get to know it at the same time as you are curious to try out new games or ideas?

So far, my solution (and that of my gaming group) has been to combine slightly longer campaigns (6-9 months) with shorter mini-campaigns (3-5 sessions) and the occasional one-off.

This way you get to do some longer gaming, but with an insert of the odd indie-game-try-out now and then.

Does telepathy cross language barriers?

Does telepathy automatically cross language barriers? This was a question that popped up in a gaming session lately. I didn't consider it much then, but after a while I started to think about it.

Many modern cognitivists claim that it is our language which form our thoughts. This makes sense.. when I think, I tend to think in Swedish (me being a swede and all). So, what happens if I send my thoughts to someone else? I propably would send Swedish thoughts (or English, if I put some effort into it). This line of reasoning makes it at least plausible to me that telepathy may very well be language dependent.

Imagine what would happen if I knew telepathy, and tried to telepathically communicate with an italian? His mind, his thoughts are all italian. All of a sudden he would have swedish thougths in his head. He would here them but he wouldn't know what these thoughts mean.

However, and this is a big however. Telepathy is a made up concept anyway. There is no "right" and "wrong", but rather a telepathic concept as it fits into any given setting. In these short paragraphs I have at least presented a line of reasoning for why telepathy mustn't need to be language independent.

My Star Wars Indiana Jones character

My vision is that of a daring explorer that seeks out the farthest and most secret ruins. His goal is to find the hidden knowledge of the force, the Jedi and the Sith.

Basically, I want to make my character into some kind of Indiana Jones-wannabe. However, I also have a plan for how he will develop. At first his knowledge of the force is purely theoretical. As time goes on, his explorations and his exposure to force-intensive locations will make him force capable.

In game terms the plan is as follows:

Start out with a Bothan Scout. Nothing extraordinary here.

At 3rd level, he gets a feat that is not from his class feats. This is where I choose Force Sensitive (with the permission of the GM). With this feat, he will be able to use the skill Use Force untrained. This won't let him do much, but there are some simple things he can do. It's nothing powerful, but it adds to the feeling that the character is on a journey to something new. He will also get his first Force Talent.

At level 4 he gets a bonus feat from his class. With the Skill Training feat, he picks the Use The Force skill as a trained skill (which is possible for all Force Sensitive characters). This expands his number of force tricks radically. As contradictory as it sounds, this is the reason I'm not sure yet if I want to pick this skill at lvl 4 or at lvl 6. My goal is that he should progress slowly into the secrets of the Force, and picking the Use The Force-skill at lvl 4 might be to fast. Keep in mind that I also want to preserve the explorer/ scout part of the character.

An alternative would be to pick any nice, agility-based feat from the scout feat list.

At levels 5 and 7, he will add two additional force talents. This is because I intend to move him into the Force Adept class at lvl 8, and for that he needs 3 force talents.

So, finally, at lvl 8, he should cover all the prerequisites for moving into his first prestige class, the Force Adept. His long studies and his deeper knowledge of the Force has let him build his own understanding of the Force and he has embarked on an even deeper journey.

Finally, as a homage to the original character, he will also build himself a Light Whip as soon as he can get the Weapon Profficiency (Light Sabre) feat.

Star Wars Saga - Latest purchase

Last weekend I finally cracked and bought Star Wars Saga. My impression so far is that it looks like a nice game.

After the first read-through I decided to do a little experiment. I wrote four one-sentence character descriptions on one page each. I tried not to think about what classes and possibilities there was in the game. Then, after I wrote the descriptions down, I tried to make PCs fittting those descriptions.

The result was good, I thought. After an hour I had four characters that fitted the descriptions close enough for me. This meant no tweaking or shoe-horning the concept into what's in the game. Since it was my first go with the system, and it didn't take that long, I consider that a promising start with the game.

For those interested, the concepts were:

• A brawler that makes his living through fighting for money in illegal tournaments.
  
• A female jedi that was a victim of abuse when she was young. Her menter wants her to find calm through the force, but her background makes her a target for the dark side
• An Indiana Jones-archeologist that looks for old temples dedicated to the Sith and the Jedi to learn more about the force (even though he is not force sensitive himself)
• A trained fighter following ancient fighting philosophies to perfect his body and his soul

As soon as I have entered these into a digital format I will post them here

Results and relations - The purpose of a gaming system

In my last post I put up a small thought experiment about character generation. The aim was to point at two different roles that a gaming system has.

My own answer to the question is that even if I make a purely random character, making the rolls myself gives me a stronger connection to and better understanding of the character. This implies one thing: The rules has two purposes

First of all, it helps me to decide what happens in the game. If my character fails a Jump skill check, he fails to make a jump he tries to make.

Second, it helps me to get a relation to the world and to my character. When I roll the dice, there is a symbolic aspect of it as well: My dice-rolling is my character jumping.

A well designed game approaches the rules from both these functions. It seems, however, that it's not as easy as it sounds. I have encountered a number of games that focus to much on either of these two.

One extreme is a game that focuses purely on a good statistical simulation. In this particular context I mean that the world says that something should happen, and the rules actually supports this. Someone who is extremely strong actually does more damage and lifts heavier weights. However, if this is the only aspect of the game, the rules and the character can be quite dry and fail to convey the sense of a strong character. A small example: In the game Heroes Unlimited, the "Strength"-attribute is called P.A (Physical Affinity). It's perfectly valid, and it doesn't take you long to learn what it means, but it's still P.A, it's not "Strength" or a similar straightforward english word. In other words, it's technically correct, but fails to relate directly what it means.

The other extreme could be a game that is very good on giving out an impression of someone who is strong. This game could use a dice pool system, having more dice to roll gives you a tactile sensation that the character is more powerful. However, if the statistical outcome of the rules doesn't support the description, the suspense of disbeliefe get's harder. One example for me would be the old Marvel RPG (The old version known as FASERIP). Since it used descriptive words and clear steps of their attributes, you quickly got a good sense of how strong or fast someone was supposed to be. If I read that a character had Incredible strength, I knew that he was about as strong as Spiderman or Iron Man.

The problem with this game was that, to some extent, the results of the rolls failed to support the descriptions of the attributes. In the real game, at least in my experience, my character with Incredible strength and Amazing Agility couldn't do what Spiderman could do in the comics.

This to me is an example of where the rules support the sense and impression of the character, but fails to live up to it's "promises".

In earlier posts, I've looked at these parts as Layers of a gaming system, where the core is about the statistics and the outer layers are about the interface. After looking at some different games through this layer system I had to abandon that idea, at least partly. This is because in some cases, the core statistics and core mechanic is closely related to the "Human Interface"-layer, and to make a distinct separation between what parts are Interface and what parts are Engine is basically impossible.