Rock - Paper - Scissors! A method for War?

Nope, it's not about solving the wars of the world with a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors (even though it would be nice if that was possible). Rather it's about me thinking more about what kind of conflict resolution system I want for my game War: The RPG (which I have written about in a couple of previous posts).

One trick that some games use is a variant of the old game Rock-Papers-Scissors. It has been used in roleplaying games before in one way or another (some Larps use it, and the game Dying Earth use a version of it). Now, in the original game, Rock always beats Scissors etc, but in an rpg one could for instance have different modifiers depending on the choices. Let's say you've got three types of attacks and three types of defences. If you are lucky and choose "Rock"-attack vs. "Scissors"-defence, you will get a bonus to your attack roll.

In addition to this you could plan your attacks (I think this is how they do it in Burning Wheels, and it's also how duels are played out in Castle Falkenstein), and for instance play out 3 (or something) cards at the same time, and then compare them step by step.

I think this would work well with a combat/ skirmish oriented roleplaying game for two reasons. First: It is quite common for a particular tactic to be more effeicient against some defences, while not as efficient against other.
Second: When the players have do several choices in advance, it simulates tactics and planning in a combat situation.

Dungeon Delves - the perfect format?

One of the problems often mentioned with RPG's in general is the time investment. First you have to spend one or several (often the latter) evenings, and on top of that, the GM have to prepare the adventures, something that shouldn't be taken for granted.

Dear Wizards have tried to solve that with what they call the Dungeon Delves. They are short adventures for DnD 4th of three encounters each, and each encounter is designed to take about an hour. There's also a book with a collection of Delves, meant to take you from lvl1 to lvl 30.

That means that if you have an hour to spare, you can play a short session. We are a couple of gamers that is trying this out on the lunch hour of the university we are all attending.

The impression so far is that it works. The modules are nice enough, and so far the encounters do stay within the time slot. So, what are our impressions so far?

• As said, the timing works quite nice. The GM has to setup the place a couple of minutes before, but other than that one encounter is roughly one hour (and sometimes less)
• The delves are VERY combat oriented. If you prefer other types of roleplaying, they may not be for you.
• The encounters are nicely balanced so that they provide a challenge, without being to lethal. You have to be careful with your resources (like Daily Powers) so that you have some oomph left for the final encounter. There are also guidelines for how to balance the encounters if you have to many or to few characters.
• The encounters use the environment quite nicely. For instance, in one of the encounters, some kobolds pushed over a large statue on one of the characters (who got stuck under it for 3 or 4 rounds).
  

Of course, while playing through the encounters, I've been toying with the idea of spreading the idea to other games and settings. Even to other types of encounters within DnD 4th, like an interesting skill challenge.

I think that "bite-sized" roleplaying has a place and is possible. Maybe we just have to think a little different and modulize our adventures a little more.

Plattforms for character generators

If you want to make a character generator for a game, there are a number of tools to use. Each of these have advantages and disadvantages, and I'll try to make a short summary here. I'll try to look at aspects like easy of use (as a developer), cross-plattform compability and what is required of the user.

Microsoft Excell

This is one of the major spreadsheet tools on the market. It's cell-like strukture and built in functions make self calculating character sheets easy to build. It's also fairly easy to deal with more advanced stuff (like turning a cell into a drop-down menu). However, after a while you run out of "out-of-the-box"-solutions, and that's when you have to come up with your own solutions. These can sometimes be both big and counterintuitive (time permitting, I'll see if I can write a post with some examples).

If you are into scripting, Excell so far has scripting possibilities (as long as you are using the Windows version. However, from what I've heard, that might change in the future).

Of course, for the user to use the Excell sheet, they need a copy of Excell. While MS Office is a rather widespread tool, it's not something to take for granted, and getting a copy isn't exactly sheep.

Google Spreadsheet

In it's suite Google Docs, Google also added a Spreadsheet tool, similar to Excell. Most of what I wrote above also applies to Google Spreadsheets. There are, however, some differences. The main one is of course that the latter is an online application. You can invite others to your application directly, and they can make a personal copy of the spreadsheet.

Google Spreadsheet is also slightly smaller than Excell. While it still has a whole heap of tools and functions, it's not as powerful as Excell. Also, it of course requires internet connecion to use.

As a side comment: There's also other alternatives when it comes to spreadsheets, like Open Office (free, both win, osx and linux), Numbers (a nifty little spreadsheet tool for osx) and Star Office. These are all usable, and have similar pros and cons as what I've written above.

Flash/ Flex/ Air

These three are basically different implementations of the same core technology (to the extent that Flex Builder changed name to Flash Builder in the latest edition).

When we think about Flash, we mostly think about annoying banners and ads on webb pages. However, Flash is so much more than that, and if you are fairly profficient in Actionscript, you can build advanced applications in a fairly short time.

Flex and Air are technologies that build on the Flash framework, but while Flash in itself (the software, that is) is aimed at multimedia and presentations, Flex and Air are more focused on Application Development.

The startup is a bit tougher in these tools, since you have to learn at least a little Actionscripting before you start. But if you master that, I'd say that Flash (etc) is a fairly good way to go, because you can develop applications for it rather quickly, it's compatibale with both Windows and osX, and as long as the user has Flash Player installed (most have, and it's free) anyone can use it.

Java and/or C#

If you have some programming experience, it might be worth looking into a more full fledged programming language like Java or C#. The advantage here is that many programming languages have pre-made functions and classes for dealing with lists and collections, something that is very usable when you are creating characters. Both Java and C# (and others) have graphical tools for laying out the GUI, which saves you a whole lot of typing (if you are not like me, and like writing the code for the GUI as well... ).

With Java, you can distribute your application to anyone with the Java Runtime Environment installed (which is fairly common), and it's cross-plattform compatible. Other languages, for instance C# is limited to one OS (Windows, in the case of C#).

Other scripting languages

There are a number of powerful scripting languages like Python or Ruby, and these can be downloaded free. However, they still require some programming knowledge (unless, of course, you are ready to learn a little coding). On the other hand, they are often very poweful, and you can achieve quite a lot with just a few lines of code. Unfortunately they are hard to make completely stand alone, and often the end user has to download the language package as well to run it. They also can be lacking in the GUI-area slightly.

Databases

One way to make a character build is to use a database enging like MS-Sql, MySql or Oracle. Some of these tools are free to download and use (Ms-SQL Express, various MySql tools) and there are a number of nifty little features and advantages you get from using a database.

However, relational database design can be quite tricky if you are not used to it, and a complex thing as a character generator can easy turn into 50-100 different tables to keep track of everything (speaking from experience. I once did a database-based character builder for Mutants and Masterminds).

Also, there is no easy way to distribute "just" a database, but instead you have to build a front end using something like Java, a scripting language or Flash.

Web-based

Using a database as above, and combine it with a scripting language like php is also a way to go. This, as well as the other tools, does require some knowledge of the following areas:

HTML+CSS
Database Design/ SQL
php (or similar)

However, as long as you got somewhere to put it (that is, a web-server), you can find all the tools for free, and distributing is easy (it's a webpage).

Summary

Creating a character generator does require some hard work (of course a bit depending on what game system you are using) and I wouldn't recommend anyone to do that as a starting project if they have no experience in a given tool. However, as long as you got the initial parts understood, a chargen is a great (if hard) way to increase your skill.

One of the main areas to look at in any given environment is how it deals with lists, because character generation is a whole lot about building lists by picking items from other lists.

Excel tip #2 - Drop down menus

Making a drop-down-menu in Excel is fairly easy (and with drop-down-menu I mean in this case a cell with a number of preset options that you can choose from).

Let's say you hae a game with 10 classes you can choose from. Create a new sheet (I usually create separate sheets for look-up-tables etc). Enter the names of the classes in a column, one class/ cell. Then select the cells and give them a name (as described in the previous tip).

Then go back to the first sheet and select the cell where you want the drop-down menu to be, and then go to Data - Data Verification. Choose "List" from the combo-box, and then enter the name you gave your list in the previous step. Finish with clicking OK.

If all went well, you should now be able to click on the cell and then get a nice drop-down-menu with all the classes.

Excel tips #1

As said before, Excel is a good tool for building character generators. In this little series, I'll try to provide some tips and hints that'll help you build your own chargen in Excel (or other spreadsheet tools). These will be varying in length and complexity.

Tip #1 Use Names for cells and areas

To make things easier for you, take the extra time to give names to your cells. It's quick, and makes your life easier when it comes to building your spreadsheet. Whenever you select a cell or an area, you can see what you have selected in a small field at the upper left of your screen (image from osx version of Excel 2008, but it's similar in Win-versions as well).

Now, with the cell or area selected, you can type in another name for that cell or area. For instance, if you have four attributes, Muscle, Brains, Cool and Speed, you can name the cells with the values Muscle, Brains, Cool and Ego as well.

You can then use that in later formulas. To continue the example above, let's say that there is a health attribute that is the sum of Muscle and Speed. Normally, you would have typed =SUM(B2;C2) or something like that to add that together. But, since we have named our cells, we can instead type =SUM(Strength, Speed) (or =Strength+Speed)

While it may not seem to make a big difference in a small example like this, when the spreadsheet grows bigger, it will make life a lot simpler. This is especially true when you start to deal with areas instead of single cells.

Excel and Spreadsheets for RPGs

A spreadsheet is a tool that basically is a large grid of cells. Each cell can contain a number, a text-string or a formula. It originated within the business world as a way to build budgets, keep track of transactions and economics etc.

However, the structure of the spreadsheet also makes it a fairly good tool to use in RPG's. Especially for creating characters and other rule-bound artefacts.

To give you an example, a few years ago, I tried to challenge myself with building a spreadsheet to handle the vehicle creatoin rules in Gurps Vehicles. While the result was clumsy and not particulary elegant, it still helped me build a whole heap of nice vehicles (including a tank with a crew of 30).

One of my current projects is to build a character generator for the World of Darkness/ Storyteller-system by White Wolf. Due to copyright-infringement etc I can't publish it. I can, however, give you some hints and tips on how to build your own spreadsheet for use with roleplaying games.

While the core application will be Excell, I'll try to keep it as generic as possible (no scripts, for instance), so that you can do some migrating to Google Spreadsheet, Numbers or Open Office.

Advance over a field

One common occurance in wars is trying to advance over a field under enemy fire. To simulate this, the following rules are used:

A field has two values: How difficult it is to pass, and how dangerous it is (enemy fire, mines etc).

Each turn, you roll 1D10 - danger. The resulting number is how far you advance along the field. If you get a negative result, that results in you getting hit.

When you have advanced along the field a number of steps equal the difficulty value, you have reached your destination, and the next scene starts.

The difficulty value is both a value of how hard it is to cross the field and how difficult it is to traverse.

Damage in War: the RPG

When a character is hit and wounded within the game, several things can happen. Not only does a hit do bodily harm, it also affects morale/ willpower, the equipmant and the cooperation within the group.

Some of these aspects, I will deal with in a later post. In this post, I will mention a little about how to deal with bodily harm.

There are different intensities of weapons, and different levels of protection from armour.

If you are hit by a weapon that with a rank equal to your armor, you are wounded. One more wound or higher will kill you.
If you are hit by a weapon that with 1 rank lower than your armour, you are lightly wounded. This will stun you or slow you down a little, but will not stop you. Unless it's in the same round or the round after that you can take an infinite number of light wounds. Each wound adds to the time you are stunned. However, if you take more than Body number of light wounds while you are stunned due to light wounds, you become wounded.
If you are hit by a weapon with 1 rank higher, you are severly, mortally wounded. This means bodily trauma, mental trauma and technological breakdown (things will stop working for you). One more hit will kill you. Same goes if you are not treated within body number of rounds

Lower damage than that, nothing happens. Higher damage kills you instantly.

A quick discovery about google wave

When I first heard about google Wave, I suspected that one of the first plugins to pop up would be a die-roller.

So, yesterday I finally got my invite to Google Wave, and lo-and-behold, when I look at the short list over plugins I find a bot (script) that can do simple die-rolling. You basically type xdy (x = number of dice, y = type of dice), and the bot gives you the roll.

Told you so! ;-)

Group combat

In most RPG's combat is treated as a number of individuals fighting another bunch of individuals. At times, there are things like aiding each other, but that's about it.

However, in War: The RPG, the aim is to simulate that the group is a group that has trained as a unit for a while. Even though it's not always explicit, when two group members are firing at a target, they are doing it in a way to maximise their fire. Also, they will always protect each other in small ways, give signs, shout out to each other giving each other clues to what's happening etc.

In order to simulate this, in each combat, there is a stat called Group Strength. In the beginning of the combat, it's at it maximum and will give bonuses to all the participants of that group. As combat goes on, due to fatigue, damages and stress, that value will go down, and after a while it'll be so low that it's actually a negative modifier to the members of that group, since they are loosing their ability to fight as a unit.

Also, whenever a single individual is hit, it can choose to take all damage on himself, keeping the Group strength intact, or choose to move some of it onto the Group strength. In other words, he can either take one for the group, or choose to live and be stronger by himself, but at the expence of the group strength.

Character traits in War: The RPG

Today, I'll post my first draft of what characters will look like. Since this is supposed to be a rules-light game, I have decided to make the attributes few, and also include more abstract things into them.

So, a character has the following traits

Body - The characters physical strength, speed and stamina
Mental - A collective term for the characters morale, mental strength etc.
Equipment - Since this is a sci-fi game one can assume that the characters have loads of equipment on them. Instead of listing everything they've got, the game abstracts it into a specific value. Whenever someone want's to try to do something (Scan the area, call for reinforcements etc), roll a test against the Equipment value.

Each character also has a role and specialities that gives them either bonuses or specific typ of actions. For instance, one character can be a healer, or a Heavy Weapons specialist etc.

More posts will follow...

RPG-Design, a case study

To put it short: I'm trying to design a roleplaying game of my own. Turns out, it's fairly tricky (no big surprise there).

It started ... or rather, was triggered by when talking to a gaming friend that also had some ideas for a game. We talked a little about it, and while there was some cross-polination, in the end, our ideas diverged a little to much, so I decided to take my ideas as a core and build a game from that.

These core ideas are

• It's a violent game, about wars and warfare
• Combat is lethal
• It's a simple, semi-narrative game
• The game should capture the feel of intense battles.
• The game should have a very low prep-time.
  

When it comes to other games, it's related to games like 3:16, Wilderness of mirrors.

So far, I've only got a couple of loose rule-ideas, but I'll publish them here as time goes by. If you read it, and have some thoughts, please let me know.

[FATE] Spirit of the World of Darkness - RPGnet Forums

[FATE] Spirit of the World of Darkness - RPGnet Forums: "I don't really have a purpose in making this post other than to say it just occurred to me how easy it would be to blend Fate and the World of Darkness system together.

* Add Aspects as per Fate. Aspects replace Virtue/Vice.
* Use the WoD skills, but treat them the eaxct same way you do skills in Fate.
* Replace the WoD health system with Fate's
* Replace Merits with Stunts
* Replace Morality with Fate's Composure track and Consequences
* Where it says you need to spend a Willpower point, you spend a Fate point.
* Replace the expendable stat (blood, essence, etc.) with a stress track and consequences.
* Replace the power stat (blood potency, Gnosis) with a special skill."

The above is a part of a forum-thread touching a subject I've been thinking about myself. I'll keep an eye on the thread and see if I can add something to it myself. My "starting point", so to speak, would be Starblazers, because I get the impression that it's slightly more generic than SotC. I am, however, looking forward to Dresden Files, whenever that one is released.

How I wrote 30 adventures in a couple of days.

Ok, I admit, the headline is a bit of an exaggeration. But it's cathy, right!

However, it's not that far of. But perhaps a better wording would be "how I wrote the outline for a 30-adventure campaign in a couple of days".

Anyway, I had an idea the other day, based on the Dawn of Defiance-campaign for Star Wars Saga, and also on the Scales of War-adventure-series for DnD 4th ed. The idea was to write a campaign that took you from lvl1 to lvl30 in DnD 4th. The pace would be 1 lvl/ adventure, so that would make 30 adventures. That felt a bit intimidating, but then I started to divide things up, and after a while I hade a rough outline for each module, stretching from the first one up to the very last one. Here is basically what I did. Hopefully it can serve as an inspiration to one or two of you out there.

I had some vague ideas that I wanted the characters to go from young, "just-graduated" heroes that could do some work for the local villages and towns, up to world-shakers. Thankfully, 4th ed provides some natural spans (level-wise) so that I basically had three parts of the campaign (Heroic, Paragon and Epic).

So, the first step was to write down the theme of each tier, what dangers there where, and to write down a line or two about the archvillain of each tier. For the first tier, it's on a fairly local scale, the villain is a local player etc. It has also the theme of "night", to keep with the Points of Light-setting. Basically, the villages are scattered, the wilderness is wild and everyone is threatened by the unknown. In the second tier, the PCs have some reputation, and all of a sudden they become involved in the politics of the area. At the same time, they have to face bigger dangers. The theme of the paragon-tier is dawn. Both the PC's and the evil around them is waking up, preparing for bigger things to come. The new archvillain is a bigger player (and a supernatural one, at that), who was the driving force behind the villain in the lower tier.
Finally, the last tier is Day, where the players are rulers of kingdoms, and now have to face opposing armies and epic enemies.

With the three tiers nailed, I made three empty lists, with 10 posts in each list. Then I brainstormed and tried to find a number of "one-sentence" plots/ scenes/ ideas. I wasn't satisfied until I had 10 ideas for each tier. Since I already had the basic framework and theme, it was fairly easy to find around 10 ideas for each. One aim I had was to vary myself, and also to use different settings and try to use as much of the rules as possible. For instance, I was keen to try out how 4th ed handles sea battles, so there is a module where the players have to stop a pirate invasion.

With the 3x10 ideas written down, I tried to sort them in some kind of order, so that they start out small for each tier, and then grow to something bigger, preparing for the next tier as the end of the tier approaches.

Finally, for each module-idea, I wrote down 3 additional points. This could be a bit of background, a twist, how it connects to the overall arch etc. The point of the points (no pun intended) was to give each idea a bit more depth and story. When I did this, I tried to look at the modules before and after the current module, to see if there was anything I could tie into it.

Not all ideas where smooth and easy to come up with 3 "sub-ideas" for, but after a little while I had 30 modules, with a coherent story, ideas, twists etc. While they still need to be fleshed out, doing so with the help of for instance the DnD-Insider tools (which I can recommend) will be a fairly quick and straighforward task. (And also, keeping it fairly loose will make it easier adapt it to what the players do and wish).

I'm so far quite satisfied with the results, and will do try this out on other games and settings as well.

So, to sum up: The secret is in

• Divide and conquer - Split the campaign into manageable parts. And then split them into smaller parts
• Use the rule of three - While a bit cliché and corny, in most cases you can always come up with three "sub-ideas" or lines for something. This process can be iterative, so if you want to detail it further, you can always add three points to each of your previous three points.
  

The concept of Balance within a roleplaying game

Game-balance is something often mentioned in roleplaying games. The idea comes from the world of boardgames/ strategy games (and later computer games), and the purpose is to make sure that units of different kinds are balanced against each other.

In many roleplaying games there is also a discussion that different types of characters should be equally powerful. A lot of time is spent on comparing feats/ abilities/ attacks etc to make sure that no character accidentally becomes more powerful than another.

There are two aspects of "balance" in a roleplaying game I feel often are neglected, and perhaps more important than power in a combat.

First of all is the ability to influence the story and the scene. Even though I might not be a combat monster, all players and characters should have a fairly equal input and ability to push the story or scene in a specific direction.

Second, all characteers should have an equal time in the spotlight. I've been in situations where one character has 1 simple attack / round whereas other characters have multiple attacks and/ or familiars and summoned creatures. This means that the player with the single attack can resolve his round in 10-15 seconds whereas players with a number of exotic attacks (with creatures etc) can take up to 3-5 minutes to solve his round.

For me, these two aspects, influence and time, are more important balancing factors than actual combat balance.

About what to play..

Usually when I'm set out to write a module or adventure for a roleplaying game I usually start with the question "What game do I want to play?" and then I go from there, trying to write an adventure for a particular game.

I am more and more starting to think that that's a slightly flawed concept. (At least partially. For a long-running campaign, you are usually bound by what game is played in the campaign. )

So, what's the alternative? Perhaps, the question shouldn't be what game to play, but rather what I want to simulate/ "experience". From there, I can pick an appropriate game rather than the other way around.

Of course, there are situations where you want to pick a specific game (it has a new concept or interesting rules to try out), but overall at least my tendency is to think game first and "situation/story" later. I will try to change this, and first and foremost think about imagery, stories and scenes.

Is Superman just strong?

Some time ago I read a thread on rpg.net (now, there's a surprise) about Dawn of Legends (DoL), a new Super Hero addition to Savage Worlds. Someone in the thread asked if DoL could support higher level characters, like Superman or the Flash.

The reply was that it definately was possible. However, the solution left me a bit less than enthusiastic. Basically, it was a multi-step-process. First you had to buy high levels of the Strength attribute. This in itself wasn't enough, but after that you had to buy Edges (I may be wrong on the terminology here) to increase damage, increase lifting capacity, make his punches armour penetrating etc.

This is not the first time I've encountered this line of thinking. A few years ago, I was a in a forum thread talking about Gurps Supers. The question was basically the same: How do you simulate a super-strong characters punches. The semi-official word was that you might as well buy it as a separate attack with a range of Touch. So, just getting a decent amount of strength wasn't enough, I also had to buy other things around the character to properly be able to reflect what I want him to do.

I find both these examples to be flawed. This is not from a simulationist point of view (which it might be if you asked me a few years ago), but from a usability point of view.

There are many usability guidlines that state that you should follow the users internal/ mental modell or expectations on how things work. It is natural, intuitive that if I buy a high level of strength (for intance) certain things follow with that. I shouldn't need to add a lot of details / extra feats on top of that, it should be included from start.

Normally I have the same opinion about to many feats in DnD, for instance. In order to build a decent fighter, I need to know that there are a multitude of different Feats that is more or less necessary for building the fighter.

Feats or Edges or whatever should be used to add specialties or tweaks to a character, but when they are more or less mandatory for a fairly straight up build, I think it's a sign of at least a partly flawed game design in the first place.

It's that time of the year again - Info is leaking out about Geist from White Wolf

Since the launch of the new World of Darkness, there has been a new line introduced every summer, and this year is no exception. It has been known for quite some time that the name is Geist, and that it seems to deal with ghosts in one way or the other.

However, it seems like more info is starting to leak, esp. from demo-sessions at cons etc, and this thread on rpg.net gives a few minor details for those interested.

[Geist] Minor spoilers about quickstart

I will post more info as I find it

Interesting resource for planning adventures

Adventure Designer

While surfing the web the other day, I found a page (see link above) with a nifty little pdf-document to be used when planning an adventure. While it's nothing complex or sophisticated, it's nice in it's simplicity. There are sheets for entering a summary for characters, rumours, map locations etc. There is also a short adventure-planning-checklist at the end of the pdf.

Wilderness of mirrors and narrative roleplaying - some thoughts

Not long ago, our gaming group tried out Wilderness of Mirrors for the first time. This was also one of our first sessions with improvisational, narrative roleplaying. The premise was the following: In our long going Star Wars Dawn of Defiance-campaign, one of the players have a subplot which includes a long lost sister.

To further that plot, we decided to play out  a rescue mission. Not with our regular characters, but with a group called the Antarian Rangers.  Also, since we like to try out new games at times (and have talked about some more narrative gaming for a while), we decided to use the Wilderness of Mirrors game by John Wick. This game can be found here: Wilderness of Mirrors [PDF] and a there is also a lengthy discussion about it on rpg.net on this thread

To sum it up, WoM is an agent-style game where you play your Jason Bournes and James Bonds. It is also a narrative, low-preparation game. Basically, the GM gives you a basic premise (Break in and rescue the diplomat, for instance) and then the players start to plan that rescue. When planning, the players can add things like "in order to take out those guards, we need a stun grenade" or "and when we enter that corridor, we have to hack the computer to shut down the weapon turrets". This way, the players build the adventure themselves. For each fact, the group get's a bonus die to add to their rolls when needed.

When the planning is done, the game starts, and together the GM and the players have the plan and the obstacles to use as the adventure. One important point is that skill-rolls don't actually decide if you succeed with an action or not, but rather, it decided who has narrative control. Even if you fail a roll, you might still succeed with the skill-check but the GM has the right to narrate what happens (which might include both good or bad things).

There is also an option in the game to add in negative stuff for other players (since betrayal and trust are major issues in agent movies), and this let's you get more dice. We didn't use that rule since we felt it didn't fit with the setting. However, in retrospect I have some thoughts on that. More on that later.

It should also be said that while all the players are experienced roleplayers, there is a varying degree of experience with more indie-type games.

When the GM told us to start planning, it did take a while for us to get into it. I'm guessing this is a matter of us being unused to the premise. However, after a while ideas where coming from all over the place. If there was one tendency it was to identify problems and then try to solve them in a fairly linear fashion. There wasn't so many ideas that introduced major obstacles or detours from the from-A-to-B-plot. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but rather that it's a leftover from years of problem solving gaming.

The game itself went rather smoothly. As before, it felt a bit odd at times, and to some extent it was kept in the problem solving tradition. Basically, roll the dice, and if you roll good, you succeed with what you wanna do with no extra details around it. Now, it wasn't dull or plain, but I think that with some more experience in these kinds of games, we could have added more details and excitement to it ourselves.

There you have the next key-word: Excitement! Somehow, it didn't feel exciting, or as exciting as other games can do. To some extent I think it is a result of us as a group covering all bases with maxed attributes, but I also think that playing this kind of game with a problem-solving mindset is sub-optimal. It is to easy to "win".

So, you have to add that excitement yourself in one way or the other. We could have been better at this (again, I think it comes down to lack of experience) and added small tidbits ourselves. For instance, when we as players succeed with a roll, we have full narrative freedom. We can choose to make it easy for us (just say that we manage to do what we want) or to make it hard for us ("Yes, I shoot the masked Sith Inquisitor. However, when he falls to the ground his mask falls of, and I see that it's only a droid. It's a trap!!").

This is where I think the betrayal mechanic could come in handy. Perhaps not as betrayal as such, since that would be a bit out of genre, but as "Dark Side"-temptation-dice or something like that. There should perhaps be a limit to this, but basically, when I have narrative control, I should be able to add in something that makes it worse for me, another character or the group as such, and then get another bonus die. This way, another element of uncertainty is added to the game.

So, to sum up:

• This kind of game requires some experience to run smoothly
• It also requires some creativity and a mindset that it's not about problem solving, but finding interesting stories
• Adding excitement can be a bit hard. In a game with more rules (D20 or similar) you can always fall back on the rules and die-rolls to add some excitement, but in these kinds of games, excitement have to be based on story and events.
• Using some kind of "players as micro-opponents"-mechanic (be it Trust-dice or something else) is a good thing. Just as the players build the module in the planning stage, they can also add nasty and interesting side-effects in the actual game.

I would definately like to play these kinds of games more, but I also have to be better prepared with ideas and options so that I contribute to the drama and excitement of the game, and not just trust the GM to add those for me.

What would I choose?

So, the question is simple... if I where to reduce my number of games, and just play one system per genre (or something like that).. what would it be?

For sci-fi/ post-holocaust: Starblazers

For modern horror/ thriller: the nWoD-series

Straight up fantasy: This is a bit trickier... Gurps comes to mind, and so does a few swedish games. For this, I'd have to go with Gurps. A bit houseruled, but still

Super heroes: Oh.. please.. pretty-please... not just one... :-( Ok, then, if I'm forced to pick ONE super hero game it would propably be Mutants and Masterminds, but I would definately look with at games like Truth and Justice, Marvel Saga and Dawn of Legends with longing eyes (and have a passionate weekend with them at a faraway hotel once/ year).

So, what about other genres? If I would like to play something outside of this, I'd propably look at and consider Fate 3.0, Savage Worlds or PDQ. I'm currently considering running either 7th Sea or Castle Falkenstein, and even though they both are nice games, I think the setting lends itself well to one of these systems.

And no, this post is NOT a promise that I will get back to some regular writing here... it might, but I wont promise anything