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Directed Promotion: [Little Game Chef] Harper Award, feedback, top five and winners
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The winner of the Harper Award (best layout within the two-page constraint) is Redemption Night. We unanimously chose this game because it took a distinct and effective visual path that no one else dared to try. Was it a stylistic statement? Was it necessity? We don't have any idea, but the hand-drawn illustrations and clear, hand-lettered text really work well.
Other strong contenders: Mustang, Mare Caspium, The City Burns at Midnight and To Elysion.
(Feedback, top five and winners will follow later in this thread. Not tonight, though.)
Graham -
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CommentAuthorEero Tuovinen
- CommentTimeApr 1st 2009
I'm the evil judge who speaks only evil, and I still liked how Redemption Night shows us the way to a simpler time and even more handicrafts. I'd buy a reproduction of a whole hand-written game, I can well imagine. -
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CommentAuthorJason Morningstar
- CommentTimeApr 1st 2009
I swore (swore!) I'd toss any hand-written game straight in the trash. That felt pretty arbitrary - I mean, I could throw it in the trash after glancing at it in disgust, right? So I looked and realized that Redemption Night was as clear and easy to read as any game in the contest, and had a lot more visual character than most. It looks like it was yanked out of a high school notebook and I can really get behind that. -
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- CommentAuthorDyson Logos
- CommentTimeApr 2nd 2009 edited
Redemption Night was written by M. Jason Parent who is currently without a computer (thus the by-hand layout). From what he told me it was scanned and uploaded by a friend. I saw the game in... of all places... a high school notebook he carries around with him. -
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CommentAuthorJohn Harper
- CommentTimeApr 3rd 2009
Congrats, Jason! Very nicely done. -
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Do congratulate Jason for us. It's not just quirky: it's clearly and attractively laid out.
We're compiling our feedback now. It looks like we'll give feedback on all the games and I think we have a winner.
Graham -
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CommentAuthorJason Morningstar
- CommentTimeApr 3rd 2009
Since we're getting close to announcing a winner, I thought I'd provide some general contest observations:
Many entries either hand-waved the ingredients by incorporating them in fiction or bolting them on after the fact. There were lots of burning horses, many of which barely impact the game at all. If you can take out the flaming horse and replace it with an ice raven, it is not an effective use of the ingredients. Many entries used midnight as a deadline. This is pretty obvious and it got old fast in reviewing the games. If you can take out midnight and replace it with 7:05 PM, or "four hours from now", perhaps that's not a strong use of the ingredient. I'll hasten to add that I've shoe-horned ingredients myself so I probably shouldn't be casting the first stone here. And my fellow judges don't really agree with me on this stuff.
Many entries didn't bother to define immersion. This is fine, but it's sort of a problem when your game does exactly nothing to facilitate or encourage it. An elaborate setting is not a good substitute in my mind. The games that carved out space for immersion and didn't make a big deal out of it tended to be stand-outs.
Most of the games are very short! This is awesome. Many hit the form factor to qualify for the Harper award, which is extra great. Eero disagreed, feeling that the artificial space constraints hurt many entries.
Mechanical trends: Oracular stuff, trait defining stuff, player-answered open-ended questions, a strong contingent of very traditional-looking games juxtaposed with a great deal of structured freeform. Some parlor narration games, a trend I'm painfully aware of because I'm guilty of it in contest entries myself.
Thematic trends: The ingredients drove games in specific directions - lots of nautical and apocalyptic themes. The popularity of fantasy made the more prosaic entries really stand out for me. Death, demons, claustrophobia and betrayal. Burning horses everywhere. A couple of literature-inspired entries, a couple-three history-inspired entries.
As a snapshot of where people's brains are right now, this was really a fascinating set of games. -
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Cool. It's always interesting to read about trends in games. My game hits some of these trends smack bang, but misses others completely. (Which should reveal exactly nothing).
I've had two conversations the last days about parallel design - how we create stuff that's completely original, and then, looking back some years later, we see that A) it was obviously a zeitgeist thing and B) three other people we'd never heard of did the exact same thing some months before or after we did it. We're just meme-crunching nodes in a multi-dimensional network of ideas. Which makes outsider art so interesting to many of us, I guess. -
Posted By: Jason MorningstarMany entries either hand-waved the ingredients by incorporating them in fiction or bolting them on after the fact. There were lots of burning horses, many of which barely impact the game at all. If you can take out the flaming horse and replace it with an ice raven, it is not an effective use of the ingredients.
QFT.
For the record this is one of the biggest reasons I think my entry is crap. -
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CommentAuthorDavid Artman
- CommentTimeApr 3rd 2009
Posted By: Jason MorningstarMany entries didn't bother to define immersion. This is fine, but it's sort of a problem when your game does exactly nothing to facilitate or encourage it. An elaborate setting is not a good substitute in my mind. The games that carved out space for immersion and didn't make a big deal out of it tended to be stand-outs.
I'm curious to see the feedback and, from it, figure out what games did or didn't "do immersion." I suspect my game will be in the "didn't do it" camp, even though I feel I used two distinct sense or modes of immersion. I suspect the Definition War is inevitable.... -
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Well, I hope not, David. One of the purposes of this contest was, rather than defining immersion, to design for it and see how far we got.
The different approaches are fascinating. For many, immersion meant taking the game in a LARP direction, speaking, acting and moving as your character. Others attempted to use setting as an immersive tool: usually a horror or mystery setting. Sometimes ritual was used, sometimes guided visualisation.
The ingredients mattered less to me: for me, they were a spark to the imagination, not something that I necessarily wanted to see used in an interesting way. A perfect example of how I like ingredients being used is Parabola: Burn, Sea and Midnight reminded the author of missiles burning over the sea as they headed for London in the middle of the night. Perfect. Ingredients, for me, were just a jumping-off point.
Still, it's interesting to see how they were used. Midnight led to lots of countdowns, which I rather liked. Sea was often used geographically: lots of games set in or by the sea. Burn went in all sorts of directions, although sometimes it just meant "use up" an ability. Horse gave us lots of horses: usually, they were the monsters. I don't remember a single seahorse.
Lots of games were a bit like In A Wicked Age.
Like Jason, I loved the two page constraint. I wish we'd made it mandatory. Sometimes, it led to neatly concise games: this especially benefited the traditional GM-led games, that got stripped of all the traditional flavour text. Sometimes, it led to very small fonts, and often editing the text down would have been a better option.
There was also one email game and one game played on LiveJournal.
The games were good. Reading through them was a pleasure.
We'll start posting the feedback on Monday, I think. Eero needs the weekend to make his feedback more evil.
Graham -
Posted By: David ArtmanI suspect the Definition War is inevitable....
I wrote an article two years ago to try to stop the Definition War. It's a summary of viewpoints from a few different schools of thought, including the Forge, the Turku School, and people on Mo's and Ben's blogs. It's short and concise; I recommend it to anyone who wants to discuss definitions of the term "immersion", simply because it shows you how difficult the task really is. You can find the PDF here. -
- CommentAuthorwhiteknife
- CommentTimeApr 3rd 2009 edited
Shh! This part of my post has been deleted for international security reasons.
Also, congrats to M. Jason Parent! Redemption Night was my favorite, glad it won (at least the harper award). -
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CommentAuthorJason Morningstar
- CommentTimeApr 3rd 2009
Please don't out yourselves until the feedback is up for your game. That would be best. -
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CommentAuthorBrand_Robins
- CommentTimeApr 3rd 2009
Wow. Redemption Night really is striking, isn't it?
It's also, for me, a great example of why indie is cool -- because it isn't about fitting the group definition, but finding your own way to make the thing you want to do really work at a level that communicates to others.
I wish I could be half so cool. -
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In the end, incorporation of ingredients was what held me back in the contest this year. I've had several friends assume that, with immersion as the theme, I would take up my personal torch in gaming and run with it. For a while now, I've said that, while there are many reasons I like gaming, immersion is why I love gaming. In the end, though, the contest spurred me to write something apocalyptic, beautiful, and utterly challenging to play... and I'm finding that, the more one is challenged emotionally (and the less one is challenged intellectually), the deeper one can sink into play.
Course, that's not always the case. I've seen Gurps and d20 Modern games pull people deep into other worlds and lose themselves in the fiction. Immersion in two pages? I dunno. It's such a vague term. I didn't wanna start a thread about it, cuz everyone's worked so hard and I don't want to be seen as poo-poo-ing on some very fun games! I'm looking forward to trying these out. I'm also looking forward to sending a revised, more beefy concept of immersive play to some folk and seeing if maybe I'm just a goofball, or if there's some way to parse this controversial word of ours into something we can really grok. -
- CommentAuthorDyson Logos
- CommentTimeApr 3rd 2009 edited
I played Redemption Night last night. We started the game at 8pm and played through to midnight.
Jason really strengthened the midnight countdown theme, with clocks ticking down every time someone rolled an 11 or 12 on their d12 (He was originally going to have it only be on a 12 - to strengthen the midnight concept - but it resulted in too little penalty for using the characters' sins).
The limited resource pool in the middle of the table lead to some ROUGH role-playing. People got up in arms about some characters pushing to take over the pool, and then risking it all to get their victory points at the cost of everyone else's, and a lot of d12's were thrown in the end. Each scene started with us more afraid of running out of dice and knowing the adversary was getting the jump on us. The first scene was a black chip scene (I drew the chip - so the other players were all ticked off at me for bringing the Nightmares down on us as soon as the game started) which lead to higher difficulties on our rolls and started the game off with a bang - everyone was arguing over dice, and the Nightmare crashed through the restaurant we were in, and chased us through a garden party. It was awesome.
Effectively, by the time we got to the end game, the most aggressive player managed to escape the grasp of the adversary, but not by finding redemption, he just managed to outplay the devil and mess over the rest of the players in the process - it made the game really feel close-at-hand because we were fighting each other to be able to win in our fight against the adversary.
I'm hooked. I can't wait to try again and see if we can either get a team to cooperate better towards success, or be the jerk who screws over the whole group for my last chance to keep my soul. -
- CommentAuthorC. Edwards
- CommentTimeApr 3rd 2009
Wow, that right there makes me want to play Redemption Night. Nice AP report, Dyson. Time to go peruse some of the other entries. -
Right, so.
There were 33 entries, plus two submitted slightly late. We've given feedback on all of them, which will follow in this thread. Not all judges have given feedback on every game, but every game has feedback.
Now, don't expect too much, because here's what will inevitably happen. You've written a beautiful work of art. Unfortunately, it's the 28th roleplaying game we've reviewed, and the 12th that night, and we're really tired. So we totally miss the point and just say "Hey, I like the cards. Sadly, I don't like the setting and I don't think it's playable. Still, cyberpunk, that's cool!".
When this happens (and it will), we're sorry in advance. In fact, looking at the first chunk of feedback I'm about to post, I'm embarrassed how little feedback I've given. However, we're happy to go into more detail if you ask. Even though we didn't like every game, we're supportive of all of them, and happy to engage in dialogue to make them better.
Here we go, then. Feedback in order of submission. As you get feedback on your game, please break your anonymity, tell us you wrote the game, ask any questions and either thank us or berate us as appropriate. -
DO U SEE
JASON
+ Very interesting, a concept filled with possibility, a cool setup that is unique. I'd play this, it seems like a fun conceit.
- Where are the ingredients? This is immersive like a parlor game is immersive. This needs to be developed and it ought to be.
GRAHAM
This is interesting: a very direct approach to immersion and hard to deny it's immersive.
I've got little to say about it, which doesn't mean I don't like it. It would almost undoubtedly work. It would almost undoubtedly be immersive. I don't think it would feel like a roleplaying game and I can't see our Wednesday group playing this.
Nevertheless, interesting, and I'm glad I read it. Apologies that I haven't got any more useful feedback than that.
EERO
I like the mechanical premise very much. The GM as a psychic guide, having the players play with their eyes closed, communicating with gestures, all goes flawlessly with the game's premise of psychic session. It's a great shame that the designer doesn't run with this; he should have the GM prepare an elaborate mission for the psykers - he should in fact be in a role as a MiB, first briefing the players with handouts and whatnot before the psychic session. Then the game would have tension - the GM/officer has this need to find the nuke and get it disarmed, but the other players actually have all the power in the situation, as they're the ones who see things. The GM in fact turns into another player, while the others act as GMs. Except that of course the GM could bring stuff in too, as he's the one holding the access to the computer mainframe, the FBI files and whatever else he wants to pull to bring in some more backgrounds.
Also, there should be some psychic combat, different psychic powers and such. All interesting to implement with the players blind and mostly unmoving.
OK, so I see an excellent gimmick game here in the spirit of a psychic Tom Clancy novel, but the designer obviously was going for some sort of murder therapy take with less game and more ritual. The actual direction of the game I found boring, as the GM doesn't get to shout at the others frantically as the clock ticks down and Mary-Jane insists that the bomb is in the other briefcase. Boooring. Games need to have interaction and goals, this is more akin to meditation. I'd do this so much better. -
THE SHORE
JASON
+ This has a lot of immersive potential. I like the open-endedness here. I like the constrained setting fixed on location.
- I'm not sold on this as a playable game. I'm not sure why you'd bother to use the rules included if you did.
GRAHAM
This is, hands down, my favourite of the more traditional roleplaying games in this competition.
I love the setting. I seriously love the setting. It's a perfect creepy horror setting, Call of Cthulhu-style. I like the flavour text, which is unusual for me (I generally don't like flavour text). And the additional ideas dotted throughout the text are good: a long-drowned girl crawling out of the ocean, looking for answers? Perfect.
Is it immersive? If it is, it's immersive in that Call of Cthulhu way, where the setting and mood is sort of hypnotic. I can certainly imagine playing an immersive game of The Shore with my group.
After all that praise, let me say this straight out: the mechanics are a total let-down. Rolling under a difficulty number chosen by the GM? Man. I would totally love this game if it had some mechanics that supported what it's trying to do. Even Call of Cthulhu had its SAN mechanic and this game really, really needs something like that. But not just an added mechanic: I'd like to see a rewrite of the mechanics to support the horrific setting.
I have such mixed feelings about this game: love the setting, hate the mechanics. I'd play in the setting, but we might switch to Trail of Cthulhu's mechanics instead.
EERO
This game's not very interesting. I liked the idea that a player character is separated by his willingness to forgo urban life and live in solitude, but that isn't taken anywhere. I also like the witching hour bonus, but it's flimsy and really a sort of a let-down if you go to the trouble of procuring it. I like the setting, but its minimalism would be better served by solid rules. The system is clumsy: the same probabilities could be gained by a roll-under system against ability+modifier. The current zero ability would be at 8 with higher abilities being better. Difficulty would be a negative modifier between 0-5, roughly. Much more pleasing numbers to my eye.
Now, all that is very negative, but there is only one reason for it: this is not a game, but a scenario. The text suffers from the designer's choice to focus on providing a rules system when he could have just pointed at some rules set (CoC, say) and focused on providing the ideas and procedures for running the interesting and atmospheric campaign buried in the GMing chapter. The campaign about a lonely lighthouse and its keeper who encounters strange visitations, learning about the history of the land and the fates of the people while trying to follow his own, lonely work - it's certainly alluring, pretty reminiscent of some of my favourite authors. All this is just brushed against by the text, however, so I can't say that the work would have really been done here to provide functional tools for actually substantiating the vision in play. -
THE CITY BURNS AT MIDNIGHT
JASON
+ I love the idea of the structured exploration of a city. I love the use of photographs and the language prohibitions. I'm happy there are alternate versions. I'm glad it isn't an overused theme.
- The whole terrorist angle seems puerile and pasted on. It barely uses the ingredients. The gamey parts don't add anything to the experience. It's immersive by fiat or it isn't immersive at all, I can't tell.
GRAHAM
OK, so, this is a concept game. Games like this are one of the things I like about Game Chef-style competitions. It blurs the line between RPGs and ARGs.
There's little I can criticize here. You go out in a city, you have a great day, you report back and discuss the day. There are nice touches: the idea that written documents could say anything; the fact you can lie about your day.
I wonder how this works with regards to immersion? You spend a day on the streets of the city, but you wouldn't really pretend to be your agent all day, would you? You'd go to some fascinating places and that'd be interesting, but I wonder whether it's actually immersive. Perhaps it makes no sense to discuss immersion with this sort of game.
Oh, yes, here's something I can criticize. I'm not sure the payoff at the end of the day would be fun. We'd have a great day in the city, we'd watch the Flower Market setting up, watch fish being unloaded*, have breakfast with champagne, go to Kew Gardens, travel around, have the best lunch we could find, drink coffee, sit in the sun, drink in a pub, watch the commuters at the station and then we'd go to someone's house and play a roleplaying game? Fuck that. I'd want to go to a restaurant. And I'd want to talk about my day, but without thinking that someone might be lying to me.
So, yes. I do like this. I have little feedback on it, but I like it. Would I play it? Perhaps. The problem is, I think I'd skip the actual game, and just continue having a great day.
* This is seriously my idea of a good day.
EERO
This is a game about travelling in a city and keeping your eyes open. You take photographs of things and then go home to tell your friends about your day. This is a fine endeavour which I fully support. However, there is one critical flaw here, philosophically speaking: why would I play this game instead of doing the thing itself for its own sake? I find it worrysome that somebody would find it a good idea to distance himself from reality in this way - isn't the world worth enjoying with your friends without imagining that you're going to destroy it all tomorrow? What does the fiction bring to the exercise? Don't you encounter interesting people and strange little stories during your day without having to lie about it?
A counter-argument would posit that the roleplaying techniques allow you to see the environment around you in new ways, but I'm not convinced; it seems like a morbid and artificial way of relating to the world around you and not something I'd recommend to people. If you have trouble relating to your city, you need to shake yourself out of it and see the values all around you instead of structuring complex imaginary structures for reinventing your relationship. Live in the world rather than your imagination, I say.
So while I don't find this game very good philosophically, the values it rides on are real and existing. Make a website about this hobby of... storyspotting or whatever it would be called, and I'd find it pretty positive. Sort of like geocaching for social people.
Incidentally: if you disagree with me on the philosophical point and find it a good idea to forgo experiencing the world as yourself, then you should know that I find this game pretty good aside from the philosophical point. It is clear about its purpose, not too verbose and reminds me of the sort of pamphlet you might distribute to people on the street. There are no obviously striking mechanics that I'd add, unless I wanted to justify the exercise as a game: in the latter case I'd probably go for some sort of scoring at the end and perhaps an argument about whether we're really going to firebomb this city. Could even go with some sort of "twelve good men scenario" and give the players missions at the start: we'll firebomb the city if you can't demonstrate thing X, where X is something positive about the city. -
PEGAPOCALYPSE
JASON
+ It's sort of mocking the whole contest and the indie scene more broadly, so I support that. It's funny and simple and playable.
- There's not a shred of immersion here, unless you get all LARPy and ridiculous on top of the already ridiculous premise. Which you probably should, right?
GRAHAM
This game is really minimal and I like that. The only thing on the table is a d4: perfect.
That d4 is used pretty well, too. Like InSpectres, if you roll 2 or 3, you basically get what you want but someone else adds something bad. That's neat. I'm less sure about dying whenever you roll a 1.
The tone is quirky and comic, which I'm less keen on. I like quirky, but my experience is that "funny" games aren't always interesting to play. The thing about pancakes, for example, isn't that funny and wouldn't be funny in play.
But it does look playable. And the setting would work, too, once you get away from the instant comedy of it. Modified rapture, then.
EERO
I like a funnily written joke game, no problem. Ideally the game should be fun to play as well - this one is 50% there, but I suspect the designer is not trying for that seriously, so no reason for us to worry about it. As it is, the text is a bit all over the place, sparse on focus and doesn't really come together as a game. -
MIDNIGHT PROJECT
JASON
+ Using Wikipedia is a nice touch. Science gone wrong is evergreen.
- This is difficult to parse procedurally. Immersion does not seem likely. The use of ingredients is tenuous at best. I don't really understand how to play.
GRAHAM
This game got my attention straight away: I have a Physics degree and love the diagram. The central conceit, of a project going wrong, is great.
Beyond that, I'm afraid I don't understand how to play, exactly. The use of random Wikipedia entries might present difficulties: trying this now, I get an article on Ewald Nowotny, an Austrian economist, which wouldn't be a very inspiring subject for a scene.
EERO
The game's incomplete. For a second I hoped that the players would play their cards to partially cover each other, which would have been potentially mechanically interesting, but this goes nowhere.
I might also note that I'm not too fond of these super-abstract, vague game elements. There are other games in this competition like that, but this one manages to be vague in Color, Setting, Situation and Character all at once. There is also a notable lack of creative agenda in this: the best I can perceive, the players are tasked with motivating themselves to care about the manipulation of the Ash. Certainly there is no character with internal motivation here. -
ATLANTIS
JASON
+ Something that feels immersive! Who would have figured?
- Not really my cup of tea, predictable use of Midnight. Rules are sort of unclear.
GRAHAM
I like this game a lot. Many games in this competition seem to be either immersive or a roleplaying game: this one straddles both neatly.
So, it's about Atlantis. I love this: it's a perfect setting. I feel, though, that I need to know what Atlantis is like: I'd like either some brief flavour text, similar to Polaris, or a phase of play where everyone describes Atlantis. But it's a great setting.
I have trouble with the text. For example, I read that "the phase is failed", but then I need to look later to find out what happens. Then I need to go back, to find out the phase that happens next. Reorganising the text would really help. I'd have loved to see this game on two sides of a single sheet of paper.
Those are minor grumbles, though, because it's essentially an interesting game that plays with immersion nicely.
EERO
The text uses the term "phase" for two different sorts of procedure, which makes it slightly difficult to read. The fiction of the game is not very evocative. The major part of content is an oracular engine that limits whose turn it is to speak. There is some edge to the fact that the order of scenes and who gets them is randomized to some degree, threatening opportunities at protagonism. Still, this is essentially parlor narration, you have to care about telling stories under arbitrary constraint to like this.
I think that the basic mechanic is pretty interesting, though. The designer will have to decide whether he's happy with the game as is, or will he try to insert some goals to structure and provide purpose to the exercise. I've noticed that many people seem to be quite happy with this sort of simple oracular engines, so perhaps it's OK as is -
Thank you to the judges for one of the nicest and best received GC entries I have done so far. I appreciate the time reading your responses and I am grateful for the feedback.
In short I can fully appreciate the responses. I did punch it out in 2 days I think it was. In the first threads I read CoC as immersible, I went with my more poetic style of writing damned the consequences, and just started writing.
I was going to go with a stripped down d20 being the Trad sort I am, then the Burn for the drive came to mind, just a few things to give character definition and away I went.
More direct responses below.Posted By: GrahamTHE SHORE
JASON
+ This has a lot of immersive potential. I like the open-endedness here. I like the constrained setting fixed on location.
- I'm not sold on this as a playable game. I'm not sure why you'd bother to use the rules included if you did.
***Thank you very much Jason. I too like my setting better than the rules, but I am more setting than rules writing oriented so I fall down in these competitions that way. By the end of writing it any constrained setting would work with the idea I hope. Any suggestions you might make to make it more immersive, just curious if you have time, if not all good, this is a hectic fast paced competition. Again thanks. ***
GRAHAM
This is, hands down, my favourite of the more traditional roleplaying games in this competition.
I love the setting. I seriously love the setting. It's a perfect creepy horror setting, Call of Cthulhu-style. I like the flavour text, which is unusual for me (I generally don't like flavour text). And the additional ideas dotted throughout the text are good: a long-drowned girl crawling out of the ocean, looking for answers? Perfect.
Is it immersive? If it is, it's immersive in that Call of Cthulhu way, where the setting and mood is sort of hypnotic. I can certainly imagine playing an immersive game of The Shore with my group.
After all that praise, let me say this straight out: the mechanics are a total let-down. Rolling under a difficulty number chosen by the GM? Man. I would totally love this game if it had some mechanics that supported what it's trying to do. Even Call of Cthulhu had its SAN mechanic and this game really, really needs something like that. But not just an added mechanic: I'd like to see a rewrite of the mechanics to support the horrific setting.
I have such mixed feelings about this game: love the setting, hate the mechanics. I'd play in the setting, but we might switch to Trail of Cthulhu's mechanics instead.
***Graham, thanks for the praise, I appreciate it. I do not know Trail of Cthulhu mechanics, might have to investigate that due to your comments. I think I would work with another rule set, not sure what, to bring this setting idea to life. If you do play with your group I would love to hear how it goes. I am not wedded to rulesets (Other than Hero for Superheros) so if you had an idea for another ruleset and post it to me I would love that. Hmmm, as I sit here maybe a DRYH, one idea I just had typing this. Again thanks.***
EERO
This game's not very interesting. I liked the idea that a player character is separated by his willingness to forgo urban life and live in solitude, but that isn't taken anywhere. I also like the witching hour bonus, but it's flimsy and really a sort of a let-down if you go to the trouble of procuring it. I like the setting, but its minimalism would be better served by solid rules. The system is clumsy: the same probabilities could be gained by a roll-under system against ability+modifier. The current zero ability would be at 8 with higher abilities being better. Difficulty would be a negative modifier between 0-5, roughly. Much more pleasing numbers to my eye.
Now, all that is very negative, but there is only one reason for it: this is not a game, but a scenario. The text suffers from the designer's choice to focus on providing a rules system when he could have just pointed at some rules set (CoC, say) and focused on providing the ideas and procedures for running the interesting and atmospheric campaign buried in the GMing chapter. The campaign about a lonely lighthouse and its keeper who encounters strange visitations, learning about the history of the land and the fates of the people while trying to follow his own, lonely work - it's certainly alluring, pretty reminiscent of some of my favourite authors. All this is just brushed against by the text, however, so I can't say that the work would have really been done here to provide functional tools for actually substantiating the vision in play.
***Eero, excellent feedback, as I read that a second time I could see where you are coming from, and damn I think you are right, I could run with it as a stand alone scenario or chain instead of my shoehorned invented on the spot rules.
I am a roll under a skill level preference sort of guy and as I was writing it all just came out. Not enough obviously but still it came out. That said it is nice to have good and bad with a review and feedback, gives me something to work with. Again thank you, you give me some good things to think about and that is golden.***
In light of what Eero said, about mine as a scenario, might we do a write and adventure ala DRB Iron DM Competition, since the ones over here are so rule set based. It might be to my personal advantage.
Again thanks to you three for running, reading, feedbacking. I appreciate it.
Tad -
- CommentAuthorwhiteknife
- CommentTimeApr 4th 2009 edited
Well, thanks for the comments on Pegapocalypse guys! It was a lot of fun to write, and I'm glad you all (sort of) liked it, at least in some way. I basically consider it a success, as far as something like that can go, anyways. Obviously it wasn't entirely serious (or at all serious, really) but hey- not all games can be deep explorations of your character's emotions and motivations.
Also, I do intend to play it. I'll let you know how that goes. He he he... -
Well I am very happy for the positive reviews of my atlantis. I know it has some language issues (the two uses of the word phase for example ) and the layout is a bit clunky ( I choose to have very separate sections where you would have to read the whole thing once in order to understand everything, and then everything is laid out well for refence or at least that's what i was going for.
As for the fiction, well I tried to put no fiction in the text, so im not sure if I was unclear about game elements or what.
That said I'v noticed the judges seeming disdain for what has been labeled, "Parlor Narration" games and their lack of bigger something. Is it because my game doesn't have a win condition to strive for (although survival is something like that and probably good enough for most people) or something else I did?
So Short Story> Why do people hate parlor narration? Perhaps a fork is in order. -
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CommentAuthorEero Tuovinen
- CommentTimeApr 4th 2009
I'm probably the right person to open up that parlor narration thing, because I'm clearly the most biased against it of the judges here. I didn't use the words in very many of the critiques, but it's between the lines in many.
"Parlor narration" is a game with an agenda that amounts to oracular storytelling: the practical method the players use in playing the game is to be concerned over and strive for the best possible story according to their narrative understanding. This is a sort of technical agenda issue in a game: many roleplayers don't like parlor narration because it offers us an opportunity to create story in the same way writers do it, except that you have to mess about with the other players and the obstacle course of the rules. Compare this to how established narrativist games tend to work: players have no onus to be concerned and responsible for the story, as they only have to take care of their character and advocate for his interests; the story is created by the process of play itself, not by a self-censoring, creativity-draining process of invention. The driving concerns of the player are very different moment-to-moment in the game.
The tricky part about flinging around the term "parlor narration" is that while it's enough of an indictment for a certain fraction of gamers (I for instance have little interest in those games), it seems to me that some folks genuinely like it and are interested in developing it. In this competition alone a third of the games were essentially parlor narration exercises. So we have the difficulty of perceiving when a designer has created a parlor narration game accidentally and when that is in fact what they are trying to do. I have nothing against people wanting to make these games, and more power to them if they in fact are happy with what they are accomplishing after we point it out that the game is putting the onus of story creation on the players. -
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MIDNIGHT H
JASON
+ Looks great. Ambitious and horizon-expanding. One of the few games that directly challenges immersion as a concept - much appreciated.
- One of seven games with "midnight" in the title. I think this game fails to use ingredients properly - I see only two, am I missing one? This reads like it's going to be an exercise in parlor narration with some live action tricks on top, which is not good. Will benefit from a post-contest fleshing-out.
GRAHAM
OK, it's a strange poetry-cum-storytelling game. I like that. I like lots of things, actually, especially the reading of cut-out pieces of text as a poem. I like the regimented use of the senses.
The text is difficult to read: for example, when I read that a burn could happen only "once per turn" it took me a minute of scanning the rules to work out what a turn was.
I'm unsure why one would burn a cutout. To stop a sense being described or a person taking their turn at describing: but why would I do that? What difference would it make?
It's almost certainly immersive, in some sense, with the dadaesque poetry and description of the senses.
Interesting stuff. I'm not burning to play, but I'm glad I read it.
EERO
Not very interesting from the viewpoint of play. The senses might at first glance seem like a pleasing classification of narration constraints, but they're an essentially arbitrary categorization of input - the categories might be anything else as well, and they wouldn't help support quality narration any better. The cutting and rearranging of texts is a fine oracular tool, but it's not coupled to any concrete player goals; you're just supposed to grasp at the first vaguely sensible meaning you see in the oracle, rather than build towards something. The burn effects are aimless and boring - the game would have to develop an astounding amount of internal tension before switching the seating order at the table would have any meaning, and I just don't see any mechanics that would encourage such tension; the players have no goals and nothing to advocate for in the game, so it basically doesn't matter what happens in it. -
MIDNIGHT RAID
JASON
+ A tightly constrained setting with built-in tension. Solid use of ingredients.
- Immersion tokens, a level of complexity that seems out of step with the focused narrative.
GRAHAM
It's a game like Mafia/Werewolf, where you play your character, but it's pretty focussed on finding out who the ringer is. Cool. I like that.
In fact, this is a perfectly good way to approach immersion. Games like Werewolf are certainly immersive, in the sense that you're playing your character, and focussed, very very intently, on the game. With that in mind, you don't need the "Immersion Tokens", which felt rather tacked on anyway. Also, if I'm going to be immersed in a character, do I really want to be playing a heroin addict? I'd much prefer to be a Mafia member or villager.
The game looks somewhat fun, but rather complicated. There's so much there - "Immersion" tokens, withdrawal levels, extra rules - and it doesn't all feel necessary.
I'd happily play a stripped-down version of this. Having said that, the stripped-down version might well be Werewolf. But I do like the thought behind this game and what it's trying to do.
EERO
I like the character creation, it's to the point and provides food for thought. The immersion tokens are just weaseling, nothing to do with immersion; the very premise of "what is good immersion" is ridiculous when turned into a reward mechanic - how can you reward an internal state, or are you supposed to join the weaseling and pretend that the word means something like "good play"? The game suffers from a weak fiction - it'd be more interesting if the scope were expanded to be about life in the hood in general, with days and weeks passing. Now there's little interest in the SIS, everything is in the mechanics.
The immersion aspect comes in the form of set-piece character acting: the players act withdrawal, support, arguments and such. Nothing in the rules encourages this, though, they just tell you to do it. There is nothing in the game that the fiction can influence, either, apart from what Werewolf has - the players can talk shit and hope to confuse the others. -
ERZULIE GA ROUGE
JASON
+ I like the way "horse", in connection with Voudoun, shaped this game. The setting elements are interesting and solid.
- Wow, that is a super irritating font. You almost lost me at four chessboards and "Gravedigger". Oh God, the chess pieces have different special powers unrelated to chess. Procedurally complex board game with RP elements overlaid - that's not necessarily a bad thing if it works, but I am skeptical that it will. It's certainly going to require a lot of concentration. It feels like parlor narration.
GRAHAM
Aaaagh, tiny text! The font size nearly made me give up on this one. The text could have been edited down quite a bit: I'd prefer to lose phrases like "This game assumes you are familiar with the conventions of role-playing games" than have small text.
I like the use of chessboards, here, and I like the idea of a boardgamey roleplaying game. There's the possibility of something 3:16-like: a roleplaying game that feels like a boardgame, but where the character interaction doesn't feel tacked on.
My difficulty is that the vignettes do feel slightly tacked on. Were I playing, I think I'd almost want to skip the vignette and get to the die roll. Also, considering it's a competitive game, there'd be the temptation to game the vignette for maximum chance of winning: for example, if a Dark Soul was one move away from the Asagwe Altar, then damn right I'd make sure my vignette had joy in it, to give me an extra point.
I'm also not quite seeing immersion.
So I really like the basic idea, and the setting, but the integration of roleplay into the board game isn't quite working for me.
EERO
Awfully difficult to read, agreed. Intended to be printed and folded. The game itself suffers from a weak fiction and too weak feedback loops from the fiction to mechanics: overall I foresee the boardgame being more interesting than the vague fiction. The horses are interesting (if I understand correctly that they are worshippers in the ceremony) as an idea, but as with the other elements, it's not really taken anywhere.
The dynamite part of the game is how players create human fates at the start and then preserve framing rights for those lives through the game; usually in this sort of game you'd give the framing right to the player who currently plays the character, but here the authorial intent is preserved; whatever you think is the interesting story this character has, you get to frame it and ensure that the other player plays through it. Essentially the players get to explore their characters through play. This makes the character creation interesting, as you can very directly create the characters in the life situations that interest you, and then deliver those situations for the others to play with the unstated question of how they'd resolve those life conundrums.
The game needs more powerful connections between the present and the past, more connections between the metaphor of voodoo ritual and the mechanics, and more direct means for the players to discover their own characters and what makes them tick. The strategy game element is not supportive of the latter, really. I wouldn't look at it astray if the game tried to move towards a payoff where the player himself, after having discovered his characters nature through the vignettes, makes the call on whether the character deserves a happy end. And it wouldn't hurt if the multi-level narrative were embedded in a more enabling context with more opportunities; the dual win/loss condition doesn't compare favorably with something like My Life with Master, which manages a similar mechanic with an interesting amount of narrative space for the players to live in. -
QUALIA
JASON
+ I'm so happy someone made a clear and unambiguous interpretation of immersion, and built on that. This game is luminously clear in its origins, motivations, procedures, and expected outcomes. Ingredients are laid out and used thoughtfully. Where it is unclear, it carefully explains why - either by design or by limitation. I love that. It's obviously playable and would be an interesting experience.
- It reads as pedantic, which may be a language issue. I'm not sure why it focuses on a GM/facilitator, or why that role is even necessary. I'm also not sure this would be intriguing or fruitful in play, as much as it would be relaxing.
GRAHAM
Guided visualisation as a roleplaying game. It's clever, this, and there are nice touches, such as the use of leading questions to get the players to fill in details ("outsourcing"). Personally, I'd like to see much more emphasis on this.
Rather GM-centric: I'd prefer that the GM asked leading questions to develop characters, rather than giving them directly.
It looks very, very immersive, and that's the point of the game.
It's clearly not finished, as the author says, but it's something I'd be interested in playing. It's on the playlist.
EERO
Big points for taking the immersion challenge seriously. Most of these games just try to be interesting games and hope that immersion comes on the side; I give props to any that try to specifically go for the big I itself directly and with intent. The games that had a clear agenda and theory of immersion were few and far between in the competition, so this one really shines.
The designer is honest - this is not yet finished. Even unfinished, however, I think that this is more honest and direct than most other texts I've read in the Nordic tradition. Doesn't annoy me nearly as much as some. There is a big fat hole in the game in the form of a question: why should one be interested in the experience of playing this? An issue of method is how the game text shifts into the objectifying GM-led mode in the middle; I'd have much preferred it if the author had written from the player's viewpoint, like he does at the beginning. I also think that this sort of game needs to have some structure and goals, even if they are not plot-like. A sense of accomplishment at the least would have to be provided in the form of external measure for me to be interested in this sort of thing as more than a curiousity. Towards what that accomplishment should be directed... that's the task of the designer to sus out. I could imagine writing a game with these techniques for the purpose of learning about some specific culture, for example. Probably would make some incredibly offensive game about immersing into Islam or something, now that I think of it. -
The judges' comments on Qualia were really interesting to me. Here's why.
In the process of writing my game (which, to make it clear, was not Qualia), I kept catching myself implementing immersive techniques in order to fulfill that requirement in the game. When I considered why I included those techniques in light of player agendas, I frequently questioned why including them would add to the quality of the game at all. What I kept coming back to was: Immersion is itself a player reward. I have known many players who claim their greatest enjoyment is derived from "being the character", and those players have been known to greatly enjoy sessions I personally thought were complete trash from a story-quality standpoint.
I did finally come up with some answers other than "immersion = fun" for my game, but notwithstanding - to me it sounds like Jason's and Eero's comments above read like:- Awesome, a game that's really, truly immersive! Bonus points!
- Why would anyway want to play this? I mean, what's the point?
Notably, Graham - who, as I understand it, place more value on immersion as a gameplay technique than either Jason or Eero - is willing to play, and doesn't question the game's fun level.
Am I on to something here? -
Thanks, Jason, Graham and Eero, for the feedback on Qualia. Wonderful stuff, and I'm very glad the comments are so positive!
Qualia is, in a way, an essay in game form, an attempt to pinpoint what immersion is, or what it means to me; like catching a rare, elusive bird. As such, it's been a very valuable experience writing it. But that might also be the reason for what comes across as pedantry: Thinking carefully about things like abstract concepts can lead to an over-emphasis on Finding the Correct Phrase (at least for me). I wanted to make sure I was as precise as I could be, given the limited time etc. So perhaps I went into "programmer mode" when writing, I don't know. Like catching the bird, then dissecting it.
It's interesting that language has been mentioned both here and in the comments over at the feedback forum. I actually started writing it in an entirely different tone, an attempt at using the language itself as a tool to draw the reader in. However, I wasn't sure I could pull that off when I hadn't (at the time) figured out exactly what I wanted to say, so I rewrote it in the current style. Next time, maybe.
I'm not sure, myself, why I think it needs a GM. I feel it does, but I couldn't tell you why. Perhaps to provide a safe link to the waking world? Some guidance in case we/the players get lost?
It's definitely meant to be a fairly relaxing experience - it's all about being there, not about doing stuff, really. -
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CommentAuthorEero Tuovinen
- CommentTimeApr 4th 2009
I think you're at least partially right, Michael. I'd sort of hoped to see some really sharp efforts at a reimagined immersion here, but the two basic definitions of the phenomenon/technique/goal seem to be the ones that we saw here: either immersion is a flow experience that roughly equals to "is entertaining", or it's a specific state of the mind wherein you experience phantasm emotions. While I find the latter utterly boring myself (akin to staring at a lightbulb until I start seeing floating shapes, insofar as profound experiences go), it's a valid and recognized idea. Qualia does a great job of expressing and implementing this approach, which makes it worthy of points whether I care for it personally or not.
Still, although the other sort of games largely failed in making their case in a clear and compelling manner, the other view on immersion is clearly just as prevalent - no reason to say that immersion is exclusively a rewarding mental experience when many have chosen to interpret it as a technical term for concentrating real hard. It's a great shame that the games that chose this viewpoint largely didn't try anything more revolutionary than making a good game as their tools in striving for the goal. -
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Michael, that's interesting. I'm not sure.
Incidentally, I think Jason and I both have some time for immersion as a technique. Eero's the true sceptic.
I don't really agree with Eero's breakdown of the ways people defined immersion. For me, the techniques to promote immersion that I noticed were:- Get people to act as their character. Often, this led to LARP, or conversations in character.
- Use some form of guided visualisation. .
- Get people to immerse by focussing on the rules.
- Use an eerie, hypnotic or supernatural setting.
- Use trance-like things (most notably setting fire to the character sheet in Sea Worshippers)
I've got opinions on which of these were more successful, but I'll keep those to myself for the moment. I did conclude that focussing on the fiction, in some way, was essential: it's about being immersed in a fictional world, not just focussing on something.
So, more feedback, I think.
Graham -
MIDNIGHT WARRIORS
GRAHAM
I like the religious setting for this game. My problem is that, beyond that setting, the mechanics are pretty much a standard fighting RPG, complete with initiative and hit points.
I'd like something in the mechanics to get me excited. Really, I'm not quite sure what this game's about. If it's about religion, I'd like something in the mechanics to make it about religion. At the moment, it's just fighty, which isn't my sort of thing.
EERO
This is not a very serious effort. Perhaps the designer just didn't get his idea on paper very well. The only interesting bit in this game is that the players can, if they manage to play the game long enough, start locking their abilities as part of the ritual to win. Shame the rules actually do nothing particular with the abilities, so this goes nowhere. -
SEA WORSHIPPERS
JASON
+ Fire, people. Non-Luke-Crane-style burning and screaming. My interest is piqued. I love player skill as a component of play.
- Ironically perhaps I don't see this as at all immersive. Also the end stakes are pretty low for a one-shot deal. One in seven dies? Big deal, I'll roll those dice.
GRAHAM
There are various things I like here. The game acts as a framework for challenges between players but, if you lose, you get to bring in your character traits. I like that.
There's lots going on: you challenge other players, you whisper deep dark secrets, you burn the character sheet. Whispering the secrets seems rather out of place: having screamed "I am not worthy!" at the top of my lungs, it's quite a jump to reveal something personal: "By the way, I'm afraid I slept with one of your cats in a drunken moment"*.
Since the game is about challenges between players, there's little happening in the fiction. So, although there's a sense of investment in the game, there's little sense of being immersed in a fictional world or a character.
It's interesting. The secrets put me off playing. I like the player-on-player challenges, though.
* Jason: It was once and it meant nothing and I think she was a better cat for it.
EERO
The character generation lacks a "gut" part for some reason, so the characters don't have any appetites. This sort of reflects my main complaint, which is that the real-life part of the game steals the show and makes the fiction rather irrelevant. I have difficulty imagining how I'd play this game and care about the fiction while strategizing in the competition - the situation and setting are threadbare, it seems to me that the fiction is there just to allow the guy to participate in this competition. Or perhaps it's a LARP and the enjoyment is supposed to come from funny accents or something. -
WE DIE AT MIDNIGHT
JASON
+ OK, this is awesome. I love the use of email as a way to facilitate play; I love the ephemerality, the fact that this enables play for people who otherwise couldn't. I really like this game!
- The game needs more of a kick in the pants, something to facilitate and direct that first set of interactons. Ingredients are pasted on. Immersion is dubious.
GRAHAM
I really like this and I've got almost no useful criticism on it.
So it's played by email, in the course of one night. The emails are written in character. I like this very much. What's more, the tone of the game sounds interesting: it sounds as though those emails will be full of spooky, mysterious things, not just introspection.
I like the guidance around the emails: a message of thanks, a secret. I particularly like the way that some emails refer to other emails: especially the public email that must tangentially refer to a private email. That's nice.
What's missing? One doubt I have is that I have no starting point, nothing to fire the imagination. If I knew we were, I don't know, secret agents, I'd have a starting point. Or libertines in Renaissance Italy. Instead, we're just by the sea, writing emails, and that's not really inspiring me. (I'd actually prefer some way that the emails become letters. Letters are so much more interesting and carry some neat period detail. Perhaps that's just me. I'd also like the characters to be able to survive at the end: why so tragic?)
As for immersion: sure, writing letters in character is a way to approach that.
Email games aren't really in my experience, but it looks playable. I imagine it'd go through much playtesting and tweaking before firing on all cylinders, but, basically, yes, it's something I'd want to play. I'm not totally fired up about this game, but I'm intrigued, and it's on the playlist.
EERO
Another oracular game that mostly tells you when it's your turn to create. The content is too flimsy and inflexible as it is, but perhaps something of this sort could be created successfully; a constructive thought is that if the players could construct their own set of letter-writing rules dynamically out of building blocks, then this might go somewhere. Perhaps this'd happen in a session before play, perhaps during it; I could see some web application reminiscent of recent Final Fantasy character advancement systems, used by the players through the game to open permission for new letters and set requirements and limitations on the letters the other players write. No idea if the designer is interested in this sort of thing, seems from the text that he's basically happy to write elaborate madlibs. -
PARABOLA
JASON
+ Ambitious, sort of mind-expanding in scope, I really, really like that. The map of London and concentration angle is a really solid element I totally appreciate.
- Ingredient use is sort of weak here. I have serious doubts that it is ultimately playable as written. That's not a harsh indictment for a week's work.
GRAHAM
There are some very good things going on here. I like the map, I like the game of Concentration, I like the depth of research behind this. The list of agencies, in particular, is golden.
The use of Concentration to find the impact location of the rockets is neat. My worry is that the narration is too constrained: on a miss, you describe where a rocket hits; on a hit, something happens to a character. It's lots of small, discrete steps: but the characters are fascinating and, really, I'd just like to roleplay them for a while.
t's lots of small, discrete steps: but the characters are fascinating and, really, I'd just like to roleplay them for a while.
The different stages mean we keep changing characters. That's less appealing: just when we've got used to one character, we're suddenly rocketmen. I would really prefer to stick to one game and one set of characters. The setting is so superb that I want to explore it at leisure, for a while, rather than rushing from stage to stage.
Is the game immersive? It would certainly focus you on the game of Concentration. But that actually feels anti-immersive, a distraction from the fiction.
All in all, I do like this game: don't let the criticism above convince you otherwise. There are lots of things going on, and I'd happily play any of them, but not all in one game. The setting and concept are golden and I do hope they get developed into a game: if they do, however, I have a feeling that Concentration would be the first thing to go.
EERO
Very narrow, a translation of the novel into a game. Most of the game consists of oracular narration based on mechanical constraints, not much character advocacy here. This sort of tight structure easily becomes more trouble than it's worth. In the stead of the designer I'd consider seriously how focusing the game, removing constraint and allowing the players a say in the overall content might benefit creativity. -
ARCHIPELAGO IN THE MIDNIGHT SEA
GRAHAM
The setting's good and it's one I'd like to play in. Colonialism, galleons, islands, tribes. Great. There's loads I could do with that.
Mechanically, I like the idea of getting the players to create their own situations (essentially, player-created Bangs) and Nouns. Nouns are really good, in fact. The core mechanics don't really set me on fire: it's a variation on Physical, Mental and Social traits, and there's so much more you could do with those Fudge dice.
I think the mechanics would work, in the sense I could sit down and run a game and it wouldn't break. But I'm not sure what the game's about or how the mechanics support it. Is it, for example, about Passion? If so, I'd like to see more mechanical role for the Passions.
I'm not particularly seeing immersion here. There's the thing that the players should enact their Passion at the table, but the Passions seem mainly like goals (e.g. "to find the lost treasure of the Ancients"), and don't really feed into the mechanics.
Overall, it's a neat setting. The mechanics look broadly workable, but slightly generic, and I'd like to see them tightened to support what the game's about.
EERO
The rules are wonky in places, I'm not completely satisfied that the designer understands the Fudge dice bell curve. (Or I don't understand the rules, either way.) As it is, damage primarily does not make characters worse at things, but rather makes them more reliable in reaching their mean result. Similarly the mechanic for extra conflict rounds seems chaotic, I'm not sure it does what the designer thinks it does.
The designer explains the game in the final notes, saying that the purpose is a flow experience. As far as I can see the game doesn't address the crucial GMing challenge, however: it's easy to make mechanics that allow players to play solely from the character's viewpoint, but leaving the GM with minimal tools in that situation means that it's all up to his natural talent and techniques picked up from other games to make up the slack.
The setting is thin and relatively disinteresting. The character and situation creation is usable if relatively uninspired, although I like how the players compile Nouns for the GM to use. -
THE FLOOD
JASON
+ Great immersive potential. Unique and engaging set-up. Wonderful ideas.
- Fiddly mechanics that my impulse would be to dump in play. If you're having a party, have a party and support that.
GRAHAM
There are some really great things in this game. To me, it's a British-style LARP, where each character has goals and you try to achieve them. The goals are fun, too: sleep with X, break up with X. It's really neat stuff. I'd enjoy it.
I love the idea of playing myself, but the idea of playing myself in the future doesn't appeal. I mean, what am I going to do? I'm an actor now, so do I become a holovid actor or something? By contrast, the idea of playing myself in the past would be fantastic. For example, set this game in 1899, with me playing my 19th century self, and I'd love it.
The text is clear but the design is confusing me. When I read about State cards, for example, I need to flip to the other side of the sheet to find out when people put them on, then back to the other side, and then I need to find Offenses and Defenses. I gave up, after a while, although I think I've got the gist of the mechanics.
The mechanics themselves are rather complex. I'd like to see them stripped back: Goals are great, but Physical, Social and Mental could go and nobody would miss them.
As for immersion: playing yourself is a really good way to approach immersion, especially in a LARP format. Playing myself in the future, as I mentioned above, doesn't appeal.
Overall, it's pretty neat. Would I play? Maybe, but I'd like some tightening of the mechanics, and a different setting, first.
EERO
Pretty good for a larp. Clear goals and methods for grasping the system and playing the game. The character creation is good, I like the simplicity and the opportunity to let imagination fly with the opportunities of the future. The purpose of the game is essentially to provide the players with little missions of interaction/exposition, which they then need to tie into a somewhat coherent series of vignettes with the other players. This is pretty unique in a larp, usually they're just about interpreting character while surreptiously wrangling to achieve something. I could imagine having fun playing this, which is not true of most larps.
The rules are still a bit rough, they can be streamlined and made easier to understand. I am positive that this might become a quite unique thing with work, I encourage the designer to engage in further brainstorming and development. Settingwise, I don't know what people see in these existentialist fantasy apocalypses. That part is doing little for me, except to encourage me to play a most apathetic character (which, interestingly enough, is up to luck to some degree). The game will benefit from lifting the contest constraints, at which point the designer can get a license for The Dancers at the End of Time and do ennui with style. -
I should have expected what I got from my entry, Erzulie Ga Rouge. I had some great ideas of working with layers upon layers, with the deepest layer being the characters immersed in their horses, another layer having the character immersed from their current life into past-life vignettes, layers of intrigue between the players voting for the next king/queen, immersive ritualism of the game board. I think it just lost a bit of focus.
I tried to cram in what I could, and make it the kind of game that you could simply give to someone with a bit of traditional gaming experience. Combine this with my desire to do it in under two pages...I should have just left it as a larger entry.
I'm reworking it now as 2 double sided A4 pages, pushing font size up from an 8pt small font, to a more legible font at 10-11pt. A few more actual play examples through the text, and some better connection between vignettes and the remainder of the game.
I'm glad Eero like the retention of authorial ownership in the characters, that was something that struck me when I came up with it...I thought hey, that's cool. It also gives more players a chance to get involved in a vignette when one occurs.
Now that I'm reworking the concept, I'll be adding back in a couple of things that I stripped out for space. A mechanism allowing players to fight one another through vignettes, a decent play example exploring how vignettes should be set up and resolved, and explore a better reward mechanism for players who really get into the spirit of things (no pun intended) when dealing with their life's issues in the vignettes. Perhaps allowing them a better chance of bringing joy into future scenes, or a chance of overcoming regret in a future scene.
But as everyone has pointed out; on a scale of 1 to 10, the game will instantly pick up a point or two simply by laying it out in a more readable font. It'll give me another excuse to develop some more voodoo pictures too.
Thanks for the feedback. Thanks for the contest. -
With respect to Michael's post, above, I do think that immersions (I use the plural, as there is no consensus on what immersion is) are their own reward. Just like, to me, the system tuning of Capes is interesting as an artifact, but mostly weird and seemingly pointless in play, I imagine my preferred immersive modes are not for everyone. So "I don't understand why anyone would play this game" is not something I read as criticism of a game, but a statement of the critic's/judge's preferred style of play.
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And Graham, thanks for running this contest! It seems to have spawned some thinking and debate about the concept and techniques of immersion, which is good. I
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MARE CASPIUM
JASON
+ This looks and feels cool. I'm a big fan of structured freeform. Complications are boss.
- Who the what the? King who and the wind-horse what? TMI, dude, this stuff does not need to be set in stone. I love structure and constraint but in this game it feels like the wrong balance has been struck. The irony there is that if you take out all the color you might as well be playing IAWA, pretty much.
GRAHAM
This looks pretty good. There are many things I like here: especially having complications instead of conflicts. I like the lists of pre-written complications, too. And the map, each bit of which is a distinct location.
I have some trouble reading the text. The first column I find very dense ("The wind-horse Tulpar was a scion of the sky-god Tengri, given to the Turki kings"), and I find I keep pausing ("Wait, who's Bulan? Was he mentioned before? Oh, yes, the King") and skipping ahead. It gets easier as we head into the rules.
As I mentioned, I like the idea of complications, but none of the Chapter One ones excite me greatly. Considering it's an escape story, I'm not instantly excited by the complications: "King Voshmgeer seeks imprisonment...", "The common people...oppose Voshmgeer". I guess I want the wording of those complications to galvanise me into action, or spark my imagination: the example of the stablehand does excite me, but I wouldn't have invented that myself, having seen the complication. I'm substantially more excited by the complications of the Taleshi Underworld: we get to use The White Banner Society and its crimelord, Greyback, three times, and that's instantly sparking my imagination.
I'm not sure where immersion comes in: perhaps in the minimal rules and fairy-tale setting.
Overall, this looks like a playable game, which I'd probably enjoy. I'm hesitating, slightly, because although I think I'd enjoy it, I'm not excited by it. This is completely subjective, of course, and perhaps related to the setting, which isn't my sort of thing. All in all, I feel about this game as I feel about In A Wicked Age: it looks good, I'd probably like it if I played, but I'm not instantly wanting to play it. Considering that many people like In A Wicked Age, that probably means it's a very good game.
EERO
I like this a lot, and would be happy seeing it developed into a finished product. The setting is ambitious and I can appreciate the effort at an unusual fairy tale environment around the Caspian Sea; however, the game is actually in many ways too inspiring, I'd like to be able to create characters with some inventive system and travel all over pretty maps (several of them) like this instead of being stuck with the flying horse and the somewhat challenging proposition of always having the same characters, no matter the number of players. Fairy tales are easy, you should give us colorful locations and ideas, not tie us down with these particular protagonists. We can create our own story. I could see attaching some standard complications to all locations on the map ("Brass Forest is terrorized by a witch."), with rest of the places filled in when the game actually gets there. This way you can give situations without nailing down the characters.
The complications are an excellent, challenging idea executed with flair. What makes them different from conflicts is that they are pacing devises - a perfect choice for a fairy tale. Essentially, you have this story, and when it gets into a rest position, you shake the machine and another complication drops out; whether it's for or against a protagonist depends on the story, the important thing is that the events progress. I also like it very much how complication appearances are tracked, and how they actually come back to haunt the characters when they return to a place. This last part is key to the extensive, exploratory feel of the game. On the other hand, the game is somewhat demure about how to make it really function with protagonists that split up; there needs to be meaningful roles for players whose characters are not present in the chapter at hand.
After getting out of this competition I'd love to see the game expanded. There needs to be something you do with successes towards complications that were not (or couldn't be) exhausted, for instance. I also wouldn't mind it if this took a turn into a full-blown roleplaying game, perhaps even with some slight secondary conflict system and mechanical character bits if the designer finds that complications can't carry the whole imaginary space. The character advocacy issue has to be resolved as well, as it stands the game is ambivalent about its creative agenda; I could see this played as light parlor narration fairy tale sim, but thematic creativity is also possible. Possibilities are ripe here, the designer just needs to choose and realize them. -
PANTHALASSIA
JASON
+ I love the morality test mechanic. That's a great idea.
- I really dislike "GM sets the target number" personally. I'm not seeing a strong immersive element. The mechanics would need a lot of refinement; the existing differentiation seems a little slight (d12/d10 or d10/d12? Not that earth-shaking one way or the other, for example).
GRAHAM
This is a startlingly traditional game and squeezes an astonishing amount into two pages. I mean, weapon damage, races, morality tests? Amazing. Loads of stuff.
Beyond the traditional bits, there are some good things going on in the mechanics. The Balance Of Power mechanic is neat (although it's sad that extra die can only be used once per Session, considering it won't often be that powerful). I like the Danger Threshold, too, which gives you both succeed/fail and injury in the same roll.
It's very GM-centric: it rankles that the GM sets difficulty numbers.
I'm not particularly seeing immersion.
Because it's such a traditional game, whether I want to play it will pretty much come down to: am I inspired by the setting? I'm not, really. Atlantis is good, but a council isn't really exciting to me. Beyond that, I'm not quite sure what an adventure would look like. Who would we go and fight? What do we do, as Knights? How does that idea of Virtue/Vice manifest itself?
There's lots of promise here and I'd like to see some tightening/rewriting of the mechanics so that it delivers.
EERO
This is one of my favourite games here. The setting is compact and colorful, the campaign framework attractive and the character options free enough to not cause an allergic reaction to splats. The secret here is that the game is in a funny halfway point between a traditional system and a sort of Sorcerer-descent Forge-style game. Get in some real verbiage about conflict management and setting difficulty levels, and I'll have no complaints at all about the resolution rules. The way harm to characters is handled is very elegant and generic, reminding me of Dust Devils; the complex conflict system is funny and really natural, requiring almost no extra rules. (Readers should notice that the combat-focus is skindeep, actually the system works for any conflict. Just assing that lipstick a damage rating and go.)
Morality tests are excellent, those should be in Pendragon. This brings us to the game's lacks, though. (Or rather, to things that could be developed more after the contest constraints are discarded.) The black and white morality doesn't make the morality tests as interesting as they would be if characters had multi-faceted political convictions. As it stands, I see no downside to ending up with valorous action. It'd be more interesting if a player would want different facets of the character's convictions to win at different times.
The same two-sided politics persist in the Senate, which would be more interesting if both sides had some moral validity and there were perhaps more factions. The actual idea of the Senate is good, it's a very natural and integrated campaign arc mechanic. However, only getting to use the Senate's power once per session is sort of wussy: I'd prefer it if characters could swing more dice as well as in-fiction benefits from the Senate. Another issue is that I'd really like it if the Senate had some sort of countdown mechanics that force a resolution when the game progresses. As it stands, a push and pull could continue indefinitely between the two factions unless the players all go for either shallow or deep characters.
Overall the one thing I'd like the designer to take a stand on is whether the game's purpose is to go on missions for the Senate/GM or learn about the surface world and take a moral stand on whether humanity should be preserved. (Essentially, I want to know whether this is a simulationistic or narrativistic game.) As it is, I'm strongly in favour of the latter myself, but the rules are ambiguous enough that I don't know which direction the designer is thinking of. Both approaches would work, but the direction the rules are developed would be different. For the nar take I'd expect material for learning about the surface world and making friends there, opportunities for starting new parties in the Senate to break the two-party deadlock and rules for committing to party lines for benefits. For the sim approach we'd want robust mission parameter rules that allow the players to focus on going to missions and roleplaying the character, whose choices then slowly influence the campaign arc in the Senate to some direction as a background element, not as something the characters directly take a stand on; they're only servitors of the state, after all, they shouldn't have an opinion on high politics... -
TO ELYSION
JASON
+ Hey, using technology, that's awesome. Leveraging existing communication models, neat.
- Too much stuff to keep track of. Hard to read. The setup feels arbitrary and pasted on. I don't know what else to say.
GRAHAM
So, a LiveJournal game, good God. This sort of game, by the way, is exactly what I love about Game Chef-style competitions. Perhaps it'll work, perhaps it's an interesting experiment, either way.
I like the idea of going out, reporting back on your experiences, and that's the game. It's cool. The communal blog is cool, too, and the opportunity to interact with others.
However, it seems such a solitary game, going out and observing people. Reading the entries on the LiveJournal community, they're downbeat and detached. It's interesting to compare this game with The City Burns At Midnight: that game gets me to go out and interact with people, too, but it encourages me to have the best day of my life. Now, OK, I could do that in this game, but the rules imply observation rather than participation.
Is it immersive? It probably is.
I can see myself loving something like this game. I'd want the online interaction to be much more exciting, spurring me into doing things in the real world. I'm reminded, and forgive me for this, of seduction websites (which I read about in Neil Strauss' rather odd book, The Game): you post online, you go and do really cool stuff, you report back, you're encouraged to do more. So, this is a great concept for a game, but it's not quite exciting me yet.
EERO
I like almost everything about this. The two bits that fail for me are a lack of interaction (the solitaire nature of the game) and the wussy, vague fiction. There are other games in this contest that advocate pretending to be somebody special while not caring enough to give that specialty any meat. It ends up as promoting outsider viewpoints without agenda, which is just weird to my eye. However, this game is better in this regard than the others I'm thinking of due to how the simple backstory actually gives you a little bit of purpose to your action: depending on character class you might be seeking to learn some specific sorts of things in the world, and this is mildly interesting.
Rewrite the game into a multiplayer exercise with Klingons who blog to bring down the government, and I'll be much happier ;) -
REDEMPTION NIGHT
JASON
+ Looks great, despite my sworn intention to savage anything hand-drawn/written as pretentious and/or lazy (this is neither). 12 scenes is a nice length and the poker hand at the end is a nice, evocative touch.
- Another game with flaming horses, OK. Cards, chips, tokens, matching dice, ugh. Target numbers assigned by GM, ugh. I'm sort of at sea about what to do as a player.
GRAHAM
This is my favourite rough diamond of the competition. I also like that it's handwritten. It looks good.
So, the setting is superb: the French Quarter of New Orleans at Mardi Gras. And the devil will show up at midnight and claim your soul unless you make right. (I think I heard a country song about this game). Whether or not the author knew I went to New Orleans six months ago, it's bloody superb.
The scene structure works less well for me. So, there's lots of moral situations, that's nice. But we have to intervene on the side of good every time? Where's the fun in that? I'd prefer some Dogs-style moral ambiguity, here. Also, the Adversary rolls to see how many rounds the scene lasts: what if the scene wants to end sooner? And the varying difficulty number is weak, too.
I'd like to see some Conservation Of Stuff. Like, you draw a chip from the bag to determine the scene. But then the winner of each round gets a different token? Find a way of using the chip! And there are colours for sins and colours for scenes. Find a way to combine them!
Still, some of the touches are just beautiful. I love the Sin Die: by the way, I want there to be one Sin Die, that sits in the middle of the table, and if you touch it you must roll it, like in Steal Away Jordan. And, when it rolls bad, I want something bad to happen in the narrative: perhaps the Nightmares turn up.
That game of Poker at the end is fucking perfect.
It's not very immersive. I'm wilfully ignoring that because I want to play a game with the Devil in New Orleans.
I'm excited about this game: love the setting, love some of the mechanical touches. I have serious doubts about the central mechanic and the scene-and-round pacing: this game promises lots, but needs an overhaul of the mechanics before it will deliver.
EERO
I like how the game looks, the handwriting is pretty legible. Graham nails it in his comments: one Sin Die, competition for it, forced to use it if you take it. Rebuild the other mechanics to compensate, of course.
The part I'm less than pleased about is the grounding of the situation in the fiction. Seems vague to me. Might be that this is somehow obvious to those who know the genre, but to me this just seems like arbitrary magical realism and lots of disjointed scenes. Might be exactly what the designer is trying for, but I'd personally prefer loosening up the situation and giving the players more freedom in the form factors of their storytelling. -
YONDER KNIGHTS
JASON
+ I love Joust!
- Not really my thing, in terms of theme or tone. Mostly situation and setting. It's difficult to discern if the system would hang together.
GRAHAM
I like world-creation through questions and character-creation through questions. I like the central mechanic. And it looks playable.
My doubt is that I'm not sure what the game's about. What do we do? What does an adventure look like? Do we fight each other (which would be cool) or monsters? And the mechanics, although they look fun, aren't really pushing the fiction in any direction.
Scene-framing seems a little strange for this game. It looks much more GM-led.
It's not very immersive, I think.
All in all, interesting central mechanic and it's well-written. I'm not sure what that central mechanic does or where the story goes. Still, a clear, concise game in two pages.
EERO
Joust! Brilliant! And conflicts give the players opportunities to develop the setting and their characters. The characters struggle with the uncertainty about their world and themselves, and can even sacrifice information to gain some power and close off unwanted answers. The campaign progresses as the players gain solid answers to their questions, and I can well imagine tension as the different visions of the players clash. I like the color and setting details as well, they make for good meat in creating anime fantasy drama. This is definitely one of my favourites among these games.
The scene framing rules are probably over-elaborate and give the powers to players who don't have immediate creative impetus, so that part I don't like. Would be better to keep it with the GM at first... perhaps allow players to declare passionate questions for their knights, questions which they are passionately concerned - then allow a player to demand for a scene frame related to a passionate question instead of letting the GM do whatever he wants... something like that. Perhaps steal a page from Vincent and have a character's next frame depend on the character's status - this seems like a game where it would fit just great that a character who is "lost" gets completely left field scenes until he finds his way home again.
Were I designing this game, I'd have battles accompanied with an alternative resolution mechanic with a fate die: roll a Fudge die and see if you win, lose or tie on the issue; perhaps reroll by exhausting a virtue. This'd be useful for the sort of rich-texture gaming I do myself, but I can totally imagine how somebody would make do with just the battles.
It might be that answering questions should be in addition to exhausting virtues in battle resolution; playtesting will tell. I'm also not certain that having a player pick a new question from the same list after an old one has been answered is satisfactory; I'd rather have new questions spring from in-game events and reincarnation solely. -
MIDNIGHT AT BURNING HORSE
JASON
+ History gaming, social issue gaming, subdued reality gaming, more please! Right up my alley in terms of scope, theme, and subject. The potential for immersion is there.
- Not fully baked, by a long shot. The hexagram thing is a little gimmicky and you'd really have to sell it - it feels wrong for the Nisei particularly. I'm seeing a standard R-Map sort of game with some color overlaid. It needs a lot of expansion and player support for what to most will be a deeply alien time and place. This is the game's strength and I'd love to see it developed further.
GRAHAM
This seems like a nice, low-key game, which is rather a pleasure to read. It's extremely well-written: any text that can explain a system where you roll dice to flip binary digits must be good.
There's some nice mechanical touches. I like the I Ching. I like the relationship map, which only allows ties based on kin and romance. The resolution mechanic is interesting, although I'm not sure whether the resulting hakke is the character's new hakke, to be narrated in the scene, or merely informs the outcome of the scene. Either would be good.
The setting is very American and, as such, isn't drawing me in. There are many American references of which I don't understand the implications: Pearl Harbour, FDR, Ku Klux Klan. I'm also not sure where the Pacific Northwest is. For a game about diversity, this game sure does assume the reader is American.
There's much guidance for the GM (e.g. ratcheting up xenophobia), which might be good to reinforce mechanically. There's a whole paragraph about how the game should progress, which, to me, suggests an opportunity for enforcing it mechanically.
It's an interesting game, which I broadly like. I'm not fired up to play, but if someone I knew was playing, I'd play.
EERO
The way I Ching is used is interesting. The fictional situation doesn't go anywhere, really. The game lacks American elements to balance the Asian ones insofar as the meeting of the cultures goes. The fictional scope should be widened to view the whole Asian immigration issue in west coast USA. Perhaps use the current I Ching system in directing the "flow" of a characters life while introducing some American-symbolic crunch to fill other parts of the game. I'm fully behind the topic, Asian immigrants in the USA is interesting, although the specific time-frame chosen is very one-sided and prone to wallowing as opposed to understanding. -
Just a quick note to say I'm totally impressed with the amount of work the judges have put into the critiques, even the short ones. I'm getting a lot out of reading them. So, anyway, thanks for sticking it out.
p. -
Quick question for the judges: everybody seemed to dislike the fixed characters in Mare Caspium (or, really, the fixed names and character concepts, since everything else is determined by the players), even though there's been a few successful fixed-character designs recently. Montsegur 1244 comes to mind, for instance. However, though I'm interested in developing the game further and many of your other comments were very helpful, I'm not planning on changing the fact that the characters are pre-determined, though I might expand the number of PCs the players can choose from. Part of my intent for the game was to create a kind of fairy tale feel, but fairy tales are generally about certain fixed characters: Jack, Anansi, the Monkey King, what have you. Is there a way I can better present this concept and make it more compelling without changing a design decision that I feel is fundamental to my goals here? Would it be easier to get if I connected it to other fixed-character games, like, uh, including pictures like these...
Tulpar / Tzitzak / Qadir
Apologies for the Chocabo. I couldn't find a flying horse sprite. -
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CommentAuthorBen Johnson
- CommentTimeApr 5th 2009
For what it's worth, I really liked the fixed characters in Mare Caspium. I'd suggest expanding the game beyond 2 pages and testing it out again before changing that part. -
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CommentAuthorEero Tuovinen
- CommentTimeApr 5th 2009
I think the reason for why I disliked the fixed characters was pretty clear to me: the game has so much creative potential and such a focus on exploration (in the form of opening new areas with their new complication tables) that being stuck with the narrow situation when you'd want to respond to color with creative choices feels annoying. Sort of narrative blue balls, if you will. The game proverbially screams for a character creation system that allows the players to exhaust some of their immediate emotional reaction to the map, the style and the idea of playing a fairy tale epic. After that the system could get as constraining as it wants. Even just a partial character creation would work if the game had some stats or something; you could have the character names and roles fixed, for example, as long as you also allowed the players to roll a stat array for the character. This randomization in the outset would be symbolically free, echoing the exploration to come.
That's my take, anyway. Having a cast of thousands to choose player characters from would work as well - in fact, I could see the game gaining some serious playable content if you gave a large number of characters, associated each with an initial complication table (or a fraction thereof), scattered them around the map and just said that any characters not chosen are potential NPCs, new heroes or even antagonists to encounter during the game. This would also help with the issue of what happens when the heros split up or recombine parties or whatever - a player who loses his character can just pick up a new one the other characters encounter later, and playing several characters at once makes much more sense if the cast has some cycling in it.
I'm also of the mind that fairy tales are not necessarily about fixed characters so much as fixed socio-cultural archetypes. So it's not such an obvious issue to interpret.
I like the character sprites, but the game needs to make serious homage to adventure video games to get me to a mindset where I accept that sort of limitations just because it's the same style.
(Of course we have to remember that I'm totally biased on this after having fermented with my own fairy tale game Eleanor's Dream for too long now. Perhaps I'm just projecting my own goals here.) -
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I've got no problem with fixed characters: I like the idea, actually. I didn't like those particular characters: they all seemed a bit squeaky clean to me. If I'm in a fairytale, I want to be the wolf or the trickster, but those characters seemed just to be underdogs or the victims of circumstances.
Slightly paradoxically, I think I'd prefer more detail in the characters, rather than less. If you give me a horse who's been given as a gift, I get an image of a passive, gentle character. I'd rather have a heroic horse or a trickster-horse-god or a horse who distrusts humans: in other words, given you've given me somestarting point for these characters, I want a little more, enough to spark my imagination.
My main issue with Mare Caspium was, pretty specifically, the complications of the first chapter. They seemed curiously low-key, especially since the first chapter is an escape. The later complications were great: a crime-lord, a carnival. Give me a more inspiring start and I think I'd like Mare Caspium much more.
Yes, do include more characters. We nearly played Mare Caspium last Thursday, but couldn't, because we had too many players.
I'm not a fan of having little pictures for the characters, personally.
I like it, though. Good game.
Graham -
THE WORLD'S END
JASON
+ Poetic and apocalyptic. It kept my attention, even though I had no idea what was going on. Cries out for custom cards.
- Feels gimmicky to me, what with the tearing the clock off the wall and locking the doors. I'd prefer procedural information to be excised from the ominous language of the fiction. Just tell me how to play without any "Once the cards are dry of their secundines, you may begin". I don't actually understand how to play because thelanguage gets in the way.
GRAHAM
It's an apocalyptic game, which is always good, and I like the defacing of the cards.
We have a competition rule that "The judges will stop reading when they get bored" and, because of the ornate language, I'm close to using that rule. I'm finding the rules difficult to parse. I find I'm skipping ahead. The cards are a narration-trading mechanic, I think.
Overall, I like apocalyptic, but I'm not sure the mechanic is driving the apocalyptic fiction as it should.
EERO
So you start playing by drawing on the playing cards. I like that. The players get two thematic roles each. The rest of the weirdness at the start is really an effort at a ritual space for immersion. When you actually play, the job is to tell a story that pings on the themes the other players represent - they give you 1-3 cards depending on how well you play to their (unknown) themes. You're trying to collect one whole suit into your own hand. An act ends when one player gets these cards, at which point the stakes of the act are resolved according to how close each player got to collecting a whole suit. Lacking cards causes misfortune that will be enacted in the next act. The game has five acts. There are some dramatic arc rules.
What this game most lacks is, again, a strong fiction or tools for creating the same. What it amounts to in practice is an oracular engine - you try to tell a story despite interference and limitations from the system, interference which hopefully proves fruitful. -
MIDNIGHT AND SEA
GRAHAM
It's a game engine, like In A Wicked Age, with setting implied by words, like Ghost/Echo. OK, cool. It looks broadly playable. It's got wants and don't-wants, and that's an instant story generator.
One problem I'm finding is that the setting isn't as evocative as I feel it should be. Reading through Ghost/Echo, I'm instantly struck by the words, and my imagination fires with setting ideas. That doesn't happen here. So, there's something called The Sea, which has a divining pool, deities and backup. Reading all that, I have very few ideas on what The Sea is. And it's opposed by something called Midnight: now, the words here are evocative, in a cyberpunk way, and I like them. But I'm not sure why it's called Midnight or how it fits together with The Sea. Now, of course, this is something I must invent, but I'm not inspired.
There's some nice touches in the mechanics. I groaned, at first, when the Navigator picked a number of dice from the kitty to oppose a roll, since this implied the Navigator was setting a difficulty number. That is, actually, what's happening, but if you succeed, you win all the dice, and that's fun.
Two quick points: I'm not mad about the first/third person thing, which seems more irritating than fun, and I think the scene-framing and Navigator-rotating is too strict. But that's minor. Well...hang on. Actually, I think the first/third person thing might be the piece of immersion in this game. Still, it doesn't feel fun: getting a penalty every time I say "I" would grate.
My main doubt is that I'm not sure what the engine does. The In A Wicked Age engine pushes the fiction in particular ways. How do these mechanics change the fiction? What do they do? What's their purpose?
I think I'd enjoy this game if I played it. It's not quite feeling together and I'm not seeing what the mechanics are meant to do to the story. But it looks workable and I like the cyberpunk.
EERO
Graham nails this pretty well. My viewpoint is that the design seems solid and will probably be fun to play, but the designer has opted to write the game in such a dense manner that the procedures are obscured. I don't care enough to try to parse it in any deeper detail than Graham does above. (This, by the way, is what you get when you encourage page limits, Graham.) I'll be interested in seeing an expanded version and even playtesting if the designer decides to continue development. I'd also like to see deeper setting material, I'm not that hot on this "invent your own using free association" thing. -
THE BLOODY BURN
JASON
+ Strong potential for immersion. Very playable. Not about fire-breathing horses. The ingredients are actually used well! This hews closely to Jeepform in some ways.
- Why are the characters not explicitly tied together more tightly? Where's the motivation for character interaction?
GRAHAM
I like this. After lots of fantasy and mythological games, it's a pleasure to read a low-key one. Points added for a realistic depiction of a pub; points deducted for thinking I wouldn't understand what a burn was.
There are lots of good things here. I like that, basically, you're playing people in a pub in a live-action way. The various positions around the table are clever: although it'd actually be quite weird to stand up and give an internal monologue. It'd feel like a speech.
My favourite part is the bet. To me, that adds an excitement to the game that would otherwise be missing. I would prefer that the bet did more: it doesn't have much effect, other than as something to be talked about. I'm particularly sad that the bet is always lost. I think it'd be more interesting if some won and some lost: it'd add anticipation to the early scenes and tension at the end. (On another note, why do game designers always think unhappy is interesting? Anyway.)
I'm unsure, in the scenes at the table, what the characters should talk about. Do they just blurt out their Losses and Resentments? There's an implication that those are the themes, but I'm not sure how they're brought in, and I'd like more guidance. Also, there seems to be an implicit focus on the relationships of these people, which seem important: I'd like some guidance there, too.
I absolutely love the idea that you can hear a comment on the table and, instantly, pull them into a past scene to explore the comment. Superb.
It's pretty immersive, in that you're playing your character, while remaining everyday. I like that a lot.
All in all, I would like to see some tightening of the mechanics, but I like this game very much. It's on the playlist.
EERO
Disinteresting to me, this one. Not much game here, these jeepform things resemble a play more. Seems workable for what it is, though. I'd use a hand gesture to indicate internal thought unless the intent is to encourage whole monologues and discourage frivolous internal voice. Overall the big letdown for me is that this toolbox is already pretty well known, so writing more of these jeepform games really resembles playwriting more than game design. At this point I'd expect jeepform game texts to gain more scope and variability, while these scenario texts could start standardizing their expression - these all use the same techniques, so it'd be nice if they weren't explained all over again. -
TAMING THE NIGHTMARES
GRAHAM
The concept isn't bad, but I'm not sure how it hangs together. These are real people, right: how do they change through their adventures in this realm? It feels as though it should matter. And it's so mechanical: there's a tarot deck there, but the meanings of the cards don't play a part.
Interesting, but the mechanics are so...mechanical...that it's not living up to the potential of the idea.
EERO
Thin fiction. Easy to correct with suitable preparatory techniques - remove the contest constraints and this might work. Suffers from the same problem many other games here have: too abstract and high concept to really entice a player who doesn't happen to be looking for a narrative obstacle course. Staple the basic idea into a solid Freudian framework and add in tools and opportunities for creating an urban landscape, and this could be a nice, muted vehicle for urban anthology storytelling in the French mold. The key would be to make this fantasy stuff secondary to who the people influenced by the dreams are. -
Cool. Thanks for the further comments. We can continue this discussion elsewhere, if needed, so as not to derail this thread.
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DESCENT
JASON
+ Beebe deserves his own damn game, the guy was either very lucky or a self-aggrandizing lunatic. The rigid determinism is awesome. The deep ocean is scary.
- I'm skeptical this setup would lead to immersion, or maybe to productive, fun immersion. The ingredient use is weak. I'm not feeling like this would hang together mechanically.
GRAHAM
There's lots to like here. It's a broadly workable game in two pages. Hard to complain about that.
Now, the author couldn't have known this, but I have real issues with two-player games featuring physical contact. Flashbacks of playing Beast Hunters with a male friend. So, yes, that thing about holding each other's forearms pushes my buttons. That said, it's an interesting way of simulating claustrophobia, and I rather like that: that's the immersive aspect of this game, I'd imagine.
My biggest doubt is that I'm not sure where the story's going. Do we tell a story entirely in flashback? If so, we can't change the ending, right? We can't, for example, get revenge on the person who cut the cable? And what's the relevance of the fire burning in the deep? Can we get out and explore? If so, we're no longer alternating bathysphere and flashback scenes. So I'm a little confused about where we take the scenes and how the game might play out.
A couple of mechanical issues, too: would you ever take a d6? Even if the drama is low key, it's only a 1 in 3 chance of succeeding (1 in 2 if you use a trait). Why is the difficulty harder at moments of high drama? It sounds intuitive, but it means that, when the characters really need to succeed, they'll almost always fail. It sounds pretty unsatisfying. And, generally, those difficulties are pretty high.
There's something really good at the core of this game, but it hasn't been brought out yet. Game built around claustrophobia: fun. A fire burning in the depths of the sea: superb. Story told mainly in flashback: I'm not seeing the fun. I've got mechanical issues with the game and I'm not sure where the story's going, but there's lots of potential there, which I'd like to see brought out by suitable mechanics.
EERO
A tight frame that doesn't offer katharsis, should be fun. The designer probably over-estimates how many dice the average player can stack, or he just isn't planning for a very long game. The trait invocation seems strange in this sort of game; usually that mechanic is used to enforce character consistency, which I'd imagine wouldn't be much of an issue here. My advice would be to either lose the traumatic central situation to allow the drama arc some breadth, or lose the focus on flashbacks to really wallow in the misery. -
Midnight & Sea is mine.
On the density of the rules text: Definitely an artifact of the contest constraints, although I dearly love the idea of a one-sheet self-contained RPG. If I work on it more, it'd probably be a 2-sheeter: one for rules, one for a character sheet (probably with rules reminders built into it).
On the mechanics: Actual play last week was generally rewarding but revealed some problems. I'm going back and rethinking some of the pushes/pulls built into the system. They're generally correct to what I want to accomplish, but it's all a bit baroque and I'm concerned about some unintended consequences. It'll probably get simplified.
On the setting(s): My gut tells me that a couple pieces of evocative art would make the whole thing clearer. Tough to pull off in text only -- would the reaction to Ghost/Echo be as positive if it were presented as a .txt file? Still deciding how much I love oracle-style free-association lists. In AP it generated a lot of exploratory what-if? talk around the table but actual situation building was harder than I wanted.
(nb. My local crew had the opposite reaction to the settings -- they loved the dreamy cyberspacey Sea stuff and were bored by Midnight!)
Note to self: It sounds like I probably need to read IAWA!
Thanks again for the feedback, Graham and Eero. Much appreciated, and I think I'll mess with this thing for one more generation before scapping it for parts.
p. -
- CommentAuthorDestriarch
- CommentTimeApr 5th 2009
On the whole I'm happy with the response I got. I knew it wasn't going to win when I submitted it, but it's good to see that the negative points put forward are the ones I was expecting to get due to the nature of my entry. Anyway, thanks for the critique.
-Ash -
Which was yours, Ash?
Graham -
- CommentAuthorDestriarch
- CommentTimeApr 5th 2009
Well, if it's OK to mention now (I wasn't sure the judging was entirely finished) it was Panthalassia. Like I said, I knew I hadn't used the ingredients well, it was just the game that came to mind. Incidentally, I used 'Immersion' in the context that it means 'underwater'. Hehe. I know, that's not what was intended, but that's the idea the word gave me.
-Ash -
Oh, how interesting. I wondered whether somebody else had written that. There you go.
Graham -
PLATO'S CHARIOT
GRAHAM
I do love the way this game looks. It reminds me of Paranoia, which is deliberate, I imagine. The setting seems rather like Paranoia, too, and I like the celestial references.
I'm not sure how play proceeds. At first I thought the six tasks (Act, Inquire, Qualify and so on) were the way the game worked, as a sort of weaker version of Polaris' Key Phrases. But there's also rolls, too, and I'm not sure how the two interact. And, although I like the setting, I'm not sure what a game session would look like, or what we'd do at the gaming table.
Overall, looks fun, well-presented, except that I don't actually understand how to play. If I did, I'd love to play. If you see what I mean.
EERO
Another example of why we shouldn't encourage page count limits in this sort of competition. The game itself is very interesting, even if difficult to parse. The Plato's Chariot is a spaceship sort of thing that ferries souls to heaven, preferably without getting them corrupted by hellfire along the way. The game itself is played in flashback, as the members of the crew explain to the case officer what happened on the mission. (Brings Space Alert to mind.) The rules for talking define how scenes are framed and advanced, interestingly without GM interference.
The HSSOP guidelines are a bit overwrought in a manner pretty typical for first tries at this sort of thing; the rules could believe in individual judgment more and leave less for consensus. Also, the rules themselves get really ambiguous about character identification; I wouldn't like this, but the frame story is very unambiguous about the fact that the players only have wide narrative powers because they are in fact discoursing on a flashback. I take it that this means that the players will ultimately limit themselves to narrating stuff from their character's point of view, and that narration will include advocation for their own character's best interests.
One of the key HSSOP parts is the Question protocol that allows a player to force another character to make a virtue check in Pendragon style to find out whether the character in fact managed to act according to their interests. I like the gauges a lot, especially with the Horse twist: the characters on their ship are supplied with a drug called "Pale Horse", intended to make them calm, honest and team-friendly, allowing them to force their gauges towards those extremes. Then there is Dark Horse, provided by hellfire corruption and usable in promoting the opposite virtues. (Perhaps demons bring it on board? I have no clue about the setting, really.) The environment makes for some pretty unique moral and aesthetic questions that I find interesting. For instance, it just happens to be that the reviled Dark Horse instigates the virtues that are actually useful in a crisis response situation (which is what the ship has to endure), so of course characters are attracted to it.
Finally, the game has a ready-to-play scenario in the form of an incomplete after-action report the GM fills by asking questions from the players, who then play through the mission according to the rules I mention above. The report has some vague information about what happened on the mission (presumably the players can't contradict this, as the case officer / GM would just accuse them of lying), but the details and fate of the mission are actually up to the players. I like this part as well: if the designer decides to continue developing the game, it's easy to add more missions in a standard format, making for an attractive set of material. The clever bit is that most of the input the GM has comes in the form of the timestamps: the scenario determines when things happened on the mission, the players decide what happened.
All in all, a very interesting show. I'm torn about the ambiguous setting: on the one hand product usability would require at least a couple of chapters of explanation about this strange corporate afterlife, but on the other hand I can certainly fill in the interesting holes myself for my own purposes, and I sort of like the extreme ambiguity here. I hope the designer continues with this one. -
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CommentAuthorEero Tuovinen
- CommentTimeApr 5th 2009
Hey, I liked Panthalassia a lot. If we gauge completeness by "how long it would take Eero to develop this game for market", Panthalassia would likely be the most complete game of the bunch. I hope you'll continue developing it carefully - you have a good chance to end up with something akin to Nine Worlds if you do. -
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THE MUSTANG
JASON
+ I love this game. It appears to be very solid and very clever. The constraints are merciless and effective. Immersion isn't hammered at but also isn't ignored, it is designed for, which is refreshing. I would totally play this. There are bits I adore, like the scene transition technique of pointing and shouting when things get dull.
- Ingredients are a little dodgy, but no more than the rest of the competition entries. Immersion is going to be hit or miss, but the game supports it well with non-intrusive mechanics. Those mechanics - I worry that they may deprotagonize a bit. Maybe that's actually cool, in a Jeep-y "not everyone has to be a lead character" way.
GRAHAM
This is really very good. Firstly, it's beautifully laid out. Secondly, it's a lovely setting: horror in the South. Great.
It's an excellent take on immersion. The rule that you should talk, in character, before the Mustang comes is good, and I love "When you see the Mustang charge, shout a warning!". It implies that, at the game table, one of you just shouts out, and that's the cue for the next phase of the game. I like that.
I have a doubt about pacing. If this is horror, then I want the build-up to be greater than the climax: I want the threat of the monster, unseen, before we see the monster itself. So I want...I don't know...say, three omens before the Mustang comes. Or three memories of what the Mustang did. The mechanics, at the moment, focus on the endgame, and I'd like to be led through the early part more.
The text is a little confusing: I didn't understand it fully until I read the summary. That is, I read through phrases like "Cassie's coin flips to the ground. It shows her fate. Pick it up!" without fully realising how that would work in play.
I like this very much. It's on my playlist.
EERO
One of the few serious contenders in the immersion department and quite pretty as well. I like the genre, too. As I feared before the contest, the game part suffers, though. This is in all probability much better as a read and an atmosphere piece than something to actually "play". I'd pay for a book with 50 2-page spreads like this, especially if they had some nuanced interconnectivity for extended play. -
CHAINED
GRAHAM
This game sets off alarm bells, because the ingredients seem tacked-on. So it looks, to me, like a game written before the contest. It might not be, of course, but that's how it looks.
The setting's great. A dreamlike, underground city: perfect. Lacuna's setting seems to give a sense of immersion, when I play, and I can imagine this might too.
I'm having trouble with the text. There's lots of words here. I keep skipping. There's bits I like: I like the use of different senses, that's well done, and I can imagine that's immersive. I like the Precious Ones, too, as a goal to aim for. Linking's good. I like the anagrammised map of the London Underground (although the author calls it a subway, way to impress the British judge there), but it seems largely forgotten about after the first page: if something like that is used in the game, I want it to be central to the whole thing.
Overall, there's lots to like about this game. Good setting. Some neat and unusual mechanics. I'm having trouble with the text, which means I can't quite tell whether the mechanics fit together into a coherent game.
EERO
Conceptually complex gamer fantasy. Devas are a nice idea, brings Final Fantasy to mind. The complex setting distances me intellectually, requires effort to get powerful imagination (immersion) out of it. The use of ritual techniques for aiding immersion is a big plus. Having the player frame his own first scene I'm dubious about. The strong mechanization of the play procedure seems counterproductive for the game's goals. The immersion in the game, if there is such, is about dreamlike urban landscapes, it seems.
The rules mechanics of the game are complex, require playtesting to see their true power. The intents are deep as well. Ambitious design, but perhaps not very immersive per se. The setting would benefit enormously from ripping the highly specific stuff off in favour of generic fill-in-the-blanks dreamland adventure. The horsegod doesn't do anything for this game, I'd actually prefer it if the text just recommended buying Don't Rest Your Head to get a setting for it.
The biggest flaws that come up on the first read-through concern who does what at different points in the game. Conch passing problems in places, like with memory conflict epilogues: the player shouldn't have to himself describe the Precious One at any point in the game, it seems to me - might be that I'm misunderstanding how the PO is created and maintained, though. Another strand I'm suspicious of is the endgame mechanic, which reduces the game into a linear series of scenes. The game would probably benefit from some sort of light tactics on the map that determine when the endgame comes and how extensive the game gets, overall.
Ultimately, though, I like this one. Definitely one of the better shows. -
SPIRITED
JASON
+ It seems nice and playable. The mechanics are pleasingly light. Nothing gets in the way of immersion here.
- Ingredients get thrown into the fiction. Weak sauce! Nothing gets in the way of not getting immersed.
GRAHAM
It's a pleasure to read a romantic game. It's also a pleasure, and a slightly guilty one, that the game assumes such traditional gender roles. See how the woman is a mystery, whom the man must work to impress?
I love the idea behind this game, but it feels so constrained. The woman sets up encounters; the man guesses solutions to them; and that's the whole game. I want room for the narrative to breathe: not just a series of encounters, but a narrative punctuated by encounters. (Breaking The Ice does this nicely). I also want to explore the city: it's a beautiful setting, too good to be reduced to a series of moral dilemmas.
I'm also confused exactly how the mechanics work in practice: how does the woman drop a hint? How does that whole scene play out? I realise there were only two pages, but I'd rather have seen that whole last column replaced by an example of play.
And, please, don't make me read a whole chunk of text aloud at the start of the game.
Lots of criticism, there, but I do like the game, and I like the layout too. I particularly like that it's a guessing game. Give me room to tell a love story, not just overcome challenges, and I'd fall in love with this game.
EERO
This is another one of those games that provides challenge for the storytelling in the form of constraint, but does little to support the players in meeting that challenge. A bit lopsided in that way. I like the game's style and topic, but to really shine I'd expect flexibility and narrative breadth comparable to Breaking the Ice. I like the basic conservative wooing theory exhibited by the game, with the man-proxy essentially solving problems established by the woman-proxy. More ambition in expressing the topic and less ridiculous page count limits, and this could be something. -
THE FINAL HOUR
JASON
+ The time/place/object/person thing could be fruitful. It'd be fun to chew the scenery.
- The second crime face-off game in the competition. This isn't that interesting a set-up, I'm afraid.
GRAHAM
Some nice things going on in the mechanics. I like the way the observations come together from random seeds.
It does feel like two separate games, though: the observations, followed by a variation on Mafia/Werewolf. There's nothing wrong with a variation on Mafia/Werewolf, by the way, I love that game, and it's probably a very good way to approach immersion. But I want the game to be one or the other: either make it about the observations, and draw them together to identify the murderer, or make the game a Mafia/Werewolf variant.
It's kind of cool. Both of the two sub-games are in their early stages but have interesting things about them.
EERO
The fictional topic isn't very unique. There are boardgames that give all this has to offer as far as fiction goes. -
PAIN
GRAHAM
It's a traditional, White Wolf-style game: seriously White Wolf-influenced, I think, down to the lethal damage. I could get behind that. I like White Wolf.
I want to possess a hippo. Any game that lets me possess a hippo is good.
Because it's so traditional, it'd almost undoubtedly work. It comes down to whether I like the setting and, really, I'm not feeling it. Vampire, for example, has a mystery to it, but this relishes the gruesome too much for me. I find the flavour text at the beginning pretty hard to read.
I'm not particularly seeing immersion.
I guess, with this, I'd like to see more experimentation. I love the idea of ghosts possessing creatures: there's a lot of potential there. But, because the mechanics are so traditional, the game isn't doing it for me. Give me some mechanics that support what the game's about and it'd get interesting.
EERO
Doesn't seem to be doing anything interesting, this one. The rules do not focus the setting in any way WW games don't do better. -
AEONAUT (Submitted Late)
GRAHAM
I'm a stickler for deadlines, so won't critique this. Eero has, though.
EERO
Submitted late and thus disqualified, but might as well critique it. It's not the victory that's important, it's the feedback, after all. The game is very long, though.
I'm fundamentally opposed to the sort of psychoanalytic balderdash this game represents philosophically, but within its own assumptions it seems like a carefully created thing. The activity itself seems fun, and the sort of thing I do for real; perhaps this is the greatest weakness here, as I see little value in the fictional layer of the exercise when this could be a set of guidelines for historical tourism. Also, I dislike pervasive larping, it's dishonest to the society around you. What's worse, the player actually shields himself from genuinely experiencing his travel destination - is the real world really so dull that you have to pretend to be a mystic to enjoy a holiday? Essentially, the same problems I have with The City Burns at Midnight.
It's notable that the game is very serious about the immersion bit, though, in the classical Nordic manner. Solid in that way. The pervasionism just seems so sick to me that it's difficult to get around it. Walking around in a city and imagining that enemies are coming for you is good entertainment?
Regardless, there's little of a game in here. Valuable because there are not too many texts about Nordic immersionism in English, certainly. If this had been on time, it'd have given Qualia serious competition - actually, I suspect that this could have won the whole thing, the text is that thoughtful and detailed. I recommend this warmly to anybody who is uncertain about what a basic, well-planned, easily set up pervasive larp looks like. It's worth the read whether you plan to play or not. The immersion is crafter very carefully. -
MISSION CREEK
by someone else with bad timekeeping skills
GRAHAM
I'm a stickler for deadlines, so won't critique this, although I notice Jason and Eero have, which is cool. Instead, I sniff and make comments about time management.
JASON
+ I'm a big fan of "teaching games" that impart some knowledge along the way. This has that potential, but misses out. Easy to fix if that's desired. Interesting to learn that Boston Corbett probably died in the Hickley fire (I read up!). Playable as-is and compelling, immersive. I really like it.
- Late, which is too bad. Would it be that hard to engineer a plausible situation if you are claiming real history? The sword of Damocles angle is cool and all but stretches belief. I'd love to see the adverserial mechanical push toned down and then later ramped up somehow - let people work together, which they surely would have. This would have been a top five game for me if it were eligible.
EERO
Submitted late and thus disqualified, but might as well critique it. It's not the victory that's important, it's the feedback, after all.
For some reason the game puts much focus on ties in dice rolling, but uses 2d6 instead of, say, 1d6. Not many ties in 2d6 vs. 2d6. Should actually have an option for getting to use even smaller dice so as to heighten the significance of the tie-breaking rules.
Other that that, though, the game is eminently playable! I'll have to commend this to the author. I could totally see a major rpg product made out of short scenarios with these tools. Sort of like Executive Decision.
One thing that could be perhaps expanded upon is the first part of crisis management - finding out the facts. As it is, the game lays everything out as certainties for the players, while it might be more interesting if they had to start working on limited information. -
And that's it. That's every game critiqued.
Eero, Jason and I each chose our favourite games from the competition, in different ways. Jason listed his favourites, I listed all the ones I wanted to play and Eero did something complex with categories.
So, each of us will post those, and then we'll do runners up and winners and stuff.
Graham -
Graham's playlist
These are the games that, for various reasons, I'm fired up to play. They range from The Shore, which I want to play in spite of the mechanics; to We Die At Midnight, which I want to play because of the mechanics; to Qualia, which I want to play so I understand it.- Atlantis
- Redemption Night
- Mustang
- The Bloody Burn
- The Shore
- Qualia
- We Die At Midnight
Graham -
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CommentAuthorSeth Drebitko
- CommentTimeApr 5th 2009 edited
Pain was my game I slapped it together pretty quick and thought of so many cooler things I could have plugged in their (including better opening text ^_^) I was thinking of dumping the wound system going with something a little more narrative in nature. I also want to try and focus more heavily on the consequences of “Burning” and player interaction with the Sea.
Ultimately I am very pleased with the idea I came up with, and joining up with the contest but now I want to really focus on drilling down some solid mechanics and a better presentation.
(edit: Thought I would also mention once I clean this up I think these little 1 sheet games make awesome previews to larger games. I plan to keep a cleaned up free 1 sheet version and later put out a "full" version of the game called Agony to expand on it)
Regards, Seth
www.Odds-Are.com
That’s how we roll -