From Screen to Board: Translating Properties into Boardgames
Here’s a pretty solid rule of game design: any game you design in your dreams is likely to be crap. (That’s not to say you can’t get inspiration from dreams, but you’re unlikely to get a good game out of one you made up in a dream.)
A friend of mine brought this up recently related to a game he designed in a dream. I told him there was only one time I remembered doing that, and it was a role playing game, not a board game.
Of course, that night, I had a dream where I designed a game. Through a combination of that talk, and reading an article on Boardgamegeek talking about adapting the movie 300 into a board game, I invented the 300 card game in my dreams that night. And of course, it was crap. (It was about playing numbered cards on each other, and yelling “This is Sparta!” a lot.)
But it did get me thinking about adapting properties such as movies and video games into board games, and how to approach it. I’ll say up front here that I have never had a game published based on a licensed property, so you can take my advice with a grain of salt. These, as always, are based on design style and personal preferences. And as someone who does have access to a few licensed properties, it’s something I am going to be doing in the future. [Read the rest of this article]
The Campaign Elevator Pitch: Selling your game to your players
A few months ago, I stumbled upon Martin Ralya’s GM Wiki (well, it’s a collaborative effort, but he hosts it) and one concept in it really inspired me, the RPG Elevator Pitch. A short, concise description of a RPG system, like if you were trying to sell someone over a new game within the time an elevator ride takes.
That got me to think. People like to rally to clear, simple and strong ideas (Politics anyone?). While a campaign’s plot can be complex, convoluted or downright insane, if you want your player’s rapid buy in, you need to hinge it on a simple cool idea.
That’s where the idea of the campaign elevator pitch came to me. It’s a simple paragraph that I put on the 1st page of our gaming Group page. It’s the campaign’s rallying point. Whenever I become too embroiled in side-quests and conflicting plotlines, I go back to it and focus on that.
As an example, here was my last campaign’s (Iron Heroes in Ptolus) pitch:
- A group of tough-as nails, extremely competent Iron Heroes found that they have been held prisoner all their adult life in a Bubble world on a Prison plane. Guided by an unlikely alliance of fiends and angels, they finally escaped that prison and were sent to the world of Prameal, where the fallen Lords of Chaos brood and plan their revenge upon the multiverse. While the heroes’ role in this new world remains uncertain, one thing is clear, they will make a name for themselves!
My current campaign, still based in Ptolus (although stripped of a lot of Monte Cook’s plotlines):
- Four survivors of the Sphere-wars converge on Ptolus, teaming up with a local noble with a mysterious past. They are determined to end the threat of the Yugoloth Shadowlords who scheme over the destruction of this ravaged world.
Feel free to adapt the pitch from ‘season to season’ as the player’s influence the plots and move the story along lines they wish to explore.
What would your campaign elevator pitch be? Sell me your campaign!
Who Games the Gamesmen?
I don’t find myself particularly drawn to being active in online message boards. There are plenty I read, especially when a big story happens, but overall, I don’t post much. I find myself getting my “feathers easily ruffled” when there are vocal internet dickwads, which seem to thrive in the message board environment. I find myself mentally putting posters into that category when they use statements like these:
“This is not Fallout.”
“This is not D&D.”
“This is not Dune.”
I find the presumption to be very off-putting that these people have put themselves in an authority position to decide what does and does not belong in a particular IP. I find it even more off-putting when it’s about a product that hasn’t been released yet. [Read the rest of this article]
Online Tools, Take 2
Last month I posted about software tools I planned on using in our current game.
It turns out it worked a lot better than planned. All players joined the Google Group we created (see here for explanations on how it works) and I’m truly impressed by participation.
Google Groups are basically a discussion group tool. All members write messages that remained stored on the group’s page. Members have various options to be informed of new messages (CCed, abridged e-mails, and e-mail digests) . All messages can be searched in Google’s well-know way.
There is also a limited wiki-like function where you can create Web pages and link them together. Each page can then be further linked to discussions.
Finally you have 100 MB of space for shared files.
So I created a closed group (members only can browse) and invited each of my players.
I use the discussions for general out of game discussions: Background, rules discussions, player request. Basically everything we use to do by email and ended up losing time digging up afterwards.
Using the web pages tool, I posted all the game-related info (Background, plot lines, house rules, etc).
As for files, we store scans of race and classes writeups for easy reference as well as character sheets and other game related stuff.
Apart from a few bugs, It works real well. And whenever we read a message, we get these funny Google Ads that rip ‘key’ words from our messages and shows appropriate ads. Boy there sure are a lot of WOW gold sellers out there. 
Aliens Vs. Predator Trailer
The Aliens Vs. Predator (Requiem, the sequel to AvP) R-rated trailer that wasn’t shown at Comic-Con San Diego is now online!
Maybe it's time for D&D 4e after all…
Boy am I seeing a lot of hate and anger being spewed at the D&D 4e announcements (just try any forum: Enworld, Okay…Your Turn and RPGnet for a sample). I must confess that I also have been part of that strong resistance to change/Lashing-out-at-Hasbro’s- blatant-money -grab.
But, but but… as I go through the motions of planning and playing out my 5th D&D 3.x campaign, I can’t help thinking that some of it is getting stale. I’m not bored or burnt out of D&D, far from it, but let’s say that the system’s, um, shall we say ‘imperfections’ are starting to irritate me more than before. And most of theses irritants are systems the 3.0 designers decided to retain from earlier editions because it defined D&D throughout the years. Namely:
- Save or Die effects (How I hate those!)
- Spell Resistance
- The Grapple rules
- Bland magic Items
- The need for a healer in all parties
And I’m not alone in finding it so, just look at my player’s choice of characters. So maybe a new edition, with fixed mechanics and new outlooks could help in this.
(Aside: I’m a very mechanistic gamer and I’m noticing how much it shows in my posts. I know that cool modern mechanics is what brings me to a RPG and retains me. In my opinion, Story-telling motivated roleplaying don’t need fancy mechanics and can occur whatever the system… However, I’ll concede that it can be argued that one of D&D’s flaws is that it’s mechanics can and do hinder Role-playing in certain groups. Does it for our group? I’ll leave the question opened for further pondering)
However, lately there has been a new ‘wind’ of D&D design that seem to point towards things to come. Ever since the latest batch of designers/developers like Mike Mearls, Jason Bulmahn and Rich Burlew joined the lineup, some new very promising concepts have been put to press:
- Iron Heroes (what I like to call the early prototype of D&D 4e, or D&D 3.75)
- CoolerMagic Items (Magic Item Compendium)
- Way Cooler Fighter classes (Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords)
- Function-based Encounter design (Dungeonscape)
And from what I can glean from the Wizards’ D&D insider blogs these concepts are here to stay.
And that makes me optimistic and interested for what Spring/Summer 2008 will bring.
YouTube of the Week: Don't Press My Buttons Edition
Through clever level design, watch Super Mario World play itself. (It’s much more fun than it sounds.) They claim there’s no button presses at all, but Mario carrying a turtle shell seems like it needs a button unless I missed something. Originally found via Destructoid… after the jump, some more self-playing SMW fun. [Read the rest of this article]
Critical Hits 4.5 Beta is Live
We’re up, but will still be tinkering for a while. And expect full release 5.0 by early next year. Lemme know what you think, especially if there are any problems.
Inq. of the Week: It's All About You?
Our poll will continue through the week, asking you what you thought about the announcement of D&D 4th Edition, right now the majority seems to be cautiously optimistic which in my opinion is the best way to go. It definitely doesn’t hurt you to be hopeful about the product, and from what we’ve heard and seen it looks like Wizards is actually doing a good job of marketing and selling the ideas, not to mention actually coming up with some good ideas finally. The way to win us over is definitely to look at it as a game, and address the issues that have been discussed time and again with it.
At this point you may be wondering, “Why is the poll continuing through this week?” The answer is here! We have picked up quite a few new readers and commenters in the last few months and we are simply dying to know more about you! So if you’re reading this, if you’ve happened upon our site by chance, or if you come here regularly (and we love you dearly for it) then please tell us about yourself by commenting on this post.
Some things we’d love to know about you: [Read the rest of this article]
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