4th Power

Well, on Halloween, I ran the first ever playtest. I designed all the characters, constructed a scenario, recruited members of my regular D&D group, and GMed the game.

I am definitely happy to report one thing: the game didn’t combust in on itself…

…but the scenario did end in near TPK, and a total objective failure for the PCs.

Still, I was heartened to find that the system does work. The powers need tweaking, the selection of at-wills continues to be challenging (especially for mental stat-focused characters), and the amount of HP that each PC possess takes some adjustment, but overall, the core of the system is solid and that’s something to be thankful for.

What’s the next step? The one thing that’s definitely true is that I need more powers written. As before, the best way to drive me on is to have a goal in mind, and thus to that end, I’m going to run another playtest, with higher level characters, aiming to run around Xmas time. I have a specific, pre-written adventure in mind from another system. Unlike the 1st level game I ran, it will be less focused on survival, so it has a much greater chance of running all the way through.

Powers are not the only thing that still needs to be developed. Two pieces that still need sub-systems are:

• Extended Actions (which resemble rituals, though might fall closer to Martial Practices) for things like hacking, making cover identities, setting up a business, that kind of thing. I have some ideas, but need to work on it a bit more.
• Wealth. From my experiences with d20 Modern (and from some of your comments), this is the elephant in the room of d20 Modern and modern gaming in general.

My current thought on wealth was sparked by a chat (as it were) with my friend Phil, who was working on his own system for eliminating micromanagement of cash in 4e. I too don’t want players to be managing the exact amount of money in their bank account and their credit score and so on.

As part of those conversations, Phil proposed a skill to manage wealth, which is somewhat how d20 Modern handled it. Well, I already have a skill to handle it (Business). And I know already that I wanted to track social class alongside the system. Thus it made sense to combine it with another system that moves up and down over time based on skill checks.

Yes, I’m making Social Class a Disease.

Eventually I will develop a track, that goes from Destitute to Billionaire. Each one will cover a range of expenses that you can reasonably cover: middle class means you have a decent place to live and can afford reasonable meals on a regular basis. Buy something more extravagant (like a sports car), and you make a Business check. Succeed, and you manage to move your finances around in such a way to cover it. Fail, and your class shifts lower. There will be some bonuses and penalties depending on the situation (time involved, how familiar you are with the area, etc.) Voila. That’s my thought right now.

As I said, I have a new goal in mind, so my guess is that I won’t be updating as much on a weekly basis while I work my way towards my next playtest. I will try, however, to create a collection of everything I’ve developed so far for better reference, and add to it when I come up with more. And as always, if you have any questions or comments, lemme know.

Well, I missed my first deadline by not posting feats last week. They ended up being more tricky than I thought. 4e and d20 feats all seem to be more combat-oriented, which was always my complaint with systems like Call of Cthulhu d20. Anyway, I had a hard time coming up with them, and it’s still something that’s going to require some thought on my part.

Tomorrow, though, is the big day: the very first playtest. To prepare, I had to come up with an adventure, character stories, and character sheets. In the process, I had to invent new powers and feats, which added some time. So posted here are 4 of the 5 characters that will be used tomorrow, sans backstories. Then next week, I’ll let you all know how it went.

Smart Hero

Str: 12 (+1) Con: 12 (+1) Dex: 14 (+2) Int: 18 (+4) Wis: 9 (-1) Cha: 13 (+1)

HP: 12

HS: 2

Defenses:

Fort: 12 Ref: 16 Will: 13

Trained Skills:

• Technology (+9)
• Engineering (+9)
• Business (+9)
• Thievery (+6)
• Bluff (+6)
• Perception (+4)
• Investigations (+4)

Class Ability:

Specialist

Choose one skill that you are trained in (Technology). The minimum result when you roll that skill is 10. In addition, anyone making a skill check of that skill that can see and hear you gains a bonus to that skill equal to your Int mod.

Feats:

Chain Smoker

Whenever you spend an action point, you gain concealment until the end of your next turn.

1337

Your first use of the Technology skill in a skill challenge gives you 2 successes if you succeed.

At-Will Powers:

Study Weakness

Standard Action

Int (+4) vs. Fort

Standard Action

Target: One creature in close range

Hit: The target grants combat advantage to your allies until the beginning of you next turn.

Smart Hero: Any allies that hit the target with an attack also deal extra damage equal to your Int mod.

Aim

Move Action

You gain a +1 bonus to your next attack roll with a ranged weapon this turn.

Smart Hero: You critical on the attack from 19-20.

Per Scene Powers

Flash of Inspiration

Per Scene

No Action

Trigger: You roll a d20 for a check and dislike the result.

Effect: You add 1d6 to the triggering roll.

Stay on Target

Immediate Reaction

Trigger: An ally within sight that can hear you misses with a per scene attack power.

Effect: The power is not expended. If the ally uses the same power again this turn, it gains a bonus to hit equal to your Int mod.

Per Session Power:

Always Prepared

Smart Hero

Standard Action

Effect: You produce an object that you can afford, reasonably own, and keep on your person.

Tough Hero

Str: 14 (+2) Con: 18 (+4) Dex: 10 (+0) Int: 11 (+0) Wis: 12 (+1) Cha: 13 (+1)

HP: 18

HS: 6

Defenses:

Fort: 17 Ref: 11 Will: 12

Trained Skills:

• Endurance (+9)
• Drive (+5)
• Engineering (+5) Specialization: Auto Repair (+7)
• Technology (+5)
• Bluff (+6)

Class Ability:

The Protector

Targets that you are in melee with take a penalty to attack rolls equal to your Con mod when they do not include you as a target.

Feats:

Brawler

You gain a +1 bonus to unarmed attack rolls, and it deals a base d8 damage plus your Str mod.

An Apple A Day

You gain a +5 to saving throws vs. disease.

At-Will Powers:

Shove

Standard Action

Str (+2) vs. Reflex

Hit: You push the target a step.

Tough Hero: You instead push the target a short distance.

Dash

Move Action

You move a medium distance and take a -5 penalty to all your checks this turn.

Tough Hero: The penalty to your checks is reduced by your Con mod (up to +0).

Per Scene Powers:

Remain Conscious

Immediate Interrupt

Per Scene

Trigger: You are knocked unconscious.

Effect: You can roll an immediate saving throw to avoid unconsciousness. If this is from an ongoing effect (such as being below 0 HP) you can roll this saving throw at the beginning of every round to avoid falling unconscious until you fail a saving throw.

Slow Motion Leap

Tough Hero

Nnnnoooooooo….

Immediate Interrupt

Trigger: An ally within a short distance is hit by a ranged attack.

Effect: You move to the ally’s spot, and the ally is pushed out of the way. You take the damage and effect from the attack.

Per Session Power:

Takin’ It

Tough Hero

Immediate Reaction

Con (+4) vs. Fort

Trigger: You are attacked in Melee

Hit: 3d8 + 4

Miss: Half damage

Charismatic Hero

Str: 14 (+2) Con: 14 (+2) Dex: 14 (+2) Int: 12 (+1) Wis: 8 (-1) Cha: 16 (+3)

HP: 15

HS: 3

Defenses:

Fort: 14 Ref: 13 Will: 15

Trained Skills:

• Diplomacy (+8)
• Bluff (+8)
• Business (+6)
• Athletics (+7)
• Intimidate (+8)
• Theology (+6)

Feats:

Inspiring Recovery

When you use your Inspiring Speech power, you can forgo the bonus to the healing surge to instead grant the target a saving throw.

Good Example

When you successfully roll a saving throw, any ally that can see you gains a bonus to any saving throw in the next round equal to your Cha mod.

At-Will Powers:

Distract

Standard Action

Cha vs. Will

Hit: The target can only take one action on its next turn.

Charismatic Hero: The next check made by the target in the next turn receive a penalty equal to your Cha mod.

Taunt

Cha vs Will

Hit: You mark the target until the end of your next turn.

Charismatic Hero: The target moves towards you.

Per Scene:

Inspiring Speech

Per Scene

Minor Action

Target an ally within sight. That alley spends a healing surge and gains temporary HP equal to its value.

Savoir Faire

Per Scene

No Action

Trigger: You use a Charisma based check, skill, or power against another creature, and dislike the result.

Effect: Reroll the check, skill, or power.

Phone a Friend

Charismatic Hero

Standard Action

Special: You must have access to a phone, email, or similar.

Effect: For the purposes of one skill roll, you are considered trained in that skill. If you are already trained in that skill, you are considered to have been Aided By Another.

Per Session Power:

Imitoot You Exarctly

Charismatic Hero

Standard Action

Effect: Choose one person’s voice that you have heard. You can imitate it for the rest of the session. You still must make Bluff checks when appropriate, but you get a +5 bonus to rolls when impersonating the person.

Fast Hero

Str: 11 (+0) Con: 11 (+0) Dex: 18 (+4) Int: 12 (+1) Wis: 10 (+0) Cha: 15 (+2)

HP: 12

HS: 1

Defenses:

Fort: 11 Ref: 17 Will: 13

Trained Skills:

• Acrobatics (+9)
• Drive (+9)
• Thievery (+9)
• Streetwise (+7)
• Science (+6)

Feats:

Sneak Attack

When you attack with a light weapon and have combat advantage, you deal +2d6 damage.

Sticky Fingers

You may make Thievery checks as minor actions.

At-Will Powers:

Aim

Move Action

You gain a +1 bonus to your next attack roll with a ranged weapon this turn.

Fast Hero: The bonus is instead equal to your Dex mod.

Dash

Move Action

You move a medium distance and take a -5 penalty to all your checks this turn.

Fast Hero: You can instead move a long distance.

Per Scene:

Kip Up

Fast Hero

Dex vs Reflex

Immediate Interrupt

Trigger: You are attacked in melee while prone

Effect: You stand up.

Hit: You deal damage to your attacker equal to 1[W] + your Dex mod.

Burst of Speed
Per Scene
Minor Action

Gain a Move Action

Per Session Power:

Improbable Hiding Place

Fast Hero

Immediate Interrupt

Trigger: Someone comes into an area and doesn’t know you are there.

Effect: You can make a Stealth check, even if you’re not in a hiding spot.

While skills are not trivial in 4e, they play a much greater role in modern games, and have a greater variety. This is not just because of the need for modern skills that wouldn’t exist in D&D settings. It’s also because there is more of an emphasis on using skills, and possessing those skills differentiates characters. Especially in a game where not everyone is adapt in similar areas (i.e. combat) the choice and variety of skills can make a big difference.

My first step was to look at the skills that 4e characters possess and see what should be brought forward. It turns out: almost all of them, since they are a really well put together list of skills. There’s only one that outright I can’t see in a modern game, and that’s Dungeoneering. So that gets tossed.

Three skills get a minor name/concept change to better fit modern. Arcana becomes Occult, Heal becomes Medicine, and Religion becomes Theology (to encompass a few other things like Mythology and Philosophy as well.)

Then we get to the new skills:

Business (Int)

Civics (Int)

Creative Arts (Cha)

Culture (Int)

Drive (Dex)

Investigations (Wis)

Linguistics (Int)

Mechanics (Int)

Science (Int)

Strategy (Int)

Technology (Int)

By my count, that gives 26 skills total. Brief explanation of the new skills follow:

Business

Manage businesses, know facts about businesses, understand corporate workings, economic knowledge

Civics

Navigate through governments, understand political situations

Creative Arts

Create art, understand art, identify artists, recall art history

Culture

Social sciences such as anthropology and sociology, pop culture, current events, studies of how groups of people operate

Drive

Driving a car, piloting an airplane, operating a boat

Investigations

Analyze crime scenes, conduct research

Linguistics

Understand and speak languages, decipher scripts and codes

Mechanics

Fix a car’s engine, design a building, blow stuff up

Medicine

Biology, pharmaceuticals, treating illnesses and conditions, nutrition

Occult

Esoteric knowledge, is not explained by science

Science

Physics, chemistry

Strategy

Games, military situations

Technology

Computers, hacking, gadgets

Theology

Philosophy, theology, religious studies

Specialization

Pick three specializations in skills you are trained in. When using that specialization, you get a +2 bonus.

Now as I mentioned then, at-will powers should come up fairly often, and be the stand-bys. The other powers are Per Scene (formerly Per Encounter) and Per Session (formerly Per Day.) In 4e, it’s a pretty easy scale: Dailies are better than Encounter are better than At-Wills, at least as far as damage goes. With modern powers, I don’t necessarily see that as being the case. The division is more based on the drama of the power: is this something the characters should be doing every scene (but not every round), or is this something that should only come up maybe once a session? Also unlike their equivalents, you wouldn’t necessarily try and burn through the modern powers as often as possible.

Additionally, I look at the powers as being closer to “spells” as far as interesting effects go. This does add the most challenging part, however: balancing them by level. Since you’re not just evaluating damage, conditions, area, and so forth, you’re trying to adjudicate the relative balance of less easily defined powers. Thus, when looking at these powers, please do keep in mind that they might need to be moved around in levels.

What you need to know: Per Scene and Per Session powers are specific to classes. I may also give them additional “kickers” based on build later, just like their 4e counterparts, but that will come later (hopefully after I have the builds nailed down.)

Per Scene

Ear Clap
Strong Hero
Standard Action
Melee – Unarmed
Str vs Fort
Hit: 2[W] + Str Mod, and the target is deafeaned until the beginning of your next turn

Slow Motion Leap
Tough Hero
Nnnnoooooooo….
Immediate Interrupt
Trigger: An ally within a short distance is hit by a ranged attack.
Effect: You move to the ally’s square, and the ally is pushed one square. You take the damage and effect from the attack.

Kip Up
Fast Hero
Dex vs Reflex
Immediate Interrupt
Trigger: You are attacked in melee while prone
Effect: You stand up.
Hit: You deal damage to your attacker equal to 1[W] + your Dex mod.

Stay on Target
Smart Hero
Immediate Reaction
Trigger: An ally within sight that can hear you misses with a per scene attack power.
Effect: The power is not expended. If the ally uses the same power again this turn, it gains a bonus to hit equal to your Int mod.

Cold Read
Dedicated Hero
Immediate Reaction
Wis vs Will
Trigger: You meet a new person. Target that person.
Hit: You gain one piece of information about the target based on an observable fact.

Phone a Friend
Charismatic Hero
Standard Action
Special: You must have access to a phone, email, or similar.
Effect: For the purposes of one skill roll, you are considered trained in that skill. If you are already trained in that skill, you are considered to have been Aided By Another.

Per Session

Knockout Punch
Strong Hero
Standard Action
Melee – Unarmed
Str vs Fort
Hit: The target is knocked unconscious (save ends, or ends if the target takes any damage.)

Takin’ It
Tough Hero
Immediate Reaction
Con vs. Fort
Trigger: You are attacked in Melee
Hit: 3[W] + Con Mod
Miss: Half damage

Improbable Hiding Place
Fast Hero
Immediate Interrupt
Trigger: Someone comes into an area and doesn’t know you are there.
Effect: You can make a Stealth check, even if you’re not in a hiding spot.

Always Prepared
Smart Hero
Standard Action
Effect: You produce an object that you can afford, reasonably own, and keep on your person.

Can Haz Cheezburger
Dedicated Hero
Standard Action
You can use Bluff, Diplomacy, and Insight on an animal. While you can not literally communicate with the animal, you can attempt to convince it to perform an action with the appropriate check or gather simple information from it with the appropriate check as part of this action. The DC is set by the GM based on the request.

Imitoot You Exarctly
Charismatic Hero
Standard Action
Effect: Choose one person’s voice that you have heard. You can imitate it for the rest of the session. You still must make Bluff checks when appropriate, but you get a +5 bonus to rolls when impersonating the person.

Skill Powers

Extra bonus powers! I’m considering just keeping the 4e power progression, and replacing utility powers with skill powers. As long as I create at least 6 skill powers at every level that cover the spectrum of classes (to make sure that there’s an option for every character at every level) I think it can work. Of course, writing them is still the problem…

Anyway, here’s a small sampling I generated while working on the other powers. There were all conceived as Per Scene powers.

Break Something
Trained in Intimidate
Minor Action
Effect: The next attack you make against an object this turn is at a +2 to hit and deals double damage. If you destroy the object, you gain a +5 bonus to your intimidate checks until the end of the scene.

Le Parkour
Trained in Athletics
Move Action
You move you speed, ignoring difficult terrain, and you can take 10 on any Acrobatics or Athletics checks used to move over hindering terrain during the move.

Trigonometry
Trained in Physical Sciences
Immediate Reaction
Trigger: You or an ally within sight that can hear you misses with a ranged attack.
Effect: Repeat the attack on a different target within a short distance of the original, with a bonus equal to hit equal to your Int mod.

That’s what I’ve got this week. Next week, a list of skills, and maybe a few feats. Then… playtesting?

So here’s what I think of as the next step, or at least a defining portion of the next step: at-wills. At-will powers accomplish a few important things in the game. They serve as the powers you will use the most, and throughout your entire career adventuring. They are the fall backs when you don’t want to use any of your encounter or dailies (expendable resources) and are more all-purpose.

But in 4e, those are also the powers you will be using every round in combat. They’re the go-to. You will probably use one of them at least once per combat. In a Modern game, that’s not necessarily the case. You rarely see the same move done in every scene.

The focus, then, are just moves that a character can always try and perform. Unlike a per scene or per session power, which will be designed to fill a certain dramatic role a certain number of times per game, at-wills can happen when needed. Not only that, but non-combat at-wills (or at least, non-encounter at-wills) are tough since you don’t want them to just be “spammed” over and over again, for whatever skill or situation. You want there to be a choice to use them.

The other big thing when working on how at-wills work is that I want to encourage multiclassing. Thus, there’s just a big pool of at-wills that anyone can take, no matter what class you are. Each at-will has an effect like expected, and then an extra “kicker” for the different classes, two for each at-will. Then a feat would be available to count as a different class for the purposes of at-will and begin the multiclass path.

A lot of introduction, I know, but it’s a tough issue. Here are some samples of what I’ve come up with. Do note that several of them duplicate abilities in 4e: these are ones that make sense for fantasy adventurers to be able to do all the time and ordinary people do only with training.

Shove
Standard Action
Str vs. Reflex
Hit: You push the target a step.
Strong Hero: You also deal your Str mod damage to the target.
Tough Hero: You instead push the target a short distance.

Grapple
Standard Action
Str vs. Reflex
Hit: You grab the target.
Strong Hero: Each turn that you maintain the grab, you deal damage equal to your Str mod.
Tough Hero: The target takes a penalty to all checks equal to your Con mod.

Dash
Move Action
You move a medium distance and take a -5 penalty to all your checks this turn.
Fast Hero: You can instead move a long distance.
Tough Hero: The penalty to your checks is reduced by your Con mod (up to +0).

Distract
Standard Action
Cha vs. Will
Hit: The target can only take one action on its next turn.
Smart Hero: The next check against the target receives a bonus equal to your Int mod.
Charismatic Hero: The next check made by the target in the next turn receive a penalty equal to your Cha mod.

Study Weakness
Standard Action
Int vs. Fort
Standard Action
Target: One creature in close range
Hit: The target grants combat advantage to your allies until the beginning of you next turn.
Smart Hero: Any allies that hit the target with an attack also deal extra damage equal to your Int mod.
Dedicated Hero: The attack bonus for combat advantage is equal to your 1 + Wis mod instead of the normal +2.

Feint
Cha vs Will
Move Action
Target an enemy engaged with you.
Hit: You have combat advantage against the target until the end of your turn.
Fast Hero: If you hit the target this turn, their initiative count drops to the bottom of the list.
Charismatic Hero: The target takes a penalty to Will equal to our Cha mod.

Aim
Move Action
You gain a +1 bonus to your next attack roll with a ranged weapon this turn.
Smart Hero: You critical on the attack from 19-20.
Fast Hero: The bonus is instead equal to your Dex mod.

Taunt
Cha vs Will
Hit: You mark the target until the end of your next turn.
Dedicated Hero: You gain a bonus to your Reflex equal to your Wis mod against the target.
Charismatic Hero: The target moves towards you.

Breather
Move Action
Any hit points you gain until the beginning of your next turn are increased by 2.
Dedicated Hero: Instead gain extra HP equal to your 1+Wis mod.
Tough Hero: In addition gain temporary HP equal to your Con mod.

Trip
Standard Action
Str vs Reflex
Hit: The target is knocked prone.
Strong Hero: The target also takes damage equal to your Str mod.
Fast Hero: The target must spend a Standard action to stand next turn.

Duck
Immediate Interrupt
Trigger: You are hit by an attack that targets Reflex and you have cover.
Effect: You gain superior cover and fall prone.
Fast Hero: On your next turn, you can stand up as a minor action.
Smart Hero: You can roll a short distance after the attack resolves.

Still working on them of course, and looking forward to some suggestions. Next week: A sampling of Per Scene and Per Session powers… which are a bit different.

Here’s some actual crunch: the core classes. Just as in d20 Modern, there’s one base class for each ability score. This setup is intuitive, and also allows for the different kind of teams you see in so many shows and movies. (I’ve been really enjoying Leverage recently for inspiration.)

So that was the easy first step: put the names of those classes down. I stole a few things from the way 4e classes are setup: class determines some bonuses to defense, hit points (mostly, as you’ll see), healing surges, trained skills, core class features, and multiple builds per class. We don’t need a role (they sort of overlap), and we definitely don’t need power sources.

The first thing I added was the bonuses to defense: they formed immediate symmetry. HP followed close behind, which was based on story of each of the classes, as did healing surges and trained skills. Core class features and builds were last, and the most in flux. I tried to make 2 builds for each class that represented a different enough concept within that class (with room for more, of course.)

So here’s what I have. Comments plenty welcome.

Strong Hero

• +1 Fortitude
• +1 Reflex
• HP: Con Score + 1 per level
• HS: 1 + Con Modifier
• Skills: Trained in Athletics, plus 3 others.

Class ability

For the purposes of carrying capacity and lifting, your strength is treated as 4 points higher. You also gain the extreme effort power:

Extreme Effort
Per Session
Minor Action
The next strength-based check you make is at a +5 bonus.

Choose one talent:

Talent: Proficiency in Melee Weapons
You gain proficiency in all military melee weapons.

Talent: Brawler
You are considered proficient in unarmed attacks and improvised weapons. Attempts to escape from your grab take a penalty equal to your strength modifier.

Tough Hero

• +2 Fortitude
• HP: Con Score + 2 per level
• HS: 2 + Con Modifier
• Skills: Trained in Endurance, plus 4 others

Class ability

If an effect would make you unconscious, you may make a saving throw to avoid dropping unconscious. This includes if you drop to below 0 HP, in which case the save must be made at the end of every round, and once failed, you do not receive any more saves.

Choose one talent:

Talent: Protector
Targets that you are engaged with receive a penalty to all skills and attacks equal to your Con modifier when they do not target you.

Talent: Hardcore
While you are bloodied, you gain a bonus to your attack rolls equal to your Con modifier.

Fast Hero

• +2 Reflex
• HP: Con Score + 1 per level
• HS: 1 + Con Modifier
• Skills: Trained in Acrobatics, plus 4 others

Class ability

You gain the Burst of Speed power.

Burst of Speed
Per Scene
Free Action
This turn, you may convert Minor actions into Move actions.

Choose one talent:

Talent: Marksman
You gain proficiency with archaic and modern ranged weapons, as well as thrown weapons.

Talent: Rogue
You gain a bonus to any skill used against a target that you have combat advantage against equal to your Dex modifier.

Smart Hero

• +1 Will
• +1 Reflex
• HP: Con Score+ 1 per 2 levels
• HS: 1 + Con Modifier
• Skills: Trained in 7 skills

Class ability

You gain the “Flash of Inspiration” power.

Flash of Inspiration
Per Scene
No Action
Trigger: You roll a d20 for a check and dislike the result.
Effect: You add your Int mod to the triggering roll.

Choose one talent:

Talent: Specialist
Choose one Intelligence based skill. You gain a class bonus to that skill equal to your level.

Talent: Planner
You can use the “Aid Another” action on any ally within sight, and the bonus granted equals your Int mod.

Dedicated Hero

• +2 Will
• HP: Con Score + 1 per level
• HS: 1 + Con Modifier
• Skills: Trained in Insight (or Perception?) plus 5 others

Class ability

Your character has sworn an oath (maybe not a literal one) to a cause. This can be anything from the Hippocratic Oath to Animal Rights Activism. You receive a +5 bonus to all defenses against any effect that would cause you to betray your oath. You also gain the “Dedicated to the Goal” power.

Dedicated to the Goal
Immediate Reaction
Per Scene
Roll a Saving Throw versus one condition you just received with a bonus equal to your Wisdom modifier.

Choose a talent:

Talent: Healer
Gain the “Healing Touch” power

Healing Touch
Minor Action
Per Scene
Target an ally next to you. That ally can spend a healing surge and regain that many hit points + 1d6.

Talent: Gain the “Dedicated to Cause” power

Dedicated to Cause
Per Scene
Target an enemy in sight. Until the end of the scene, when attacking the target or using a skill that is opposed by the target (either actively or passively), you roll twice and pick the better result.

Charismatic Hero

• +1 Fortitude
• +1 Will
• HP: Con Score + 1 per level
• HS: 1 + Con Modifier
• Skills: Trained in Diplomacy plus 5 others

Class ability

Savoir Faire
Per Scene
No Action
Trigger: You use a Charisma based check, skill, or power against another creature, and dislike the result.
Effect: Reroll the check, skill, or power, and add your Cha to the result.

Choose a talent:

Talent: Gain the “Inspiring Speech” power

Inspiring Speech
Per Scene
Minor Action
Target an ally within sight. That alley spends a healing surge and gains temporary HP equal to its value.

Talent: Gain the “Unerring Confidence” power

Unerring Confidence
Per Scene
Immediate Interrupt
Trigger: You are hit by something that targets one of your defenses.
Effect: Increase that defense by your Cha modifier.

Issues? Questions? Lay them on me, and I’ll modify as necessary. Since these are just first draft powers, I’m not as worried that X power is balanced or poorly worded or such… play testing will show most of that. The bigger question is: do they adequately represent the archetypes they need to? Are the important archetypes there? Those are the big questions.

Next week, we’ll start into the at-wills that should give you some idea of how I envision them, as well as some of the basics on multiclassing. The week after, if all goes well, Per Scene and Per Session powers… which gets us pretty close to having a set of rules that can be playtested.

I want to do a new version of d20 Modern but updated with 4e-style rules. And I’m going to share the process of making it with all of you, and get your feedback as I go.

But that doesn’t really tell you anything about how I’m going to do it. This week I’m going to tell you what my goals for the game are and some broad strokes as far as the rules go. However, I’m going to cover two things up front, which may disappoint some of you:

• This will not just be 4e rules, classes, etc. reskinned for Modern times. Not that I have anything against this approach (check out the write-ups for Greywulf’s “Endday” campaign for an excellent way this is being done in his campaign) but it’s not the game I want to design… for one, the work is mostly done already and isn’t anything you couldn’t do at home.
• Furthermore, 4th Power will not have all the same design goals and assumptions that 4e has. This is a big one. What it means is that I’m not just going to take the same structure from 4e and make new classes/feats/skills/bad guys to fit that structure in Modern times. In that way, it’s going to be farther out than d20 Modern was to 3e. The big reason for this is that it’s not the game I want to play. Second on the list is that a 3rd party publisher is definitely going to be doing this, with a bigger budget and bigger staff, so on some level I would be competing with it. (Amethyst may be the first of these to come out.) By changing up some assumptions, I can assure that my game is going to conflict with someone else’s game, especially in case WotC ever decides to do it.

That’s all vague stuff, I know. I just wanted to get it out there. Now let’s hit some specifics:

Core Design Elements

If you’re an old, old fan of ours, you’ll remember how I mentioned the d20 Modern variant that I was working on while running a campaign of it at the same time. The genesis of that game was now 8 years ago when I ran Call of Cthulhu d20 set on the college campus that I was attending that ranks as my favorite campaign I’ve ever run. Then d20 Modern came out and it seemed like a natural fit for the next installment of the same campaign, but I could not help but tinker with the system and come up with my own advanced classes, feats, and so on. Then I moved on from that college and that group of players and moved back to Maryland. It would be a few years later when I would seriously try to resurrect the project by once again running a campaign of it. I  wouldn’t call any of them failures, but none of them lasted long enough to tell me what I needed to know about the game overall, and moreso, I never devoted enough time to complete the game.

Well, flash forward a few years, and we have a mostly dead d20 Modern brand (updated by the excellent Modern20 but receiving little overall support) and a new system to play with in the form of D&D 4e.

That’s my long winded way of saying this: I want to do a new version of d20 Modern but updated with 4e-style rules. And I’m going to share the process of making it with all of you, and get your feedback as I go.

My working title is The 4th Power but is in no way a final title. Posts will ideally happen weekly and examine various aspects of the rules in development, as well as playtest reports, and so forth. Next week will discuss the core design principles (carefully crafted to annoy both d20 and 4e fans) and a broad overview. Then rules development will follow, and I hope to do a playtest within a month or so just to test the viability of the concept at all. That’s the thing about game design: this all could easily be a bad idea and end up scrapped. Or I could come up with something genius.

Now, some of you may be asking how I’m going to handle the tricky legality of it all. First, all of the materials I post will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share alike license, just like the rest of the site. That means you can repost anything I make here, print it out, etc. as long as you don’t try to sell it and you credit me.

Second, I’m assuming familiarity with the D&D 4e rules, and moreso, assuming you own a PHB. I won’t post any rules from the PHB, but I will reference them where needed. I also won’t be reprinting any powers, feats, etc. from the PHB, but will be posting plenty of my own creation to fit the game.

With those in mind, by the time all the posts are up, everyone who reads the posts will have a complete game to play set in the Modern world (alongside a campaign setting, or settings.) Legality may make it difficult to make it into a complete, assembled game in one document, but my hope is that the project will have gotten some attention and a publisher will be interested in it. Otherwise… hey, at least I’ll have a game that I’ll play.

Anyway, that’s the project plan. Next week will be a list of core design tenants that will guide the creation of the game, and why they’re important to me, and I hope that you’ll come along for the ride.

I’m a big proponent of change in game design. If something isn’t working, don’t just patch it, teardown and rebuild. This puts me in opposition to what I will respectfully call the “Conservative Gamer” contingent, who prefer that games preserve much of their makeup from edition to edition. Their reasons are certainly strong ones: ensuring backward compatibility with existing products, keeping the game familiar to previous fans, and so on.

But, that’s not for me. I prefer to see innovation in game design. I’m all for taking an existing game in brand new directions, especially if the end result is new and interesting, but- here’s an important part of a successful redesign- while maintaining the core feel of a game. Not only that, but the tastes of audiences change as time goes on, and new editions should take that into account. I also feel quite strongly that in ANY kind of design, be it game design, graphic designer, programming, what have you, the fact that something is traditional is not enough justification by itself to keep an element in.

This all probably will not surprise many of you with my support of D&D 4e, Fallout 3, Twilight Imperium (despite my negative experiences with it) and more recently, the newly announced Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay edition. In every case, they took an existing game, and decided to take it in a new rules direction, often featuring new components and styles. I’m quite happy they did: in each case, they tried to bring forward the essence of the previous edition or editions while introducing new gameplay and appealing to a wider audience beyond those who already had the previous edition. To put it more bluntly: a new edition with minimal changes or only superficial changes is unlikely to bring in new players. Many gamers unfamiliar with a game aren’t really going to care that “Class X or Card Y was broken” in the previous edition, but now it’s fixed, so you should really play. They’re more likely to be brought in by “the combat system was streamlined” or “there’s a really neat new set of options.”

Of course, not all revisions are successful, and are going to always be judged on various personal criteria both by existing players deciding to switch and the new audiences they want to appeal to. Ultimately, I’d rather them try something new and fail then play it safe and have moderate success (though a game company’s accountants may disagree.)

Am I picking on fans of older editions? No, not at all. In fact, I think there’s a fair number of retro-clones that are doing exactly what I’m talking about, and are trying to bring forward the essence of an older game by emphasizing those aspects that they enjoyed and trying some new things in other areas. Nor am I completely an adopter of every new edition (Mage: The Ascension 2e forever!) but I don’t ever begrudge new editions of games coming out.

In fact, that gets to the heart of my main complaint about the other site of this argument: you can still play your older edition, or older edition with house rules and other patches… but if I don’t get a new edition, my only recourse is to make a new innovative game myself, which is a lot of work. And you know how I hate that.

This is an entry into this month’s blog carnival about Transformations and Transitions.

Reading over the interview done with the authors of Manual of the Planes and the Design & Development article on Cosmology (DDI sub needed), I couldn’t help but notice the focus (which we were first informed of all those months ago in the preview books) on making all the planes places to adventure. Planes that felt underused were done away with, and a new cosmology was created that both had some new planes, but still drew on parts that existed in previous editions- most notably in my mind, Sigil and the City of Brass.

The push in 4e was to take what were considered the “core” parts of D&D and incorporate them into one solid setting that all worked together, instead of the previous elements of D&D that were added on as time went on and more modules were published. In a way, the transition from the previous editions core setting to 4e’s core setting was an attempt not unlike the attempts by DC and Marvel Comics to clean up their continuity so as to allow new readers (players) an easier entry point and to recreate the continuity to fit together better. DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths was the trend-setter there, but the analogue that works better for me is Marvel’s Ultimate line.

As mentioned, both took the elements that the creators/designers thought worked and streamlined it into a whole designed from the start to work together. Many were not happy about the changes, preferring the existing, familiar setup. The creators/designers tossed out a number of elements that had their fans.

Interestingly, 4e seems to also have be taking after the Ultimate universe in another big way that I wouldn’t have expected: people are excited to see the 4e version of old elements. The Ultimate universe has (or at least had) fans waiting for a certain character or event to show up, so they could see the “Ultimate” version of it. “I wonder what they’ll do with Ultimate Rhino” or what have you. In 4e, particular character classes, races, and monsters are of course the main targets for anticipation, but I’ve also seen a lot of calls for the new versions of specific NPCs and locations. “What will 4e Spelljamming look like?” and so on. Of course, just like the Ultimate universe, there are plenty who will say that the new version isn’t faithful to the original or doesn’t follow the core concept of X well enough.

This process is similar to The Teardown, since the goal is to improve by not being confined by anything previously established, only the core elements that are necessary. In a roleplaying game like D&D, mechanics and story are intertwined at least to some extent, no matter how much you choose to ignore for your own campaign. I find it interesting that more companies seem to be taking chances with this kind of process (and it is definitely a risk). I have the feeling that those will always be those that will want to keep around traditions as much as possible, and those who want to destroy and rebuild.

When starting a new campaign (or even just planning a one-shot), it’s tough to get people into a new game. Thus, the game usually ends up being D&D. Now, there’s nothing wrong with it being D&D, but with so many RPGs out there, I enjoy a bit of variety when I can get it.

Why is it so tough? Because the “buy-in” total for the game is too high.

What do I mean by that? The buy-in is anything that has to be contributed by the players (and GM) in order to make the game function. While buying the game itself and any accessories is one form of buy-in, that’s generally not the problem. The problem is how much has to be learned in order to play a new RPG.

This can generally be divided up into two kinds of buy-ins: mechanics and setting (or if you prefer, crunch and fluff.) To expand a bit, let’s use an example. Say I want to run a game of Dark Heresy. In order to have a satisfying game experience, the players need to learn how to play the game. They need to know both how to create a character and how to play, and will be frustrated if they don’t. (The more complicated the game, the longer this process takes.) In addition, I need to convey to them all the setting details of Dark Heresy. This could mean just telling them what kind of characters they can play and what their job will be, or could go as far as having to explain the entire Warhammer 40K universe to them. When running the game, I don’t want to have to stop every few minutes to explain everything: I’d much rather be able to just say “Disciples of Nurgle have infected the toilets of Hiveworld P247 and a joint force of Ultramarines and Eldar are on their way to battle Tyranids on the other side of the planet” and have that actually mean something.

Even D&D can have this problem. I’ve yet to run a game of Forgotten Realms or Eberron, despite being interested in those settings, because I know they come with all kinds of baggage that the players will have to buy-in to in order to get the most out of it. Leaving aside published settings, there’s always going to be a buy-in required to understand whatever world I’m running, which is why I tend to lean towards “exploration” games, where the PCs begin with very little knowledge and then learn more and more about the world as they play, both in and out of game.

Of course, different RPGs have different levels of buy-in necessary. A White Wolf game, with its emphasis on the various factions, is going to have a higher story buy-in, but the rules are generally pretty portable between them. Some games are going to have more complicated mechanics: joshx0rfz ran a campaign of Iron Heroes, which despite being largely d20 based, still had enough differences to throw off the players and cause slowdowns in the game.

This all is especially a problem in convention games, which is often an ideal location to try out new RPGs. New players have to learn the rules, setting, and scenario in a very limited timeframe. It’s often just easier to play something you already know, unless you are sure you’ll have an awesome teacher, or the game is structured as such to allow easy access. Those are two ways to get around buy-in issues, but there are others.

RPGs from licensed properties usually have the advantage when it comes to story/setting buy-in. When I sit down to play Star Wars- in any system- I have a pretty good idea what to expect. While I may have to find out what era we’re playing in and lookup what a Trandoshan is, much of the work is done for me.

The same was true for the Wheel of Time game I played in. However, that game had another advantage: it was the d20 system, and didn’t stray all that far from the basic d20 setup. Thus, I was up and running rules-wise very quickly in that game, allowing most of my energy to go into playing my character, and the DM’s to practice his Illian accent.

That’s one of the many reasons D&D tends to get chosen as the current game so often. Since D&D got there first, most of the players are familiar with at least the basic concepts of how to play and what the setting is like (no matter the edition) to mostly dive right in. I myself am very fond of d20 Modern for similar reasons: the rules are similar to what I already know, and there’s almost no setting buy-in whatsoever: it takes place in today.

Still, I find myself yearning to play other games, which is why I find myself fascinated with games like Dread. The rules buy-in takes a grand total of two sentences, and I can use whatever kind of setting I want. Dread looks to be the kind of game that I can play with just about anyone, which I certainly can’t say for most RPGs. Of course, there’s always going to be this push and pull between a game with enough options to satisfy players and keeping it simple enough to understand easily, so a rules-lite system like Dread may not always be the answer.

I don’t think there’s a good, one-size-fits-all solution. In my situation, it’s likely to stay the same for a while: either I’m running D&D (or very similar game), or I’m running something extremely simple like Dread. I welcome any comments about the idea, and how you’ve tackled the buy-in issue in your games.

Here’s a transcription from my notes. As before, this is not verbatim, just my notes on his session. Taking notes proved more tricky than I expected since I had to do them on my PDA (my laptop deciding not to work that morning), the door to the event was quite loud, and there was a very loud demo shouting every few minutes downstairs.

All that out of the way, how do you create a successful game?

Beginning

Knizia first showed his chart depicting the process of game creation. It went Idea > Briefing/Concept > Prototype & Testing > Master > Licensing. He stated that like any creator, he has customers, and they are the publishers. Eventually, near the end of the process, the publisher takes over. The entire process can take anywhere from weeks to years.

Game creation is art, not science. He showed his diagram of the Triangle: start a game from Theme, Mechanics, or Components. He often gets asked the “best” way to start a game, which he says is the wrong question. If you start developing a methodology for beginning games, you lose out on innovation, which is something that he prizes quite highly in games.

He recommends trying to find new entry points into game creation. Looking at the triangle again, you only need to start with one, but all games need all three, and they should meld together into a good design.

From there, he started listing examples from his own games of how they began.

Ingenious

Ingenious started as a brief: “can we make an abstract math game that’s popular?” He said there’s enormous freedom in mechanics for abstracts. He wanted to have a game where you built colored lines and scored them. However, this didn’t work with single-colored pieces being played. Each score builds on one another, which is boring. So then he added limitations: make two-color pieces. From there, he needed to decide on the number of colors in the game. Six colors came out from the topology of the board itself. A chessboard wasn’t interesting enough, so they tried eight sided and six sided pieces for the board. Six was the clearest to see, and went together with the other sixes in the game (six colors, six tiles in hand, six sided spaces on board).

The next question to address was how to score. He decided to score each color individually instead of one big score, and then only count your lowest score. This forces balance, which introduces tension into the game. He says a good scoring system is essential for a game, since it drives the behavior of the players, in both thematic and abstract games. The theme should also work with the score: he said “Am I acting like a pharaoh, or am I just playing a game with Egyptian graphics?”

The game was very quick, and took about three months total to develop.

Lord of the Rings

Knizia wanted to stay true to the spirit of the book. Since the book was from the viewpoint of the Fellowship, the players should be members of the Fellowship. And the cooperative came out of the idea that it wasn’t thematic to do anything else: “Frodo cannot ram Sting into Sam’s neck.”

The idea of a cooperative game was controversial, but he made sure to build evil parts into the game itself. You can’t just write in the rules “work together”, the game has to cause it, so that the players are naturally driven to work together. The license drove him to explore new systems. However, it was also a long development process: 1.5 years. A cooperative game can be more satisfying than a competitive zero sum game.

Side point of how he was offered the license: The director of a documentary for the BBC about Tolkien approached the Tolkien estate about gaining the boardgame license for the book. Thus, they were able to work on a Lord of the Rings game before the movie came out (because it was based on the book, and not the movie: Knizia said movie licenses can be really difficult to obtain.) They also were able to hire John Howe to do the art, who was an art director for the movies. Because of the head start, the game was already in stores when the movies were released. The game has now sold more than a million copies.

Secrets of the Sea

This game is not available in the US yet. This game’s creation was driven by components. It contains a lamp with a UV light, which are now very cheap to produce. The tiles in the game are printed with UV ink. This allowed the tiles to go from two-sided to “three-sided.” Because the lamp looks like a diving bell, they went with a diving theme. Diving further down gives more info for each tile. The tiles are shuffled and placed face down to start.

Prototyping

Creating and testing games is the longest part of the process. It’s important to brainstorm and generate a lot of ideas, and to actually set aside time for creating, and not just between phone calls. That part is freeform, which then becomes much more structured during testing. Testing is the process of continuous revision. The designer needs to watch the playtesters carefully for points where there are question marks. The designer needs to be both creative when designing and a businessman to understand company needs. When to go to prototype has a sweet spot: do it too early, you don’t know what to analyze in playtest. If you spend too long before playtesting, you’ve wasted a lot of work if it crashes. However, sometimes partial prototypes are made to test specific parts of a game. And pieces of games can move between different prototypes.

Ra

“Ra is a very strong title,” Knizia said. It’s a good example of starting with a concept that drives everything. It started with a board, cards, and the setting of Egypt. It was a card game where you were trying to win certain cards, which were then applied to a board. Then once you’ve built, you go back to playing more cards. The first test took over 3 hours, and the parts didn’t work together at all. So when discussing what was next, it was decided that the card game was the strongest part. He took that, and made just a card game about building an Egyptian empire. It worked fine, but the cards took up too much space, so they  switched to tiles. Tiles worked, but they needed to add a board back in to organize everything.

In the future, he said to maybe expect a Ra card game, a Ra dice game, and a new Ra game, maybe within a year.

Modern Art

Knizia referred to this as a “strong brand.” It was an auction game at the beginning, very small with only 25 cards, all dealt out. It lasted 10 minutes. It was too small, so he experimented with making it bigger. They could play multiple rounds, but how to tie those rounds together? He said he wanted a bigger game, not just a game that lasted longer. So he added scoring at the end of each round, but with some risk built in.

There have now been 5 editions. The Finnish editions uses real Finnish artists and their art. More is expected to be sold with the Modern Art brand, and a new game might be out within a year- he had just negotiated a contract that morning.

Marketing

Knizia said that thinking about marketing before game design does not work. That should be after the game is done, and that publishers are going to be better at it anyway. There are some concerns about what type of game to design, however. Abstracts didn’t used to work until Ingenious and Blokus, but now are more widespread. Sports games are still not popular; according to Knizia, this is because it’s tough to bring enough action into a boardgame to go with the experience.

Knizia listed several “Quality Success Criteria”:

• Commercial Feasibility (Publishers)
• Appealing Presentation (Price)
• Accessible Rules (Innovation)
• Robust and Universal Design (Box Design)
• High Replayability (Platform)
• Market Opportunity (Media)

To explain some of these, he made the following points:

• The market changes, try to follow it.
• Don’t touch technology that isn’t cheap- otherwise, there’s no way to publish a game with it.
• A marketer can look back and explain why a game wasn’t successful, but can’t tell the future of a game.
• A game needs to grab from the shelf.
• The theme can influence the experience of the game.
• A good box design helps the initial sales, but the long term sales are dependant on good game design.
• And even if you get both right, it may not be a big seller.
• The designer is not an expert on presentation, and should rely on a publisher.
• Big rules frighten players away (and they frighten Knizia too.) People want to play right away.
• The rules should be explainable in 5 minutes.
• Innovation is very important. Hitting the spot between innovation and simplicity is important: game critics want innovation, but too much innovation loses accessibility.

He went on to explain the two biggest amateur mistakes. One, being afraid of your idea being stolen. Two, the game only works in a limited audience (“like your grandmother.”) A game should be available to a broad range of people. He considers himself to be a member of the entertainment industry. He packs entertainment in a box, then entertainment should come out. You shouldn’t just test with one group, because then you’ll be telling people later the way they “should” play.

Market Opportunities Examples

Once again, Knizia showed examples of his games, and how they fit into the category of market opportunities.

Risk & Battleship Express

Hasbro is important as a customer, but very bad to work with. (He says he can say this because he’s friends with Mike Gray, the VP in charge of game acquisitions.) There are no ideal publishers. The bigger companies are harder to pitch to. You have to try match their lines. Hasbro is mainly interested in milking their lines. Knizia sold dice games to go with their brands. Offer a publisher the right product, because once it’s sold, you can’t sell it elsewhere.

Sudoku

A friend of Knizia’s, Kevin Jacklin, kept telling him to do something with Sudoku. During a long phone conversation where Knizia was explaining why it can’t be done, it occurred to him how it could be done, and he had convinced himself by the time he was off the phone. It was a few months to get the design working. he contacted Kosmos about buying his Sudoku game, and sent out a list of newspapers that carried Sudoku. The very next morning, Kosmos called back and said they wanted it. 100k were sold in the first week of availability. The marketing manager called him up and said they wanted more.

Nintendo DS Games (Brain Benders/Brain Voyage)

Video games are becoming more interesting and important. There’s plenty of power to make good games, and price them well. Video games are now the mass market. The DS is ideally set up for the gaming market. It’s important to look at different publishers and trends in the gaming market. Plus, new areas enlighten a designer.

Ingenious Brand

Making your own brand can be very helpful. Ingenious is branching out into puzzles and downloadable games.

Medici/Strozzi Brand

Medici was the first game, then came Medici/Strozzi, so now he’s going to release Strozzi which has the other half of the Medici/Strozzi game in a game more like Medici.

Pickomino

Many things come down to luck when publishing games, but you can make your own luck. Pickomino is an example of a little game that took off. It comes in many different languages, and has sold over 100k. A good game that grabs people is more important than anything else… but you can never tell what’s going to grab people.

Monkey Madness

Monkey Madness is another example. A small children’s game that has no marketing or advertising, but keeps selling. It was done quickly. There’s no recognition from it, but it steadily provides sales. The designer market is a small but loud group, whereas the mass market is bigger but quieter.

Knizia Game Facts

• 12 Million Games Sold
• 700 Different Editions
• 40 Different Languages
• 80 New Publications Each Year
• $40 Million Retail Turnover Each Year

Now, Knizia has an assistant that handles the business end.

Afterwards came the Question & Answer portion.

Q: What can be done about being too innovative?
A: Think about it early in the process. Do not go too far out.

Q: What’s your favorite design, and why?
A: Don’t have a favorite, since each game is not an absolute. Each game is dependant on your mood and the group you’re playing with. It’s different when playing games against your parents than with your friends. His favorite games are the ones that he’s currently designing.

Q: A question from Blood & Cardstock games- any more advice on effective marketing?
A: He’s not a marketer, and doesn’t do it. He relies on publishers. The only advice he had was to offer support as much as possible. A big brand is worth money developing by throwing money at it. Even if it doesn’t succeed, it enriches the culture of gaming.

Q: When designing a kid’s game, what if it’s tough to get them to play by the rules?
A: Kids are very honest. The rules are bad if they’re too easily distracted. That’s all part of the design process.

Q: How do you get to work with different publishers?
A: It’s easier for him because he’s known, and works in many markets. Some companies really look after their games. Different companies are good in different areas: a small company is more likely to look after your game, but won’t sell as much as a big company.

Thanks to Dr. Knizia for his seminar, and congratulations to him again on his double SDJ win!

Our biggest source of traffic is, of course, Google. Thanks to all the tracking software whojidgts, we have a comprehensive log of the search terms used to get here (as do most people who run blogs and other websites.)

Occasionally, I look in these search terms and see things that are perfect to steal as game design ideas or to incorporate into RPGs. The concept is similar to using random generators for idea seeds and brainstorming. The difference, however, is that somewhere a human brain is searching for this thing, so there’s at least an audience of one (and the idea is more likely to be coherent, as opposed to a random mismatch.)

Here’s some examples that I like from our logs:

• 300 spartans really giant elephants? (Surprise, Xerxes!)
• “points of light” indie campaign -india rpg (Indian flavored D&D?)
• “open source” dungeon tiles (Yes, more of those would be great)
• “chrono trigger” tabletop (I think I’m already stealing this idea)
• critical hits & piratz (What could possibly go better together?)
• cloverfield dnd monster stats (You probably can use the Cthulhu stats, right?)
• best build for a d&d gnome pvp character (To make the opponent die laughing?)
• gelatinous cube comic (Or, Cube 3: Cube in the City)
• geek-girl rpg (About time they had their own rpg, right?)
• jurassic park d20 (Plenty of dinosaur stats in 3.5)
• post unclear multiplayer game (They probably misspelled “nuclear” but post-unclear sounds more interesting!)
• play a survival games based on movies (I’m sure the sci-fi channel has plenty of untapped licenses)

That’s just a quick survey from the past week. Delving back into the past few years since we started the site would yield more results but take more time. I also find that the best ones to look through for random ideas are the ones with only one search hit. The ones with more hits are likely to be things that already exist that you wrote about. The one hits are people searching in every possible spot for something that may not exist… but that you could create.

WHITE, HOUSE LANNISTER, RUSSIA

In board games, you could break it down into two broad categories. There are symmetrical and asymmetrical games, and they’re not necessarily an absolute one or the other: most games will fall inside a spectrum between the two.

An easy example of a symmetrical game is Chess. Both sides start with the same pieces and the same options. Because Chess is a pure strategy turn-based game, the first player has an advantage. (It’s statistically minor based on the emergent complexity, but it is there.) Thus, the only point of imbalance is in who goes first. (I’m sure there’s some simultaneous play variant that eliminates it but changes the game significantly.)

Moving a little farther along the scale is Diplomacy. Everyone’s starting positions are different, but it’s assumed that they are all roughly balanced, so that no matter what nation you choose/are given, you have an equal shot of winning based on your skills in the game.

A classic example of an asymmetrical game is Cosmic Encounter. Though everyone’s starting positions are the same, everyone has an alien race that gives them unique powers that influence how they play. Again, though, the races are supposed to be balanced to at least the extent that the outcome isn’t clear as soon as the aliens are dealt.

Then there’s something like Game of Thrones, which shares some mechanics with Diplomacy, but is very asymmetrical. There are different starting positions and different special powers for each player. Again, however, these are supposed to be balanced so that every player knows they have a chance to win. However, the farther you get from symmetry, the more concerns there will be that there is actually balance, and the harder it is to actually test if everyone has an equal chance of winning.

GOOD VS. EVIL: 50/50?

Reiner Knizia reportedly wrote a computer program to test whether Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation was balanced. I can only assume that he had the computer essentially make random moves for the two sides, and then see who won. Then it did that many thousands of times, and see how often one side one. If it wasn’t balanced, he’d tweak something in the game design, then try it again. Repeat until the percentages come out to roughly 50%.

Of course, that’s not going to work for all games. I’m not sure I’m qualified to explain the role of intelligence in games (make appropriate joke here), but there are just some games that just more influenced by having actual people behind them instead of those who make random moves. (Of course, if you’re willing to write an elaborate artificial intelligence to test your game, you’d have a better system.)

Then the obvious best tester of balance is to have people actually play your game. A lot. (Which really, you should do no matter what.) The longer and more complex the game is, the more time-consuming and difficult it is to test to a statistically relevant degree.

WHY CARE IF THERE’S BALANCE?

So if it’s all that trouble, why is balance important? There’s a few reasons.

• You don’t want the game to be over as soon as it begins by getting stuck with a weaker position. (All players should feel like they have a chance to win throughout the whole game.)
• You have to assume that your players are going to want to win, or else there’s nothing that drives the game.
• You don’t want the game to essentially be decided by a single random event, thus negating the rest of the game.

The last point is a little bit trickier. In many games, there are clearly things that exist in the game that are better than other things. At the simplest level, there can be some cards/tokens/tiles/whatever that are just worth more points than other ones.

The idea, however, would be everyone has a chance to get those things. It’s not just a matter of randomly giving them out: worth more points is harder to get. And then there’s the principle of self-balancing.

I BID $700 ON PARK PLACE

Self-balancing is the idea that if the players know that something has a high value, they can work on making it harder to get by their actions. Many bidding games work on this principle: yes, this card is awesome, but you’ll have to pay more for it because I bid higher for it. Self-balancing can be tricky, because you don’t want it to lead to a lot of tackle the leader/kingmaker/clusterfuck. It shouldn’t be used as a catch-all excuse for imbalance, because at some point, the players just aren’t going to be able to stop someone, and you’re back to the issue of imbalance.

OK, following me so far? It was a long walk, but now let’s look at RPGs.

I’M BALANCED: I’M GOOD AT EVERYTHING

RPGs have a moderator/game master/outside of the rules person. (Not always, but for the purpose of the kind of game we’re talking about, it’s our starting point.) That person’s job is to create as enjoyable a game as possible for all involved. The goal, really, is for all players to have a balance of fun. Few RPGs have a winning/losing condition, but I think it’s fair to say the goal would be for all players to have fun.

However, there are certainly adversarial challenges. In D&D, that challenge is often combat. Then there is the broad umbrella of problem solving. Most complaints about something being unbalanced or broken generally talk about the former, because those tend to be more rules-heavy. Role-playing and puzzle/problem solving tend to be divorced from the rules so that anyone can talk (regardless of their charisma) and anyone can solve the riddle (regardless of their intelligence.) Combat, however, is the more “game” part of most systems: most games don’t reward you in combat for being able to cut off the DM’s arm in real life.

A reason lack of balance bothers many players in combat is that there’s a very clear winning/losing. You want your character to win and the bad guys to lose. At the same time, you don’t want to feel obsolete by someone else’s character. You want to feel like you’re contributing.

It’s also a matter of character concept: if you imagine yourself as an excellent archer, and then someone else who’s better at picking obscure feats ends up being a better archer than you AND better in melee, it’s not a good feeling. Additionally, it changes what skill is being tested in the game. Most people would rather their ability to choose wisely (and get lucky) to be what primarily determines their success, not ownership of obscure sourcebooks or spending hours hanging out on the Character Optimization message boards.

But wait! We’ve got this neutral third party whose job it is to make it fun for everyone. As a player, I should be able to go to the DM and say “I’m not having fun because Abe the Super Telekinetic makes all my abilities worthless.” And the DM should be able to do something about it.

Admittedly, this often works, especially in cases of minor imbalance. “OK, you get this cool weapon that only you can use, and so now you both do well, just in different ways.” That kind of thing.

However, that puts the work of game design off the system, and onto the DM. In more extreme cases, the DM might have to design something from the ground up to try to make it work. And most DMs don’t have the time or inclination to try to balance it by running computer simulations. They’re generally going to test by playing, which means continuing to game design as the game goes along.

THE CASE OF THE EPIC MIND FLAYER

Let me throw in an example of my own experience here. I have an epic level 3.5 game that I designed once as a game that I planned once and used for three different groups, kind of like a module that I never was going to publish.

The third time I ran it, a friend wanted to play a Mind Flayer. Since they have a really high ECL, this would be his only chance to really play one in the rules as written. Because I wanted everyone to have fun, I approved it without a second thought.

Now, Mind Flayers aren’t NEARLY up to snuff with an equivalent number of levels in any of the basic classes. It was clear that his DC 17 mind blast wasn’t going to cut it when the Atropal came floating around. Though he didn’t approach me with the problem specifically, it was clear that he was unhappy with what he could do during combat compared to everyone else (and how little he was able to do against the bad guys.)

So what are my options here? I could have given him a whole bunch of new powers, granted to him by the “Wand of Mind Flayer Badassness” or whatever, in which case I have to sit down and design those powers, and hope they make up for it. (I’m sure I’d do a good job of it too- after all, people do give me money for making and developing games, so I have some kind of knack for it.) Most likely though, because I don’t want to spend that much time when I could be planning cool stuff to happen, I’d compare it to the classes of equivalent level to bring him on par- in effect, balancing him by making him the same as something that I already feel is balanced. There’s a good chance that he’d lose a lot of the reason that he wanted to play a Mind Flayer in the first place, and it would turn more into “fluff” then “feel” at that point.

My other option would be to design a class from scratch that is balanced for the level but take extra care to make sure it “feels” like a Mind Flayer, which is even more work.

End result: I’d rather the ECL rules work in the first place so that if the option is out there for him to play a Mind Flayer, I know that he’s balanced for that level.

IN CONCLUSION, I’M LAZY

Now, there are plenty of people out there who enjoy designing as they play, or are awesome at making players feel like they can contribute no matter how weak they are, or who just don’t care as much.

When it gets right down to it for me, any work that’s placed on me by the game system makes me question why I’m paying for a ruleset. I already know I have to give each player their time in the limelight and do what’s best for my players. I don’t need to spend money on books to tell me to do that, and they’re unlikely to really get it right for my situation anyway. However, I am willing to spend money to be provided with sets of rules that have been thoroughly tested and an assurance that all of the character types present will perform well at what they do and generally not be overshadowed by others. Oh, and hey, you can set up a fight when you need it and not worry that a diversion will accidentally destroy your players without a fight.

Finally, I’m paying for a game, and those same concerns about the board games above can also apply to a game like D&D. If I’m going to be playing something that doesn’t care about the game system’s ability to have balanced characters, I might as well just run a dice-less, rules-less system.

In fact, the style of game that does this most directly is the push-your-luck game (like Incan Gold.) In a typical PYL game, a losing player can just keep taking risks to try to catch up until the very end.

However, there are other games that take another, but still direct, tact. Some games contain a “catch-up” mechanic by which players are specifically hindered for being in the lead and/or specifically helped by trailing. The two most direct examples of this I’ve seen are Power Grid and Mario Kart- however, each of these have some issues in how they handle the implementation.

For those who are unfamiliar, Power Grid structures its turn order around what players it says are losing and winning. A later turn order is generally bad: you buy your resources later and thus more expensive (and allow the other players to drive up the costs to attack you) and you buy your houses later, and so the good spots will often be taken by the time it rolls around to you.

There is only a small amount of luck in the game in the order in which power plants come out, which leads to a game that’s entirely open (or hidden trackable.) Thus, skilled players will navigate themselves into situations where they are purposely losing to gain the advantages at the right time. Indeed, this is part of the expected strategy. It’s a very good game with tons of decisions that come out from that, but does not satisfy the usual criteria.

Now, in Mario Kart Wii, there’s some very direct methods by which winning players are hindered, and some by which losing players are helped. The most infamous example is the blue shell: only given out to players near the back of the pack, it seeks out the player in first place and destroys him, no save. However, this tends to have a very direct Kingmaker effect. Generally, the player in twelve place doesn’t care about whose in first place. The blue shell, in a close race, just punishes whoever happens to be in first and lets second place take the lead. Really, it would be much better if the shell just sought out whoever was in front of the person firing it, though that also has the effect of punishing players who are already pretty far behind.

The item that has the best effect in helping the loser is Bullet Bill. As long as you’re not hideously far behind (as what happens to me every time on the haunted house level), you are pushed ahead several places without needing to do anything. At least this is fully helpful and not punitive to other players, but it does mean it’s the item you really want to get when behind.

Mario Kart has always tried to balance the skill of driving with some chaos associated with items and power ups. Like many of Nintendo’s offerings, younger kids are the primary audience which tend to need more help catching up and enjoy chaos more. Of course, Nintendo also wants adults to play the game, and judging by some of the reactions online, it’s clear that being constantly bombarded with blue shells when doing well can be frustrating. So in your own designs, be careful of the line to walk between “anybody can win” and “winner gets blowed up.”

Now, you are given the chance to revise the paper for a higher grade. You could just revise the former: it’s easy enough to correct grammar mistakes when the professor tells you what they are. If you just change all those in Word and reprint it out, you might get a B+.

The other stuff is harder. It’d effectively take a rewrite to fix. You know the overall structure now that it’s been written out, but you’re basically starting over. You know you can fix those problems, and if you did, you’d get an A, but it’s going to be a lot of work.

I prefer the latter, in every kind of design I do. And I especially recommend it in games.

There have been plenty of games I’ve been involved with designing or testing that have been in that stage. There are parts of the game that we enjoy, and are working OK, but there’s clearly still something wrong. But either we could start patching the game all over the place to try to force the results we want, or we could start over. (We have a leaky boat. We could patch the holes in the boat, though those patches would always show, or we could build a new boat.)

There are many reasons designers are unwilling to teardown. When you’ve invested so much time in a project, it’s tough to just step back and say “this isn’t working, we need to start over.” There will often be complains from playtesters too who have enjoyed so much about the game. I mean, you basically have to tell them that you’re taking away their fun! Such is one of the hardships of game design. What you should strive for is to make a new game that is even better, such that they never pine for the days of that old, broken proto-game.

Doing a teardown is easier when working on a game in your spare time with no deadlines or pressures. In the fast paced world of game design, such luxuries aren’t always possible. I’ve seen plenty of games by the same designers (OK, usually Knizia) that clearly stem from the same idea, but have been released multiple times. There’s some core mechanism in there that’s roughly the same, but a change in scoring that makes it a different game.

Then there is the question of multiple editions. D&D underwent a pretty major teardown. Had D&D never been released in any form before, it’d be much easier to accept for fans that there was this game called D&D, and it has powers and very abstract hit points.

Of course, that’s not the case. The game has been around for over 30 years, and we all have plenty of fond memories of playing with it in a variety of rulesets. It’s also had the problem that the rules tend to be used by people for a lot of different styles of play. In order to support the style of play D&D is best at, the designers really had no choice but to step back and teardown. That meant alienating a lot of players who were using it in other ways. It also meant going to all those fans who have so many fond memories of play and saying “yeah, it’s a good game, but we want to step back and make it better.”

I may not approve of every single design choice that the Wizards team has made, but I wholeheartedly approve that they were able to teardown D&D and rebuild it. There were many core issues of the game that they had tried for many years to patch, but ultimately, the only way to fix a core issue is to change the core.

It just remains to be seen if the final rules will convince enough people that the rebuild is even better than what they were playing before.

I have had game design ideas wake me up in the middle of the night. I’m constantly thinking “what could be a new game idea” and I go to sleep, literally, almost every night with bits of design swirling in my head. In fact, I had a breakthrough last night doing exactly that. I have a game that I’m convinced would work GREAT with the Euphrat & Tigris scoring. Unfortunately, it’s the Euphrat & Tigris scoring… an idea so friggin’ wonderful that I couldn’t live with myself if I borrowed it. So I lay awake thinking “how do I reach those ends in a *different* way”. And something occurred to me! I got up, wrote it down, and went back to bed satisfied.

I do something from time to time called the DESIGN A BAD GAME EXERCISE. The concept is that I am under contract to design a game in ONE DAY. It doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to be particularly original. It doesn’t even have to be fun. It just has to be a game that works. Game = a system wherein players compete by making choices. For example, LCR would not qualify as a game even by these minimal standards. Another restriction is that the game can’t be the same as any other game I’m aware of (including those created in previous DESIGN A BAD GAME exercises).

This idea has several things going for it:

1. It allows me the pleasure of designing. I love designing. It’s fun. Sometimes it’s a drag when I don’t have a good idea and I can’t design. I love creating the graphic components using Microsoft Publisher. I love printing them out on heavy stock paper or full sheet labels. I love cutting them out. I love scavenging my thrift store game pile for pawns, tiles, boards, etc. I love sitting at my dining room table and assembling the prototype with my headphones on. Sometimes I even have music playing through them!

2. This exercise keeps my motor running. It keeps me mentally fit. The same way that running on a treadmill will never win you a race, but it might help you win a race in the future.

3. The act of creating a game (even a bad one) is still, by definition, a creative act. At least in my case, creativity breeds creativity. Sometimes when I’m designing a bad game, a new, fresh idea will sneak in. Now, this idea may not make my bad game much better, but it’s an idea I can catalog for future sessions. Believe it or not, I have a notebook with lots of these ideas just waiting for a home.

4. Every now and then, a bad game will turn out to be a decent game that people like and play. My silly little Finger Ball game has a small, obscure, yet enthusiastic group of fans. Some of them even play it via BGG chat. One BGGer wrote a mock dissertation of the game. While it was certainly intended as a joke, it was somewhat insightful.

Every designer has to design in his or her own way. For me, game designs don’t spring from nothing, I have to be thinking about it and working on it. I don’t wake up from sleeping with a good design in my head, I don’t gather them as I am paying attention to other things. I need to work at designing, and here’s a bunch of exercises to get my mind working. I do these with a time limit, because I find that a deadline, even an artificial one, pushed me forward and prevents me from doing any self-editing. I sit with a two-minute sand timer and my notebook. This is how I work.

Most of these exercises follow the same pattern: brainstorm, churn, brainstorm, design. None of these exercises is supposed to get in the way of good design. If a promising game idea brews up in the middle of an exercise then ignore the exercise, ignore the timer, and let the ideas flow.

CTMG: 45 minutes. Most games have clearly defined components, themes, mechanics, and goals. For two minutes each, make a list of each of these four areas, broad or narrow. Randomly put together one piece from each of the four so you have a list of about ten games that have these disconnected parts. Then, for two minutes on each game, design each game. Lastly, for two minutes each, design three games that use any combination of components, themes, mechanics, and goals that you’ve written down or have thought of.

Compel: 30 minutes. Games capture compelling activities in competition. For two minutes, write down a list of compelling activities. Then spend two minutes putting two or three of the items on your list together, so that you have a list that uses all of your activities at least once. You’ll have about six items, so spend two minutes per item designing a game that would feature all the activities listed. Lastly, for two minutes each, design three games that use any combination of these compelling activities.

Steal: 30 minutes. Many times a new game idea comes from existing games, so intentionally steal ideas. For two minutes, write down the key idea used in as many good games as you can think of. Then spend two minutes matching those ideas together into a new list of ideas. You’ll have about six items, so spend two minutes per item designing new games that do not look at all like the original inspiring games. Lastly, for two minutes each, design three games that use any combination of these ideas.

Feel: 45 minutes. A good game evokes strong feelings in the players. For two minutes, write a list of specific feelings that a good game should have. For each item, write for two minutes how you might create those feelings. Spend two minutes pulling the ways of creating feelings into lists of methods. You should have about ten sets of methods, so spend two minutes per set designing a game that would use them. Lastly, for two minutes each, design three games that use any combination of these methods.

Reversals: 30 minutes. Turn good games inside out or upside down. For two minutes, write down a list of good games. Then, for two minutes each, design the opposite game, one that runs the game backwards in time, has the opposite goal, has the opposite mechanism, or somehow turns the original game on its head. Lastly, for two minutes each, design three games that combine the best elements of the games you’ve just created.

Combine: 30 minutes. Look through your design notebook and find games that don’t work and list them in combinations, with the ideas from two or three different games on one line. Then, for two minutes each, redesign those combined games. Lastly, for two minutes each, recombine parts of these new games into three new games.

Problems: 30 minutes. There are many problems that plague game design. For two minutes, list them. Then, for two minutes each, write new ways to attach each problem. For two minutes, combine those ways into games. Spend two minutes on each game designing it. Lastly, for two minutes each, make three new games that combine several of these solutions.

Drawing: 15 minutes. For two minutes, draw game boards, cards, pieces, and other components. Then design six games, for two minutes each, that use the game components you have drawn.

Meta: For two minutes, write down game design exercises that follow the brainstorm – churn – brainstorm – design model.

MetaMeta: For two minutes, write down other possible game design exercise methods.

Today’s Patient:

Tales of the Arabian Nights by Eric Goldburg.

Overview:

You can read my review of the game for a more indepth look. Players take on the role of a character in a mythical Arabian Nights setting. Each character has skills and other statuses that determine what the character can do. Characters go through encounters generated via the Book of Tales and try to obtain Story & Destiny points.

Core:

Players want to have fun encounters and experience all the interesting stories that the Book of Tales has to tell.

Changes:

There are a number of rules that get further away from the core concept of experiencing stories and attempt to bring it more towards a strategy game. Really, it shouldn’t try to be a strategy game at all, though the victory conditions give the players motivation to keep going.

• Adventure game only. There are variants in the book for other types of play, mainly a merchant game and a quest game. Both of these add on extra mechanics that detract from the core of the game, so we never play them.
• Adventure deck. Normally the game has one big deck that has a mix of cards that cause adventures, city destinations, and special actions. It was always disappointing to have a turn where you didn’t have an adventure (especially with the amount of downtime in the game) so we made a deck that just had the adventures to guarantee you were having one on every turn. The destination cards had a useful purpose of giving incentive to explore the board, so we made it a separate deck, and each player always has one destination card. (When it is used, draw another one.) The special cards didn’t add anything, so we don’t use them. This has the emergent property that players go through the adventure deck quicker so that you’re more likely to have the “afternoon” and “night” encounters.
• Character sheet. Instead of having a limited number of skill chips for each skill, we use markers to show which skills we have. Before, you were limited to the number of skill chips in the game, which didn’t make sense from a thematic perspective.
• Shorter game. Usually, but not always, we play to 15 SP/DP instead of the suggested 20. This help prevents the game from going stale.
• Statuses. Many of the statuses end on the “Quest Solved” result on certain types of encounters, and this is difficult to remember in gameplay. We simplify it and say that any Quest Solved result fixes those statuses. However, the statuses remain a problem in game play, and we may try using “one status per player.” This is untested.
• Places of Power. The rules are unclear about these. The way we were taught you cannot enter these directly. We found that they are very tough to enter through other stories, and yet provide some of the most fun in the game. We allow anyone to walk into these Places of Power from the board and have the encounter there.

Prognosis:

Tales of the Arabian Nights is a great game that provides hours of interesting stories for players to experience. By stripping out the not-so-fun strategy elements and focusing on the core of adventures, the game is improved dramatically.

We both agreed the perfect game, that is fun for all, has not yet been designed yet.

But with this in mind, and based on recent conversations, I have been mentally preparing a list of games that are close to perfect. These tend to fall into three camps:

• Great after a few tweaks to the rules as written
• Great except for an untweakable flaw
• Just plain great.

These are just my opinion of games that fit into these categories.

Great after a few tweaks

Loopin’ Louie

A game of pure skill. Succeeds great at being an easy to play, tough to master dexterity game. Surprising depth and skills needed to play masked by an innocuous looking theme.
Tweaks needed: Tournament play (with its built in catch-up mechanism). Also, eliminated players should probably not be allowed to keep playing to minimize Kingmaker.

No Thanks!

Elegant and heart-breaking at the same time, with every turn being filled with tough decisions (and if not, a quick toss of a chip.)
Tweaks needed: The number of cards to remove per round is questionable, balancing between some amount of strategy without being totally open. Also, scoring/number of rounds needs to be considered so as to minimize king-maker. And please don’t play Hidden Trackable.

Quo Vadis?

As pure of a negotiation game as they get, with simple and elegant rules leading to cut-throat situations.
Tweak needed: Hidden trackable ends up being more hidden than trackable, but relatively easy to fix.

Space Dealer

Innovative, it bridges the gap between the fast-paced computer game world and the decision-filled world of the board game.
Tweaks needed: The rules as written are a mess and don’t seem to accomodate for how the game actually plays. They seriously expect you to track your score as you play, in the center area where everyone is constantly grabbing? There are also a few funky exceptions that need to be purged to give new players a chance at playing without having to ask “hey, can we pause the timer while I ask some questions?”

Great except for an untweakable flaw

High Society

One of the best light bidding games out there, with the person who appears to be in the lead probably being the most likely to go bust at the end.
Flaw: The game needs an uncertain ending to avoid all the nasty end-game issues, and 1/4 of all games lack an uncertain end, with no easy way to fix it.

Werewolf/Mafia

A huge hit at many a convention, and the best of the psychological games out there. Too subtle or nasty for many players, it still succeeds wildly in the genre.
Flaw: Elimination means that people often don’t get to play, or lose fairly arbitrarily. However, elimination is also what gives the game an extra psychological edge.

Acquire

A classic game that partially invented the economic genre. Simple to play- place a tile, buy up to three stocks, draw- that rewards planning and allows influence over how stocks do.
Flaw: Strategy goes out the window if you don’t draw the tiles you need to merge, especially if you spent everything early.

Magic: The Gathering

The game that controlled many years of my life and bank account, the first CCG has mastered how to create a game of infinite combinations and strategies.
Flaw: The game is nearly impossible to teach new players. And even if they’re able to get a grip on the rules, you can’t cover all the combinations of cards that come up. Even long time players need to consult the massive online database of cards fixed for the current edition.

Just plain great

Mama Mia!

A memory game that was designed as a memory game, with all the mechanisms playing well to fit into this core. With the extra hand management and random elements, this game still works even when the memory element is removed!
Not perfect because: The memory aspect is enough to turn off many players, and there’s not quite enough depth in the rest of the game.

Lost Cities

Knizia’s masterpiece two player game combines planning, hand management, luck, and the ever impending sense that time is running out.
Not perfect because: It’s a two player game only.

Uptown

The game on the list I’m completely biased towards. However, I do really feel like this game has tons of depth, while being extremely easy to teach and play.
Not perfect because: There is no real theme, and it resisted any attempt to become themed. Many of the games on this list can be accused of having no real theme, but this is the game that to me most resists theming, and so there’s nothing outside that can help the metaphor.

Conclusion

I could go on and on, of course, picking apart every game I’ve ever played and putting it into one of these categories (or the all-purpose “not even close to perfect” category.) The factor that all of these games share is that they are very succesful to their audience, who are more willing to dismiss the flaws (or even claim that the flaws are a benefit.) By considering your audience, and striving to make the best game you possibly can in that area, you can come out with something succesful (and close to perfect.)

…And of course, if a game isn’t perfect, I’ll be happy to tell you why!