Recent Games...

...but not RPGs!

It's spring break here for my daughter, so lots of family time, the odd snatched hour or two of work to keep things ticking over, and little-to-no time for thinking or writing about RPGs.

Correction: little-to-no time spent thinking or writing about RPGs, as I've had time, I've just chosen to spend it playing games on my PS4. I got a game bundle last week and have played and completed two short games and messed about with a third. All have got me thinking parallel things about RPGs...

Hue is a side-scrolling puzzle game. The title character, Hue, is trying to find his mum, a scientist. They both live in a 2D black and white world, but his mum has figured out a way to "see" other colours. Hue gathers pieces of a magic ring that helps him shift his perception to see or not see other colours; when he chooses to not see, say, red, then red walls disappear, red spikes can't stab him and so on. The puzzles get tricky, the story is charming and there's a nice philosophical flavour running throughout. But it got me wondering about ideas like that in RPGs. Are there systems, rules, mechanics that just let someone veto effects? Maybe as super-ultra-powerful magic items, but what about just regular little artefacts... I wonder...

Everybody's Gone To The Rapture is a game I finished in one four hour sitting. A beautiful, haunting game, you play as someone (it's never revealed who you are) exploring an empty English country town. No one is around, but there's evidence that something very, very strange has happened. As you explore you find ghostly echoes of the people who lived there, and piece together the story that has lead to this strange situation. It's amazing, it's deeply emotional, it's incredibly gorgeous to look at and I've not been able to stop thinking about it since last Friday night. It's got me thinking about two player games, role-playing games of exploration, games with very few instructions, games to explore difficult topics (there's a lot to unpack in Rapture about life, death and legacy) and a lot more. If you get the chance, play this game.

The Flame in the Flood is hard. It's a rogue-like game set on a great flooded river. Scout and her dog are rafting downstream trying not to drown. When they find a camp site or an abandoned town they explore for food, supplies, clean water and things they might need. Everything wants to kill you. Water is mostly polluted, so has to be cleaned. Filters break after three uses so replacements have to be found or made. The nights get cold so you need to make clothes. Animals are all around but hard to catch. Walk by some thorns and you'll get scratches; don't treat them and you'll get infected and die. Can't cook the food you find? Food poisoning. Eat too many berries? Stomach ache. And so on. Flame is really hard, but there is a neat little game concept that could help a lot.

Whenever you start the game, you're shown Scout's dog dragging a backpack away from someone who has died. Scout takes the little backpack and puts it on the dog, and it becomes a kind of second inventory (the third is what goes on your raft). To begin with I thought this was just a kind of extra little item slot and nothing more, but then I realised: those six item slots persist between games. If you have a jar of water and a piece of jerky in the dog's pack and die, when you start a new game it's in the new pack.

So... The dead body that your dog finds at the start of the game is YOU, holding your last dog's little pack...

And... If you're about to die in the game and you can you should load the most useful items into the dog's backpack so the next Scout can use them.

Also... What games do interesting things between a dying character and a new one? Yes, people pick over a dead character body for treasure and items; the interesting thing in The Flame in the Flood I think is the weird metaphysical connection between the characters that the items creates. So what other kinds of things could we do in games? Persistence of memory? Persistence of consciousness somehow? Clones that pop up when your character dies? (played in a oneshot game that did that actually!) A chance to send a small portion of your inventory to the next character, who is somehow connected to you?

Friends, take my sword to my daughter, tell her to avenge me...

So not much writing and thinking about stuff that was in my head a few weeks ago (although more on Troika! as soon as I can get my thoughts in order) but lots of thoughts.

Projects Update, April 2016

Just after I released Oddpool in September, I wrote a short post about the various projects that were on my to-do list stuck on the wall next to my desk. Following something that I had seen Warren Ellis do in his regular mailing list email, I had decided to give them "cute" or "vague" names, descriptors that might only be tangentially related. Over the last six or so months my priorities and interests have changed, so here's my updated list of names and where I am now:

• Project STUDIO3: this is Issue 3 of A Random Encounter, where the focus is Vandel J. Arden. I've interviewed Vandel already, and now that Issue 2 is out, I'm starting the transcription process. This is on track for a mid-June release.
• Project STUDIO4: Issue 4 of A Random Encounter. I did the interview for this yesterday, and I'm aiming for mid-August for this one.
• Project OORT: I'm working on Into The Oort slow and steady; I didn't have the time or focus until recently to put the hours into this, but I'm getting there. It's taking longer than I thought, but it's coming...
• Project ESCAPE2: this will be the updated version of the print extra that came with Issue 2 of A Random Encounter. It's a little A5 micro-game. I had a lot of fun playing it recently, and I've heard from others who are going to give it a go soon. I think it's pretty good, but as part of another project (TBA) I'm interested in making this as slick and well-presented as possible.
• Project SHADES: this has morphed from what I had envisaged originally, but I still see this as a near-future, gritty, Cyberpunk-y sort of thing. Expect to see something of this over the coming months.
• Project JAGD: a recent idea for a one-shot game. It has phases that I'm trying to link together, but is sort-of random, sort-of procedurally generated. Like so many things in life and games, it's about the journey. Expect to see something of this over the coming months.

These are the things in my head at the current time, and I think my wife and I are going to also be working together on the writing for Project SOLO, which I mentioned in the last post. You'll hear more about STUDIO3, STUDIO4 and OORT in due course: out of the others mentioned here, which do you want to hear more about?

Getting Physical

On A Gaming Podcast About Nothing, that podcast that Dave and I will return to at some point, I've often been criticised for being an RPG hoarder. In the past I've downloaded every free pdf that someone has offered, tried to support every game that has flagged my attention and tuned in to every little one-page thing that looks interesting. I've slowed down on that, partly through a realisation that I was reading so little of the stuff that I'd bought or found - and using even less - partly through a lack of time and money to buy things, but also partly after some honest reflection: I just prefer to read and use RPG stuff in a physical medium.

As an aspiring publisher, I see the other side of that now as well. I think this was crystallised in my mind recently when chatting to Chris McDowall for A Random Encounter:

How has the last year or so been?
...It was just incredible to have that feeling of, “There's this many people that want to pay money to have your product on their shelf.” I'd given away these other free games and they'd probably had hundreds of downloads. But I know that when I go on RPGNow and download a free pdf, 80 or 90% of the time I never get around to opening that pdf, and the vast majority of the time I never get around to using it. The fact that someone has paid for Into The Odd at least makes me hope that it's being used.

If I make something, free or paid, I want people to read it, use it. From the limited anecdotal research I've done, thinking about myself, talking to others, I've come to conclude like Chris that the main way to get people reading something, playing a game or whatever is to get it in print. Physical products are simply more likely to be used.

Following my train of thought from yesterday, since I don't need anyone's permission to make something or to publish, then I have no excuse other than any I conjure up for myself (I don't have time, people might not like it, how will I get it done? etc). I asked some questions at the end of yesterday's post too:

• Which project do I think will be the most fun?
• Which project do I think has the most potential for me to learn something?

And for now at least, when it comes to the small project that I want to work on in-between the regular, ongoing project of A Random Encounter and the longer-term project of Into The Oort, my answers are:

• One where I'm doing something small and different, which can be made physical easily;
• One where I force myself to do something new, to practise a new skill or develop an existing one.

The second point sounds a little obvious, so I think I need to work on fleshing that thought out. In my day job I'm always encouraging people to "Plan -> Do -> Reflect -> Review" so it's about time I did some of that too. As I follow my playing around with ideas, I hope some time soon to have something to show for them, even at a rough stage. Anyone want to see what I'm working on when I have something to share?

Pick Yourself and Pick The Project

I've been watching and listening to a number of talks to help motivate me lately. In particular, I seem to have gravitated towards Seth Godin; I read a number of his books a few years ago, with Poke The Box being a firm favourite, and I get his blog posts in my email every day. I listened to his two hour interview on the Tim Ferriss Show recently, which sparked my attention to go and look for more things of him talking.

A couple of favourites that I found on YouTube and listened to while doing the dishes of an evening include this one and this one - both worth a listen, whether or not you're doing the dishes at the same time. Somewhere in and amongst all of these recent things, two points have popped into my head and won't go away. I'm not sure where I encountered these insights in my listening and reading (I re-read Poke The Box recently too), but know that they came from Seth.

The first thought is about picking yourself: whether you have a boss or not, whatever your profession or job, stop waiting for someone to choose you. Despite being self-employed for years, this has been a hard thing for me at times. Waiting until you hear from someone in order to approach them for work. Waiting until you get this or that and henceforth have the right conditions (they'll never be perfect). Recently I've really accepted this, I've chosen myself to do interesting work - both in my day job, and in this little (for now!) RPG business that I'm running.

The second thought is one that I'm still struggling with, or rather a consequence of the second thought that I got from listening to these talks/books. I think in Poke The Box, Seth Godin raises this idea: "if you want to get better at juggling you have to throw more balls." I.e., if you want to do good work you have to start more projects, you have to start things and work on them and see what happens. You can't umm and ahh over whether or not the idea is the best it could be, you can't wait until you have enough money or no risk or the perfect team or the best circumstances. You have to take an idea when it comes your way and start the project that leads to a new something being in the world.

And I get that: I really do. I don't have any resistance to that concept.

I just don't know which project to pick! Hashtag first world problem, I have so many ideas, what can I do - what a goddamn hack! But this is what has been hanging me up at the moment. A Random Encounter is fine, Issue 3 is underway now that Issue 2 is out and available to buy (hint hint), and I'm probably going to interview for Issue 4 next week. Into The Oort is ticking along in the background, I add about a page a week to my document and make notes on how to resolve some of the mechanical issues with it.

But my brain is telling me that there is something else that I need to do. A small project to break things up. And I have a concept. My brain is jumping up and down and SCREAMING at me that, like a zine which is just an interview with one person, there is something else that I've thought of that is interesting and which I am sure would be interesting to lots of people in the RPG community. I have my concept and I have a couple of variations on the theme that have evolved from that core concept: but how do I pick? I just don't know.

Do I pick the thing that could be done in the least amount of time?
Do I pick the thing that involves fewest collaborators, so there aren't other contributions to keep track of on the production side of things?
Do I pick the thing that would be lowest risk?
Do I pick the thing that I think will be most attractive to others' tastes?

None of these seem like the right approach to finding an answer... So far, where I am, the two questions that have lead me to the small project I'm currently pursuing are:

• Which project do I think will be the most fun?
• Which project do I think has the most potential for me to learn something?

These are the questions which are helping me. YMMV, of course. What are the questions that you ask yourself when you're trying to decide between projects?

OSRewind: September 16th

Yesterday I shared the idea of a daily digest that looks back at the posts made in the OSR (or maybe games blogs in general?) in previous years. There's lots and lots and lots of ideas out there, with more being shared every day. A look back could highlight ideas that have been forgotten or showcase the origins of concepts that are part of the language of the OSR now.

I'm quite taken with the idea but not sure if it's something I can commit to exploring along with the other projects that I have underway. But for today at least, and because the term "OSRewind" popped into my head as I was thinking about this, here's a quick jaunt through the last few years...

• 2014: [Tuesday Map] Hubert's Tower/The Butcher's Tower - Dyson's Dodecahedron - I really like the step-by-step approach and the details of how this was done. I'm quite keen on the how-to of maps at the moment so seeing this was serendipitous!
• 2013: Demogorgon implies.... - Playing D&D With Porn Stars - A really cool method for world building and inspiring interesting ideas for sandboxes. If I get around to running Oddpool on G+ some time soon I think I'll be using this method to set the city up.
• 2012: The Verbs of Madness - False Machine - My nephew and his friends were players in a campaign that Patrick ran and which I turned up to sometimes. Being teenagers their minds quickly turned to evil, and they ended up allied with a genuine Dark Lord. In this post Patrick describes how the Dark Lord comes up with his orders.
• 2011: Faking It; or, you'd better be Al Pacino; or, stop rolling the fucking dice - Monsters and Manuals - a short rant about player agency, DM fiat and Quantum Ogres goes on to generate 121 comments! Hoo-ha!

Something visual, a couple of solid tools and a bit of a theory: nice things to find and start thinking about...

On This Day

I've grown to love exactly one aspect of Facebook over the last few months. I hate the interface, I hate the notifications I get when I logon, I hate that I see things that people have liked, I hate to see that a friend-of-a-friend has posted something and a friend has liked it. There's a lot to hate.

But one thing I love is the "On This Day" feature, letting me look back and see what happened in years gone by. For post-fatherhood this is quite nice, it lets me see my daughter a year ago (and soon, two years ago) and I can do that whole "Awwww, she's grown so much!" thing that some people find sickening. It also lets me peer back to the early days of married life, and even further to my PhD days - in fact, exactly seven years ago today I said goodbye to that and started my business!

Time flies.

In the last few days I recorded an episode of A Gaming Podcast About Nothing, and Dave and I got on to talking about terminology and blogging and "has everything been said already?" - things of that nature. This conversation is on my mind, as is "On This Day"...

People have said in the past that it might be difficult to do a regular "OSR Digest" as a site or a newsletter, but I wonder if there is some value in a site that looks through the back catalogue of the OSR and does a regular link share about posts from days gone by - with or without commentary.

For example, on this day:

• in 2008, Dave shared a post of random spellbook appearances on Monsters & Manuals, which is a neat way to spice up your fantasy game;
• in 2011, Patrick was asking whether or not he had invented drawing a dungeon on a polyhedron, and a couple of related questions;
• also in 2011, Zak S shared the Caves of Chaos as a really neat one-page dungeon;
• and also in 2011, Chris shared six random jerks you annoy in town! 

It's interesting to see people riffing on ideas as they come up, but I wonder what ideas might be re-discovered or re-examined - even appreciated more - by looking back?

Codenames

I mentioned yesterday that I have a sheet of paper stuck on the wall next to my desk. It lists the various projects that have floated through my mind and made it as far as "huh, that might work..." Some of these are things that readers of the blog (before the longish hiatuses) might recognise, and some people from G+ might recognise one or two others. Some, I think, you will not recognise or guess at all. Here are my project codenames with some brief teasers:

• Project PARRISH: a really random encounter, a game within a game.
• Project ALMANAC: mentioned this on the blog... Now thinking this might be best as a crowdsourced thing.
• Project SOLO: started thinking about this after Dave and I played some choose-your-own-adventure books on A Gaming Podcast About Nothing.
• Project VINGT: a regular zine idea that just never quite came together in my head. But maybe it's time to look at it again...
• Project SANTA: putting together the very first D&Dish thing I created and ran, a Christmas themed adventure. My wife thinks I should focus on getting this finished by the middle of November and released.
• Project SHADES: half an idea for a system-and-setting wide hack of LotFP. Good old fashioned OSR-y mechanics, in a not-too-distant-future...
• Project OORT: if you've read this blog before you'll know what this is!
• Project STUDIO1: something I'm working on now, which has a real working title but I'm not quite settled yet. Expect an announcement in the next couple of weeks.
• Project POOL: Oddpool. So that's one done!
• Project BANK: a microgame, just trying to get the mechanics right, but the core idea has been unchanged for about two years...
• Project HOBOES: a hack of a two player game that I like, but a radically different setting. Needs work, but I have a general map that is about 80% solid.

And that's everything on the wall at the moment. Am hopeful that Project STUDIO1 will be finished by Christmas, and am very tempted to check my notes and materials for Project SANTA, see how far I got. I need to settle on something for Project BANK and just try the damn thing, see if I like it at least. And Project OORT... I'll try to start blogging more of that soon!

More importantly: time to pick one or two small projects, do them, learn something and carry on.

Start Over

I don't remember the last time that I slept through the night. I used to, all the time, sleep for six to eight hours at a stretch every night without fail. Now, my rest is piecemeal, two hours, then three, then 45 minutes, then whatever is left until the morning.

(Parenthood ladies and gentlemen!)

I also don't remember the last time I wrote something of substance on here, but the clock tells me it was probably over three months ago. It hit me a few days ago, when reading Warren Ellis' new "blog" morning.computer that there was an opportunity here to connect two "problems" and create an opportunity.

Even at two or three in the morning when I swing out of bed, stumble into the nursery and shush CJ or lie her back down (tangent: she learning a new trick this week, how to go from lying on her back to sitting up; this has been an intellectual leap for her. The next day she started crawling) and help her fall asleep, even when I am actually struggling to remember what day it is, or whether I have work or whatever - even then, my brain is ticking over ideas.

So: when I wake in the night, brain kicks in, ideas ideas ideas - when I get back to bed, before I lie down, make a note of them, when I get chance in the day after, write something - anything, even if (like morning.computer) it is just a short idea or observation.

Let's see where this leads.

A Gaming Podcast About Nothing

Dave, aka noisms, and I are doing a podcast. We've been talking about doing it for ages, and finally found the time. It was so much fun to record that we're going to make time to record more regularly (although not on an official schedule just yet).

A Gaming Podcast About Nothing is here! And we talk about lots of things related to role-playing games, our lives and nothing really. Listen to it, and tell us what you think.