Half Meme Press will have a table at STAPLE! The Independent Media Expo, on Saturday March 7th, at the Monarch Event Center in Austin, Texas. I'll be sharing a table with my wife Danielle's Cream Alien Games (site under construction). Her game, Kagematsu, is currently soliciting playtesting and feedback as an ashcan.
Come and see us at the show.
Will Terrell, who did My Life with Master's gorgeous cover illustration is a Texan, and he will have his own table at the show. If you already own My Life with Master, bring your copy for him to sign the cover art.
If you think you can come to the show, send me an email at:
And if you're an indie RPG designer with a published game or an ashcan, consider doing a table. (But decide quickly. Chris Nicholas, one of the show's two coordinators, says there are fewer than a dozen tables left. And email me.)
Though STAPLE! has historically been primarily indie comics, they have also had a horror novelist, zine publishers, and always have a radical co-op bookstore. And Chris Nicholas is serious about his "independent media" tag line and about broadening the focus of the show beyond comics.
So I'm doing STAPLE! because I think the indie RPG community should be developing relationships and synergies with the indie comics guys. Have you seen my thoughts about how Gen Con could better support the creative dynamics of the indie community? The indie comics guys already know this. Tables at STAPLE! are an affordable $75 for a full 8' table or $40 for a half table (4'). Indie comics guys maintain their creative vitality by forming up into projects, splintering off into side projects, and doing special event projects. They recognize that a creative identity is about both independence and finding shared purposes. And their shows, and their fans support this with enthusiasm. We have a lot more in common with the indie comics guys than we do with the paradigms of freelancer-driven RPG publishing.
In The Sorcerer's Soul Ron suggests playing a game of Sorcerer, and then playing a second game, this time among the prior generation of characters, and which results in the situation that was dealt with by the characters in the first game. When I read that suggestion I asked him how it played. And he said he didn't know. That he'd never done it.
Recently, for only the second time ever, I had the experience of playing My Life with Master, as a minion, rather than running it. My wife Danielle ran the game. So in that game there's this scene where I'm wanting the Sincerity die and I'm roleplaying for it. And Danielle says, "If you want the Sincerity die you're going to have to do better than that." So I close my eyes and think for a bit, and then I come back with more passion, and more intensity. And she gives me the die.
What I've realized is that I designed My Life with Master to do that.
Honestly, I don't think I'm a very good player. I tend to create emotionally repressed characters who aren't particularly interesting for other players to watch. Yes, if the GM does everything right with his or her delivery of antagonism to my character, for maybe three sessions, everything, then my character explodes into dramatic protagonism. And it has happened. Once. Usually the GM doesn't do everything right, and my character fizzles, or rather, remains...unaccessed.
I designed My Life with Master to stretch me as a player, to train me where my skills are weak. And as a GM too. The whole group gives me, as GM, a challenge of delivering meaningful antagonism through the concept of Master they create, stretching the range of my creativity.
Bacchanal teaches me to create narrative that holds the interest of the other players using uncommon content. And in current local Acts of Evil playtesting I've realized the game is a crash course for the GM (with a player feedback loop) in creating interesting NPCs.
What I've realized is that I design games, at least in part, from an awareness of my own creative weaknesses and a desire to move through them. And I think then my games are compelling to folks who share my creative desires. Acts of Evil still has me in its clutches (in a way that Nicotine Girls doesn't), because it still has something to teach me.
I think that's what My Life with Master tries to show other designers that I'd be excited to see from them as a consumer: games you designed to challenge the limits you perceive to your own creative and collaborative skills when you play them.
I used to say I created My Life with Master to show other designers the kind of games I'd be excited to see from them as a consumer. Of late I've realized that's only part of the reason, and that myself I didn't even understand what exactly I was trying to "show". And as a result I've started to understand why I've kept designing games.
If you file the serial numbers off of My Life with Master, and then keep filing until all that's left is the underlying framework, you find a social structure for collaboratively creating a story that relies on: shared creation of antagonism, to be managed in play by the GM; conflict resolution, based on a few thematically meaningful character stats that fluctuate with each and every conflict outcome and manage progress toward story closure; and an institutionalized preservation of the protagonism of player character.
Now take a look around. Take some recent games and file them down to the framework, and you find shared creation of antagonism, conflict resolution built from a small knot of thematically relevant character stats that fluctuate with every conflict, etc. You find what's effectively the same architecture of collaboration, transported to new themes.
So, mission accomplished, right? Time to retire.
But damn if I haven't been dug in on Acts of Evil for all I'm worth since early 2005. I spent the better part of a year working on a game called Soul of Man prior to Acts of Evil, and then put it on the shelf after alpha playtesting. But Acts of Evil has had me in its clutches for three fucking years!
Why?
(Enjoy psychoanalyzing me in the comments if you're so inclined. I'll hold off on what I've realized until tomorrow.)
When Patrick Dugan's review of My Life with Master appeared last month on Boing Boing and then StumbleUpon, I started inquiring of international buyers requesting shipping/handling quotes whether they were "active (or lapsed) RPGers," or just curious from hearing about the game online. Their replies, reproduced with permission:
"I am lapsed, but I recently started running Call of Cthulhu with my wife and friends. They love it for the atmosphere, but the pay off is always disappointing, involving as it does tentacles and monsters and whatnot. Your game sounds like it might be more rewarding, and it really excites me how people are responding to it in such a primal, hushed way. It almost makes me nervous about playing it, and therefore sounds very much up my street."
***"Yup - I heard about the game on Boing Boing.
I am an active RPGer and thought the game sounded really fascinating.
We mostly play games with quick and dirty rules, SLA Industries, Savage Worlds etc. but the exact game depends on whose turn it is to GM. We are playing Children of the Sun at the min. We like concentrating on story and characters rather than combat/rules. Though a dustup is always fun.
I don't have the time or imagination to run long campaigns so when my turn comes I like to run fast paced short campaigns (3-4 weeks usually). Life with Master sounds like it could fit that really nicely as well as just sounding an interesting read."
***"Found you through Boingboing.
I am a long time roleplay, mostly table top, but also LARP-er.
As many others I half way designed my own game ( modern Japan with occult and Sci-fi ) but it all became way to complex and our interest up here in the cold of Norway turned towards more free form and indie games.
Mostly I story tell customized settings for 3-5 game nights. Each player gets to pick 3 keywords/ideas/things he wants to have in this setting, I whip out a world bassed on those the group comes up with. And we use a system that fitts the world :)
Also do a lot of roleplay in World of Warcraft, despite those heavy limitations the game impose on rp.
But well work and all, can`t play as much as when I was 15 :)"
***"Not at all actually; but me and some friends are planning on having a post-A level board- and tabletop-games binge, and your stuff was too cool too pass up."
***"Re: your question, i play boardgames quite regularly as a social thing but i've never played an RPG in my life.
the small article about your book just piqued my interest really, in terms of how the mechanics of it worked and how you could, through a game, use a group of people to tell an involving story. i guess that's kind of the basic premise of an rpg anyway?
i've no idea whether i'll actually play it as a game tbh, (i don't know who i'd play it with in truth!) i'm just interested in reading through it and understanding how it works :)"
***"Well I play from time to time now (and each year less than the previous one - but it's only natural i guess) and I'm somewhat into Polish RPG fandom. Aside from playing, I've made about 10 different RPG mechanics already for my own use (though right now I consider first 8 hopeless) and I'm in second bound-to-fail cRPG developement project right now (half of the crew random ppl, slow progress, when 1 guy's motivated he's blocked by lack of cooperation from other one - and after some time roles reverse but project's still going nowhere). Even though I consider latest iterations of these RPG mechanics pretty good - they're going nowhere. Unfortunately I like long campaings and big games - neither "2282" setting with last "sf" mechanics, nor "unnamed fantasy" with it's own could be scaled down to reasonable size. Not indy-friendly....
Anyway MlwM with "turned around" mechanics, narration "ruled by" simple mechanics, purposedly limited scope and simple (so consequently easy to fallow and powerful) setting - obviously cought my attention. It's more than "regular" new-wave stuff. Will be definately used on mea... newb players and on conventions where long campaing, tangled relations and deep personalities are simply out of question."
***"I actually do not play RPGs all that often, but I really love to read rules. My tastes currently tend to run more towards boardgames, and other games that can be finished in a single session. I would put the odds of playing your game at somewhat below 50%, but I think I already know I'll enjoy the rules. And it seems a complete game of MLwM can be done in a 1 or 2 evenings, so who knows, maybe I'll gather up some friends and make it happen!"
***"I've actually never played a pen and paper or tabletop rpg. I have plenty of geeky interests, but as a kid I went down the path of miniatures wargamer rather than pen and paper rpg's. (more or less anyway, we played with cardboard squares cut out from cereal boxes that had unit descriptions written on them)
More to the point, I'm a graphic and interaction and designer and in our studio we have this running joke that the guy who maintains our hardware is like an evil genius with the way he's hunched over the empty shells of computers on his workbench, plugging in hardware and running cables everywhere. Which in turn occasionally makes us act like Igor-like henchmen. (we're big hammer horror and cheesy B-movie fans here) So the boing boing description of the game really caught our eye and we'd love to give it a go.
The game also got a lot of praise for it's mechanics in several reviews which I suppose makes me profesionally interested as well. =)"
***"I'm a lapsed RPGer. I've recently got quite into Lovecraft, which reminds me of Call of Cthulhu. That and the chain of memories from Gary Gygax's death put me in a receptive mood and the tantalising suggestions from the review and your website piqued my curiosity. I'm unsure of who I can pursuade to join me in a game. I don't think my wife has ever played one. But this sounds like an ideal introduction for her.
Plus I'm addicted to buying stuff in the US since the dollar value made everything so cheap. Ireland is quite an expensive place."
***"I heard about My Life With Master through the Game Writer's mailing list I'm on - we were discussing the differences between the tailored gameplay offered by tabletop experiences and why many computer games can't give the player the same feeling of accomplishment/involvement in the world. One of the members was kind enough to post a link to a review of your ruleset, and it sounded fascinating, especially with regards to player psychology and a dynamic experience.
As for table-top-ing, I've been playing D&D, D20 modern and White Wolf stuff for about 5 years now. I've gotta say, Planescape is my favourite so far! :) But I also currently teach at Qantm College (a college that specialises in training people to work on video games) and we're always looking for new tabletop games to try. What I read of My Life With Master would appeal to a lot of my students, I think!"
Matt Snyder and I are organizing an Ashcan Front booth for Gen Con again this year. The main changes are:
- Gen Con raised its booth prices by quite a bit, and so we had to raise the buy-in cost by a little as well.
- And we're partnering with The Playcollective on a two-booth endcap. It'll be a clearly divided space, with separate shelving and everything. But the Playcollective shares our enthusiasm for ashcans, and so we'll have some of theirs on our shelves and Matt and I will have My Life with Master and Nine Worlds in with their other games. (We're excited about this partnership, because it means Matt and I can represent for our core titles without diluting a stand-alone Ashcan Front presence with them, and because it means Ashcan Front participants will be right in with the community of designers, working together, making connections, feeding each other's enthusiasm, and talking about design.)
A 2008 FAQ has been posted at http://www.ashcanfront.net/2008faq.html. Give it a look.
In working on Acts of Evil lately I've found myself thinking a lot about sophomore milestone games. And by "sophomore milestone" I mean the second game a designer produces as a project of the same or larger scale as the effort behind his or her freshman signature game. So Bacchanal, for instance, the second game I put out in print, doesn't satisfy the "same or larger scale" project requirement. And Soul of Man, which received a lot of development and playtesting, was never "produced," because I shelved the project. My sophomore milestone game will be Acts of Evil.
Ben Lehman blogged recently that Bliss Stage is selling slower than Polaris did after release. I can see that it's getting less actual play. I see Nine Worlds not getting much actual play. I see Burning Empires getting less actual play than Burning Wheel. Etc.
We playtested a supers game that Scott Knipe was working on last year. It had some structural similarities to With Great Power, except Scott had pared back on the enrichment scenes in favor of more screen time for the villains. And the result was a less fun game for the players.
My feedback to him was that the best indie RPGs are the ones created to be games the designer wants to play. And it was clear he was creating a game he wanted to run. This motive behind a game design project (game-I-want-to-play vs. game-I-want-to-run), I'm thinking, is fundamental to the game that gets produced, and I think it warrants some reflection on the part of the designer.
I think the key social challenge faced by a game that wants to be played is, and has been as long as I've been a gamer: How do you hook the player? The best, most engaging blogs are the ones where the writer manages to be consistently personal and honest, not a manufactured identity. But write your game-I-want-to-run rules text honestly and who do you hook? Answer: a prospective GM.
And then...he or she tries to create some player enthusiasm.
I've heard the lower incidence of actual play for more recent games attributed to an increasing crowding of games for the attention of indie gamers. Back in the 2001-2003 timeframe, indie game designers were so frustrated about unsatisfying play experiences in the 90s, and excited about new possibilities, that what we designed were games we wanted to play. But...having first written the games we want to play, and high then on the endorphins flooding our creativity, do we go on (without thinking about it) to write the games we want to run? Games that carry a fundamental challenge to actual play?
One day, Fulgencio, Elequemedo, Anier, and Oswardo found themselves in the rainforest, surrounded on all sides by intractable flora. Each of the men in turn (starting with Fulgencio, who was the leader), took up his machete, chose a position along the perimeter, and delivered a powerful slash to the encircling brush. And upon doing so, each announced the discovery of "a path".
Mysteriously, with each slash, a quantity of pesetas was dislodged from the brush to settle at the foot of the man wielding the machete. Elequemedo's "path" was met with approving grunts from the others, though it produced the least pesetas. And more than one of the men thought they heard voices speaking a strange language beyond the mist that shrouded Elequemedo's "path".
Each man collected the pesetas that had fallen at his own feet.
The "path" created by Oswardo's blow was wider than that of the others, twice as wide as Anier's path, and arrayed with orchids in bloom, and so, was quite pleasing to the eye and senses. And the quantity of pesetas that settled at Oswardo's feet was substantial.
"That was a gross endeavor of peseta harvesting," said Fulgencio.
"That is not the path we want to take," said Anier.
"Why do you fear my path, Anier?" asked Oswardo.
"It is very pretty, and it is greater than my path in every dimension."
"That's bullshit," said Oswardo.
And then, Oswardo stepped out into his path to deliver another slash to the foliage. Vines parted to reveal the man JaJuan standing among the flora. He handed an additional quantity of loose pesetas to Oswardo.
The other men frowned a bit at each other, but there was no need for actual conversation. They each knew they could create such a path as Oswardo if they chose, but they also knew that none of them would choose to do so.
In the context of a creative community, each individual's creative product asserts that it represents a significant creative direction, and aims to influence the community with its values. For RPG designers, creating structures for co-creation is the creative medium; and it's an exciting and engaging new medium that many of us wish we could spend more time with, if only we didn't have full time jobs and other obligations. Fulgencio, Elequemedo, and Anier don't fear Oswardo's path for its aesthetics and values. They fear there's a connection between its aesthetics and values and enough pesetas to afford spending more time with the creative medium.
On Tuesday, Patrick Dugan posted a review of My Life with Master to Greg Costikyan's Play This Thing blog. The review was picked up by Cory Doctorow's Boing Boing blog (within an hour if I'm guessing the time zones correctly). Boing Boing was at one time the world's most popular blog, according to Technorati, which rates such things. (It's currently ranked no. 5.) The title of the Boing Boing post was "My Life With Master: 'As seminal to RPGs as Frankenstein was for literature,'" a quote from Patrick's review.
And then people started buying it. A lot. Mostly the pdf at first, and then increasingly the book. It's only now, 72 hours or so later that things are pretty calm.
So, I can guess your question. How much is "a lot"?
Check out this year-over-year chart of My Life with Master sales I posted to halfmeme.com about this time last year:
Note how sales have tapered off year-over-year since I first started selling the game in 2003. 237 units from July to the end of 2003. 364 units in 2004. 295 units in 2005. 223 units in 2006. And I haven't done my 2007 Half Meme Press taxes yet, but I roughly estimate 2007 sales of My Life with Master at around 183 units (maybe 46 of which were the pdf version).
In the 72 hours since My Life with Master appeared on Boing Boing I've sold 71 units (39 of which are the pdf), plus two copies of the Acts of Evil ashcan, and one copy of Bacchanal.
Pretty damn cool, to be sure, but actually not the coolest part.
Huh? Well, back in 2003 when I first put the print version of the game up for sale the best rate for shipping it internationally via the U.S. Postal Service was "Air Letter Post". But there was significant cost variation across the various destination "zones," which I didn't understand well, and I wasn't particularly wise in the ways of PayPal buttons anyway, so my order page asked international buyers to email for a shipping and handling quote (which, knowing the weight of a packed copy of the game from past experience I could easily calculate via the USPS website, no knowledge of zones required). More recently the most economical rate is First Class International, and it has less cost variation across destinations. But having come to enjoy emailing with prospective international buyers about shipping and handling and how they heard about the game, I haven't bothered implementing a button for international orders. So when My Life with Master appeared on Boing Boing on Tuesday I started inquiring of international buyers requesting shipping/handling quotes whether they were "active (or lapsed) RPGers," or just curious from hearing about the game online.
And yeah, I only had the conversation with five or six buyers, but they were board gamers, and graphic designers, and WoW players, and only one was an active RPGer. Think again about that year-over-year tapering off in the chart; getting attention beyond the self-identifying RPG community...now that's cool.
The article I wrote about My Life with Master for Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media (MIT Press, 2007) is now up at the Electronic Book Review. It's an actively edited site, so your ripostes should be sent to editors@electronicbookreview.com.
I honestly didn't expect the articles from other RPG designers (Will Hindmarch, Rebecca Borgstrom, etc.) would be so expansive compared to my own when I submitted it, so I'd be quite glad to see you take this as an opportunity to expand on me, if you're so inclined.
I recently had the opportunity to play a couple of games of Shadows Over Camelot (at Dr. Stidd's birthday party in early November). My best man Tom has been telling me to play the game for probably a year, and now having played it I can see why. It's the rare boardgame that's (mostly) collaborative for the players. You're not playing against them so much as against the game itself. (And Tom knows that when I was heavy into video games in the later '90s it was for collaboration against computer AI.) And it's a very very tight game, very nicely balanced. You quickly get some white swords onto the Round Table, and there are only a couple of siege engines out, and you're thinking it's going to be a rout. But damn if the game doesn't manage to create tension and then maintain it all the way to the end. I liked it a lot.
Well, what I've heard is that at some point in 2004, Days of Wonder decided to move the game's release date to 2005, to give it more playtesting and development time. And damn, if that story is true, after playing it, I'd pay ca$h for a prototype from the game session that drove the decision to delay the game. Just for the opportunity to experience the hitches behind the decision and mentally walk my way through the same design insights that solved them.
Friends, this is tough love. (And damn I wish I had a stern looking photo of myself as the avatar for it.) I know right now you're thrilled with the roll of cash you brought back from GenCon, but designers you need to learn about the Overjustification Effect.
Researchers played math games with children that the children seemed to enjoy. And then with one group they started giving a reward (coins, or gold stars or something) for the playing of the games. After a while they stopped playing the games with the children, which also ended the rewards to those that had been receiving them.
And what they observed is that the children in the group that hadn't been given rewards was significantly more likely to continue playing the games among themselves than the children in the rewarded group. The rewarded children generally lost interest in the games once the context of rewarding had clearly ended.
Social psychologists call the initial unrewarded enjoyment the intrinsic motivation, and they call the reward the extrinsic motivation. Their explanation is that extrinsic motivations will supplant intrinsic motivations so completely that when they're removed there's almost no intrinsic motivation left. And they have consistently demonstrated this same loss of intrinsic motivation not just in children, but also in adults of all ages.
So every year the successful young turks of the Forge booth come howling home from GenCon, geeked (with good justification) by their achievements, high as kites on the smell of Franklins, and announce plans to write and publish three or four games in the next year. And then...maybe they force one game out. Maybe. (And maybe they aren't too pleased with it.) But mostly they come to GenCon the next year with just the same game they were selling the previous year and a deeply buried knot of regret, confusion, and feelings of failure and inadequacy.
So designers, my advice is to hold on tight to the motivations that brought you to GenCon in the first place. The studies show it's possible to stay grounded in your intrinsic motivations if you recognize the extrinsic motivations for what they are.
Paul
As demonstrated by the ginormous stack of games I picked up at GenCon Indy, the rpg design community is on freakin' fire:
I also picked up a resale copy of GURPS Goblins, and a set of Sicherman dice. And I only barely held off on a couple of other indie rpgs by assuring myself I could order them online.
Danielle bought:
(Of the above, and based on demo experiences, Hero's Banner is the game I'm most wanting to play. And Best Friends gets my award for most awesome and elegant currency mechanic.)
Paul
Now ten months into owning our ice cream maker I'm transitioning from ice creams to sorbets. And with some serious enthusiasm after last week's success. What I did was search out a couple of recipes from the Internet that best matched ingredients I knew I had on hand. The key among them being a bag of frozen mango pieces we buy regularly from Trader Joe's for making fruit smoothies.
But plunging in after choosing a recipe I realized I didn't have quite enough mango left in the bag. Which put me into experimental territory. But damn, this past year of smoothie experimentation must have seriously polished my culinary instincts, because the end result is probably the second most awesome sorbet I've ever had. (The best being a champagne sorbet we had for dinner at the Montague Inn in Saginaw a couple of years back.) Try this, and see if you don't agree:
BANGO SORBET
1 1/4 cups water
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups sliced peeled pitted mangoes
two-thirds of a ripe, medium-sized banana, cut into five or six pieces
7 tablespoons Bacardi Limon rum
Stir water and sugar in a medium-sized saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat and bring to boil. Add mango pieces and banana. Bring to a boil. With fresh fruit you can probably remove the mixture from the heat almost as soon as it boils, because you don't want to turn the fruit pieces into cooked mush. But I let mine boil for a minute or so just to be sure the frozen mango pieces had been cooked through. Transfer mixture to food processor and puree. Pour into bowl and chill until cold, at least 2 hours.
Mix 7 tablespoons Bacardi Limon rum into puree mixture and then process it in your ice cream maker. Transfer to a sealed container and freeze for at least 2 hours. Expect the result to be firm, but still softer than ice cream or other sorbets that don't have alcohol in them. Serve and enjoy.
A short while ago I received the gracious offer of an advertisement in Joe J. Prince's forthcoming Lulu Press print edition of Swansong, his tarot-based rpg. Bacchanal isn't much of a revenue stream for me, but I've not previously done an ad for the game and so that's what I proposed to Joe. And he was cool with it. So, using an awesome and previously unseen ink-only version of Ed Heil's cover art, this is how it came together:
Whaddya think?
So, what's your take-away from these journal entries I've posted, and the cards? Do you fear my design powers because I was thinking about descriptor based characters more than twenty years ago? (What was the first RPG with descriptor-based characters, anyway?) Or do you look at the writing of my 18-year-old self, my mixed use of past and present tense, my awkward grammar, and at my strange choices for the physical descriptors, and find the whole thing less than remarkable?
Actually I'm hoping to make a non-obvious point by having posted it. What did I do with this game design? I left it in a box. Partially complete. Never playtested. Never published. And because I found it lacking in enduring merit? (Not hardly. I've held on to it for more than twenty years.) Or because I lacked passion? In fact I never did anything with it, or designed anything else for more than fifteen years, because I just had too much gamer baggage holding me back. Every descriptor gives you an additive 5% chance of success...good lord! As a gamer I was arrested at 18 and didn't get beyond it until I was almost 34. And I wouldn't even have managed that if I hadn't found a mentor and a community who helped me overcome my baggage.
So my non-obvious point is an exhortation. I wasn't born from whole cloth as the designer of My Life with Master. I was born into it from my own gaming pain and then delivered from my arrested state by mentorship. This game, with its descriptor-based characters, could have been honed to a blisteringly innovative and fun rpg. Or alternately, I could have done nothing further as a designer my whole life. My non-obvious point is that creative excellence needs mentorship...and there isn't enough of it in our hobby.
|
![[the full-text abduction of paul czege]](http://paulczege.nfshost.com/templates/mt-plainjane/img/abduction-logo.gif){kind=logo}
