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October 30th, 2009
12:06 pm - Quiz
 | I am:Frank Herbert His style is often stilted, but he created what some consider the greatest SF novel of all time. |
Which science fiction writer are you?
I don't like to do these things too often, but just i couldn't pass this one up! Unfortunately, the first question doesn't really have an answer that fits - i chose "war & conquest" when i really wanted "societal evolution", but i'm doing military sci-fi, so it's close enough. Plus, i got good old Frank, and his stuff is *right* up that alley!
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October 22nd, 2009
12:31 pm - Tax and Leverage
I love Burning Wheel's "Tax" mechanic.
Unlike early RPGs, where a character's finances were tracked in concrete terms, down to the dollar (or copper piece), and most current ones, where wealth is either an absolute rating (as in Reign) or merely another generic trait, BW introduced a numeric rating that would become depleted or replenished directly due to the character's actions. A character's pool of Resources is treated as any other ability; Tax kicks in when a roll is failed, allowing you to convert that failure into a success, at the cost of reducing your ability, first temporarily, then, if you continue scraping bottom, permanently. It is a lovely mechanic that really succeeds in driving play and makes dealing with a character's purchasing power fun.
...But BW only uses it for measuring the growth and decline of a character's wealth; I can see a host of other situations where such a roller-coaster ride would be perfectly well suited - morale & resolve, health & fitness, supernatural abilities, or, perhaps most interestingly, a character's relationships with other people or groups of people.
You can readily imagine writing down a number attached to a name, like "Astra Magnussen 5", where the number is the strength of the connection between your PC and that character, presumably an NPC. That is the number you roll when calling on the character, or adding her strength to your own. Apply the Tax mechanic to that and you get a dynamic where, to put it harshly, using your friends to further your own ends puts a strain on your relationships with them.
(Perhaps this can even be a sort of amelioration of the 'trait weighting' problem - while a high strength connection is more useful, it might also be made more vulnerable to decline, thus forcing you to conserve its use for when you really need it. On the other hand, typically a high value can be expected to have a longer endurance than a low value, but also a longer recovery time.)
However, we may want an alternative to BW-style Tax which avoids using potentially dangerous weighted traits, but keeps the principle of dynamism.
A possible way to achieve this is by creating otherwise unweighted traits with sub-traits that are able to be "checked off". Thinking about a character's relationships again, a lone name written on your sheet would simply be a Contact - you've indicated that this NPC is important to you, but you don't yet have any way to bring them to help you, any power over them. You need Leverage, which is exactly what the sub-traits give you. Leverages can be all sorts of things, so long as they are specific - "Astra Magnussen" might have the Leverage 'loves me", or perhaps "saved my life", or "paid to keep quiet", or even all three, if my character is like that! When a Leverage is employed to move a character toward your goals you check it off - you got them to do what you wanted, but now they aren't "yours" anymore. Naturally, most kinds of Leverages can be restored through an appropriate scene - your character has to act to keep that love alive, or shell out a bigger bribe to keep the turncoat committed. (There might even be two types of Leverages, resilient, which can be restored, vs transient, which can only be used once.)
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October 21st, 2009
12:23 pm - Crossblog: Beliefs vs Binary Choices
Thought it might be useful to post a link to this essay on drama rpgs & writing: The Little Things In Life.
I'm going to call out a quote, too:
A writer has a responsibility to tell stories that are dark and sexy and violent, where characters that you love do stupid, wrong things and get away with it…because that’s what makes stories into fairy tales instead of polemics.
- Joss Whedon
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September 17th, 2009
02:07 pm - Computer Adventure Game Mini Reviews!
As i mentioned in my last post, i've been playing (what i've always called) Adventure games this past week or so - quite a few actually. So, i figured i should talk about them!
The Blackwell Legacy, Blackwell Unbound, & Blackwell Convergence (2009) : These indie paranormal mysteries from Wadjet Eye Games started this whole thing, and for good reason - they're truly excellent, with wonderful voice acting, even from likely amatuer actors, great characters (wonder how much those two are related?), and good plots. The games, especially the third one, also draw heavily on real history & place for the substance of their plots, blending it smoothly with the fiction. (In this case, New York City's recent history.) They're really the sort of (Adventure) game i like the best: point & click, 2D, no "fatal mistakes", and a complete absence of clunky, traditional puzzles. The games also boast a nice serving of sarcastic humor, lively banter, and tenderheartedness, reminiscent of the best Lucas Arts games, without all the unnecessary slapstick. (PS: Checking out the concept art & photos is well worth it.) Finally, i love the way these games do the credits for the voice actors, many of whom also seem to be the models for the character art, as well.
Emerald City Confidential (2009) : I played this one later, but i'm putting it down now since it is also from Wadjet Eye. It has the same style as the Blackwell games, but a much higher degree of polish - a more professional game, judging from the marketing. Is it a better game? Maybe, but it is hard to say - it is a "Film Noir" style detective story set in fantasy world (the Land of Oz!) and that is just about my favourite genre ever... so of course i loved the game! It gets pretty heartfelt too, though perhaps not to the extent of the Blackwell games, and the silliness of Oz is kept firmly in check by the hard-boiled protagonist, and the demands of the genre. I should also mention that this game has an achievement system - like many, many modern games, but not a single other Adventure game i'm aware of - which also doubles as a progress tracker (like the old "score" systems Sierra loved to include) and an objective notebook.
(Like Dreamfall & Momento Mori, all of the Wadjet Eye games also have fairly bittersweet endings - and yes that's the same list i'd give you for "best of the bunch"... so, huh? What's that about?)
Still Life 2 (2009) : Unfortunate name, but a worthy sucessor to the excellent high-octane, highly arty, serial-killer thriller Still Life. Instead of running all over Chicago & Praha, the sequel spends the vast majority of its time in one location - but it's a great location: a secluded house in the middle fo nowhere, Maine. The game is definately inspired by the emerging "torture-horror" movie genre (ie. SAW) - like the first game, (and like nearly every game on this list!) you switch between two characters, only this time only one is a detective (Vic from the first game), while the other is the killer's (potential) final victim (a local reporter with all the makings of a slasher movie heroine). As the victim, you have to run through a series of SAW-style challenges under the killer's watchful eye, and eventually outwit him. On the other side, as Vic, you start off investigating the case, but just like the first game, things swiftly get intense.. and very, very personal. And more than a little crazy! I loved it.
There are a few things for me to be critical about, however. The timed sequences aren't so bad, but the new inventory system is so ill-concieved it would take pride of place even amongst the mistakes of JRPGs! Seriously, the game makes you fiddle things in and out of your inventory and special storage cabients located at not particulary key locations around the house almost constantly. The story is worth the minor headaches this causes, though. And the game's finale is powered by a truly excellent trick of game design i'm not going to ruin by mentioning here.
Art of Murder: FBI Confidential (2008) & The Hunt for the Puppeteer (2009) : Almost certainly inspired by Still Life, this Polish-made series also features a tough FBI woman and art-themed serial-killer murder mysteries, although they lack much of the power that comes from a personal connection between detective and case. They also are much more traditional-style Adventure games - and both get downright adventure-y, Indiana Jones style, in the late-game. However, they're great games if you like the genre. By which i mean to say, the plots are solid, the investigations are fun (and somehow more "real" feeling than Still Life's), and the puzzles never feel divorced from the flow of the fiction. (Although, as always, "the ancients were really clever with counterweights"...) Like most European games, the voice acting & scripting is a bit off (but probably sounds better in Polish ;) ), however, the location and character artwork is just phenomenal - especially in the second game, which takes us from Paris to Andorra to Italy to Havana, and back. FBI Agent Nicole Bennet is a decent, likable character, and now that i think about it, one of the few you spend a whole game (or two) playing! I wonder if she manages to keep her badge for the third game... at least in the first game she had an excuse to ignore orders to go world hopping! ;)
Chronicles of Mystery: The Scorpio Ritual (2008): The same Polish developer who produced the Art of Murder games this time brings us a Dan Brown meets Indiana Jones archaeogical religious conspiracy thriller, and in the same beautiful, easy to play style, too. This time the case is personal, as the protagonist, Sylvie Leroux, has had her beloved uncle and mentor discredited and disappeared from her hometown (on lovely Malta!), and yet the story doesn't feel as powerful, or as deep as that of the company's other series. Still, a good game, though.
There are little crossovers between the two series, which i enjoyed - Bonnet briefly meets Slyvie in Paris, at her hotel, and Sylvie sees, but doesn't recognize Bonnet playing tourist on Malta (and compliments her car). I like little touches like that. I do have to wonder why both characters are French, though...
Secret Files: Tunguska (2006) : Now we turn to the Russians, and a seriously Indiana Jones experience - the travel cutscenes even have that classic red line moving on the map! And move it does - the game takes our two adventurers - Nina, an independent but refreshingly "girly" young woman, and Max, an archaeologist and colleague of Nina's famous father - from Berlin to Moscow to Siberia to Ireland to Cuba and to Tibet, before finally dumping them in Antarctica for the grand finale. Another good game - great production values, fun characters, classic interface with some playfulness with the technology (the Ireland & Cuba sequences are simultaneous, and character switching is used to good effect in Siberia as well), and a fun, diverse array of puzzles (the Indiana Jones effect always lets you get away with more elaborate puzzles!).
My brother Matt pointed this out, and i'd like to mention this, too - Nina & Max develop a romance at the end, which you think would be a spoiler, but no. I'd say that it comes out of nowhere (unlike Lara & Max's almost romance in Momento Mori), but that's not exactly true - i think it's just a requirment of the action-adventure-movie genre! Indy & Bond always get the girl, so i guess when we have two more or less equally weighted protagonists they get each other?
Memento Mori (2009) : I'll go ahead and stick this one up here with these, even though i played it later, since it fits in. Other than the Wadjet Eye games, this may be my favourite game on the list, contrary to the Adventure Gamer's review in the link! I'm going to start where i usually don't and say straight out: the technology is impressive. The game's art is in 3D, but more or less fixed to an artfully chosen 2D perspective, and using the traditional point & click interface, unlike Gabriel Knight 3, Dreamfall, or Culpa Innata - which is a welcome relief from all that camera fiddling! Also unlike those older games, the rendering is beautiful, crisp, and detailed, and, in a stroke of genius, the characters are actually animated interacting with their environment - picking up phones, sitting at computers, or lugging bulky objects (no more 10-ft poles in your pants! ;) ). Even more, the 3D is used in simple puzzles to manipulate devices (via camera in camera shots) and inventory objects to great effect.
On to the story & characters! While there are three people on the box art, you 'only' play two of them - Larissa Ivanova Svetlova, Russian Interpol agent, and Max Durand, French art professer and ex-art forger. (The other is Max's brother Andre, who turns out to be pretty key to the action anyway.) Sounds familar, right? Only Lara is a paper cop (with the art theft division), with a sardonic wit i really enjoyed (unlike the reviewer i mentioned above), while Max reminds me of one of my proffessors who taught in two subjects - evolutionary biology and Judo. Lara and Max have a nifty not-quite-romance relationship, and a shared history at the heart of the game's plot - she caught him, then worked out a deal where he didn't have to see the inside of a Russian gulag. Of course, now Max is beholden to Lara's oh-so Russian former boss, and she feels responsible - so they're both stuck when he calls Max in to help cover up (so he won't look bad) the theft of a painting from the Hermitage. Of course, *that's* just the beginning of an international religious conspiracy thriller... which gets *really* interesting at the end. I'd say Dan Brown-worthy, but it's much better, IMHO. Other than the expected revelations & twists, at the very end there is this part where the structure of the game play screws with your head and moves to make you complicit in some pretty potentially disturbing acts. (Though i think i got the "good" ending myself.) Cutscenes - or written words - just wouldn't have the same effect!
Unlike the other games, Mememto Mori generally feels much more real, if that makes sense - the actions and puzzles are more grounded in reality, and, more importantly, the characters are too. It's not often you see an Adventure game character actually back off from the "adventure" when people start dying in droves! I loved it. (At the end things get a little bit trippy, though - mabye a quarter Gainax? ;) )
I'll do the rest of the games later! (I especially want to talk about Culpa Innata, with its full Gainax experience!)
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September 9th, 2009
12:38 pm - Hey, What Happened to August?
Another summer come and gone already... but, really, I got quite a bit done this time.
On the writing & gaming front, which is what this blog is nominally supposed to focus on, i have some upcoming posts to make. Much of the past month has been spent attempting to wrestle the beast of my eternal Hardspace project to the ground, and i think i'm making progress. I have the framework for a semi-modular science fiction RPG to go along with the setting in the works as well.
In other news, i just (a couple weeks ago) attended my High School's 10-year anniversary - yikes! Most everyone i knew hasn't seemed to change that much. Bunch of us still in school, or gone back to school. Cute kids. My friends and I suck at horseshoes...
Finally, the past week has seen me enter into a massive binge of classic & modern & indie computer Adventure game playing. I always think of "point-and-click" Adventure games as the first computer games in my ludography, and i'm glad to see that they're enjoying a renaissance of sorts at the moment. I heartily recommend everything by indie developer Wadjet Eye - Emerald City Confidential in particular! (But, then, i'm a sucker for any creative use of the detective story / film noir genre!)
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July 10th, 2009
12:14 am - Dexcon 2009
Looks like i won't be going to Dexcon this weekend, after all. I had originally planned on it, but with it coming so close to my surprise attendence at Origins i don't think i'll be able to make it. Maybe next year i'll finally get to Jersey in the summer!
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June 29th, 2009
02:20 pm - Back from Origins!
I'm back from Origins today (or really, late last night), which means i'm also back from my first real con. Not that the DEXcons aren't real cons, but i've only day tripped out to them - this was a week!
It was a great experience, all told, and i'd be glad of having the opportunity to do it again. I bought games, I played games, I taught games, and I demo'ed games for unwary passerbyes - all the same three games, actually, since i was there helping out Ad Astra Games.
I played two full games of Squadron Strike - the first in which my Star Destroyer had its "rudder" crippled, and was then finished off by a squadron of Rebel proton-torpedo corvettes, and the second in which my Federation CA (SFB, style) was disintegrated by a combination of a Gorn enveloping plasma torpedo and two full point-blank disrupter salvos from a Klingon D7 - and one full game of Attack Vector, where we playtested the "orbital mechanics made easy" rules via the crucible of a ballistic weapons duel in orbit of Alpha Mensae II. My Kuan Yin was hammered to pieces under the weight of the enemy Shoko's continuous high velocity fire, finally succumbing to 19 rocket hits when i failed to get enough thrust to dodge out of their way. I'm convinced the orbital mechanics rules got me killed - which is exactly what they were supposed to do!
I didn't do any scheduled events, but I did sit in on a couple of introductory games and demos: I got to see a couple of turns of Squadron Strike's sister game, Saganami Island Tactical Simulator, played through a challenging combat encounter using the crazy old-school rpg style WEGS rules, and was introduced to a brand new, very cool looking, Risk-style strategy boardgame called World War IV. I also caught a glimpse of the 3/d space-combat game With Hostile Intent's awesome new fighter rules, but didn't get to try them out.
However, I'm pretty sure spent most of my time at the con manning the Ad Astra demo table and helping out with introductory games of Squadron Strike. It was a great experience teaching people the game, and explaining it's principles.
The rest of the con was meeting people, and chatting about games and fiction, which never gets old.
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