Visited London at the weekend to stay with gamer Mike. I got the double pleasure of playing his Tron lightcycle tabletop game, which is a real toy experience, and running a PULP game for Mike, Nick, Rob and Vicky.
They opted for Western style and we produced a slice of fairly moody frontier drama. The characters created weren't high toned enough for spaghetti Western, or silly enough for heroic Western, although Nick's Riverboat gambler did seem to fit into any of the above.
We elected, due to time restraints, to generate characters on the fly and that worked out very well indeed. I'm really happy with the fact that PULP is becoming the most invisible of all of our systems in terms of the dichotomy between support and absence.
On the way home with Justin had a big discussion about the way that No Dice is going and what we might like to do to plan for the future. I'm surprised to find that I am having difficulty viewing any level of corporate involvement as any kind of help at this stage. One day I would love to use what I've learned to design a game with a "proper" games company but I'm not sure that any of our current projects would benefit from the involvement of the wise and wonderful in the world of RP. After all we still have acres of niche to exploit getting PULP RP and the Core System into the homes of gamers everywhere mostly down to the failure of everyone else in the world to really fill the narrative void. This is down in no small part to a corporate model which believes such things to be, at best, too risky to be viable.
I'm also enjoying the Robin Hood act, being generous, being crazy, trying to claim the market with kindness. I'd say it hasn't paid off, except it's starting to. That's what's enormously encouraging. People are coming forth and saying that No Dice is "a good thing". I wouldn't want anything to interfere with that currently.
Showing posts with label No Dice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label No Dice. Show all posts
5 July 2011
2 January 2011
The Year of the Gamer Beard
What's struck me, particularly, this Christmas is how far the ideas of No Dice have come in 2010. It hasn't been the most glamorous of years for the endeavour although we have got out into the world and played the hell out of some games. We've just kept plugging away at it. Something curious is starting to emerge.
Back at the start of this whole No Dice mullarkey what we were essentially doing was formalising aspects of what Role Players the world over know as "free form role play" i.e. role play with few rules and not very much dice rolling. The problem I think most gamers had with that, if indeed they did have a problem with it, was that there wasn't very much to formalise.
This was true.
I think the further problem some of them may have had was that they believed that once it was done that would be it. There would be no more work to do. It would all peter out. I didn't believe that when I started and I'm amazed anyone should think that would be the case as of now.
The amount of narrative techniques we've mined out through just trying to make role playing more of an entertainment and less of a game has been staggering. I've spent my spare moments of the last few days grinding through archetypes and what not in an attempt to bring out the PULPiness of PULP. And that's just the beginning.
For this reason I have declared 2011 the year of the gamer beard because I imagine many theories will be unpacked in the next twelve months. I suppose I'd better go and get ready for that then.
Back at the start of this whole No Dice mullarkey what we were essentially doing was formalising aspects of what Role Players the world over know as "free form role play" i.e. role play with few rules and not very much dice rolling. The problem I think most gamers had with that, if indeed they did have a problem with it, was that there wasn't very much to formalise.
This was true.
I think the further problem some of them may have had was that they believed that once it was done that would be it. There would be no more work to do. It would all peter out. I didn't believe that when I started and I'm amazed anyone should think that would be the case as of now.
The amount of narrative techniques we've mined out through just trying to make role playing more of an entertainment and less of a game has been staggering. I've spent my spare moments of the last few days grinding through archetypes and what not in an attempt to bring out the PULPiness of PULP. And that's just the beginning.
For this reason I have declared 2011 the year of the gamer beard because I imagine many theories will be unpacked in the next twelve months. I suppose I'd better go and get ready for that then.
23 September 2010
Back In The Saddle
So yes.
Been a while. A good while. Those of you who have been following the continuing saga of No Dice will know that I've been putting all my effort into what I shall now dub "No Dice Phase I". No Dice Phase I consists of: The Core Book, Random Encounters, Levercastle, Shadow Cities and PULP RP and represents a full cycle of work.
If No Dice has any BIG IDEAS trust me most of them are in this Phase I. Sure there are plenty more ideas in Dreamtime Stories and Marauders and so on. But these are all derived from the BIG IDEAS in Phase I.
No ideas are bigger in this phase than the ideas behind PULP RP, the last publication in the series which is what I am getting down to now.
So that's what I've been up to. The other main piece of news is that I have acquired an eBook, which has swiftly become a great boon. I have been able to catch up on my reading as I prefer PDFs to regular published books. It's been great. I shall soon be returning to my duties as a POD book reviewer as I've chewed through so many books in the last fortnight that I shall no longer feel horrendously guilty for not reviewing things people send me in a reasonable amount of time.
Currently submissions are closed. But when they are open, be assured, you will know.
I think that's all for now. I'd better go and see if Sue's Sim 3 is now working as it was having memory issues.
Been a while. A good while. Those of you who have been following the continuing saga of No Dice will know that I've been putting all my effort into what I shall now dub "No Dice Phase I". No Dice Phase I consists of: The Core Book, Random Encounters, Levercastle, Shadow Cities and PULP RP and represents a full cycle of work.
If No Dice has any BIG IDEAS trust me most of them are in this Phase I. Sure there are plenty more ideas in Dreamtime Stories and Marauders and so on. But these are all derived from the BIG IDEAS in Phase I.
No ideas are bigger in this phase than the ideas behind PULP RP, the last publication in the series which is what I am getting down to now.
So that's what I've been up to. The other main piece of news is that I have acquired an eBook, which has swiftly become a great boon. I have been able to catch up on my reading as I prefer PDFs to regular published books. It's been great. I shall soon be returning to my duties as a POD book reviewer as I've chewed through so many books in the last fortnight that I shall no longer feel horrendously guilty for not reviewing things people send me in a reasonable amount of time.
Currently submissions are closed. But when they are open, be assured, you will know.
I think that's all for now. I'd better go and see if Sue's Sim 3 is now working as it was having memory issues.
7 May 2010
...And Let That Be The End Of The Matter!
This Dice vs. Cards thing is now irritating me. Not because everyone keeps saying how much they wuv their dice and would marry them if they were not polyhedral lumps of plastic; although that is slightly creepy.
No, what's getting me is that people say that Cards = Dice and therefore Cards !> Dice. In the Core Book we went into some detail about why this was not the case but now I think about it we probably didn't get to the heart of the matter. All the things we say are true, cards are more versatile and excellent mnemonically to keep system in people's heads instead of forcing them to bookmark rules and charts or refer to their super secret GM Screen to remember what numeric value on what chart means what.
But this doesn't cut to the very greatest thing about cards, i.e. they save you time.
I have not run a session that ran longer than three and a half hours in at least a year. At the same time, no one leaves these sessions feeling short changed. This is not a usual state of affairs in the hobby of RP. Of course I did my hahasoamusing little experiment write up in yesterday's entry. Although intended to be sarcastic it does have a serious point behind it. My session plans have gone from being good for two to three weeks worth of play, doing four and a half hour's worth at a time, coming away from every session feeling we should have done more, to cramming a good deal of plot and action into three to four hours with space for a tea break in the middle. Where did all this time come from?
Some might reason that I had simply become a more efficient Host. Well, possibly, but I know some cracking Hosts who have been in the game far longer than I have who still have a problem keeping in the limits of a good six hour run.
Maybe it is a combination of elements, fair enough. But here's one thing I know for a fact. Rolling a dice isn't just more time-consuming compared to drawing a card, it has the potential to introduce a finger-pause in the action that threatens to deep-six your session. Now, I have noticed that this is certainly not the case when properly playing your game of choice on a tabletop. Board games and the like seem to take a throw of the dice in their stride, it's part of the fun, and I have enjoyed exactly that fun on more than one occasion myself.
No, where dice are the kiss of death is in the sofa-lounge scenario. There's something quite luxurious about loafing about on a sofa engaged in RP something that gets players into a rhythm and even seems to put them in something of a trance. Nothing shatters that concentration like everyone craning forward to see a dice roll. Now, if you were to display dice rolls on a television screen or similar so they were big enough to be read without people craning forward to see them then that might mitigate the problem; but why employ technology when a playing card is usually clear enough to be seen by someone just holding it aloft?
This is where I think the time gains are made. There is some time at the beginning of a session where people are settling into the game. In a way the game takes a while for everyone involved to become fully engaged in it. I believe that in the past when people have rolled a dice it almost jogs them out of the game. Having a tea break also has a similar effect but that happens maybe once in a session, dice rolling is supposed to be a more frequent event.
Now I come to think about it I remember when I used to run Over The Edge by the book, with dice pools and what have you, we used to swerve rolls wherever possible. In fact the habit of being a dice dodger was one that infected all the games I played (not necessarily Hosted, just partook of) before starting in on No Dice. Now I come to think about it I can remember a lot of times the Host of the game, and sometimes that was me, made a Host Fiat decision before allowing the rhythm to be upset by a randomiser check. Randomiser checks which were supposed to be common became a last resort.
Some gamers still wear the "we hardly ever roll dice" thing as a narrative badge of honour. I always felt it made the whole thing less fun if you were afraid of trusting the vagaries of chance. If you stick to the unforgiving mistress that is chance the story is likely to be a lot more dramatic for the players than it is if you are the Host who enforces most of the rules but is basically on the player's side. Choices become important. In a fudged game choices are not really choices, they're just scenery on the mystery tour which really only has one destination and outcome.
Host Fiat in such cases is evil. It should be used to decide whether a proposed player plan even has a chance of succeeding; it's not intended to replace the element of chance altogether. The problem is that when your arbitration mechanism is destructively intrusive it encourages destructively simple Host arbitration. The most effective arbitrary Hosts are the ones who sustain a healthy distance between themselves and the players, although I always find this overcooks the player experience, the game becomes one of [Insert Host Name Here]'s games which are unique and untouchable.
Unless it can be systemised and is approachable it needs work. At least, in my world it does. For these reasons:
The Bloody End (of my NSHO).
No, what's getting me is that people say that Cards = Dice and therefore Cards !> Dice. In the Core Book we went into some detail about why this was not the case but now I think about it we probably didn't get to the heart of the matter. All the things we say are true, cards are more versatile and excellent mnemonically to keep system in people's heads instead of forcing them to bookmark rules and charts or refer to their super secret GM Screen to remember what numeric value on what chart means what.
But this doesn't cut to the very greatest thing about cards, i.e. they save you time.
I have not run a session that ran longer than three and a half hours in at least a year. At the same time, no one leaves these sessions feeling short changed. This is not a usual state of affairs in the hobby of RP. Of course I did my hahasoamusing little experiment write up in yesterday's entry. Although intended to be sarcastic it does have a serious point behind it. My session plans have gone from being good for two to three weeks worth of play, doing four and a half hour's worth at a time, coming away from every session feeling we should have done more, to cramming a good deal of plot and action into three to four hours with space for a tea break in the middle. Where did all this time come from?
Some might reason that I had simply become a more efficient Host. Well, possibly, but I know some cracking Hosts who have been in the game far longer than I have who still have a problem keeping in the limits of a good six hour run.
Maybe it is a combination of elements, fair enough. But here's one thing I know for a fact. Rolling a dice isn't just more time-consuming compared to drawing a card, it has the potential to introduce a finger-pause in the action that threatens to deep-six your session. Now, I have noticed that this is certainly not the case when properly playing your game of choice on a tabletop. Board games and the like seem to take a throw of the dice in their stride, it's part of the fun, and I have enjoyed exactly that fun on more than one occasion myself.
No, where dice are the kiss of death is in the sofa-lounge scenario. There's something quite luxurious about loafing about on a sofa engaged in RP something that gets players into a rhythm and even seems to put them in something of a trance. Nothing shatters that concentration like everyone craning forward to see a dice roll. Now, if you were to display dice rolls on a television screen or similar so they were big enough to be read without people craning forward to see them then that might mitigate the problem; but why employ technology when a playing card is usually clear enough to be seen by someone just holding it aloft?
This is where I think the time gains are made. There is some time at the beginning of a session where people are settling into the game. In a way the game takes a while for everyone involved to become fully engaged in it. I believe that in the past when people have rolled a dice it almost jogs them out of the game. Having a tea break also has a similar effect but that happens maybe once in a session, dice rolling is supposed to be a more frequent event.
Now I come to think about it I remember when I used to run Over The Edge by the book, with dice pools and what have you, we used to swerve rolls wherever possible. In fact the habit of being a dice dodger was one that infected all the games I played (not necessarily Hosted, just partook of) before starting in on No Dice. Now I come to think about it I can remember a lot of times the Host of the game, and sometimes that was me, made a Host Fiat decision before allowing the rhythm to be upset by a randomiser check. Randomiser checks which were supposed to be common became a last resort.
Some gamers still wear the "we hardly ever roll dice" thing as a narrative badge of honour. I always felt it made the whole thing less fun if you were afraid of trusting the vagaries of chance. If you stick to the unforgiving mistress that is chance the story is likely to be a lot more dramatic for the players than it is if you are the Host who enforces most of the rules but is basically on the player's side. Choices become important. In a fudged game choices are not really choices, they're just scenery on the mystery tour which really only has one destination and outcome.
Host Fiat in such cases is evil. It should be used to decide whether a proposed player plan even has a chance of succeeding; it's not intended to replace the element of chance altogether. The problem is that when your arbitration mechanism is destructively intrusive it encourages destructively simple Host arbitration. The most effective arbitrary Hosts are the ones who sustain a healthy distance between themselves and the players, although I always find this overcooks the player experience, the game becomes one of [Insert Host Name Here]'s games which are unique and untouchable.
Unless it can be systemised and is approachable it needs work. At least, in my world it does. For these reasons:
- discourages "fluffy Host syndrome"
- encourages randomiser use
- preserves fictive state
- shortens game length
- while increasing game quality
The Bloody End (of my NSHO).
6 May 2010
Doing It For The Fans
Long time, no blog, for reasons already expounded.
A mail from Matt today prompted me to reconsider the logic of the statement that content producers in various media love to gushingly proclaim: "We're doing this for the fans!"
Matt's mail addressed a perceived problem with the No Dice Core Book that people didn't like the introduction in length or content and it was putting people off the system. Maybe, maybe not. In my experience people are really good at making excuses for not doing this or that. We call people sheep because they resist and reject and reject and resist before, in some cases, running hell for leather towards some mediocre artefact because everyone else is doing it.
Digression! For example the number of moany twunts I've seen complaining that "Cards are not all that different from dice". Here's a simple experiment that proves the utter arsetwattery of such moans:
1) Sit on a sofa holding a D6.
2) Without leaning forward, to the side, employing the aid of any flat surface such as a table or the cover of your favourite "My Little Munchkin" Annual roll the dice to produce a satisfactory result.
3) Notice this is, at least, inconvenient.
4) Repeat the process, except this time hold a shuffled pack of cards in the hand of your choice. Draw rather than roll.
5) Now repeat with dice, but time how long it takes to roll the dice and read off the result.
6) Now repeat with cards and time how long it takes to make and read a draw.
7) Multiply the amount of time from 5 by 50. You will probably end up with an amount of time somewhere in the region of 20 minutes.
8) Multiply the amount of time from 6 by 50. You will probably end up with an amount of time somewhere in the region of 5 minutes.
9) Note how much time you save using a pack of cards.
10) Stop pretending that dice are the convenient randomiser of choice STFU and go away.
It certainly doesn't help that for everything on the good side of mediocre up there is 1000x as much stuff that slides off the grotesque hunchback of the distribution curve and leaves quality produce, or the stuff with potential, drowning in a sump of crap.
People have very strong filters for novelty, it's only necessity that pushes them beyond that. If I was a keen role player of the old school I would be put off No Dice because of its novelty. It's only because I find most role playing system books utterly unreadable, mired in pointless and restrictive micromangement details, filled with equations and charts that make most current role playing "statistics and probability for fun". People I role play with read the systems in order to hack them into something that requires far less effort. Those people are the kinds of people who will decide quite quickly that they've bought enough core books and they're going to do their own thing.
Many of these guys run the one system they could be bothered to finish reading through in pared down form, or just stick to homebrew, or homebrew something LIKE some system they skim read once but a hell of a lot lighter.
But I didn't get involved in No Dice to reach the other people, the people who play by the book, the people who are put off by the mere concept of reappraising their hobby. I believe that we wrote it for newbies and those who love role play as a form of narrative entertainment somehow sullied by arbitrary numeric systems that impede the development of plot.
We wrote No Dice for our friends. All the people who "get" No Dice are fans of it. All the people who just feel slightly nauseous reading the Introduction to the Core Book are not. So of course I'm "doing it for the fans". Who in their right mind would do it for the non-fans? Try and please a bunch of people who really couldn't care less if you died in a ditch? Who would do that?
So I guess like every other content producer and the rest of the gang I am obviously doing No Dice for the fans. Those people who want to whinge that they would love it more if we just changed the length and content of the introduction to sound like every other Role Playing System ever written can shove it up their anuses. If that is they can fit "it" up there with all the polyhedral dice, pencils, double sided character sheets, hex maps and rule expansions they've retained up there already.
Tortured anal retentive joke over I will mention that one of the projects for 2011 is the Core Book Redux. I've reread the Core Book and I can see a hell of a lot that's just plain wrong with it. However, I did not miss the absence of page after page after page of number crunch combat system.
(More To Follow.)
A mail from Matt today prompted me to reconsider the logic of the statement that content producers in various media love to gushingly proclaim: "We're doing this for the fans!"
Matt's mail addressed a perceived problem with the No Dice Core Book that people didn't like the introduction in length or content and it was putting people off the system. Maybe, maybe not. In my experience people are really good at making excuses for not doing this or that. We call people sheep because they resist and reject and reject and resist before, in some cases, running hell for leather towards some mediocre artefact because everyone else is doing it.
Digression! For example the number of moany twunts I've seen complaining that "Cards are not all that different from dice". Here's a simple experiment that proves the utter arsetwattery of such moans:
1) Sit on a sofa holding a D6.
2) Without leaning forward, to the side, employing the aid of any flat surface such as a table or the cover of your favourite "My Little Munchkin" Annual roll the dice to produce a satisfactory result.
3) Notice this is, at least, inconvenient.
4) Repeat the process, except this time hold a shuffled pack of cards in the hand of your choice. Draw rather than roll.
5) Now repeat with dice, but time how long it takes to roll the dice and read off the result.
6) Now repeat with cards and time how long it takes to make and read a draw.
7) Multiply the amount of time from 5 by 50. You will probably end up with an amount of time somewhere in the region of 20 minutes.
8) Multiply the amount of time from 6 by 50. You will probably end up with an amount of time somewhere in the region of 5 minutes.
9) Note how much time you save using a pack of cards.
10) Stop pretending that dice are the convenient randomiser of choice STFU and go away.
It certainly doesn't help that for everything on the good side of mediocre up there is 1000x as much stuff that slides off the grotesque hunchback of the distribution curve and leaves quality produce, or the stuff with potential, drowning in a sump of crap.
People have very strong filters for novelty, it's only necessity that pushes them beyond that. If I was a keen role player of the old school I would be put off No Dice because of its novelty. It's only because I find most role playing system books utterly unreadable, mired in pointless and restrictive micromangement details, filled with equations and charts that make most current role playing "statistics and probability for fun". People I role play with read the systems in order to hack them into something that requires far less effort. Those people are the kinds of people who will decide quite quickly that they've bought enough core books and they're going to do their own thing.
Many of these guys run the one system they could be bothered to finish reading through in pared down form, or just stick to homebrew, or homebrew something LIKE some system they skim read once but a hell of a lot lighter.
But I didn't get involved in No Dice to reach the other people, the people who play by the book, the people who are put off by the mere concept of reappraising their hobby. I believe that we wrote it for newbies and those who love role play as a form of narrative entertainment somehow sullied by arbitrary numeric systems that impede the development of plot.
We wrote No Dice for our friends. All the people who "get" No Dice are fans of it. All the people who just feel slightly nauseous reading the Introduction to the Core Book are not. So of course I'm "doing it for the fans". Who in their right mind would do it for the non-fans? Try and please a bunch of people who really couldn't care less if you died in a ditch? Who would do that?
So I guess like every other content producer and the rest of the gang I am obviously doing No Dice for the fans. Those people who want to whinge that they would love it more if we just changed the length and content of the introduction to sound like every other Role Playing System ever written can shove it up their anuses. If that is they can fit "it" up there with all the polyhedral dice, pencils, double sided character sheets, hex maps and rule expansions they've retained up there already.
Tortured anal retentive joke over I will mention that one of the projects for 2011 is the Core Book Redux. I've reread the Core Book and I can see a hell of a lot that's just plain wrong with it. However, I did not miss the absence of page after page after page of number crunch combat system.
(More To Follow.)
26 February 2010
Crawling Toward The Finish Line
Back from Belper and keen to relay gory details but for now suffice to say that my favourite session of the weekend for general hilarity and mirth filled darkness has to have been OTE. Least favourite for running smoothly but certainly no slouch in the "fresh ideas" camp was Dreamtime which was intellectually stimulating whilst being a bit slow to play. Work is ongoing.
Other than that I am pounding the keys frantically on the home stretch with Levercastle which nearly has a magic system and does, in fact, have an Alchemy system which all the failed alchemists in my campaign may be pleased, or nervous, to hear.
For now though, arrivederci.
Other than that I am pounding the keys frantically on the home stretch with Levercastle which nearly has a magic system and does, in fact, have an Alchemy system which all the failed alchemists in my campaign may be pleased, or nervous, to hear.
For now though, arrivederci.
25 January 2010
Lulu First Run Toll
It's inevitable, I have discovered. Just like going away entails leaving some small but irritatingly necessary item behind at home so printing with Lulu entails finding one glaring but ultimately trivial thing wrong with the first batch of published product.
With Random Encounters the problems are superficial but relevant to me (it probably won't make a lick of difference to anyone else):
1) Slight overcropping on the front cover, even though I was careful to keep within the software cover designer.
2) When I first published the book to review the PDF I made sure that the spine was consistent with the Core Book having title and authors at the top and a product number at the bottom. Apparently, somewhere in the multitude of republished editions that have followed the cover designer seems to have reset to the default. Title at the top of the spine account holder's name at the bottom. So the spines of the first eight copies of RE read "Random Encounters-Leo Stableford". That's rather embarrassing, there were four distinct authors of the volume and an illustrator (who was one of the four authors!) just having my name on the spine is wrong and makes me feel a bit awkward.
Obviously, I shall have to make sure both of these issues are remedied before any more are printed.
With Random Encounters the problems are superficial but relevant to me (it probably won't make a lick of difference to anyone else):
1) Slight overcropping on the front cover, even though I was careful to keep within the software cover designer.
2) When I first published the book to review the PDF I made sure that the spine was consistent with the Core Book having title and authors at the top and a product number at the bottom. Apparently, somewhere in the multitude of republished editions that have followed the cover designer seems to have reset to the default. Title at the top of the spine account holder's name at the bottom. So the spines of the first eight copies of RE read "Random Encounters-Leo Stableford". That's rather embarrassing, there were four distinct authors of the volume and an illustrator (who was one of the four authors!) just having my name on the spine is wrong and makes me feel a bit awkward.
Obviously, I shall have to make sure both of these issues are remedied before any more are printed.
13 January 2010
2010: The Year We Got Busy
I wish that the amusing implication of the post title was anywhere near accurate. No, a more literate version of the semantics is to be inferred.
The plans are afoot for a calendar littered knee deep with exciting and rewarding events. The problem is that none of them are planned. Unplanned events are the absolute worst kind. You know they are going to resolve into the flesh but until you have a time, or a place, or both they torture you with vagueness.
Among the highlights of a full summer programme are: New No Dice events at Nottingham's new game and comic shop where Justin and I are also almost certain to organise a bit of Heroscape. Especially seeing as WotC seem to have released the Scape freeze to produce a D&D themed Underdark expansion set, which looks pretty yummy.
We'll also be wanting to get out and about in the summer time as outdoor No Diceing last summer was a brilliant success. In addition we want to hit three conventions, our friends at Beer and Pretzels, IndieCon (our non-attendance at which was an epic fail for us last year) and GenCon (if there is one). It doesn't stop there: we want to organise our own massive shindig to tie in with the release of Levercastle.
Finally, myself and the Mrs want to slope off for a couple of holidays in amongst all that. And there's the ever present joy of the Belper games weekends!
2010 will be eventful for sure. But will I survive it?
P.S. Check out our new slimline podcast available from the link top right.
The plans are afoot for a calendar littered knee deep with exciting and rewarding events. The problem is that none of them are planned. Unplanned events are the absolute worst kind. You know they are going to resolve into the flesh but until you have a time, or a place, or both they torture you with vagueness.
Among the highlights of a full summer programme are: New No Dice events at Nottingham's new game and comic shop where Justin and I are also almost certain to organise a bit of Heroscape. Especially seeing as WotC seem to have released the Scape freeze to produce a D&D themed Underdark expansion set, which looks pretty yummy.
We'll also be wanting to get out and about in the summer time as outdoor No Diceing last summer was a brilliant success. In addition we want to hit three conventions, our friends at Beer and Pretzels, IndieCon (our non-attendance at which was an epic fail for us last year) and GenCon (if there is one). It doesn't stop there: we want to organise our own massive shindig to tie in with the release of Levercastle.
Finally, myself and the Mrs want to slope off for a couple of holidays in amongst all that. And there's the ever present joy of the Belper games weekends!
2010 will be eventful for sure. But will I survive it?
P.S. Check out our new slimline podcast available from the link top right.
14 December 2009
Yikes!
So RoboJoe stole the show... *sigh* worst X Factor winner Evar! (relatively speaking, Leon Jackson was a massive anti-climax but he wasn't up against talent like Olly, Danyl and Stacey, he also wasn't following talent like Alexandra and JLS).
I've been creating a wiki for No Dice. This will replace the soon to be extinct No Dice Forums. Have a look around. There's already a bunch of stuff in System Hacks.
Also Random Encounters is out! The ideal Chrimbo gift! Buy one now! ;)
Have a good Monday!
I've been creating a wiki for No Dice. This will replace the soon to be extinct No Dice Forums. Have a look around. There's already a bunch of stuff in System Hacks.
Also Random Encounters is out! The ideal Chrimbo gift! Buy one now! ;)
Have a good Monday!
8 December 2009
Of Monsters And Magnets
Quick one today. I'm going to reclaim my lunch hour to get some Dreamtime Stories stuff done for this weekend's session. After all the harping on about how difficult magic is in RP this magic system seems to have sprung, unbidden, from my mind and is looking like making pretty cool RP.
The only thing I have a slight issue with is that each type of magic needs an associated circular geometric design. That's a lot of geometry.
Anyhow. It occurs to me that yesterday I said nothing about the Monster Magnet gig that I went to on Saturday. Quite by chance RP Matt got in touch and asked if anything was happening and news of a Monster Magnet gig piqued his interest. Sue graciously handed her +1 status over to Matt so Matt and I got in on the guest list.
The opening act was an instrumental metal group. They weren't bad but they weren't sufficiently beyond riffing to make their prog metal designs work. Monster Magnet were chuffing excellent. All you could imagine a psychedleic metal band confident in their abilities to be.
Mrs has an issue with the fact that they're mostly old enough to be her dad but hey, what I say is if you can raise hell then whyever not?
Just a mini-blast today because the allure of the dreamtime is calling. Enjoy Tuesday!
The only thing I have a slight issue with is that each type of magic needs an associated circular geometric design. That's a lot of geometry.
Anyhow. It occurs to me that yesterday I said nothing about the Monster Magnet gig that I went to on Saturday. Quite by chance RP Matt got in touch and asked if anything was happening and news of a Monster Magnet gig piqued his interest. Sue graciously handed her +1 status over to Matt so Matt and I got in on the guest list.
The opening act was an instrumental metal group. They weren't bad but they weren't sufficiently beyond riffing to make their prog metal designs work. Monster Magnet were chuffing excellent. All you could imagine a psychedleic metal band confident in their abilities to be.
Mrs has an issue with the fact that they're mostly old enough to be her dad but hey, what I say is if you can raise hell then whyever not?
Just a mini-blast today because the allure of the dreamtime is calling. Enjoy Tuesday!
9 July 2009
The Joker In The Pack
No sooner do I lament the complete lack of anything that makes for a substantial post than KA-BLAM! something amazing socks me in the face; almost literally in this case.
When I was compiling the Core Book I tried to include everything I could think of at the time to make a sourcebook for the budding No Dicer. It is inevitable that things should be missed. Almost everything that's coming in the Random Encounters series is intended to be filled with examples of powerful things that you can do with No Dice principles. So in each adventure we're kind of expanding the toolkit of the prospective Host and also giving a concrete example of potential play.
Last night we play tested the Monster Action Thriller "The Creature of Black Lake" and got off to a rocky start. Basically an incident mentioned in the notes that's supposed to just happen resulted in the death of a player's character before the adventure had even started.
This was notable for several reasons but not least because that's really not supposed to happen. I know that people have been keen to discuss the idea of abitrary character death recently but this basically put someone out of the game in the first forty minutes.
Not only that but I experienced an incident of Host meltdown, a brief autopsy of the situation lead to the conclusion that the wires of communication were badly crossed and for a while there it all looked grim. You see, the whole point of No Dice is that it's supposed to help you sidestep these issues and keep going. If an adventure has a serious hole that relies on a certain series of incidents not happening then it's just not working.
A workable suggestion was put forward by Justin who suggested that when you hit the blind alley you as Host rewind the action to just before everything went pear and then re-explained the situation giving the player an out.
Like I say, this is workable but it's not really all that neat. It means that a player could take a one way trip up diarrhea drive and then like the Prince of Persia just rewind and do it again.
It was Sue who hit on the real answer. Which in a discussion that followed broadened out from a specific instance in that adventure to become a general principle that Core Book is sorely missing. Oh well, for the second edition I suppose.
But for those of you who don't want to wait n years for the 2nd ed here's the idea right now. Treasure this one, it's golden:
Creating NPCs is always a problem. 95% of NPCs are just cyphers of course. They are barkeeps, random wandering citizens and other reasonably easy to scope functionaries.
That other 5% are the important ones. Many of these, probably just over half, are villains and again there isn't really a problem with them. It's that last 2% that can leave the Host scratching their head.
These are the "major friendly NPCs". Don't be fooled, just because they're marked "friendly" doesn't mean they're always happy to see the players, it more or less just means they won't just try to kill the players on sight.
In the Core Book I got as far as advising people to avoid "infoblaster" NPCs who just know everything. And I also advised against making NPCs as powerful or more powerful than the player characters who were supposedly their allies.
Aside from that I just recommended a Host create "real" characters using the Player's Guide notes to make a fully rounded and realised character.
In some cases this might be fine. But in reality players don't really spend all that much time talking to NPCs just for fun. So a lot of the Host's fine character creation work goes by the wall.
Besides, once you've stopped the NPCs being more powerful when they're too friendly you've kind of left yourself in a bit of a bind.
The problem is sometimes you want characters to move the plot on. They are supposed to arrive, do something dramatic and then leave the players to deal with the fall out.
So how does one do this without making them villainous or too powerful? After all a constant parade of utter villainy keeps things busking along but really in a story based RP you want other types of encounter.
This was exactly the problem in Creature. I had an NPC who needed to rather aggressively insert himself into the party and provide useful plot information, in a guarded manner, for the remainder of the adventure (or at least until he died). I had written up notes for this character which were pretty light. I wanted to introduce him and then, in the playtest, develop him in some way into a fully realised character.
So when he came in to the action I kept him neutral. The only problem with this is that he was neutrally holding up the party's boat with AK47s. As I quickly discovered this kind of thing can be misinterpreted as open aggression. Funnily enough, had he gone in with open aggression the accidental adventure ruining bloodbath that resulted from my weak characterisation would have been averted. Then, of course, the players would have had to just follow along on rails.
On rails is not a good place for adventures to be.
So I needed to, rather than render the character neutral and hence weak, render him a little bit charming and crazy and hence allow characters to interact with him even though he was, technically, a bad dude.
This is a really exciting dramatic position, the guy's holding you hostage but he's quite willing to have a conversation with you about begonias (or whatever). As a player you feel you might be able to negotiate or something.
At the same time the Host has someone who can nudge the characters back on task if they look like they're about to commit suicide or whatever.
This guy's a great NPC, not too overpowering but not too floppy either. He's not going to interfere unless you need him too. He's a joy to have involved.
And hence was born the Joker.
You see Creature is not alone in needing a character like this. Every role play session could do with having a Joker to interact with the players, nudging, testing, exploring their characters.
The situation where the Joker is a guy who has technically taken the Players as hostages, but in a polite way, is just one possible scenario. Characters who have vast reserves of information they are unwilling to share, characters who offer money, or professional services desired by the players all of these are ideal Joker characters.
The secret is to always lay on the unthreatening manner on thick. This was my vital mistake last night. Neutrality won't cut it if an NPC has some power over the players. The character has to maintain their power over the character while entertaining the player.
I'm not saying that making them will be easy but there is a way to make it easier. Sue loves poker and she quickly put me on to the old poker trope of trying to find the sucker at the table. Essentially when you come up with an adventure design your job is to try to identify the Joker(s) at the table and then make them around their role in the story.
Some stories, Con of the Dead, Revelation Point, don't really need a Joker character. Then we return to the poker trope: if after ten minutes searching for the Joker in the scenario you still can't find them, it's you.
Yes, in some adventures it is the Host himself who takes this gently tormentative role for the players. Horror splatter scenarios are the most likely to feature these.
So from now on when I'm dealing up a new scenario I will be sure to use a deck comprised of 53 cards. The joker's going to become one of the most powerful tools in my arsenal.
NB: That last sentence was a dramatic article closer. You don't need to actually draw a card to know when to make the Joker NPC, you just kind of look for them after you've finished your notes.
When I was compiling the Core Book I tried to include everything I could think of at the time to make a sourcebook for the budding No Dicer. It is inevitable that things should be missed. Almost everything that's coming in the Random Encounters series is intended to be filled with examples of powerful things that you can do with No Dice principles. So in each adventure we're kind of expanding the toolkit of the prospective Host and also giving a concrete example of potential play.
Last night we play tested the Monster Action Thriller "The Creature of Black Lake" and got off to a rocky start. Basically an incident mentioned in the notes that's supposed to just happen resulted in the death of a player's character before the adventure had even started.
This was notable for several reasons but not least because that's really not supposed to happen. I know that people have been keen to discuss the idea of abitrary character death recently but this basically put someone out of the game in the first forty minutes.
Not only that but I experienced an incident of Host meltdown, a brief autopsy of the situation lead to the conclusion that the wires of communication were badly crossed and for a while there it all looked grim. You see, the whole point of No Dice is that it's supposed to help you sidestep these issues and keep going. If an adventure has a serious hole that relies on a certain series of incidents not happening then it's just not working.
A workable suggestion was put forward by Justin who suggested that when you hit the blind alley you as Host rewind the action to just before everything went pear and then re-explained the situation giving the player an out.
Like I say, this is workable but it's not really all that neat. It means that a player could take a one way trip up diarrhea drive and then like the Prince of Persia just rewind and do it again.
It was Sue who hit on the real answer. Which in a discussion that followed broadened out from a specific instance in that adventure to become a general principle that Core Book is sorely missing. Oh well, for the second edition I suppose.
But for those of you who don't want to wait n years for the 2nd ed here's the idea right now. Treasure this one, it's golden:
Creating NPCs is always a problem. 95% of NPCs are just cyphers of course. They are barkeeps, random wandering citizens and other reasonably easy to scope functionaries.
That other 5% are the important ones. Many of these, probably just over half, are villains and again there isn't really a problem with them. It's that last 2% that can leave the Host scratching their head.
These are the "major friendly NPCs". Don't be fooled, just because they're marked "friendly" doesn't mean they're always happy to see the players, it more or less just means they won't just try to kill the players on sight.
In the Core Book I got as far as advising people to avoid "infoblaster" NPCs who just know everything. And I also advised against making NPCs as powerful or more powerful than the player characters who were supposedly their allies.
Aside from that I just recommended a Host create "real" characters using the Player's Guide notes to make a fully rounded and realised character.
In some cases this might be fine. But in reality players don't really spend all that much time talking to NPCs just for fun. So a lot of the Host's fine character creation work goes by the wall.
Besides, once you've stopped the NPCs being more powerful when they're too friendly you've kind of left yourself in a bit of a bind.
The problem is sometimes you want characters to move the plot on. They are supposed to arrive, do something dramatic and then leave the players to deal with the fall out.
So how does one do this without making them villainous or too powerful? After all a constant parade of utter villainy keeps things busking along but really in a story based RP you want other types of encounter.
This was exactly the problem in Creature. I had an NPC who needed to rather aggressively insert himself into the party and provide useful plot information, in a guarded manner, for the remainder of the adventure (or at least until he died). I had written up notes for this character which were pretty light. I wanted to introduce him and then, in the playtest, develop him in some way into a fully realised character.
So when he came in to the action I kept him neutral. The only problem with this is that he was neutrally holding up the party's boat with AK47s. As I quickly discovered this kind of thing can be misinterpreted as open aggression. Funnily enough, had he gone in with open aggression the accidental adventure ruining bloodbath that resulted from my weak characterisation would have been averted. Then, of course, the players would have had to just follow along on rails.
On rails is not a good place for adventures to be.
So I needed to, rather than render the character neutral and hence weak, render him a little bit charming and crazy and hence allow characters to interact with him even though he was, technically, a bad dude.
This is a really exciting dramatic position, the guy's holding you hostage but he's quite willing to have a conversation with you about begonias (or whatever). As a player you feel you might be able to negotiate or something.
At the same time the Host has someone who can nudge the characters back on task if they look like they're about to commit suicide or whatever.
This guy's a great NPC, not too overpowering but not too floppy either. He's not going to interfere unless you need him too. He's a joy to have involved.
And hence was born the Joker.
You see Creature is not alone in needing a character like this. Every role play session could do with having a Joker to interact with the players, nudging, testing, exploring their characters.
The situation where the Joker is a guy who has technically taken the Players as hostages, but in a polite way, is just one possible scenario. Characters who have vast reserves of information they are unwilling to share, characters who offer money, or professional services desired by the players all of these are ideal Joker characters.
The secret is to always lay on the unthreatening manner on thick. This was my vital mistake last night. Neutrality won't cut it if an NPC has some power over the players. The character has to maintain their power over the character while entertaining the player.
I'm not saying that making them will be easy but there is a way to make it easier. Sue loves poker and she quickly put me on to the old poker trope of trying to find the sucker at the table. Essentially when you come up with an adventure design your job is to try to identify the Joker(s) at the table and then make them around their role in the story.
Some stories, Con of the Dead, Revelation Point, don't really need a Joker character. Then we return to the poker trope: if after ten minutes searching for the Joker in the scenario you still can't find them, it's you.
Yes, in some adventures it is the Host himself who takes this gently tormentative role for the players. Horror splatter scenarios are the most likely to feature these.
So from now on when I'm dealing up a new scenario I will be sure to use a deck comprised of 53 cards. The joker's going to become one of the most powerful tools in my arsenal.
NB: That last sentence was a dramatic article closer. You don't need to actually draw a card to know when to make the Joker NPC, you just kind of look for them after you've finished your notes.
25 June 2009
Group Musings
A plaintive Twitter by one of the folk I am following lead me to consider the dynamics of the gaming group. Currently we have a core group of four on a weekly basis and one more every fortnight (we play our games on a biweekly basis, this being a happy medium between weekly Hosting madness and monthly Hosting doldrums). On a one off basis we number easily a dozen or more.
I don't think of any of the seven or eight people who don't come to every single game I play in to be any kind of slacker, or "not really part of the group", similarly I don't think of the hardcore four as being the "real group" or any of that nonsense. If you are a gamer reading this you may well be wondering how all this works. One thing having a gaming group is famed for is requiring a certain level of commitment.
I'm going to mention No Dice again, big surprise.
The fact is that one of the things that spurred me on to write down the No Dice way of doing things was that there are a lot of gamers who don't game any more because as they got older they lost the time required to be in a "proper" group.
I game on a weekly basis now but only because of an accident of scheduling. I game a lot more often that just the weekly session but only by being able to be flexible about who is there and who isn't.
Of course there are some things it's better to have everyone there for. No one likes to know their character is being NPCed without them. But No Dice was specifically designed to encourage "casual Role Playing". We are talking about one-off events and pushing one-off ideas because it's a feature of the system. One offs are awesome, a little taster of something that might be a little strong, strange or hard to sustain for a campaign.
We've also tried to foster campaign set ups where people drift in and out. We're working hard on allowing Hosts to cope with player characters who hardly ever meet, so if someone can't make it to a session then it's assumed their character is busily going about their life elsewhere.
All of these things have resulted in me having the largest group of gaming contacts I ever have, and it has also resulted in me gaming with a greater variety of people more often. It also has delighted me that people not traditionally attracted to the hobby have been open to getting involved because of the greater flexibility.
So as much as it does make me cringe to push the product again, if you're worried about maintaining a gaming group, or about starting one with many flaky members, then it might be you need to No Dice Up Your Life...
I can't believe I just said that.
I don't think of any of the seven or eight people who don't come to every single game I play in to be any kind of slacker, or "not really part of the group", similarly I don't think of the hardcore four as being the "real group" or any of that nonsense. If you are a gamer reading this you may well be wondering how all this works. One thing having a gaming group is famed for is requiring a certain level of commitment.
I'm going to mention No Dice again, big surprise.
The fact is that one of the things that spurred me on to write down the No Dice way of doing things was that there are a lot of gamers who don't game any more because as they got older they lost the time required to be in a "proper" group.
I game on a weekly basis now but only because of an accident of scheduling. I game a lot more often that just the weekly session but only by being able to be flexible about who is there and who isn't.
Of course there are some things it's better to have everyone there for. No one likes to know their character is being NPCed without them. But No Dice was specifically designed to encourage "casual Role Playing". We are talking about one-off events and pushing one-off ideas because it's a feature of the system. One offs are awesome, a little taster of something that might be a little strong, strange or hard to sustain for a campaign.
We've also tried to foster campaign set ups where people drift in and out. We're working hard on allowing Hosts to cope with player characters who hardly ever meet, so if someone can't make it to a session then it's assumed their character is busily going about their life elsewhere.
All of these things have resulted in me having the largest group of gaming contacts I ever have, and it has also resulted in me gaming with a greater variety of people more often. It also has delighted me that people not traditionally attracted to the hobby have been open to getting involved because of the greater flexibility.
So as much as it does make me cringe to push the product again, if you're worried about maintaining a gaming group, or about starting one with many flaky members, then it might be you need to No Dice Up Your Life...
I can't believe I just said that.
4 June 2009
Farewell Black Wednesday
I don't know why exactly but yesterday was the most stupidly bad day for the Mrs and myself for quite some time. The front door on the house is not working and I'm the only person who can lock it so I had to spend my lunch hour coming home to make it lock so the Mrs could go to work which meant having to spend an extra half hour in work.
This wouldn't have been so bad but halfway through the day Lulu wrote to kindly inform me that there was an issue with transparency artefacts in some images in the Core Book and as a result they couldn't print or fulfil any orders yet. So I had to run home to spend a cheery evening print optimising all the pictures, re-inserting them into the document and then republishing the project on Lulu. I didn't know, at this stage, whether my remedies would work. The only benefit I received straight off the bat was that the PDF, previously an encumbering 47MB was now a sprightly 6MB.
Not that my travails were anything like as bad as those of the Mrs who had to put up with death threats at work. No, seriously. And came home early in the least good a mood as can possibly exist to find her rubbish other half frantically uploading new PDFs to Lulu because a few real people actually want their copuies of the actual book on actual paper with actual ink.
Thankfully Ian's order has shipped, and I guess this means the issues are over with. Although Lulu didn't actually get back to me at all even though I submitted a trouble ticket asking how long it might be before they attempted printing again. I tried mailing back to the address they mailed me from but the mail bounced.
Lulu is becoming a proper corporation that acts just like one too!
Bah.
This wouldn't have been so bad but halfway through the day Lulu wrote to kindly inform me that there was an issue with transparency artefacts in some images in the Core Book and as a result they couldn't print or fulfil any orders yet. So I had to run home to spend a cheery evening print optimising all the pictures, re-inserting them into the document and then republishing the project on Lulu. I didn't know, at this stage, whether my remedies would work. The only benefit I received straight off the bat was that the PDF, previously an encumbering 47MB was now a sprightly 6MB.
Not that my travails were anything like as bad as those of the Mrs who had to put up with death threats at work. No, seriously. And came home early in the least good a mood as can possibly exist to find her rubbish other half frantically uploading new PDFs to Lulu because a few real people actually want their copuies of the actual book on actual paper with actual ink.
Thankfully Ian's order has shipped, and I guess this means the issues are over with. Although Lulu didn't actually get back to me at all even though I submitted a trouble ticket asking how long it might be before they attempted printing again. I tried mailing back to the address they mailed me from but the mail bounced.
Lulu is becoming a proper corporation that acts just like one too!
Bah.
20 May 2009
Mixed Bag
First off let me just point you in the direction of The No Dice Node which is the official No Dice forum. I've always loved a good forum ever since I was first on teh intarwebnet and it's always been a sad little ambition of mine to run one. So sad little ambition now realised.
I'm really pleased that we've got 5 real members (and the Google AdSense bot) on the roster. Admittedly Admins still outnumber real community members but, hey, everyone's got to start somewhere. We've already proven to be a lively bunch and once I've finished writing this I'm sloping off to reply to threads and maybe start a few of my own.
I've always wanted to have the exploits of myself and my colleagues be fully interactive and I always find people more able to witter away and keep in touch in a forum than commenting on blogs or podcast posts. So I hope some of you will join us in the node and see all that's super live in the Node.
Before I disappear one brief thought I felt it was worth setting down regards how I'm finding the transition between thinking of myself as a writer and thinking of myself as a game designer. When I was a writer it all seemed very lonely. Writers aren't supposed to be particularly interactive and writer's circles are seen as places of ego battering misery for the ascetic journeyman. Basically writers aren't really seen as "chatty".
I remember when I was trying to promote the cause of POD back in the day people generally regarded it as a station of hopeless but valiant calling. Nobody in POD circles sees themselves as a "joiner", well, except me.
I love people, I love seeing what lies within someone's imagination. I love to tell stories with people and being the designer of No Dice and its associated systems is already an awesome thing. I've met possibly 15-20 new gamers as a result of No Dice and all of them have been awesome human beings, every game that finished I was sad to see them go and hoped we'd hang out for a session again.
That's what I think the absolute difference between being in the gaming world and the pure writing world is. I am all about enabling the stories of others, writers feel they have story to tell that is theirs.
I am glad I've found my side of that fence.
I'm really pleased that we've got 5 real members (and the Google AdSense bot) on the roster. Admittedly Admins still outnumber real community members but, hey, everyone's got to start somewhere. We've already proven to be a lively bunch and once I've finished writing this I'm sloping off to reply to threads and maybe start a few of my own.
I've always wanted to have the exploits of myself and my colleagues be fully interactive and I always find people more able to witter away and keep in touch in a forum than commenting on blogs or podcast posts. So I hope some of you will join us in the node and see all that's super live in the Node.
Before I disappear one brief thought I felt it was worth setting down regards how I'm finding the transition between thinking of myself as a writer and thinking of myself as a game designer. When I was a writer it all seemed very lonely. Writers aren't supposed to be particularly interactive and writer's circles are seen as places of ego battering misery for the ascetic journeyman. Basically writers aren't really seen as "chatty".
I remember when I was trying to promote the cause of POD back in the day people generally regarded it as a station of hopeless but valiant calling. Nobody in POD circles sees themselves as a "joiner", well, except me.
I love people, I love seeing what lies within someone's imagination. I love to tell stories with people and being the designer of No Dice and its associated systems is already an awesome thing. I've met possibly 15-20 new gamers as a result of No Dice and all of them have been awesome human beings, every game that finished I was sad to see them go and hoped we'd hang out for a session again.
That's what I think the absolute difference between being in the gaming world and the pure writing world is. I am all about enabling the stories of others, writers feel they have story to tell that is theirs.
I am glad I've found my side of that fence.
14 May 2009
Things Are Getting Desperate
Only a couple of days to go until No Dice debuts at Beer & Pretzels. I'm really looking forward to taking some games out for a trundle. Justin, Mrs Monkey and myself had a war council last night and it all is looking quite exciting. I think it's fair to say that hopes are high for this enterprise. Sure we won't be filling a Global Stadium Tour any time soon but I hope people can get behind what we're trying to do here.
One thing that struck me in the paper-riffic character sheet production bonanza that took place yesterday was that we really do have a vast array of different rules and features that swap around in a dizzying number of ways to create an awesome powerhouse of role play variety.
It was part of the design all along that there would be a Vanilla system onto which features would be bolted as suited the needs of the scenario but I never expected there to be so many subtle shades. For example Con of the Dead is the exemplar of cheap and cheerful, four character records to a sheet of A4, 8 stats, a suit, a character name. Extremely efficient.
At the other end of the scale Marauders: Pirates of the Kamuri Kandam has 12 stats and a whole separate grid for fighting. Shadow Cities two meters for combat (ranged and melee and a huge wash of skill slots). Revelation Point, our slasher one off, employs a completely gimmicked system for making Slasher one offs where injuries are micromanaged and obssessed over much as they are in the genre they attempt to emulate.
Despite what could be a dizzying array of different rule sets the system remains, at heart, pretty simple. The scores on the sheets are only ever chucked in when needed. In fact there are sub variations of the rules for certain situations, the Marauders one off we're taking to B&P has almost no role play in it, well, very little that would require role play tests. In response I've stripped the 12 attribute skill grid out of the one off sheets and presented players with a character history and a fighting style.
Anyhow, all of this variety is intended to impress and I hope it does. After this piece of work we're looking forward to a launch party next week and then, well, the launch. A rest can't come soon enough to be honest.
Word of the week has been traction. What we're all really hoping is that this product will create some space for us to get some traction, buy a little time to do the work and get on with writing up the twelve books we've got planned so far (not counting anthologies of one offs). I predict a lot of hoarsely telling people that if they had a good time please to spread the word in the immediate future.
Oh well, off to think about fliers to hand out this weekend...
One thing that struck me in the paper-riffic character sheet production bonanza that took place yesterday was that we really do have a vast array of different rules and features that swap around in a dizzying number of ways to create an awesome powerhouse of role play variety.
It was part of the design all along that there would be a Vanilla system onto which features would be bolted as suited the needs of the scenario but I never expected there to be so many subtle shades. For example Con of the Dead is the exemplar of cheap and cheerful, four character records to a sheet of A4, 8 stats, a suit, a character name. Extremely efficient.
At the other end of the scale Marauders: Pirates of the Kamuri Kandam has 12 stats and a whole separate grid for fighting. Shadow Cities two meters for combat (ranged and melee and a huge wash of skill slots). Revelation Point, our slasher one off, employs a completely gimmicked system for making Slasher one offs where injuries are micromanaged and obssessed over much as they are in the genre they attempt to emulate.
Despite what could be a dizzying array of different rule sets the system remains, at heart, pretty simple. The scores on the sheets are only ever chucked in when needed. In fact there are sub variations of the rules for certain situations, the Marauders one off we're taking to B&P has almost no role play in it, well, very little that would require role play tests. In response I've stripped the 12 attribute skill grid out of the one off sheets and presented players with a character history and a fighting style.
Anyhow, all of this variety is intended to impress and I hope it does. After this piece of work we're looking forward to a launch party next week and then, well, the launch. A rest can't come soon enough to be honest.
Word of the week has been traction. What we're all really hoping is that this product will create some space for us to get some traction, buy a little time to do the work and get on with writing up the twelve books we've got planned so far (not counting anthologies of one offs). I predict a lot of hoarsely telling people that if they had a good time please to spread the word in the immediate future.
Oh well, off to think about fliers to hand out this weekend...
7 May 2009
Frantic Preparation Abounds
Those of you champing at the bit to get a copy of the Core Book will be pleased to hear that the final few bits and pieces are coming together nicely. We've had tentative conversations speculating about what kind of business it might do.
When I published my novels I knew how badly they would do. I am a very harsh reader and rarely read any novels unless they really grab my attention. I am apt to view my own work in the same light. Sure it's a good novel, I might think, but there are thousands of good novels that don't sell well.
But a game?
The scope of a game is different. If you're Harry Potter you can sell yourself to millions of people world wide, no role playing game will ever outsell you not even a Harry Potter RPG. But if you are an unknown but pretty decent novel you could go through a print run of 600 copies 550 of which will get remaindered and no one will ever know who the hell you were.
RPGs are far more narrow band. If an RPG is decent it will shift a few units no matter what. Or at least that's the way it seems. Of course if you write a rubbish RPG it fares about as well as the unknown decent novel. But there is some kind of meritocracy in the world of the RPG. Good stuff makes a mark, bad stuff makes a different kind of mark. The community is communicative and keen.
It's a world I understand. While I'd never really be able to sell a novel to someone without resorting to "it might give you an idea for an RPG session" I can tell every role player who ever lived that they need to look at No Dice.
In the latest podcast (#5 up this weekend) Justin talks about the appraisal of D&D 4e which states that it's a game that does an epic job of removing all the RP. Well No Dice is almost the polar opposite it's a Role Play tool that hacks the game down to a minimum.
Thus if people want to mix their game complexity with some RP fun it might be best to buy both. One's a game, the other supports you in Role Play, together they might just make beautiful musics... or they might just make a terrible hideous carnage filled mess.
The point is valid. I have always looked on No Dice as an addendum to crunchier systems because if I want crunch I can easily get myself stocked up. If I want to examine parts of the RP experience that don't involve crunch there's limited resource available. And what is there isn't terribly well organised.
So I'm keeping my phylanges crossed that people see things the way the No Dice Crew do. I guess we'll find out come June 1st and thereafter.
My own personal ambition that we've done something really good is when we sell around 1000 copies of the printed book. My target to know it wasn't a complete waste of time and energy is at a more conservative 50 copies.
There's a hell of a lot of legroom inbetween for stuff to evolve.
When I published my novels I knew how badly they would do. I am a very harsh reader and rarely read any novels unless they really grab my attention. I am apt to view my own work in the same light. Sure it's a good novel, I might think, but there are thousands of good novels that don't sell well.
But a game?
The scope of a game is different. If you're Harry Potter you can sell yourself to millions of people world wide, no role playing game will ever outsell you not even a Harry Potter RPG. But if you are an unknown but pretty decent novel you could go through a print run of 600 copies 550 of which will get remaindered and no one will ever know who the hell you were.
RPGs are far more narrow band. If an RPG is decent it will shift a few units no matter what. Or at least that's the way it seems. Of course if you write a rubbish RPG it fares about as well as the unknown decent novel. But there is some kind of meritocracy in the world of the RPG. Good stuff makes a mark, bad stuff makes a different kind of mark. The community is communicative and keen.
It's a world I understand. While I'd never really be able to sell a novel to someone without resorting to "it might give you an idea for an RPG session" I can tell every role player who ever lived that they need to look at No Dice.
In the latest podcast (#5 up this weekend) Justin talks about the appraisal of D&D 4e which states that it's a game that does an epic job of removing all the RP. Well No Dice is almost the polar opposite it's a Role Play tool that hacks the game down to a minimum.
Thus if people want to mix their game complexity with some RP fun it might be best to buy both. One's a game, the other supports you in Role Play, together they might just make beautiful musics... or they might just make a terrible hideous carnage filled mess.
The point is valid. I have always looked on No Dice as an addendum to crunchier systems because if I want crunch I can easily get myself stocked up. If I want to examine parts of the RP experience that don't involve crunch there's limited resource available. And what is there isn't terribly well organised.
So I'm keeping my phylanges crossed that people see things the way the No Dice Crew do. I guess we'll find out come June 1st and thereafter.
My own personal ambition that we've done something really good is when we sell around 1000 copies of the printed book. My target to know it wasn't a complete waste of time and energy is at a more conservative 50 copies.
There's a hell of a lot of legroom inbetween for stuff to evolve.
15 April 2009
Post And Run
Things are quiet on the journal front. Maybe this is because I hae been spending a lot of time chuntering away on the No Dice Podcast.
Lots of fascinating chat in there, and then I say some stuff too.
In other news. Have been gaming. A lot. Mostly No Dice of course. Had a couple of newly interested experimenters join us for a mammoth Marauders session on Saturday. In order to keep the continuity of the campaigners timeline I had to set the game four centuries further on in a steampunk setting. It was still pretty cool. Much martial arts was had by all.
Then their zeppelin crashed. Oh well.
Lots of fascinating chat in there, and then I say some stuff too.
In other news. Have been gaming. A lot. Mostly No Dice of course. Had a couple of newly interested experimenters join us for a mammoth Marauders session on Saturday. In order to keep the continuity of the campaigners timeline I had to set the game four centuries further on in a steampunk setting. It was still pretty cool. Much martial arts was had by all.
Then their zeppelin crashed. Oh well.
24 February 2009
Website At Last...
So the domain kicked into life round about 11:30 AM. I know that of late visiting my journal has been like a game of internet orienteering but I'm really just sending you on to an actual website now, the journal continues to be here.
It would be really cool if you would go and have a look around. If you live within reach of Nottingham and you would like to attend one of the preview sessions for No Dice that would be even cooler. Directions on the site.
So without further ado the wonderful website may be found at *drum roll*
www.nodicerpg.com
The Doodler and myself have worked really hard on getting it looking nice, Mrs Monkey will be wanting some queries to deal with so we're all working super hard to get some traffic in at the moment.
So come on in and have a look around.
It would be really cool if you would go and have a look around. If you live within reach of Nottingham and you would like to attend one of the preview sessions for No Dice that would be even cooler. Directions on the site.
So without further ado the wonderful website may be found at *drum roll*
www.nodicerpg.com
The Doodler and myself have worked really hard on getting it looking nice, Mrs Monkey will be wanting some queries to deal with so we're all working super hard to get some traffic in at the moment.
So come on in and have a look around.
19 February 2009
Time For The Morpheus Act
So I was online today listening to the various RPG podcasts I enjoy and more specifically the stream at Warpig Radio and I was lead hence to Talisman Studios where I picked up a PDF of the basic rules for their Suzerain RPG for the grand price of nothing.
What attracted me to have a look at the site in the first place was the fact that the systems advertised therein use playing cards like a certain other RPG that is coming out in June *ahem*.
It never hurts to check out the competition.
And looking through this PDF it came to me that in many ways people have already seen the potential of the playing card. Hell, I now know of three RPGs that are entirely based around using playing cards as randomisers. As a whole section of the Core Book will explain cards are monumentally better at randomising than dice ever have been or ever will be. Cards rule.
Talisman haven't pushed this. Their site is not plastered with hyperbole about the effectiveness of cards as randomisers. The other systems I've seen didn't make much fuss about it either. It's almost like they're trying to shrug off their rejection of dice. They certainly don't describe themselves as "diceless" and yet they are, dice are not mentioned.
I even like the essential Suzerain mechanic.
But is Suzerain No Dice?
No way.
Which leads to the Morpheus bit.
If No Dice is not playing cards what is it? What is No Dice?
It occurred to me that the No Dice core book is like The Prince, or Hagakure or The Art of War. It's a treatise on dead ends that role-playing has ended up in, and how to get out of them. It's a plea for the hobby to broaden, deepen, to become something more, something new.
That's, in essence, why we're giving the Core Book away as a PDF. How the hell are we going to sell another product if we can't tell people how we feel about the way these games should be played?
The Suzerain rule book had some gorgeous art and a super keen playing card system, which rather shamefacedly takes up a single page of double column print, as if it's ashamed to be accessible. Furthermore the rest of the book is filled with skill charts and vague instructions on building characters with skills to take part in something, something I guess one would learn about in the other Suzerain books.
Suzerain is not No Dice.
No Dice would not do this. And by "this" I mean turn casual drive by readers off by having one neat idea surrounded by a bunch of dry and obscure ones. I also mean hint at some glorious campaign setting through teaser artwork and odd quasi-phlosophical mumblings and then not solidify any of it.
No Dice is more than the sum of its parts, to be sure. Because when I see parts of it in what has gone before I don't recognise any of what I'm so excited about in those places.
That's reassurance of a very real sort.
So what is No Dice?
No Dice cannot be explained, one has to experience it for oneself.
And the Morpheus act ends.
What attracted me to have a look at the site in the first place was the fact that the systems advertised therein use playing cards like a certain other RPG that is coming out in June *ahem*.
It never hurts to check out the competition.
And looking through this PDF it came to me that in many ways people have already seen the potential of the playing card. Hell, I now know of three RPGs that are entirely based around using playing cards as randomisers. As a whole section of the Core Book will explain cards are monumentally better at randomising than dice ever have been or ever will be. Cards rule.
Talisman haven't pushed this. Their site is not plastered with hyperbole about the effectiveness of cards as randomisers. The other systems I've seen didn't make much fuss about it either. It's almost like they're trying to shrug off their rejection of dice. They certainly don't describe themselves as "diceless" and yet they are, dice are not mentioned.
I even like the essential Suzerain mechanic.
But is Suzerain No Dice?
No way.
Which leads to the Morpheus bit.
If No Dice is not playing cards what is it? What is No Dice?
It occurred to me that the No Dice core book is like The Prince, or Hagakure or The Art of War. It's a treatise on dead ends that role-playing has ended up in, and how to get out of them. It's a plea for the hobby to broaden, deepen, to become something more, something new.
That's, in essence, why we're giving the Core Book away as a PDF. How the hell are we going to sell another product if we can't tell people how we feel about the way these games should be played?
The Suzerain rule book had some gorgeous art and a super keen playing card system, which rather shamefacedly takes up a single page of double column print, as if it's ashamed to be accessible. Furthermore the rest of the book is filled with skill charts and vague instructions on building characters with skills to take part in something, something I guess one would learn about in the other Suzerain books.
Suzerain is not No Dice.
No Dice would not do this. And by "this" I mean turn casual drive by readers off by having one neat idea surrounded by a bunch of dry and obscure ones. I also mean hint at some glorious campaign setting through teaser artwork and odd quasi-phlosophical mumblings and then not solidify any of it.
No Dice is more than the sum of its parts, to be sure. Because when I see parts of it in what has gone before I don't recognise any of what I'm so excited about in those places.
That's reassurance of a very real sort.
So what is No Dice?
No Dice cannot be explained, one has to experience it for oneself.
And the Morpheus act ends.
11 February 2009
Looking Ahead To Zero Hour
Work to be done on the actual core "No Dice" book is all about the spit and polish now. I'm chewing my way through putting up our first lines of "No Dice" gear in the shop. The Doodler is frantically creating the illustrations for the book. I have to turn my attention to the website.
We're looking at a publishing date for the No Dice Core Book of 1st June 2009. First time in my life I have ever been nervous-excited about publishing a book.
Let's get one thing straight herrs and frauleins, this isn't just a book. I designed a game. And not just a game. An evolution. A revolution. A new type of social experience. I am expecting big things.
So, will I be hugely disappointed if it doesn't fly? I don't think the concept of disappointment does this justice. I will be shocked, surprised, gobsmacked, awestruck.
You see, I'm a writer ghost writing a product that is more the product of every good time I've enjoyed with every close friend I've ever had than it is of my brain in glorious isolation.
I'll be sticking some bells and whistles on it using my own talents, just as the Doodler will draw up associated images to make these words pop. In the end though No Dice is about helping people who never really had much time for ardent dice rolling during a storytelling experience get out those all important creases.
The whole thing is about helping a Host to Host and about turning the intensity dial up on the player's experience. If I'll say one thing for people who've been role playing hitherto it's that they have incredible powers of imagination.
That's the thing. Role Playing, as it stands, is hard. You have to be so in to what you're doing to make it fly sometimes, and when it's good it's great. Still, it would help if everyone had a chance to enjoy the peculiar specialness of the role playing experience.
No Dice is designed to reduce some of the brainwork that is currently de rigeur for GMs and Players. Playing No Dice should allow the hobby to become more accessible.
Yup, No Dice is a heady brew, to be sure.
The last closed Beta of the various systems is starting a week on Friday when the long-adored Games Weekend is due to commence. I have all manner of escapades planned for that event from the crunchiest to the lightest. We shall see how they all go over.
The current archetypes that need to be written, illustrated and then added to the catalogue are the aforementioned Martial Arts game, a cop game and a fairy tale game. I'm also rolling out something experimental to see how it plays.
Following that, it comes to me that the only thing that should really be done to fill the intervening time is to open the Betas up for a sort of "Final Run" leading up to the big launch. Actually now I come to think about it a launch *event* might even be appropriate... Hmmm.
Changing gears between creating and marketing, even when that means a bunch of RP events, is kind of bizarre. What I'm keen to avoid is huge costs in printing etc. when we've got no money coming in. Anything I spend now has to be recouped by donations and so on later. To date I've spent precisely no money on getting this ready to go. I was hoping to continue in that trend.
As that's probably not going to be possible (and I realise a few quid on ink and paper for character sheets and other stationery hardly breaks the bank) I guess it's time to draw attention to the "donate" link over on the right there. 'Nuff said.
Expect to see the website spring to some kind of life in fairly short order. I'll restrict specific discussion of any participatory events people may or may not be interested in news of to that forum.
We're looking at a publishing date for the No Dice Core Book of 1st June 2009. First time in my life I have ever been nervous-excited about publishing a book.
Let's get one thing straight herrs and frauleins, this isn't just a book. I designed a game. And not just a game. An evolution. A revolution. A new type of social experience. I am expecting big things.
So, will I be hugely disappointed if it doesn't fly? I don't think the concept of disappointment does this justice. I will be shocked, surprised, gobsmacked, awestruck.
You see, I'm a writer ghost writing a product that is more the product of every good time I've enjoyed with every close friend I've ever had than it is of my brain in glorious isolation.
I'll be sticking some bells and whistles on it using my own talents, just as the Doodler will draw up associated images to make these words pop. In the end though No Dice is about helping people who never really had much time for ardent dice rolling during a storytelling experience get out those all important creases.
The whole thing is about helping a Host to Host and about turning the intensity dial up on the player's experience. If I'll say one thing for people who've been role playing hitherto it's that they have incredible powers of imagination.
That's the thing. Role Playing, as it stands, is hard. You have to be so in to what you're doing to make it fly sometimes, and when it's good it's great. Still, it would help if everyone had a chance to enjoy the peculiar specialness of the role playing experience.
No Dice is designed to reduce some of the brainwork that is currently de rigeur for GMs and Players. Playing No Dice should allow the hobby to become more accessible.
Yup, No Dice is a heady brew, to be sure.
The last closed Beta of the various systems is starting a week on Friday when the long-adored Games Weekend is due to commence. I have all manner of escapades planned for that event from the crunchiest to the lightest. We shall see how they all go over.
The current archetypes that need to be written, illustrated and then added to the catalogue are the aforementioned Martial Arts game, a cop game and a fairy tale game. I'm also rolling out something experimental to see how it plays.
Following that, it comes to me that the only thing that should really be done to fill the intervening time is to open the Betas up for a sort of "Final Run" leading up to the big launch. Actually now I come to think about it a launch *event* might even be appropriate... Hmmm.
Changing gears between creating and marketing, even when that means a bunch of RP events, is kind of bizarre. What I'm keen to avoid is huge costs in printing etc. when we've got no money coming in. Anything I spend now has to be recouped by donations and so on later. To date I've spent precisely no money on getting this ready to go. I was hoping to continue in that trend.
As that's probably not going to be possible (and I realise a few quid on ink and paper for character sheets and other stationery hardly breaks the bank) I guess it's time to draw attention to the "donate" link over on the right there. 'Nuff said.
Expect to see the website spring to some kind of life in fairly short order. I'll restrict specific discussion of any participatory events people may or may not be interested in news of to that forum.
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