Long term games. Role-playing, 12 hour marathon sessions of such-and-such. This post is somewhat inspired by an upcoming (2008?) expansion to FFG's Descent, which adds a campaign system to the tactical dungeon crawl. And some of my recent experiences.
Board games are often beloved for their 'play and forget' aspects. You can start a boardgame quickly, and it makes no demands on your time before and after the game. This is a start contrast to other 'hobby' games. Miniatures demand time painting and sculpting. Collectibles demand time sorting, planning, and devising (deck-building/army building). Role-playing demands prep time from the GM, and require players to carry information from game session to game session.
As gamers age, add families and commitments, board games begin to appeal above other games because of this lack of commitment away from the table. But there still remains in some people the desire to build something lasting within their hobby. Online MMRPGs tap into this. Join World of Warcraft and you are immediately part of something large. The game goes on around you and you experience bits and pieces. Put the game down for a moment and when you return you find your position identical, but the environment has shifted - a living game.
There is obviously some desire to see this sort of persistence in board games. It's not for everyone. Some people bundle this desire into "theme", but it's a whole nut by itself, most often called 'campaign play' - the idea that each playing of a game impacts the next time the game comes out.
One of the best examples in my experience is the old GDW game Imperium. In this 1970's space wargame the two sides fight a short-lived strategic war. Generally the war ends when one or two planets or outposts change sides. One side wins the war - "game" over. But the game doesn't actually end there. You roll some dice and play a 5-10 minute mini-game of peace, and then the next border skirmish/war breaks out - with players in a similar position to the end of the last war, or game. Players can play two wars back-to-back, or keep track of holdings and continue to play the game with an ever shifting series of planets and fleets. Persistence.
Imperium is a good game, taken up to greatness because of the ease of what is often called 'campaign' play. Descent (as mentioned earlier) received some derision early on due to it's complete lack of 'campaign' play. The next expansion will change that, bringing persistence into the game.
An obvious inspiration for Descent is the Heroquest/Warhammer Quest line of games. These games have the same theme as Descent (fantasy dungeon crawls), but had campaign systems from the very beginning. Even granddaddy Magic Realm provided a campaign system.
But a persistent world doesn't need to be tied to a fantasy adventure game. We have yet to see a designer (probably an American or Italian, given their design tendencies) bring the idea of persistence into an economic game, or any genre of game using 'modern' design features.
Perhaps the oft-requested Civ-lite game should be a game that plays in 'mileposts'. Short 60-90 minute games that reach stopping points where one player is deemed the winner, but the game is set up again next game for the next age of the game. Players could even change.
The Lords of.. series approaches persistence in-game by suggesting that players can enter and leave the game as they wish - that the players have no need of being static, and it might be possible to even win the game by playing for the first or final third of the game.
I'm sure there are other persistent worlds built within boardgames. It's an interesting piece of the attraction of games in general - and probably the one that inspires the most loyalty1.
--
1Obligatory footnote. It's not a surprise that campaign systems inspire loyalty. Invest more time into a specific game and you will feel more invested in it. What a surprise eh?
2Second Obligatory footnote. The second impetus for writing this is a persistent browser game that I'm involved in called Imperium Nova. It's an economic/negotiation space empire game. Mostly inspired by board games, the main mechanics are economic. Even warfare carries a hefty monetary cost. But it really serves to illustrate how electronic(computer/console) games have fully embraced persistent worlds. It's a selling point of many of these games. The microchip takes care of the math and the note-taking, leaving the player free to remain involved in an ongoing game. Persistence is a strong selling point3.
3But it still hasn't been applied much outside the Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Military genres.
Showing posts with label roleplaying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roleplaying. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
A Eurogame Review
Everything on the Internet seems to come in waves. Even before reading Shannon’s recent post about reawakening his interest in role playing games, I had been preparing this post on a game I have that I have become reacquainted with in the past month or two. While it has a lot of American boardgame tendencies, there are a few strong Euro attributes that contribute to making it a gripping title that has eaten into gaming time I might have spent on other boardgames. What game am I referring to? None other than the new edition of that classic Euro-American hybrid game, Dungeons and Dragons (referred to as D&D for the rest of this article.) For those unfamiliar with the game (and there isn’t an entry for it over on BoardGameGeek), it is like a longer, more complex version of Dungeoneer, Return of the Heroes, or Descent. While different than many Eurogames that it predates, there are still a number of mechanics found in popular Euro titles, making it a game that many gamers just might want to check out. If that piques your interest, read on to find a more thorough review.
The Bits:
The first thing a boardgamer will see when opening up a new game are all the fun little bits to play with. Unfortunately, this game has none. What, you say? NO BITS? That’s right, no little wooden cubes, no meeples, nothing is included in the basic package, just three thick rulebooks. THREE! And you thought paging through the rules for BattleLore was a bit much – at least in that case it was a rulebook and a scenario booklet. The last game I played with three rulebooks was Avalon Hill’s Horror at House on the Hill. With no bits to play with, one might expect the game to score a nice fat zero for its components. Thankfully, there are options to solve the component problem. There are so many options, that players are typically expected to provide their own components (similar to the pawns and dice in some of the Cheapass Games productions…) For those willing to spend a little bit of money, players can obtain nice plastic figurines, expandable cardboard maps, and even little cubes to roll. I’ve seen photos of players going all out on designing their own game boards, making model terrain to rival the Deluxe Chest Version of Settlers of Catan. So while the lack of components is initially a big strike against the game, players who like to tinker and customize their own gameboard and pieces will find plenty of things to play with. Die hard Eurogamers can even use little colored wooden cubes along with Meeples to represent the various creatures and figures within the game. Some players use hand painted metal figurines – talk about dedicated game component fans! The last game I played with metal playing pieces was an old game of Monopoly. While many Eurogamers eschew dice, this game has plenty of them. Taking a cue from the French Formula De, there are even many nonstandard dice available. However, in this particular game (unlike Formula De) the dice have a different number on each side. This does make the results more random than a typical Formula De game, but it also easier for new players to estimate the expected outcomes since only one series of numbers have to be averaged. In fact, a good portion of the strategy of this game involves making the decisions so that you can modify die rolls in your favor.
Bits Score: 0 out of 10(there aren’t any in the standard game), however, there is a Basic Game available that provides you with several plastic figures, shortened rules, and a set of funny dice like you might find in Formula De. Using these bits (or your own acquired elsewhere) increases the score dramatically.
Gameplay: 7 out of 10 (primarily due to game length)
Even a quick glance through the rules shows how this game is similar to other popular Euro titles. Like many wargames, there are two sides to the game. All but one player create an alternate persona to represent themselves within the game. These alternate personas are called Player Characters (or PCs). There is a lot of flexibility here, but players should take care not to overlap their specialties too much, because the remaining player (referred to as the “Dungeon Master”) gets to control almost everything else within the game. At first glance, this seems very unfair for the PCs. There is very little within the game to make up for the DM’s strong initial starting position. However, after much play testing it seems that the PCs win the game more often than not, so perhaps their superior numbers are enough to win the day. In some respects it is like Shadows over Camelot, where most of the players conspire to defeat the game while one player works against them. However, in D&D, the “traitor” (the DM) is known at the outset, and is given a number of advantages to make up for that fact.
The theme of the game revolves around a fantasy setting (like Lord of the Rings) with the players typically playing the forces of good and the DM playing the bad guys. The DM plays a sort of “defense”, setting up traps and obstacles for the players while the players go on “offense” trying to find and overcome these challenges. Over time, the players get more powerful, providing a nice sense of accomplishment. Unfortunately, so do the obstacles used by the DM player. In fact, in a glaring oversight, not only do the rules fail to provide proper victory conditions, they don’t even provide game-ending conditions! As a result, many games of D&D can drag on and on. Players typically agree to a set time limit and play until it is reached. Often, a group will then meet again a week or two later and pick up where they left off, making sure the game length of D&D easily exceeds even a highly negotiated game of Die Macher. With such a long playing time, the game severely limits other games making it to the table. As a result, it gets a solid couple of strikes against it in the scoring.
To help Eurogamers decide if it might be something they want to try, I thought I’d make a short list of all the pros and cons of the game.
The Bad
The rulebook(s) – when was the last time you had three hardbound rulebooks for a single game? In an interesting twist, only the DM player has to read up on two of them, so gamers who don’t like to read rules should stick to the PC team.
The bits – as mentioned, there are no bits included in the standard game. There isn’t even a game board! The general availability of quality substitutes (even metal bits!) keeps the game from flopping.
No Auctions! – can you even have a boardgame without some form of an auction in it? (There aren’t any trains either, but PCs can simulate them by starting up trading caravans)
Analysis paralysis – typically, each player gets two action points in a turn keeping things very constrained. However, there are a plethora of options to spend your action points on (like moving, fighting, casting spells, etc…), causing some AP prone players to simply shut down.
Unbalanced Teams – Despite the very good record of the PC team, the GM team simply has too many advantages to make a fair game.
The Traitor Factor – In addition to the DM team, sometimes there is a secret traitor within the PC team as well. While that works great in Shadows over Camelot, as there is already an opposing team in D&D, adding in a secret traitor creates a third team in the mix and can quickly complicate the entire situation.
The Good
Expansions – some players love to have options in their games (witness the variety of ways to play Settlers of Catan). There are multiple ways to expand the D&D game including new rulebooks as well as many new game boards. For game tinkerers, it is probably the game best able to handle additional house rules. In fact, most gamers have at least one or two house rules they prefer to play by…
Cooperation – the game screams for good cooperation with the PC team. As the DM team has most of the advantages, the PC team has to work hard together to make sure they survive
Heavy Player Interaction – Goa haters take note, there aren’t any auctions and player interaction is high. Despite a high degree of cooperation, players are also competing for limited resources, constantly being forced to find ways to evenly distribute advantages and rewards so that they can improve their teams effectiveness.
Role Selection – As in Cosmic Encounter (or to a lesser extent, Puerto Rico) players each take on a role selection that will tend to dictate their strengths and weaknesses. This makes the game different every time and can often keep players interested as they can all focus on their strengths without getting in each other’s way.
No Player Elimination – While player elimination can occur, the rules have provisions to reverse said elimination, or the player who lost their character can simply take on a new position within the team and keep on playing.
Snowball Effect – as in some of the best Eurogames, D&D has a snowball effect so that players gain more and more power and abilities as the game progresses. Fans of empire building and snowball effect games (like Puerto Rico, Settlers of Catan, Through the Ages, and the like) will find many similarities here.
Multiple Victory Conditions – Actually, there are no set victory conditions, players are free to decide for themselves what victory conditions they want to strive for. Players can try to gain the most influence in the palace (like Succession or El Grande), try to rack up the most money (like Modern Art) or even try their hand at more unique victory conditions like building their own castle (a la Caylus).
Final Analysis:
Overall, I can only recommend the game to fans of more American style boardgames, or at least Euro-American hybrids rather than straight up Eurogamers. With their love of a 90 minute cap on a game, D&D just won’t be brought to the table that often. Sure, there are a lot of popular Euro mechanisms present (money management, role selection, cooperative team play, multiple victory paths, a modified action point system, I’ve even seen goods delivery occur) but those are probably not enough to pull in the Euro-snoot crowd. For those who welcome a little variety in their gaming and are not adverse to trying something a bit more detailed and long-term, the rewards can be great. After all, it is the only kingdom-building game that I’ve seen that starts a player out with a single, unskilled worker.
The Bits:
The first thing a boardgamer will see when opening up a new game are all the fun little bits to play with. Unfortunately, this game has none. What, you say? NO BITS? That’s right, no little wooden cubes, no meeples, nothing is included in the basic package, just three thick rulebooks. THREE! And you thought paging through the rules for BattleLore was a bit much – at least in that case it was a rulebook and a scenario booklet. The last game I played with three rulebooks was Avalon Hill’s Horror at House on the Hill. With no bits to play with, one might expect the game to score a nice fat zero for its components. Thankfully, there are options to solve the component problem. There are so many options, that players are typically expected to provide their own components (similar to the pawns and dice in some of the Cheapass Games productions…) For those willing to spend a little bit of money, players can obtain nice plastic figurines, expandable cardboard maps, and even little cubes to roll. I’ve seen photos of players going all out on designing their own game boards, making model terrain to rival the Deluxe Chest Version of Settlers of Catan. So while the lack of components is initially a big strike against the game, players who like to tinker and customize their own gameboard and pieces will find plenty of things to play with. Die hard Eurogamers can even use little colored wooden cubes along with Meeples to represent the various creatures and figures within the game. Some players use hand painted metal figurines – talk about dedicated game component fans! The last game I played with metal playing pieces was an old game of Monopoly. While many Eurogamers eschew dice, this game has plenty of them. Taking a cue from the French Formula De, there are even many nonstandard dice available. However, in this particular game (unlike Formula De) the dice have a different number on each side. This does make the results more random than a typical Formula De game, but it also easier for new players to estimate the expected outcomes since only one series of numbers have to be averaged. In fact, a good portion of the strategy of this game involves making the decisions so that you can modify die rolls in your favor.
Bits Score: 0 out of 10(there aren’t any in the standard game), however, there is a Basic Game available that provides you with several plastic figures, shortened rules, and a set of funny dice like you might find in Formula De. Using these bits (or your own acquired elsewhere) increases the score dramatically.
Gameplay: 7 out of 10 (primarily due to game length)
Even a quick glance through the rules shows how this game is similar to other popular Euro titles. Like many wargames, there are two sides to the game. All but one player create an alternate persona to represent themselves within the game. These alternate personas are called Player Characters (or PCs). There is a lot of flexibility here, but players should take care not to overlap their specialties too much, because the remaining player (referred to as the “Dungeon Master”) gets to control almost everything else within the game. At first glance, this seems very unfair for the PCs. There is very little within the game to make up for the DM’s strong initial starting position. However, after much play testing it seems that the PCs win the game more often than not, so perhaps their superior numbers are enough to win the day. In some respects it is like Shadows over Camelot, where most of the players conspire to defeat the game while one player works against them. However, in D&D, the “traitor” (the DM) is known at the outset, and is given a number of advantages to make up for that fact.
The theme of the game revolves around a fantasy setting (like Lord of the Rings) with the players typically playing the forces of good and the DM playing the bad guys. The DM plays a sort of “defense”, setting up traps and obstacles for the players while the players go on “offense” trying to find and overcome these challenges. Over time, the players get more powerful, providing a nice sense of accomplishment. Unfortunately, so do the obstacles used by the DM player. In fact, in a glaring oversight, not only do the rules fail to provide proper victory conditions, they don’t even provide game-ending conditions! As a result, many games of D&D can drag on and on. Players typically agree to a set time limit and play until it is reached. Often, a group will then meet again a week or two later and pick up where they left off, making sure the game length of D&D easily exceeds even a highly negotiated game of Die Macher. With such a long playing time, the game severely limits other games making it to the table. As a result, it gets a solid couple of strikes against it in the scoring.
To help Eurogamers decide if it might be something they want to try, I thought I’d make a short list of all the pros and cons of the game.
The Bad
The rulebook(s) – when was the last time you had three hardbound rulebooks for a single game? In an interesting twist, only the DM player has to read up on two of them, so gamers who don’t like to read rules should stick to the PC team.
The bits – as mentioned, there are no bits included in the standard game. There isn’t even a game board! The general availability of quality substitutes (even metal bits!) keeps the game from flopping.
No Auctions! – can you even have a boardgame without some form of an auction in it? (There aren’t any trains either, but PCs can simulate them by starting up trading caravans)
Analysis paralysis – typically, each player gets two action points in a turn keeping things very constrained. However, there are a plethora of options to spend your action points on (like moving, fighting, casting spells, etc…), causing some AP prone players to simply shut down.
Unbalanced Teams – Despite the very good record of the PC team, the GM team simply has too many advantages to make a fair game.
The Traitor Factor – In addition to the DM team, sometimes there is a secret traitor within the PC team as well. While that works great in Shadows over Camelot, as there is already an opposing team in D&D, adding in a secret traitor creates a third team in the mix and can quickly complicate the entire situation.
The Good
Expansions – some players love to have options in their games (witness the variety of ways to play Settlers of Catan). There are multiple ways to expand the D&D game including new rulebooks as well as many new game boards. For game tinkerers, it is probably the game best able to handle additional house rules. In fact, most gamers have at least one or two house rules they prefer to play by…
Cooperation – the game screams for good cooperation with the PC team. As the DM team has most of the advantages, the PC team has to work hard together to make sure they survive
Heavy Player Interaction – Goa haters take note, there aren’t any auctions and player interaction is high. Despite a high degree of cooperation, players are also competing for limited resources, constantly being forced to find ways to evenly distribute advantages and rewards so that they can improve their teams effectiveness.
Role Selection – As in Cosmic Encounter (or to a lesser extent, Puerto Rico) players each take on a role selection that will tend to dictate their strengths and weaknesses. This makes the game different every time and can often keep players interested as they can all focus on their strengths without getting in each other’s way.
No Player Elimination – While player elimination can occur, the rules have provisions to reverse said elimination, or the player who lost their character can simply take on a new position within the team and keep on playing.
Snowball Effect – as in some of the best Eurogames, D&D has a snowball effect so that players gain more and more power and abilities as the game progresses. Fans of empire building and snowball effect games (like Puerto Rico, Settlers of Catan, Through the Ages, and the like) will find many similarities here.
Multiple Victory Conditions – Actually, there are no set victory conditions, players are free to decide for themselves what victory conditions they want to strive for. Players can try to gain the most influence in the palace (like Succession or El Grande), try to rack up the most money (like Modern Art) or even try their hand at more unique victory conditions like building their own castle (a la Caylus).
Final Analysis:
Overall, I can only recommend the game to fans of more American style boardgames, or at least Euro-American hybrids rather than straight up Eurogamers. With their love of a 90 minute cap on a game, D&D just won’t be brought to the table that often. Sure, there are a lot of popular Euro mechanisms present (money management, role selection, cooperative team play, multiple victory paths, a modified action point system, I’ve even seen goods delivery occur) but those are probably not enough to pull in the Euro-snoot crowd. For those who welcome a little variety in their gaming and are not adverse to trying something a bit more detailed and long-term, the rewards can be great. After all, it is the only kingdom-building game that I’ve seen that starts a player out with a single, unskilled worker.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
My (Secret) Life in Gaming
About 14 months ago I wrote an article called My Life in Gaming. It was a simple piece talking about the many different sorts of gaming that I've been involved in over the last twenty-five years, from D&D to board games to computer games and back to board games again. Much to my surprise the folks over at the British 'zine Flagship liked the piece, and reprinted it in issues #120 and #121.Since I wrote that article, life has continued changing, as it ever does, and I've been surprised to see the gaming pendulum shift once more. It's ultimately one of the reasons that I'm writing here less than I used to. (I'll get to that shortly, but as you'll see, it's more lack of time than lack of interest).
I should say that I still am playing board games. Almost every Wednesday I go over to EndGame for four hours or so of play, and almost every Thursday I have folks over to my house for my "review nights"--though I've actually been reviewing less too, and as a result we sometimes play something random on Thursday instead.
However, in balance with that, my interest in roleplaying games has increased quite a bit, to almost the levels it enjoyed when it was my prime gaming entertainment back in the 1990s. The reason has ultimately been my job--which is nice, given that working in the industry was part of what burned me out on RPGs about a decade ago.
RPGnet and the Gaming Index
My company owns RPGnet, where you've probably read my reviews, and which is the top independent roleplaying site on the 'net. Last summer I decided to get serious about an RPGnet project that I'd been playing with for a while on my own time: the Gaming Index. In short, it's a BoardGameGeek for roleplaying games, designed my way.
The project itself has been a major undertaking. At this point I've written about 12,500 lines of code, which I'm pretty sure is the biggest coherent set of programming that I've ever done for anything. And, it seems able to suck up any free time I have, with a constant list of new features that I want to add and things I want to modify or fix.
However besides the code, the Gaming Index also required a lot of data entry to get going, which sent me scurrying to my book shelves to input whatever I could. As I paged through my books, entering authors and descriptions, I gradually came to rediscover what interested me in roleplaying in the first place. This came in two parts: the fun stories told in fabulous worlds, and the collectibility aspect of the hobby.
That in turn is precisely what rekindled my interest in the roleplaying hobby.
Writing, Writing, Writing
As you might have guessed from my entries in this blog and my reviews, I'm a writer. I write obsessively and constantly. Before I was blogging here I wrote a few hundred computer game design articles, and before that I carefully chronicled the adventures of my roleplaying group. I suspect you could find millions of words of my writing on the 'net.
I also used to write roleplaying books, with Tribunals of Hermes: Rome (for Ars Magica), The Nephilim Gamemaster Companion (for Nephilim) and Tales of Chivalry and Romance and Tales of Magic and Miracles (for Pendragon) being my largest collections of work in print. However that largely fizzled out about a decade ago when I went to work for Chaosium.
Until now, when my resurgence of interest in roleplaying has led to a resurgence of interest in roleplaying writing too. And that (finally) is one of the reasons that I've been writing less here. Since last September or so I've been working on three different major roleplaying projects.
The first was Elder Races: Aldryami, a 100,000 word sourcebook for the HeroQuest roleplaying game which I hope will see print in 2007, but may not come out until next year. It's a bookthat I've literally been working on for a decade (depending on your definition of working, that is). It's the definitive sourcebook for elfs in the world of Glorantha--unique plant creatures that I think I've given an interesting worldview. I finished this book up last December and sent it to the publisher.
Just when I was finishing up Elder Races: Aldryami I discovered that Mongoose Publishing, who is doing a different Glorantha game called RuneQuest was also planning to release a book about elfs. Terrified that it would contradict my own work which I'd been working on for so long I practically begged them to let me write a book for them. They agreed, and the book, Aldryami: A Guide to the Elfs, is due to them at the end of the month. Fortunately as of last week I've got a complete draft of 62,500 words. I'm going to give it a full edit over the next three weeks.
However my biggest project since last summer has been the "Brief History of Game" project, which is intended to be a history of roleplaying games told one game company at a time. I initially started writing my first history because I was curious about a company that I was then entering into the Gaming Index. Afterward I decided to publish some of these histories at RPGnet as a way of building interest in the Index itself. Except along the way I've learned that people had a lot of interest in the articles in and of themselves. To date I've gotten four queries about publishing a book of these history essays.
I've accepted one, which has forced me to notably speed up my work. The book is going to have a ton more stuff than I've published online to date. (To date I've published 10 histories, have 12 more sitting on my computer in various states of completion, and am writing one a week.) The book should also be a really beautiful artifact, if it comes out the way my publisher envisions it. If all goes well, this book will see print this year too. I'm definitely pushing it.
Conclusion
So that's my secret life in gaming ... all the stuff I'm doing that isn't exactly board game related and thus is outside of the scope of this blog (usually). The first four months of this year have been particularly crazy because I've been simultaneously writing my history book and my second elf book. Last weekend was my craziest weekend of writing ever, with almost 20,000 words of text going down onto electronic paper in first draft form. But I got some good games in too.
I'm looking forward to May, when things will slow down a bit, and perhaps I can take a break to really go gaming.
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