It's not a rip off, it's an homage

So when I'm writing games, I rip other people's stories off a lot. But it's for the best, trust me.

Maybe I can't write like Shakespeare, but he ripped off most of his best ideas, and I can certainly follow in those footsteps.

To be honest, I mostly steal concepts, ideas, character archetypes, and themes. I recombine them, recycle them, and re-use them. I'm an ecologically-aware writer, if there's ever a world-wide idea shortage, I will be on the forefront of the idea recycling movement!


You only have so much time to tell a story and you have to share it with the players and what they want to do. If I need to spend a lot of time establishing a particular character, or society, or bit of technology, that's basically just me sitting at one end of the table narrating to my players. It's not really interactive and unless I'm a really good storyteller, it's kind of boring. Heck, sometimes even I get bored of doing all the talking. Every word I can avoid saying is another word my players can jam in edgewise. Believe me that's a good thing.

Ripping off somebody else's idea - especially a well-known idea that is shared by most, if not all of my players - saves a lot of time. For example, if I base a society on Imperial Rome and drop a few not-so-subtle hints about it, all of my players have a big leg up on the story I'm telling and they can then cooperate by contributing their own bits if they choose to. If I want to introduce a character with crazy-advanced technology and I have them whip out what is obviously a sonic screwdriver, the players are likely to recognize it, even if their characters don't. It's a short cut and it puts everyone on more or less the same page. Now I can move the story along and give my players some well-deserved spotlight time.

This is even more useful in a one-shot game. When I'm writing a character sheet for a 4 hour live action game, I like to keep it under six pages, including abilities and contact list (the ever-popular 'Who You Knows'). That doesn't leave an awful lot of room. If I could make the sheets shorter, I would. Most people won't memorize much more than two pages, so every page I go longer is that many more times a player needs to whip out his character sheet and bring the game to a screeching halt while they 'search their memories.' I like to keep things moving and minimize character sheet checking, so I keep the sheets short.

The best method I've found for having well-rounded and fleshed-out characters that can be written in under six pages is stealing referencing other people's ideas. I don't always copy a character outright (but when I do, I do it like an internet meme) but if I can get the basic concept across in a paragraph or two instead of a page or two, that's a big space saver. How many pages would it take me to describe Darth Vader or Wolverine? Answer: a whole lot. But I can convey to a player that a character is 'just like' Vader or Wolverine in less than a page. Plus it gives them some potential ideas on how to portray the character and what his or her motivations might be. Even better, if the player does choose to portray the character as strongly reminiscent of the inspiration, the players who interact with the character will also benefit from the reference.  Of course, this brings up the question of player knowledge versus character knowledge, but that's a subject for another blog.  Short answer, I tend towards revealing as much as possible to the player in the hopes that it will inform their portrayal of the character and I leave 'firewalling' to the player. Besides, this incarnation of the character is very likely to have an entirely different set of dark secrets to discover so knowing an 'alternate universe' version of the character isn't as much of a leg up as one might imagine.

Characters aren't and shouldn't be static things. Even a concept that began as a point-for-point rip off homage to another character can and should evolve and grow beyond its origins. Campaigns are excellent for that sort of thing. But starting off with a good point of reference and a well-known media touchstone is a great start. One of the best characters I've ever seen started off as a fairly blatant clone of Battlestar Galactica's Starbuck (the modern one). The character went through a lot of changes, situations and challenges and ended her run three years later as a fully-realized, unique and compelling character that would have graced any series she appeared in. Would the character have gone as far without literary shoulders to stand on? Maybe, maybe not, but it worked and ripping off things that worked is what this blog post is all about.

Taking other people's characters and putting them into new and different situations is nothing new, fan fiction has been doing it for decades, taking other people's ideas and expanding on them or re-combining them in new and different ways isn't new either, it's called 'genre.' But using it as a short cut or place holder for character development is a powerful application for both players and game masters of tabletop and live action games.

There are other ways to go, of course. I've gotten more than my fair share of twenty page character sheets, I've seen a lot of bold and unique characters, in fact some of the best players, writers, and game masters insist on creating entirely new and original characters every time. Some situations call for originality and others call for a reference.  Keep a large toolbox and steal use the right tool for the right job.

Freedom of Choice and Other RPG Disasters

If I were asked to list the most important quality of a role playing game I might not think of the freedom to make your own choices right away, but I sure as heck would get to it somewhere in the top 10. Choice is an integral part of role playing and is implicit in nearly every interaction a player has with the game master. The GM tells you much of what you see, hear, smell, and so forth and follows up with the single most common (and most important) question: "What do you do?"

Often there isn't much real choice available. Do you hit the orc with your sword or do you shoot an arrow at him with your longbow? Do you hurl mystic fire or mystic ice at the troll? "Fire, duh. Trolls regenerate ice damage." But either way, it's a tactical decision more than an actual choice. In this context, any choice is constrained and generally 'safe.' Which is to say, it is unlikely to derail the game master's plans for the evening. Nor is it going to seriously endanger your character's existence or the party's overall success... At least not any more than any other roll of the polyhedral.

But there are other kinds of choices. Do we kick in the front door of the dungeon or sneak around and try to find a back way? Sometimes these choices don't have a huge effect, if the dungeon already features a back way in on the map, the GM is pretty well-prepared. Likewise, everything is peachy if it absolutely doesn't have a back door. But there are occasions where it can cause problems. What if there is a back way in, but the GM had counted on the players learning something key in the first few rooms? Some bit of plot that either relates to the larger story or a key secret that will allow them to defeat the hideous undead lord they are destined to meet at the very bottom of the dungeon? Now the GM has to scramble. Is there a way to duplicate that important bit elsewhere? Should the GM utter that infamous phrase, "No. You can't do that?" Should the GM let the dice fall where they may and allow the possibility for players to make mistakes, or even fail entirely because of what seemed like a reasonable choice at the time?

There's no single right or wrong answer to these questions. Every group can find its own way through these thorny issues. But if the players and the GM never discuss these things, no decision will be made consciously. Communication is hugely important. As a GM, I don't want my players to be frustrated because they failed due to a circumstance beyond their control. At the same time, I'm proud of my adventures, my stories, and my schmaltzy jokes. I want the players to see as much of my grand tapestry as possible. I want as much of the hard work I put into the game to show as possible. Selfish? Heck, yeah, I am.

In my experience, players tend to be very risk-averse in a game. They always want the maximum return for the minimum risk. And they plain hate to lose, let alone suffer the ignominy of character death. Losing happens and so does character death, but players will almost always move heaven, earth, and various elemental planes to avoid it. This leads to a lot of careful planning whenever the players think their characters are heading into a dangerous situation. Which is pretty much all of the time in an adventure game, right? So that means a lot of time is going to be spent on things that would never be explored in a novel, movie, or comic book.

There's a reason why editors cut that stuff out or boil it down to a quick-cut montage set to 80's music: it's boring. It isn't any less boring when it's hashed out at the table. Even worse, it can lead to players arguing with each other - there's nothing wrong with characters arguing with each other - but I hate it when my friends fight for real. I think these arguments are based on the fear that there is a Right Decision and a Wrong Decision. And if the players make the Wrong Decision, the GM will Punish Them with loss or even death. Did I mention that most players hate losing and/or dying?

The other night I ran a game of D&D 4th Edition and I wanted the players to have a real say in where the campaign went. We were at a turning point and the plan would play a large part in determining the stories we tell together for the rest of the campaign.  So it was an important choice and it was a wide-open free choice. I literally didn't care which way the game went, because I hadn't written it yet. In this case, there was no wrong choice. I had nothing prepared that would be wasted if the players never saw it. I had no serious preconception of how the campaign would play out. Whatever decision the group came to was pretty much by definition the Right Decision.

But neither the players nor their characters knew any of that. And I think that's a good thing, but it has consequences. In this case, the consequence was the conversation spinning down into frustration and discord. The decision was SO IMPORTANT that the players didn't dare make the wrong choice. In game disagreements were on the verge of becoming real life frustrations and tempers were fraying.

So I stepped out from behind the GM screen (metaphorically-speaking, I didn't actually get out of my chair) and told them pretty much everything I just wrote down in this here blog post. There was a sort of a pause while it all sunk in and then everyone immediately agreed on the option that sounded like the most enjoyable, exciting, and adventurous choice. The entire argument was over in less than a minute and everyone seemed pretty happy with the conclusion.

Except me.

Anytime I have to break the fourth wall and explain something directly to the players, I remind them all that this is "only a game." Everyone breaks character and the whole fantasy world that we're all working (playing) so hard to create gets a little less vibrant and feels a little less real. We never did get back into character that night. The conversation rapidly turned to Marvel's The Avengers and other non-game matters. I totaled up the experience points we had racked up for the evening, did all the necessary accounting, and the game wrapped on an up-note.

But I think I could have done better.  I'm just not sure how. There's a certain amount of deception that any role-playing game must involve. There are some fights the characters are simply never going to lose - almost all of them, in fact. But I want the players to feel on some level that they could always lose. That's what makes winning so cool. To use a movie analogy, sometimes the choice is between cutting the red versus the green wire in a bomb. Making the Wrong Choice is bad. But sometimes the choice is who to date. That's a pretty big choice, but from the pool of legitimate candidates, there may not actually be a wrong choice, just different choices. If we are always frank and honest and open about everything, a lot of dramatic tension goes right out the window, never to return. But if we aren't all on the same page about which decisions are important but safe, which ones are important and risky, and which ones are just color text ... well, that's just no fun at all, is it?

I'm still working on it. Has your table hit on this problem? How'd you deal with it? I'd love to hear from game masters and players alike.

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
Chelmsford, MA

Nuts and Bolts

With the recent (and long-awaited) release of Verdigris for the Droid platform I thought this would be a nice time to talk about my approach to writing multiple choice interactive fiction in general and Verdigris in specific. I grew up on the Choose Your Own Adventure game books as well as great computer games like Zork and its many cousins and descendents.

These games were and are great fun and I cannot recommend them too highly. Actually that's not quite true, if I were to say that playing interactive fiction games would forever end the threat of nuclear war in our lifetimes, I would be recommending them too highly. But short of that, they are pretty dang nifty. The thrill of interactive fiction (hereafter occasionally referred to as IF to save space and delay the inevitable onset of carpal tunnel) is much the same as that of role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and all of its cousins and venerable descendents: Stepping outside of your own head and your own life, creating an alter ego and having adventures, solving mysteries and just generally dealing with problems that aren't the same old mundane ones you have to deal with in Real Life. As most people who have met me know, I am no great fan of Real Life.

The problem with a lot of interactive fiction games is that they are mostly constructed out of frustration. Many IF games require you to learn the language and structure of each game. That takes time and can be painful and - wait for it - frustrating. Anyone who has played an IF game has had screaming arguments with their computer that go something like this:

Computer says: You see an interesting umbrella, you should pick it up
Player types: Pick up umbrella
Computer replies: I don't see an umbrella here
Player types: Pick up parasol
Computer replies: I don't see a parasol here
Player types: Look around
Computer replies: You see an interesting umbrella, you should pick it up
Player types: Pick up the freaking umbrella!!!!!
Computer replies: There's no need to get upset here, I'm just doing my job. Did you want to pick up the umbrella?
Player types: Yes!
Computer replies: I don't understand what you mean.

At this point, Player often throws his computer through a convenient window. But once you get the hang of each program's specific quirks and requirements they're a lot of fun. Trust me here. But what Team Verdigris wanted to do was create a vibrant interactive world with lots of real choices and real consequences that was as close to frustration-free as we could manage. Unfortunately, that meant front-loading all the frustration onto ourselves. We used a structure that allows the players to choose whatever missions they want in pretty much any order they choose, and because it's all multiple choice, there was no need to learn the program's idiosyncratic language.

The consequence of this choice was what we began calling zombie chips. Small spoiler here: the consequences of your choices in the game can lead to the deaths of some of the characters you interact with. The problem with this is that some players will move forward in the game with a particular character being alive and others with that same character being dead. This was a ticklish logic problem that led to a bit of a walking dead problem, or in some cases, a bit of a lying down living problem. It's hard to keep a good character down in Verdigris, even when they're dead.

The other problem we had was the vanishing button conundrum. Many of the missions in Verdigris feature several different investigative paths that all lead to the same conclusion (more or less, your choices matter) but some require that the player follow every lead to piece together all the information. For these, we created structure that lets the player follow the leads in any order they choose, mostly because it's more fun that way. When each track was completed, the player is sent back to a central screen where they report back and then choose the next track. In theory, the button that leads to the tracks they've already completed will no longer appear. This is all well and good, but sometimes it led to a player getting back to a screen that had no buttons at all. There was literally no way out other then jumping around using the map mechanic or actually restarting your game. This may be my first game, but I rapidly concluded that this was a design flaw.

Tracking down the logic errors that causes these vanishing button dead ends was a mystery as challenging as any in the actual game. Some of these central screens have over 60 discrete code elements and figuring out which one is buggy ... well Dear Reader, it ain't easy. Team Verdigris has spent hundreds (and hundreds, and hundreds) of hours playing the heck of the game trying to find and fix all of these pesky problems. Did we get them all? Probably not. Will we fix them when players find them? Absolutely. Will it be easy? That would be a big nope. Is it worth it? I said is it worth it? Hello? Is this thing on? Anybody? Is it worth the late nights, the early mornings, the lonely SOs, and the crushing poverty?

...

Only you, Dear Reader can answer that question for us. Play Verdigris and let us know. That is all.

March 23, 2012
Chelmsford, MA

It's all about Timing

As I stare down the barrel of the season's first snow, I find myself - to paraphrase Tom Lehrer - waxing philosophical while I wane sensical. Looking back on the weekend that just passed, everything went well. I and a group of friends ran a session of the Serendipity Station live action game and then the next day I got to play in A Dance of Flame and Shadow, an old school vampire game. By old school I mean that it harkened back to the live action games of the late 90's, so maybe the school isn't all that old.

I was struck by the structural differences between the two games. Having recently attended a weekend-long game (Once Upon a Time in Tombstone), a six hour-long game (Serendipity Station Game 5) and a four hour-long game (A Dance of Flame and Shadow), I'm in a good position to observe the differences between the three different forms.

In any role playing game, there is only so much game to go around. Whether you're talking about secrets to be discovered, interactions to had, puzzles to be solved, rituals to be performed, combat to be resolved, or any of the other myriad things that happen in a live action game, the most important thing is pacing. If all of your game gets burned through in the first quarter, you're going to have a whole pile of bored and grumpy players. But is it just as bad to have three quarters of the game all happen right at the end? There's nothing wrong with an exciting and dramatic climax, but if there's too much going on, players will feel rushed, confused, and yes, grumpy. Deciding how a game should be paced is a good start, but actually adhering to that pace during run-time is the brass ring. How to pace a game is a hotly contested challenge.

Once Upon a Time in Tombstone did it with a combination of lengthy and intricate character sheets, a moratorium on character death for most of the game, and regularly scheduled events. I think the writers also relied on the players having a sense of timing, drama, and fair-play inspired by the movies the game was based on. Most players won't want to have a big showdown with their arch-enemy first thing Saturday morning when they know that there will be a day and a half of game to play afterwards.

I've played in some great games that featured a steady trickle of information over the course of the game, sort of a serialized character sheet. This works particularly well in amnesia or other limited information games where that sort of thing makes sense in game as well as mechanically.

In Serendipity Station we employ a number of tools to control pacing. Our go-to method is something often referred to as a Social Puzzle. That's where one or more characters in the game know something that another character must discover in order to move forward with their own plots. This challenge has multiple levels. In some cases, the players (and their characters) don't know who has the information they need, so some time must be spent identifying who to speak to. An additional layer comes in to play when the characters with the information have reasons not to share it immediately or even at all. A well-written Social Puzzle will give the player the proper tools to eventually gain the information they need to move on. Examples include blackmail, fair trade, intimidation, or a mid-game paradigm shift that removes the original reason not to share.

We also had major in game information reveals that we hoped would spread through the gossip engine that most on-going campaign games enjoy. Since that information gave the players the tools they needed to resolve some major long-term plots we were confident that the information would get where it needed to go in reasonably good time. This is a risk because some players hoard information no matter how badly it hurts them, but we know our players pretty well at this point and we try to have at least three different sources for anything really important. We also had new characters enter game space at the half-way point and a half hour before game wrap with vital new information. That isn't always an option but when it is it can be a writer's best friend.

A Dance of Flame and Shadow used in game intelligence gathering methods (in my character's case, talking to rats), Social Puzzles, and escalating villainy to move the action and the plot inexorably forward to a series of rapid-fire climaxes and combats. I enjoyed the bulk of these combats from a nice comfortable laying down position as my character was a bit out of his depth in a fight and got hammered flat pretty quickly.

Pacing a live action or a tabletop role playing game isn't all that different from pacing a novel or a movie, but the writer has completely different tools, advantages, and limitations to make that pacing happen. In the end, the goal is the same: entertaining the audience. The main difference is how much absolute control versus collaboration the creators have in each project. From effectively complete control with a novel all the way down to the 'fire and forget' of an improvisational live action game, each level brings new challenges and rewards. Seeing what extreme wackiness players get up to with the pretexts and situations you have written for them is one of the great rewards of writing and running live action games.

But I'm still working on that timing thing.

October 27th, 2011
Chelmsford, MA