Tag: game design

New Games for New Hacks

Recently I had a discussion with +Stras Acimovic and +John Sheldon during our camping/gaming weekend about the prevalence of Powered by the Apocalypse games and similar hacks.

First thing: I don’t think hacking is bad, nor do I think it’s lesser than making new, original games, nor do I think that hacks lack innovation.

Here’s the second thing, though.

I worry about stagnation. I see tons of games being made, but so many are from the same core. I want to see more games being made that are original, or that come from different things. While Powered by Apocalypse games are great, and it’s awesome that +Vincent Baker made the system available to people to make more games, there are a few games that have come out recently that are simply flavor laid over the original system without new mechanics or innovation, and I worry we’ll see that more and more. I also see games being created that use Powered by the Apocalypse, but lack the issue of scarcity. This is something Stras could talk about more than me, but if there is no real scarcity in a game, then the Apocalypse doesn’t work as well. This is a case where system really does matter. I’m not saying that no one should make games Powered by the Apocalypse, I’m saying that not everyone needs to use it if they have the capacity to do otherwise.

What I’d like to see: designers who have the capacity (which is technically everyone, but potentially moreso experienced designers) creating new, original games and making them open source/Creative Commons. Not just because new games are awesome, but because new games enable future innovation. When we have more games that are original, we have more games to hack, so new designers who are trying to figure out the way games work can hack those original games, and it creates a cycle of creation and innovation, because people will add on mechanics of their own to those original games, or tweak them, and make new things once they know what they’re doing.

I’m sure someone will see a flaw in this, but I admit I don’t care much. That doesn’t change the fact that we’re seeing tons of games Powered by the Apocalypse, some of which don’t make sense to be powered that way, and not seeing as many new and original things as I personally would like to see.

So, make new games. Hack those new games. Then make more new games. This is a fun cycle. It’s exciting.

Let’s do it.

Five or So Questions with Ryan Macklin on Backstory Cards

Backstory Cards are currently Kickstarting!

Tell me a little about Backstory Cards. What excites you about them?

Backstory Cards is a tool I made to create surprising, dynamic backstory between characters in an RPG. The cards have prompts on them and methods for randomly tying together PCs, events, NPCs, and locations in the world. Some are cooperative in nature (“When push came to shove at event, PC displayed something you weren’t expecting. What was it, and how did you react?”), dramatic (“You, PC, and individual were caught up in a love triangle or other complicated romantic entanglement. Who came out the better? At what cost?”), or even adversarial (“Place is important to [you/PC], and the other one harmed or threatened to harm it. What happened, and how did [you/they] get away with it?”) Everyone answers around two prompts each, and you have some interwoven history with immediately usable hooks.

You know those moments of surprise in games, when someone comes up with something that seems out of the blue, but also seems like exactly the right thing to say at that time? I live for those moments in RPGs, as a GM and as a player. And I love character setups that ask pointed questions, which I’ve been doing at convention games for years (after learning how to do it from Paul Tevis and Brian Isikoff). But the two never quite meshed together for me, because either I was asking the leading questions myself or the game was providing a host of questions to choose from. Don’t get me wrong, I love that stuff! But there’s something special about being asked a pointed question you weren’t expecting, and then coming up with an inspired answer that makes everyone else at the table excited to play.

I love asking good questions! How did you come up with these questions for the cards?
I’ve been using this technique for years at convention games with partially pre-generated characters. When I would make the pregens, I would have some likely relationships between the characters in mind, but leave the question of “why” out of it. I did that with heroic moments, with love triangles, with complicated pasts. I would create interesting NPCs and ask them all questions to pump up that NPC, and then start the game at the NPC’s funeral; I called this technique “the Xavier method” because for a year I kept naming that character Xavier.

Years of doing that, and then becoming more improvisational about it, gave me the basis for the first couple dozen questions. I’ve also played in a lot of convention games with amazing question-asking GMs like Paul Tevis and Brian Isikoff, who are significant influences in Backstory Cards. All of those experiences have worked out my improvisational Socratic muscles into lean fighting form.

What sort of games do you think these cards would be most effective for?
I tell people that Backstory Cards are good for pretty much any RPG where characters are interconnected at the start of the game. Obvious systems would be for Fate, Cortex+ Drama, and Dungeon World, where relationships can or are put on the character sheet in some form. But I’ve also used this method (or seen this used) in GURPS, Heroquest, GUMSHOE, Don’t Rest Your Head, various dungeon crawl games, and so on.

But it’s particularly effective when what you as a group emphatically want to riff on character history as part of the game, whether it’s a plot motivator or just as banter. If you need something superficial, it might be a waste of time (but might also create player buy-in). I’m also super-curious to try it as a Fiasco hack, but I’m betting more likely than not that it’ll result in a weaker Fiasco game.

How do you think we can, as gamers, use good questions more in games?
My take on questions in games, whether in character creation or in play, is to take to heart one strong idea: answers are agency. Whether that’s asking you about minor scene elements, character backstory, or major plot points, by asking questions you’re promising agency. Respecting that promise at the table is important. You know those moments when you are specifically offered input, and after you answers someone response with “You know what would be even cooler?” That’s not respecting the promise of agency. (That doesn’t mean every answer is equally valid — agency comes with it responsibility. But that gets into answers as negotiation rather than wholesale negation.)

The *World games show how to use questions in play in a brilliant manner — I have always appreciated how Vincent crafted questions as currency.

There’s a tendency to eschew the yes/no question because it can frequently lead to nowhere, in favor of open questions. Most of the time, that’s true, but there can be power in the yes/no questions. I recall one time when Josh Roby ran Full Light, Full Steam at a Nerdly Beach Party. The party was on a giant gondola and I wanted to shoot at some people below us who were looking to do the same thing. Josh ask me if I thought the windows slid or otherwise easily opened, and my gut was to say “of course” because saying no felt like a stop. Then I thought about it and say “Of course they’re solid glass! That makes it more awesome because I have to shoot through it.”

A lot of time, the yes/no question is too simplistic, but look for opportunities to turn that on its ear.

What’s up next for you?
I always have games and other projects cooking. The biggest one that I’m slowly chipping at is called the Emerging Threats Unit — an action-investigation horror game that asks “What if the secret agency fighting supernatural threats wasn’t in the FBI, but in the CDC?” I’m slowly creating it in the open, writing about pieces here and there on my blog. (Here’s a detailed bit about the premise.)

More importantly, I have a wedding coming up with Lillian Cohen-Moore. That’s my big upcoming project, and I have three conventions between now to also eat my time and mental bandwidth. Perhaps when that’s behind me, I’ll make a worker placement game that’s about getting ready for a wedding — a cooperative game where you play the couple, the best human, human of honor, wedding planner, and officiant. After all, They say write what you know, and right now this is my life.

Five or So Questions with Meg McGinley on Pack the Pack

I interviewed Meg McGinley of Games By Playdate about her award-winning game, Pack the Pack! The game is Kickstarting currently – Check it out!


Tell me a little bit about Pack the Pack. What has you excited about it?
Pack the Pack is a real-time tile laying game that is about what happens AFTER the adventurers slay the dragon. They are standing around the loot pile and have to figure out how to shove all of that beautiful booty into their packs and get back to town before the rest of the party to be crowed the true victor… the hero that the town tells stories about. It has me excited because it’s exactly the type of game that I like to play- a quick game that you can play multiple times so you can build strategy over the course of an evening, not the course of a year, and has you laughing with and yelling at the people you are playing with. The mechanics are completely generic in that I could play this with my mom, but nerdy enough that it’s the perfect game to play before (or after) a night of role playing. When I first started designing it, I thought it would be a super small, super niche game but the more and more I really worked on it, the more I saw that it really could have a broad appeal and that’s pretty exciting.

I’m also excited that it was chosen out of 500 entries to be one of Cards Against Humanity’s Tabletop Deathmatch finalists. That’s crazy to be pulled out of a pool like that. This was the first game that I really put myself into and it’s a really odd feeling to have that sort of public scrutiny but also that validation too. Games, almost by definition, are a hobby, and to have it be a “professional” thing is a really weird and exhilarating feeling. It’s also probably the most vulnerable I’ve ever felt. Games are such a passion, such a part of ME that to get critiqued is much more personal than feedback at work. So that feeling, as weird feeling as it is, also has me feeling alive and that’s pretty damn exciting.

What inspired Pack the Pack?

I was inspired to make a game in general. That nugget was floating around in my brain for a long time. I really just wanted to make a game that my group of friends could play because I think we’re a pretty typical group of nerds, I mean gamers. We need a game that will get us ready for a night of game play- space wise, brain wise and just overall physically pumped and so I started to look for that game. At the same time, I’ve always just been one for the underdog. That idea of inventory tetris, which so many people roll their eyes at, I KNOW can be fun and I want to show people it CAN be fun, dammit!

What was it like to compete in Tabletop Deathmatch?

Stressful. And I don’t really get stressed. I speak in front of people a lot. I do trainings as part of my day job. I just had a full film crew in my crappy, tiny house judging me as a parent for a video that is going to be put up for all to see and that was NOTHING compared to this. I really think it goes back to that idea that the judges were people who I really, actually cared what they think. So many times I don’t let myself get stressed about a situation because I recite the whole idea of “sticks and stones” to myself… well, these judges know their shit inside and out and know it way better than I do, so that was almost intimidating to go up in front of them, raw and vulnerable and open myself up.

And then to have it put on youtube for all to watch? I’ll take the film crew judging me as a mom any day.

Tell me more about your mechanics of Pack the Pack. How do they work?

Pack the Pack is a real time, tile laying inventory management game. What that means is that 3-6 players have tiles in a big pile in the middle of the table. They each draw five tiles, face down and when everyone is ready, someone yells, “PACK!” and everyone flips and starts packing their pack- the playmat in front of them. You pack by matching the gems (circles) on the tiles that you’ve flipped to make complete circles of a matching color. Everyone is drawing new tiles to fit as much loot (represented by the tiles) into their pack as efficiently as they can. If you draw something you don’t like, you can declare that it’s “Junk!” and toss it back, but it goes back in face up so everyone else can see it and get the advantage from it and now you have to take two tiles. When you think your pack is packed, yell, “To Town!” and you are done. Everyone else keeps on packing and stuffing. The game is over when it’s down to two players and one of them yells, “To Town!”.

In the basic version, you count how many complete circles of a single color you have made, extra points for three or four tiles (using quarter circle pieces). In the advanced version, you instead are scoring the loot items on the tile but they only count if the tile was part of a complete circle. This version, on the back side of the playmat, is much more strategic and for the more serious gamer. In both versions, you get extra points for going to town first because you got the best prices at the market and more time to schmooze with the townsfolk.

What do you hope to see happen with Pack the Pack in the future?

Well, of course I want to see the kickstarter super successful and the game take off and be on every game store shelf in America with expansions and a spin off Role-Playing game! But that’s dreaming big. I’d settle for it just to have a wildly successful kickstarter 😉

Five or So Questions with Andrew Medieros on Urban Shadows

Tell me a little about Urban Shadows. What excites you about it?
Urban Shadows is an urban fantasy roleplaying game in the vein of The Dresden Files novels and the television series’ Angel and Supernatural. Players take on the roles of serious power players in their city’s political structure and play classic archetypes like vampires, ghosts, half-demons and much more. It’s powered by the Apocalypse World engine which allows us to cram in as much drama, action and tension as we can with minimal rules that still pack a punch.

The two most exciting things about Urban Shadows are our new Corruption mechanic and our choice to address and challenge race and gender in an urban setting.

Corruption is gained when your protagonists crosses a line they shouldn’t (such as taking a life) and rewards you for these choices with new and very potent powers. But this new power comes at a cost, keep it up and you’ll find yourself becoming more and more a slave to your inner darkness.

When you create a character in Urban Shadows you choose your Look: how the city sees you. Ambiguous, female, male or transgressing? Asian, black, caucasian, hispanic, mixed, or other? These choices are purely descriptive and inform the kind of stories you wish to tell in the game.

Tell me more about the Corruption mechanic. Is it just a toggle on-off to monstrousness?
Corruption is the dark mirror to our experience system, except instead of gaining standard advances, you gain access to some really powerful and potent Moves. You mark a point of corruption whenever your character takes a life, breaks a rule set by their archetype, or when they MC offers it to them and you accept: Gain corruption five times and you get a new Corruption Move.

These moves give your character access to some game breaking abilities, but there’s a couple catches: Firstly, each of them generate further corruption when used and secondly, you can only select a maximum of four of them. If you reach the point where you need to select a fifth, you lose your character to the MC, who can choose bring them back into the story as a Threat (which is usually really bad news for the city).

You can buy off corruption moves through advances but that’s an expensive path, it’s far easier to just avoid it altogether. However, temptation calls on us all, and it’s a hard thing to resist.

Tell me a little about Debts. How do they work?
Debts are how we track favours in Urban Shadows. When you do something worthy of note for someone, or vice versa, a Debt is given (unless of course that action was to pay off a previous debt). They let you influence both player characters and non-player characters with no risk, just the cost of the Debt. Non-player characters can just as easily gain Debts on player characters, which lets the MC use those Debts to make hard moves against them. Owing favours to powerful people is a dangerous prospect.

What made you decide to put race front and center?
This was something we feel really passionate about: we wanted stories told within cities to be representative of the cultures and races in that city, so we made it part of character creation. By asking players to choose their character’s race, we ended up seeing casts of really diverse protagonists and that was exactly what we wanted. It’s been great to see how it’s changed the game and it’s now become a central theme for our project. It’s important to note that your choice of race has no mechanical implications for your character but it is an important part of who they are.

Tell me how factions work. What do they influence in the game?
Factions are how we divide the city’s populace into not-so-neat categories. They are arenas of conflict that represent rough communities of mortal and supernatural creatures: The Factions are Mortality, Power, Night and Wild. Mortality are the vanilla mortals, Power are humans with supernatural gifts, Night are people who have been turned into monsters, and Wild are beings who originate from outside our world.

Protagonists have a stat that correlates to each of the four factions: the higher the stat, the better understanding they have of that world and their members. For example, the Night faction includes vampires, werewolves, and ghosts. Having a low Night score means you don’t really understand how these people operate and don’t know many of them personally. A higher score in Night means you have a solid grasp of how they work and you know many of them fairly well. So it’s one part understanding and one part relationship.

Factions power a lot of the moves in the game: when you seek info from your contacts, look for resources to help you get things done, or when messing around in other players’ business in the hopes of influencing their dice rolls, you roll Faction to see how that plays out. The scores change through play, they’re not static by any means.

What’s up next for you after Urban Shadows?
I think maybe I’ll go outside and take a long walk. Then I have plans for a couple of other games, one of which is also powered by the apocalypse. I can’t say too much here but it includes fighter pilots and drama! Lots and lots of drama!

How do you decide what projects to design?

How do you choose what projects to design?
That’s a toughie. I could say something trite like “the designs choose me!” because it’s kind of true. If I have an idea, I try to take it to execution. I might put stuff on the backburner but I always try to work on things periodically, keep old projects in mind, and take notes. Google Drive is a huge tool for this. I have loads of unfinished ideas lurking in a folder on Google Drive where I will take notes and log ideas.
Here are the major things I think of, honestly, when it comes to deciding whether I proceed with a project.
Do I have ideas for it?
If I don’t have ideas for a project, there’s no point in working on it. If I’m in a rut, I can dig at it, but often that just keeps me digging deeper instead of finding my way out. There’s a lot to be said for having inspiration and enthusiasm for a project, and without those things, it’s just toiling, and I don’t design to toil. I design to create things people will enjoy, and if I don’t enjoy making it, it’s not my best work.
Now, it’s one thing to design something that is hard or tedious, but I’m talking complete lack of interest. If you ask me to design something based on politics (like bureaucracy) or something with strict history guidelines, I probably will have a lot more trouble and enjoy it a lot less unless it’s something I find fascinating.
Do I have an audience for it?
I have loads of ideas just hanging out and waiting to see if there is someone who wants to play it. With Girls’ Slumber Party WOO! I am anxious because it’s kind of a niche game. I have ideas and enthusiasm for it, but I don’t know whether there’s a big enough audience to sell it, which is why it may end up being a free release once it’s done. One of the keys with having an audience is having playtesters, and we all know that having playtesters is a struggle for designers. If you can’t playtest a design, you put yourself at risk of having design flaws. Yeah, it can be done, but I’d rather find obvious design flaws before I put my games in the hands of people who paid for it. This is why development for Clash and Tabletop Blockbuster have taken as long as they have – we playtest, we find flaws, redesign, and playtest again. Rinse, repeat.
Is there interest in it?
It’s one thing to have an audience. Having an audience means there are people out there in the demographic and with preferences that means your game might appeal to them. Having interest is a whole ‘nother deal. Interest means that there are individuals or groups out there that receive your pitch and say “YES. Let’s DO this.” You don’t want to be putting something out there and have people bored to tears or uninterested because you didn’t design it to appeal, or because there’s just not interest in what you’re selling. You want people picking up what you put down, right?
Can it make money?
This sounds shallow, but frankly, I like getting paid for my work. To put it in perspective, I was not going to sell Clash. I was going to print it out and give it out for free. Then a few IGDN members went “Oh, no no no!” and gave me what-for about it. They showed interest in the game (see the last question), and gave me reasons for why it was a money-making possibility. Subsequently, I invested tons of time and some of my own money in getting it to ashcan state over six months, including taking it to cons, paying for scenarios to be written, etc. I still think free products are great, but I also think that models like Patreon are appropriate for people making “free” games because I think it’s fair to pay people for their efforts. As much as it would be great to just create and be free of societal expectations of financial responsibilities, we still live in a world where living – just living – costs money. Design work isn’t magical. You still have to eat while you’re designing, and keep the internet and power on. When I’m working on design, I’m not working at my day job or doing freelance writing, but I’m still using power and burning calories. Something’s gotta pay for that. This doesn’t mean that I’ll never release something for free, it just means that I’ll try to create products that can pay me back for the work I do.

Does the design concept work?
I’ve written down some really silly design ideas. Some I saved, some I deleted. The thing is, if your design concept is flawed – like bad math or too much complexity or too much simplicity – there’s no point in pursuing the design as is. You either need to redesign or dump it. And there’s nothing wrong with dumping a design! Generally when I dump a design I put it in a Google Drive folder just in case I want to pull it out and pull ideas from it at a later date – I’ve saved every revision of Clash, every draft of Tabletop Blockbuster rules, and a bunch of other stuff.
Do I have time for it? OR Will I make time for it?
I’m super busy. I work and go to school and have this blog, plus I do freelance writing and design. So, stuff I’m working on personally has to have a lot of value for me. I have to either have free time, or make time. And whether I make time really depends on whether I like the product.
Do I like what I’m working on?

Some stuff this is a quick and easy “Yup!” like Girls’ Slumber Party WOO! Some of it is harder, like certain aspects of Tabletop Blockbuster (like GM rules, which were quickly handed over to John, my partner-in-crime). While designing is something I have found passion for, I still need to like the stuff I’m doing. This is different than having ideas; this is more an emotional investment. I need to want to pour my soul into what I’m doing.
In the end, it’s about whether I like the project and whether I feel like it’s worth investing in.
What helps you decide what projects to focus on?