Matt Leacock on game design

Much late, but I’ve finally picked up a copy of Pandemic, and saw a link on the webpage to the designer, Matt Leacock talking about game design on at Google talks.

The two things that stood out to me were:

Designing Challenge

He mentions the curve of challenge to skill ratio, and that, if you’re going to be off, being under and having the option to ramp up is better than being over.

For players, if it’s a little weak, you can tell yourself it’s a tutorial and then see how you feel with higher difficulty. If it’s hard, you get the initial rush of anxiety and frustration associated with the game, which makes it even harder to learn.

For RPGs, the most common routes of setting challenge are to provide pregenerated challenges (modules, dungeons, encounters), randomized charts (random map/encounter generators), forms of point-buy balancing systems (points, Challenge Ratings, etc.), or most commonly, leaving it completely unstructured.

There’s a certain advantage to having someone dedicated in play towards designing challenge to meet your group, on the other hand, that means someone has to be dedicated in play towards designing challenge… Aside from the many other issues, you can probably point to a good amount of GM advice being just this- advice on designing challenge, mostly specialized to a specific game.

Even still, it seems like there’s a lot we could learn from both videogames and boardgames for self-regulating challenge without leaving it to the GM to design on the fly for it.

Setup Investment

Towards the end, there’s an interesting bit about learning curve, and initial investment to play- whether “Hey, it’ll take 15 minutes to learn the rules” or a party-game, “Hey, it’ll take 1 minute to start playing.”

This is something I think more and more about. I just had a 2 hour setup session to play PTA with friends. I’m coming closer to the idea of having pregenerated situations ready to pull out, with punchy conflicts, something you can literally pick up and play without a ton of prep.

Instead of saying, “Hey, let’s play Shock, it’s sci-fi about tech and ideas changing society, etc. etc.”, being like, “Hey, here’s Shock. The scenario is all about self aware computer viruses, living in people’s heads. And you’re the Special Electronic Taskforce, a special police squad to track them down…”

Color and situation to jump into, instead of produced in play. It’s a quicker sell, more visceral, and gives the impetus to jump that “learning curve hurdle” depending on the investment based on the idea. (Lady Blackbird would be a good example of this.)

Burning Wheel – A Guide to Fight! Strategy

When to use Fight!

It’s good to remember that you don’t use Fight! for every combat (in fact, you can run the whole game -never- using the Fight! subsystem…). Consider simply Saying Yes if it’s one-sided or using Bloody Versus, especially if the fight is more about driving someone off or capture than serious injury.

Master Basics First!

The game tells groups to start with the core system before adding subsystems like Fight! into the mix. This isn’t just because they’re crunchy – it’s also because the core rules have a lot of things people tend to overlook.

Are you comfortable using FORKs, Helping Dice, Advantage Dice, Linked Tests, and Artha? These can typically earn you 1-3 bonus dice on a regular basis.

Timing is everything

The trick to Fight! is timing- knowing when to attack is crucial. In many games, you can and should attack every action you get, but here, there’s going to be a lot of times when it’s a waste of time to attack- the Obstacle will be too high, they’re out of reach, you need to be defending instead. Etc. You need to figure out WHEN is a good time to get a strike in, and that will help more.

Start by paying attention to known factors: if you are at Lunging Distance (+1 Ob), Scripting a Close action (+1 Ob) and have an Avoid (+1 Ob) and then an attack? You’re looking at +3 Ob right there. Don’t script attacks when you’ve got that much going on- you’re only going to set yourself up to miss and waste an action you could have used for something else.

Positioning

Positioning is way more than simply “reach”. Winning a positioning roll lets you do things like back an opponent up against the balcony, angle someone to be in the line of fire from their allies with crossbows, put yourself in line for the doorway to cut off someone’s escape. Use Positioning to put yourself or your foe in specific situations to help yourself.

Don’t think the crunchy rules replace the game fiction- the crunchy rules exist to support you in utilizing the fiction and taking advantage of it. Take the high ground, go for things that will give you advantage dice, and put your opponents in situations that will give them obstacle penalties.

Assess

Use the Assess action to help in this kind of stuff with Positioning.

“What furniture or obstacles can I put between me and him to make Close actions harder?”, “Can I block the window and step aside to blast the sun in their eyes?”, “Is there anything liquid and hot on the table I can throw easily?” “Who’s the greenest or least sure combatant? I want to intimidate them!”

Ask if your Perception roll can be a Linked test for Positioning or specific actions you do.

Weapon Length & Reach

Weapon length plays a huge role in Fight! The easiest way to break it down is this: Are you fighting on the Inside or not?

If not Inside, the longest weapon has the advantage. The longest weapon gets extra dice to Position, while the shorter weapon either can’t attack at all, or else has to fight at a penalty. The combatant with the shorter weapon has to spend time scripting Close (+1 Ob to everything) to get to a better position, while the longer weapon merely has to Maintain with no penalties.

If you are on the Inside, the shorter weapon has the advantage, and typically, the longer the weapon, the greater penalties it will have to fighting.

Don’t forget that the most distance you can cover in a Volley is 2 distances- Out of Striking Range – Lunging Distance- Optimum – Inside. This means that if you’re fighting a guy with a knife, a wolf, or anyone who would work best on the Inside, it’ll take a minimum of 2 volleys to get there. (or if you’re Inside and someone wants to get away, it’ll take at least 2 volleys for them to get away).

If you’re outclassed in Positioning rolls, keep that in mind, so you can script closer range attacks (Push, Throw, Charge, etc.) accordingly.

Free Defense

If you’re paying attention to positioning and reach, you’ll realize the opponent will be at places where even if they attack, it’ll be at a disadvantage. If you know they’re out of reach, have to Close, they’ll be at +2 Ob to hit you.

It’s like free defense – and a good time to attack or do other things with your actions. This works best if there’s a reach disparity and either you have the longer weapon in general or the shorter weapon on the Inside.

When your weapons are about the same length, then it gets pretty hairy. Both of you have the same ideal hitting distance, so you’re both in danger.

Getting Tricky with Reach

As you can see, a lot of strategy and scripting depends on weapon reach. Being able to change up your distance can throw off everything your opponent has scripted.

For example, if you script dropping your sword, drawing a knife, and rushing in, and your opponent expected you to stay at long range, you might just get them completely off guard.

A nastier trick is “give ‘em what they want” – the opponent has a short weapon, will clearly be scripting Close actions- so you switch to a short range attack/weapon and don’t oppose them on the Positioning test at all. Now they’re in range, but that first volley or two they expected to be fighting to get in, they’re already there, with +1 Ob for Closing, while you’re attacking with no penalties.

You can also look for makeshift items to use as weapons to play with reach- thrown objects are fun, especially if they obscure vision (“I pull the curtain over his head”).

Second Action Roulette

Most human characters will have Reflexes 4. This means they get 4 attacks split over 3 volleys. Since defenses have to be scripted on the same volley and same action to work, attacks made on the second action are hard to defend against. Someone has a 1 in 3 chance of guessing the correct volley, and, of course, that assumes they’re not doing something else with their action.

How to defend against it? Well, ideally the opponent is out of reach or suffering penalties to even try. Minus that, you’ll need to pay attention to their weapon speed and try to guess when they’re likely to lay it in. Scripting a Withdraw or Close on the 3rd Volley might just put you out of the ideal range as a backup.

Specific Defenses

Assuming you’re in reach to be attacked, and the opponent isn’t looking at Obstacle penalties, it’s a good idea to defend every action you’re not busy attacking. Pay attention to your opposition’s weapon speed- if you know they can only attack every other action, you have a good idea of how often to defend (There’s a lot of ways to switch that up, but unless they’re a savvy opponent, the GM will probably not put that much thought into it).

Avoid
(Corrected. God, I’ve been playing this wrong for 2 years now. I sad.)

Avoid is just the best all-around defense option. It deals with multiple attackers and bumps up the Ob for ranged attackers. It also adds +1 Ob to anything else you want to do that round… so don’t use it on a volley you plan on doing more actions. Unless your Speed is really poor or there’s other circumstances, Avoid is usually a good way to go for straight defense.

Block & Strike/Counterstrike

If you can hit your opponent in return, these are great. You defend and attack, and the opponent is basically open at this point. You’re not likely to get a heavy hit in, but if you’re looking to wear down your opponent, or slowly chip away at armor, this isn’t a bad choice.

Block

The worth of block depends mostly on your weapon skill, or, if you have a shield. A shield gives bonus dice, which makes Block solid for defending… but it’s vulnerable to Feint and only stops one attack, so it’s not quite as useful as the other defense choices.

Knockdown

Getting your opponent off their feet is a major advantage. Push, Throw, and Charge are easy and useful tactics to sprinkle into your scripts. Make sure you’re at a decent range, though.

Since it takes two actions to get up from being knocked down, these are mean attacks to drop in the first or second volley, since no one (who is already standing) will have scripted “Get Up”, so they’ll be at penalties until the new exchange starts. Putting it in the third volley isn’t as effective, but it will guarantee the person wastes two actions out of their first volley next exchange, and maybe that’s good enough.

Buying Initiative

Buying Initiative is something that doesn’t get used enough. You get an action in before anyone can act – including defend. You can choose whether the action kicks off before, or after Positioning, even.

Getting in a free, undefended attack is pretty fricking awesome. (Also: consider Push, Throw, Charge…)

Sure, they can cancel it by giving up an action of their own. But you know what that means? If they only had Reflexes 4, now you’re not worried about taking a second-action attack from them. Which is good if you’re afraid of them landing one on you.

If you have higher Reflexes than your opposition, it becomes a non-problem- them losing actions costs more than it costs you.

Stance

Stance is tricky. You get +2D to certain actions, penalties to others, and can’t even do other actions still.

There’s some interesting tricks to changing stance:

Defensive Stance

Defensive Stance counts as a Block. So, it’s pretty good to pull off when you were planning to script a Block anyway.

Even though it penalizes Strike & Great Strike, look at all the neutral maneuvers you can pull off – Beat & Bind, Charge/Tackle, Disarm, Lock, Push, Throw Opponent.

If you find yourself trying to get past someone’s reach, it’s a good stance to take, get in, and throw them off their feet. Consider using the +2D for Positioning to get in. If you end your entry with a Charge, you’re now back at Neutral Stance. Not bad at all.

Or move in with a Lock and Throw to play a Judo/Aikijutsu style of fighter.

Offensive Stance

Changing to Offensive Stance costs an action- leaving you open, neither attacking nor defending. If you script this on a second action, you’re less likely to get tagged while switching stance. For the offensive minded, consider “Charge- Change Stance” especially if you’re pretty sure you’ll knock them down.

While in offensive stance, you can’t avoid, Speed Defense sucks (+2 OB), Block, Counterstrike also suck (+2 OB), but you’ve got extra dice for Strike & Great Strike. Or you can use it for Positioning bonus.

The two things this rocks at is: a) if you have a Fast weapon… like a Dagger, or b) you’re planning to drop a lot of Artha on a big attack to break your opponent.

If you want to get out of Offensive Stance, consider either going to Defensive Stance (Free Block! Nice.) or Charging.

Lock

Lock is under appreciated in general. It’s a great set up move, it can’t be Blocked, it reduces ALL stats and skill tests, other than breaking out of the Lock and will immobilize a character if it reduces any of these to zero: Power, Forte, Speed.

The target will have to forfeit actions to Escape the Lock, and in the meanwhile, they’ve got penalties to all Skills and Natural Defenses- it’s a great setup for Strike, Throw, or Disarm.

Throw

Throw is also under appreciated. It’s got three things going for it- it knocks the opponent off their feet, has VA of 1, and it can do really nasty damage if you’re near something hard. (If you’re on a balcony, near a cliff, on a boat, etc. it’s even more fun…)

Armor

Armor is a big factor in Fight! combat. If you know you’ll get into combat, it’s a good idea to get some kind of armor, as it’ll save your life over and over. It’s also a good idea to get weapons that have Versus Armor (VA) scores, because it drastically improves your odds of doing damage. A Superb hit that is deflected is no hit at all.

Generally, only if there’s armor do I worry about moving the hit location around on a target – and I spend my Strike successes towards getting it to an unarmored (or much less armored) location rather than for extra damage.

Artha- When to Spend?

So, you’ve got all this Artha built up, and you’re looking at 20-30 odd rolls in a single Fight!. Where do you spend it? Where do you save it?

- Don’t waste Artha on Strikes if the opponent is well armored. Wait until their armor has been beaten down, otherwise it’s a waste.

- Use Artha on Positioning tests only when there’s either a massive difference in weapon length OR there’s other factors that change the situation (“If I can get through the door, I can make a getaway”).

- Consider using Artha for Locks or Disarms! Both provide a serious advantage over multiple volleys and aren’t countered by Armor.

- Defensively? Wherever you think you might need it. You’re not likely to get killed from a single hit in Fight!, but you can get penalties that make a combat unwinnable. Better to not get hurt in the first place.

If your opponent doesn’t have VA or you have really good armor, consider using Artha on your armor rolls as the most efficient means of defense. The only drawback is you don’t get the long term benefits of shade-shifting this way like you would spending Artha on stats and skills.

- Open end 6′s if either you need just one more success OR if you see 2 or more 6′s on the table, and extra successes will actually make a difference.

Test Mongering

Varying your attacks and maneuvers isn’t just good for outwitting your opponent, it’s damn good for getting a variety of Advancement tests. Any given skill or stat will only get a single advancement test from a full Fight! – so try to get as many different ones as possible. Fight! is one of the few places where you regularly test Power, Speed, and Perception, so it’s a good idea to take advantage of that.

Hundred Thousand Kingdoms: Darre

Nora K. Jemisin has been putting up posts on the characters and backstory bits to her novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. She just put up some info on Darre, which is an interesting look at a matriarchy.

She remarked awhile ago, how many readers bought into enslaving gods without a problem, but the idea of a matriarchial society was “fantasy” to them.

Anyway, it’s got a lot of interesting ideas if you’re looking at including a women-warrior society in your gaming (Artesia, Reign, for example).

I could totally see some fun Burning Wheel games working that way, especially since motherhood gives you a higher status as a warrior in Darre culture- (+10 Resources, maybe? Definitely a +1D Affiliation with Mother-warriors). Not only that, motherhood in Burning Wheel earns you an extra point of Steel, which is damn useful for warriors!

I could see a bunch of interesting scenarios built around clans doing raids and counter-raids for husbands, folks who’ve mis-used runes and left themselves sterile, and general bad ass clan warfare.

The Riddle of Steel

Riddle of Steel is still one of my favorite games that simply never got enough love.

It came out in 2002, right around when Burning Wheel “Classic”, aka the first, unrevised version dropped. In many ways, the two games are siblings-independently developed fantasy rpgs built with an eye towards historical research, tactical combat, and reward mechanics for pursuing beliefs and passions. Burning Wheel got revised to polish out it’s rough edges, while Riddle of Steel ended up getting more supplements with more options, which I feel hurt it in terms of accessibility.

Spiritual Attributes

The Spiritual Attributes mechanics in Riddle of Steel were one of the first, and finest, bits of design that began the idea of giving advancement points AND bonuses for a character pursuing abstracted motivations – “Loyalty to the King”, “In love with the Countess”, “I must keep the Church from falling to the Heresy” etc.

Most games now that use a similar mechanic usually offer either a bonus to rolls OR a form of reward points, but not both together. By making these things do both, Riddle of Steel tightly wound play all around the pursuit of Spiritual Attributes.

The second slick thing about the SA mechanics was they set up a pacing/climax cycle to the game.

Each SA could go from 0-5, and would give bonus dice equal to it’s current rating. In order to increase stats, you’d have to spend down your SAs, often from 2-3 different ones at the same time. If an SA was at 5, you got no more points, even if you would normally be eligible for more.

What this meant was, a) you had to pursue several SAs to improve your character, b) you had to strategically choose WHEN to spend out points, since you’d lose your bonus dice afterwards, giving rise to a very cinematic build up of tension and ability, followed by a lull in ability, c) holding onto the bonuses for it’s own sake would cost you in the long run, as you’d be missing out on points you could be using for improvement.

Tactical Combat

Riddle of Steel has one of the fastest and elegant systems for combat. If you look at the book, you wouldn’t figure it right away- it’s got charts in the back for hit location, which look like Rolemaster critical charts, but all of that is extra on top of the core mechanics.

At the heart of the combat mechanics, you have a dice pool (“The Combat Pool”) which must be budgeted over two exchanges before it refreshes. Deciding how much to commit to the first Exchange vs. the second one is crucial to play. Over-commitment leaves you open to getting whomped in the second exchange, and since wounds in Riddle of Steel are brutal, most folks play for caution.

The second aspect which is brilliant is it’s handling of terrain. You don’t have maps or tons of modifiers- Terrain is a difficulty to beat each round. You only need one success, but you’re pulling the dice from your Combat Pool- so it becomes a matter of gambling how many dice do you want to commit? Failing the roll costs you 1/2 your Combat Pool, which is a brutal price. Likewise, if you’re facing multiple opponents and want to maneuver to only face one at a time, it’s done with this same mechanic.

It’s quick, elegant and fun.

All Said

I wish it gotten cleaned up and was still in print. It’s a game I think is great for exposing folks who only really know the mainstream rpgs to some smart and innovative game design.

GMing: Broad Authority + Clear Directives

I’ve been reading a lot of stuff lately that has the “Less rules free your imagination!” kind of thinking to it. It seems to basically be a shorthand phrase for the philosophy of preferring broad authority over formalized rules to resolve a major part of action in play.

Where a lot of this stuff goes wrong is in thinking that broad authority alone “naturally” produces functional play with it. Stuff like The Primer for Old School Gaming exist as ways to fill in the missing parts which have been oral tradition, learned through play, because it doesn’t exist in a lot of the game texts which assume it’s use.

It’s not enough to just give authority and responsibility to someone to resolve action in play- you need to give a direction of how they should be using it.

Vincent had this nice post about rules in the book vs. “principled decisions” – that is, things the rules didn’t cover, but the group makes choices that fit in with the spirit of the rules, that follow the same principles of the rules. When you decide to grant broad authority as a major part of play, you need to also make sure you’re communicating the principles of how this authority should be used.

The three things that make broad authority work well in a game:

1. A Directive

Is the point of the authority to pressure and challenge the players? To herd them into a specific choice? To force them to choose between a few things? A lot of games use this very well. Vincent’s thoughts on authority and judgment are worth considering.

Primetime Adventures tells the GM to challenge characters’ Issues, Burning Wheel does the same with Beliefs. Sorcerer tells GMs to constantly put characters into situations to force them to make choices about Humanity. The Drifter’s Escape has two GMs; one’s goal is to get the Drifter to commit antisocial acts of violence, corruption and evil, the other’s goal is to get the Drifter to commit socially enforced acts of violence, corruption and evil (and, at least obedience and submission).

2. How to think about it

HOW should a GM use their authority? What kinds of process should they use in applying broad authority? When you lack this, you end up with stuff like “Roll the dice to see if you can walk down this empty, totally safe hall – oops, looks like you fall on your face!” etc.

This is where things like the Old School Primer really stand out- it provides examples, a bit of the thinking behind the choices, and even some alternative ways things could have gone. Showing the thought process gives some kind of direction to work with broad authority instead of letting it be a guess in the dark, or falling back to whatever familiar methods the player has.

3. How should the other players interact with the authority?

Is a tough challenge merely a tough challenge, or is it a clue that you’re going the wrong way? Part of giving the directive and a methodology to using authority- it not only tells the person who has it how to use it, it tells the rest of the group playing how they should be working with it as well.

For example, My Life with Master tells the GM to be generous in rewarding bonus dice for Intimacy, Desperation and Sincerity. If you’re a player and you’re not getting a reward for these, you know either a) you’re being really weaksauce with it, b) you’re not communicating clearly enough, or c) the group needs to remind the GM about the rules.

Even though this isn’t a step-by-step process as most people consider rules, it’s absolutely crucial in terms of system.