How Do We Support Creators?

Patreon’s quite sudden change in its fee structure – shifting fees more to patrons than creators, inciting outrage and exodus from both groups – inspired me to not only re-evaluate my own support on Patreon (and my own potential to use it as a creator) but also to look at how we as game consumers support those who design material to inspire us and enhance our games. Patreon isn’t the end-all-be-all means to support creators in the adventure gaming hobby. Sure, it’s a pioneering platform in the ever-changing Internet Age, but I’ve come to regard the interwebzes as a fickle mistress where little if anything remains the same (or reliable) for long. Creators and their patrons have many ways to connect online, both for interaction and appreciation.

Themed Gaming Gift Ideas for Non-Gamers

It’s the holiday gift-giving season again. Goodness knows I’ve rambled on enough over the years about the magic of the holidays, how this is a great time to indulge in fantasy and gaming, and what gifts can best entice non-gamers and kids into gaming. I suppose I just can’t stay away. This year I’m recommending gifts for non-gamers that focus on a theme they enjoy. I’ve discussed the relationship between game mechanics and theme before in “Introducing Newcomers to Games: Theme & Mechanics.” The gist is that, while the turn sequence, player choices, interaction mechanics, and other systems of play are just as important in providing an entertaining game experience, often just getting new players to the table requires an enticing theme. “Do you want to play a game where you fly X-wings against TIE fighters?” sounds a lot better than “Do you want to play a starship miniatures game with maneuvers, special combat attacks, and upgraded ship abilities?” So I’ve perused my library shelves for board games I own or have played with interesting themes appealing to fans of certain genres. Most of these buck my past recommendations: they’re not necessarily the best games for introducing newcomers to gaming; few are kid-friendly; and the price points often soar past the $25 threshold a past “survey” indicated is the optimum cost of games to risk as gifts for non-gamers. Few of these are ideal starter games for newcomers to the adventure gaming hobby, so if you give them as gifts, expect to take the lead in introducing them to the rules through an actual game. I’ve listed them according to which fans might most enjoy each recommendation:

Gather at the Table

“Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest.”

– Johan Huizinga

It’s that time of year again. We make plans to visit friends or family. Someone prepares a meal, others bring drinks and snacks. Hopefully we don’t have too much anxiety that everyone gets along and carefully laid plans come together. Time to clean the house and prepare the table as everyone gathers. We set up our rulebooks, scenario notes, gamemaster screen, favorite dice. Wait...are we here to celebrate Thanksgiving or play games?

The typical Thanksgiving holiday and gaming share many similar elements. We gather together around a table or similar shared space for a celebration, one of thankfulness and another of play and imagination. Each has a symbolic purpose grounded in some form of play: the recreation (to some degree) of the mythical first Thanksgiving, the immersion in an interactive game that mirrors some reality, however fantastic. One provides an opportunity for reflection, the other for entertainment, and both for taking a break from the normal, often tedious routine of our everyday lives. Both require some degree of preparation – of food, game material, cleaning the house for guests – sometimes fraught with anxiety: will we all get along, will the food be just right, have we forgotten anything, will the overall experience be satisfying? Often everyone brings something for the table, whether a main dish, a host of indulgent snacks, drinks, and dessert. Games even form part of the Thanksgiving tradition as many people sit down afterward to watch their favorite football teams compete...or those of us who aren’t into sports might actually break out some of their favorite adventure games to play or introduce to non-gamers (something I plan on indulging in during my Thanksgiving observance).

Favorite Resources for Solo RPG Play

November has arrived, which means Solo Gaming Appreciation Month (SGAM) returns with a vengeance. The event, organized by the Google Plus Lone Wolf Roleplaying community, encourages gamers to celebrate solitaire play and post their experiences (something the community generally supports throughout the year). Some of us, myself included, dabble in all kinds of solitaire play year-round, from roleplaying games and solo gamebooks to board games and wargames, sometimes to playtest design concepts, other times for sheer entertainment. SGAM offers an occasion to reflect on some solitaire roleplaying resources, some tried and true, some newly discovered, that not only reflect my particular solo gaming preferences but might also enhance others’ solo play experiences:

Post-Apocalyptic Roleplaying Games

“So it was that, after the [Flame] Deluge, the Fallout, the plagues, the madness, the confusion of tongues, the rage, there began the bloodletting of the Simplification, when remnants of mankind had torn other remnants limb from limb, killing rulers, scientists, leaders, technicians, teachers, and whatever persons the leaders of the maddened mobs said deserved death for having helped to make the Earth what it had become.”

– A Canticle for Leibowitz

I’ve never really immersed myself in the handful of post-apocalyptic roleplaying games released over the years. Sure, I own some, acquired more out of curiosity and an interest in dabbling, but even the few I’ve played never really struck a chord. Perhaps it’s because I grew up with a sheen of anxiety about nuclear war. Maybe it’s because – for the first time in more than 25 years – the threat of nuclear war on even a small scale seems frighteningly possible. Yet I still look fondly at my small collection of post-apocalyptic roleplaying games, day-dreaming of a time when it was considered escapist “fun” to indulge in settings ranging from gritty reality to gonzo fantasy.

Returning to Traditional Board Games

A package from Lulu.com recently arrived containing a few books of interest, two titles I knew I wanted – Bob Cordery’s Developing the Portable Wargame and Dyson Logos’ 2016 Dodecahedron Cartographic Review – and one I discovered on a periodic search of the Lulu site (which still doesn’t have a wishlist function or any means of more specifically searching categories)...Damian Gareth Walker’s A Book of Historic Board Games. Frequent readers know I keep a shelf of books about games across the adventure gaming spectrum, including those about more traditional board games like R.C. Bell’s Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations, David Partlett’s The Oxford History of Board Games, and Jeffrey A. DeLuca’s comprehensive Medieval Games. Walker’s contribution proves a worthy edition to my reference shelf and opens the door to other resources to aid one’s exploration of more traditional board games from throughout history. It invites readers to discover board games from across history and cultures, a pursuit that can vary our diet of adventure games.

Games Influencing Real Life

Recently I’ve noticed a number of game-related items demonstrating how powerfully games can affect real life when they move beyond the comfortable confines where we safely enjoy them: the kitchen table, family game night, the game club shed, teen gaming day at the library, the Friendly Local Game Store, game conventions. Certainly games occur in reality – read Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens and one learns games and game-like activities occupy particular spaces in which specific rules of play operate – but when games move beyond their usual boundaries they can exert a positive influence in the real world, sometimes just for fun, sometimes for serious issues.

A Wealth of Printables

The recent release of S. John Ross’ HexPaper Pro reminded me how much the technological advances of the Internet Age have enhanced our collective gaming experiences. It wasn’t too long ago – in what I like to call the “Golden Age of Roleplaying” (the early 1980s) – that some of us purchased pre-printed character record sheets and hoarded graph paper given our limited resources and lack of home publishing technology. Today computers, printers, and the internet give us seemingly unlimited access to printable game accessories (paper minis, graph/hex paper, maps, adventures), PDF and print products available through online e-storefronts, and to a worldwide community of fellow gamers.

Gamer’s Gambit Demonstrates Store Ideals

Everyone has their ideas about what makes a good Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS). I particularly value a friendly staff, comprehensive inventory, and plenty of play space, all of which goes a long way to cultivating a sustained and diverse play community. I’ve visited many games stores in my 35+ years in the adventure gaming hobby as a player and writer. Even where I live now, on the medieval frontier of Northern Virginia (the medieval side) I’ve discovered several game stores, some closer than others, that hit the marks quite well (though some, always the closest, seem to have a habit of closing after just more than a year in business). My family recently had an excellent experience at an FLGS, this time while on our annual pilgrimage to visit family in New England, and it reminded me what makes for a successful FLGS.

Solitaire Board Games on my Radar

I’ve talked about solitaire roleplaying game adventures and solo wargaming before, but not a whole lot about solitaire board games. Although the common perception places “games” in the realm of activities engaged with groups of people, I feel solitaire gaming across the broad spectrum of the adventure gaming hobby has value, whether to satisfy the urge for an interesting interactive story (“Curling Up with Solitaire Gamebooks”), teaching rules and introducing a setting (“Solitaire RPG Tutorial Adventures”), or any number of other beneficial applications. I’ve often lumped solo board games in with my occasional broad overviews of the state of solitaire gaming: “Celebrating Solitaire Play” and “Solitaire Play Addendum” come to mind. For whatever reason – my introversion, a lack of a stable gaming community, my slowly-increasing misanthropic tendencies – I’m exploring more solo board games these days. It certainly helps that I’m seeing more solitaire offerings in this field on my gaming radar.

Adapting Games for A Play Community

“It’s not winning the game that makes the game fun. It’s playing that makes the game fun.”

– Bernie De Koven

I’m reading Bernie De Koven’s The Well-Played Game in which he focuses on the “play community,” a group of people willing to play games together, striving not for the triumph of the win but for a positive, satisfying play experience. “The nature of a play community is such that it embraces the players more than it directs us toward any particular game,” he writes. “Thus, it matters less to us what game we are playing, and more to us that we are willing to play together.” I’d recommend the book to anyone willing to more deeply examine their relationship, dynamics, and shared goals with those who join them at the gaming table no matter what the game. Although it discusses “play” as a more free-form concept, its many insights can apply equally well to adventure games (as opposed to more rigidly organized games like sports, with more strictures in terms of rules, requirements, and referees). In that pursuit he encourages play communities to embrace the freedom to change a given game so we can play well together. Members of the adventure gaming hobby have a long history of adjusting their games to best suit their own tastes and sharing them with others, but we might consider becoming more sensitive to individual players and groups depending on the participants and venue of particular games.

Random Encounter Motivations

Monsters serve as the default antagonists in Dungeons & Dragons and its derivatives (primarily many games developed in the spirit of the Old School Renaissance or OSR). They’re the focal point of the entire hack-and-slash mentality: kill the monsters and take their stuff. The character advancement structure of these games encourages this kind of play. Fighting and killing monsters not only earns experience points for the deed but points based on the value of treasure plundered from dead monsters (an aspect of the game’s design I’ve examined before). Certainly elements like the “Monster Reactions Table” can mitigate these presumptions. Yet a creature’s own motivations might affect how they react when encountering adventurers just as much as the adventurers’ openly displayed intent. This becomes particularly important for randomly determined creatures – as “wandering monsters” or in randomly generated dungeons – who don’t always have motivational cues based on a particular location. For instance, in a published scenario, four orcs in an evil wizard’s guard room have an assumed role to keep adventurers out, sound the alarm, and try to kill or capture intruders; but four orcs encountered as wandering monsters don’t have such clear cues regarding their motivation and hence their reaction to meeting adventurers. What if – before rolling on the “Monster Reactions Table” – we consulted a “Creature Motivation Table” to determine their intent when they stumble upon adventurers?

All the Emperor’s Men

Half the fun is playing around
with the miniatures....

After enjoying Daniel Mersey’s Victorian skirmish rules – The Men Who Would Be Kings – I had some inspiration to adapt them to other periods for which I have miniatures. Although it would have been easier to start with the French and Indian War (FIW) or American War of Independence (AWI) considering their historical proximity to the original rules, I decided to try porting them to Star Wars to use my collection of 25mm painted miniatures and engage my son’s immediate enthusiasm. I have modest numbers of stormtroopers, Imperial army troopers, Rebel troopers, bounty hunters, and a few other models that could muster into appropriate units, plus a host of terrain to simulate desert, forest, or other environments. And I have a more-or-less willing opponent in the Little Guy, whose interest in Star Wars seemingly waxes and wanes with the moon’s phases but otherwise enjoys playing with Daddy’s toys (though he’d prefer to play during the Clone Wars era...). So I set out to customize The Men Who Would Be Kings for Star Wars miniatures.

Summertime Gaming Can Reinforce Lessons

Today’s the last day of school on the medieval frontier of Northern Virginia...the medieval side. (Alas, our school board thinks starting school the second week of August, putting the first term SOL testing right before the December holiday break, will increase SOL scores instead of focusing on paying teachers decently and letting them teach instead of handle bureaucracy....) Already last week summertime recommendations started coming home: a list of recommended “series” books for summer reading, a 22-page handout with math problems to solve, a list of educational websites to visit, a page of “dice games” that are really just math exercises with dice, and a thick, door-stop-sized reading/writing workbook someone ordered but apparently didn’t use all school year. All this comes slathered in the repulsive stigma of homework, something the seven year-old Little Guy has grown to dislike and resist throughout the school year, more so in these final weeks before summer vacation. So what’s a parent to do? I’m turning to two things we know and enjoy: fun themes and games.

The Little Guy – and most elementary school kids, I suspect – maintains a host of interest in various media properties: Minecraft, Transformers, Pokemon, Star Wars (particularly Clone Wars), Godzilla, Doctor Who. Interest in them waxes and wanes, but they sometimes help him engage in educational activities disguised as fun. (I’ve blathered on about themes in games before in “Introducing Newcomers to Games: Theme & Mechanics.”) Just the other weekend we caught him sitting in bed reading a Star Wars book aloud to our cats (granted, they like hanging out in his comfy bed anyway, but apparently reading was a bonus). We’re embarking on a first-edition Star Wars Roleplaying Game campaign at his insistence; so far he’s enjoyed accurately adding up the results of numerous d6 rolls, especially when tossing handfuls of dice when using a Force Point. He reads all the powers and attacks on the cards when we play the Pokemon collectible card game.

An Exercise in Nostalgic Futility

A reader recently asked me about T1 The Haunted Keep from my “Gaming Artifacts: Homemade Modules” post. Back in my teenage days during the “Golden Age of Roleplaying” (the mid 1980s) I wrote several Dungeons & Dragons modules to run with the neighborhood kids, complete with maps and keyed texts in the style of TSR’s own releases. T1 The Haunted Keep was my continuation of the sample dungeon at the back of the Moldvay-edition D&D Basic rules. All my work from this period is irredeemably horrible, yet I keep these artifacts because they were an integral part of my earliest, eager gaming days. And that enthusiasm suddenly returned when someone expressed interest in seeing at least the maps to gain some insight about how I developed the dungeon as a base for a family of wererats and their marauding goblin allies. At first I had grand designs of typing up my handwritten text, cleaning it up a bit, rendering the maps in a better style than pencil-on-graph-paper, updating the stats to my oft-overlooked AnyOSR Key system-neutral notations, and releasing it with retrospective design notes for fun. Then I realized the idea was distracting me from my current distraction (developing The Greydeep Marches setting) from what I really should be working on (The Infinite Cathedral setting) and that it was channeling my nostalgic enthusiasm for the creations of my youth. Once I calmed down, refocused, and realized bringing it to publication in any form was not a good use of my time, the brief experience provided an opportunity to reflect on my past work to see what made an impression on a teenage roleplaying gamer in the mid-1980s.

Adventures in Victorian Wargaming

Over the years I’ve pursued an interest in Victorian era games, first through GDW’s groundbreaking Space 1889 (well before fan interest in “steampunk”), then with R. Talsorian’s Castle Falkenstein, dabbling with The Sword and the Flame miniatures rules, and even writing for early versions of Victoriana. The games inspired my interest in the historical period itself (not just its fantasy game-world versions) to the point I’ve accumulated a small, specialized library on the subject that never seems to hold enough books by Osprey Publishing. In recent years the company started releasing wargame rules sets for various historical periods (and some not-so-historical ones). When I saw Daniel Mersey’s Victorian-era wargame rules, The Men Who Would Be Kings, I immediately saw a way to put all the various historical miniatures I’ve been collecting and painting over the years to good use in an engaging skirmish game.

The Lingua Franca for RPGs

“Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.”

– Genesis 11:9

Gamers are a contentious lot, reflecting an overall human tendency of unfriendliness, or at least indifference, toward those outside our chosen tribes. We have been “confounded” by a plethora of different games catering to different genre tastes, mechanics, and play styles. Some folks can sit back, acknowledge the existence of games for which we don’t care much, and let others go about their business playing games that bring them the most enjoyment. Others like arguing about which edition or game is best and disparage those who play different games. Differences set us apart – they can help define who we are and what we enjoy – but can also reinforce tribal tendencies within adherents of particular games and can cause friction with other factions. In most cases this wouldn’t pose a problem; but for adventure gaming, and roleplaying games in particular, it’s often a barrier to bringing new people into the hobby or more actively pursuing our own involvement with new player groups. For better or worse, Dungeons & Dragons has, since its beginnings, served as a common frame of reference, a lingua franca, so to speak, for the diverse and sometimes divisive roleplaying game hobby.

Passive & Active Entertainment

Every so often I hear the argument on the internet justifying the high prices for games – usually roleplaying games, but also board and miniatures games – that they offer far more entertainment in dollars per hour of enjoyment than a few brief hours at the movies. Thus a $50 roleplaying game with all its creative potential for years of play is far more worthwhile than a similar dollar-value of movies, usually about one movie with a handful of attendees, the size of the average gaming group. I don’t follow these discussions much; from my point of view as a consumer I value my money on my own terms and I evaluate each potential game purchase on its own merits. But I find the comparison between the price of games and movies and the amount of enjoyment they provide one of those apples-and-oranges issues. Although it seems like a valid point for a discussion, we’re really talking about two very different kinds of entertainment: passive and active. In one participants remain relatively passive, sitting back and enjoying someone else’s vividly creative efforts. In the other the participants themselves – working within an already established framework, like a game – actively take part in creating their own entertainment.

WEG Memoirs/Gaming Artifacts: Star Wars Battle Book & Dueling Pack

Imagine a simpler time, before personal computers, smart cell phones, e-readers, tablets, electronic games with state-of-the-art graphics, and even the internet became ubiquitous elements of our society. It was during this time, the mid-1980s, that West End Games capitalized on the niche popularity of Alfred Leonardi’s innovative Lost Worlds and Ace of Aces “combat picture book games.” In 1988 West End released the Lightsaber Dueling Pack, enabling players to fight a battle between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker (like the one at the climax of Return of the Jedi); in 1989 the company published the Starfighter Battle Book: X-wing vs. TIE Interceptor, putting players in the cockpits of those ships for a head-to-head dogfight. They represent innovative game formats of their time that have since passed from practicality and popularity.

The Temptation of Random Tables

Random tables remain a staple of roleplaying games. They determine random encounters, character backgrounds, treasure and magic items, monster and retainer reactions, or even form the basis for an entirely random dungeon or hex crawl (among a great many other things). They’re a temptation for both gamemasters and game designers, offering quick means to generate encounters and add another layer to an adventure or setting. They serve as prompts, providing a host of ideas in a succinct format to roll or choose. Part of the responsibility for their successful use depends on how designers present table information and tie it to the existing setting or scenario. Part of the responsibility depends on how gamemasters implement a random table result into their game. Random tables run the risk of seeming lazy tools rather than inspiring enhancements.

Interesting Wargame Releases, Spring 2017

I don’t talk much about “news” or “new releases” here at Hobby Game Recce; it’s often fleeting and doesn’t seem to matter months or years down the road. But now and then a few gaming products release that catch my attention for one reason or another...and this just happens to be one of those times. Announcements by three different companies promise some notable wargaming products that cater to my own interests and hopefully engage the enthusiasm of other gamers: a Wings of Glory Battle of Britain starter set; a Commands & Colors game set during the American War of Independence; and some interesting terrain and tank kits from Battlefront Miniatures. One things certain with all these releases: I’d better start saving up my money if I want to buy any.

Customizing My B/X D&D Experience

My son and I have been gaming on and off recently, occasionally testing the waters of intro roleplaying games between Pokemon card game duels and an occasional board game. We’ve enjoyed Hero Kids, though each adventure requires a good deal of prep, whether I’m printing and adapting an existing scenario or devising my own (with the requisite maps). We’ve also tried the forgotten Pokemon Jr. Adventure Game – a wonderfully simple yet entertaining intro roleplaying game experience that capitalizes on the popular Japanese license – which I’m enjoying for its very basic, read-aloud scripted scenes and simple combat system printed on the various Pokemon cards. Both games still hold some potential for several more play sessions, especially if I can wean everyone off Hero Kids’ maps. At some point, though, I’d like to transition to something a bit more mainstream that also caters to my own gaming urges. So I’m re-evaluating my current views regarding Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons, as many of you know, my preferred version of D&D and, despite my general explorations of the Old School Renaissance, my preferred OSR game. I’m looking to make it more comprehensible for a seven year-old and provide a more heroic (read” less-deadly”) experience for characters.

Beyond First Edition RPGs

The release of subsequent editions of roleplaying games carries different significance for publishers and gamers. Professional publishers often develop subsequent editions to further refine the game system or setting, but usually with the core motivation of launching a new product or product line to stimulate sales. As consumers, gamers have the prerogative to invest their money in what they like; some love new editions of their favorite titles, others try one edition and either stick with it or move on to something else (just as some gamers find everything they need from a game’s core rulebook while others need every published supplement). Do gamers really need subsequent editions, or would publishers’ efforts be better spent on developing and releasing innovative new rules and settings?

The Portable Kriegspiel

Veteran gamer and designer Bob Cordery recently released The Portable Wargame, a small yet illuminating booklet that vastly refines the idea of the classic Kriegspiel for today’s gaming audience. It distills the wargaming experience to a gridded surface (squares or hexes) using modular terrain on a board far smaller than the sprawling landscapes usually enjoyed by miniature wargame enthusiasts. While gamers have been using gridded boards for a while – and some, like Richard Borg’s Commands and Colors series, continue making innovations in that field – The Portable Wargame provides a rules framework to run a streamlined yet satisfying game with fewer resources and less time than traditional board and miniature wargames.

DIY Licensed Games

Last week I talked about professional publishers releasing licensed roleplaying games based on popular media properties, particularly in the context of West End Games’ often ambitious licensing designs in the mid-1990s. But in a hobby often infused with a do-it-yourself spirit nothing prevents individual gamers from running their own adventures in their favorite film, television, novel, and comic book settings. The roleplaying game hobby has always cultivated an informal tradition of gamers doing their own thing, taking established games or settings and developing them for their local player groups. Reading Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World one realizes how the entire adventure gaming hobby evolved from people taking someone else’s ideas and modifying them to varying degrees into something different. In the same vein fans sometimes unofficially channel their enthusiasm for a media property into their roleplaying games, often in a more timely manner than professionally published licensed games delayed by the production and approval process.

WEG Memoirs: Licensed Games

West End Games offices, 1993.

I’ve wanted to talk about games based on licensed media properties for a while, both from the angle of professional publishing companies and hobby enthusiasts. During its final few years (1993-1998) West End Games focused a great deal of its energy on acquiring licenses and publishing games based on them, to the point some considered it the leader in licensed games. My experience working for West End sheds some light on issues facing professional publishers in producing game product based on popular media franchises. Like many aspects of West End, this endeavor involved a lot of scrambling behind the scenes and a great deal of risk.

Gaming Artifacts: Homemade Fantasy World Maps

How I miss those lazy afternoons when I got home from school and had an hour or two before dinner to indulge my gaming hobby. Sometimes neighborhood kids would gather for a hapless D&D scenario or a board game of my own dubious design. Other times I’d relax with a good fantasy or science fiction novel. I’d draft maps for future dungeon delves or wilderness expeditions. I’d type out articles for my extremely amateur gaming fanzine. And then there were the wars waged by metal miniatures across map-kingdoms of my own creation.

The Basic Hack Offers Intro OSR Experience

I’ve enjoyed dabbling with the Old School Renaissance (OSR). It’s nice to indulge my nostalgic tendencies and revel in some of the innovations people are sharing based on the old “core” fantasy roleplaying game rule sets: Erik “Tenkar” Stiene’s Swords & Wizardry Light, James Spahn’s The Hero’s Journey, Scott Malthouse’s Romance of the Perilous Land, among others in the back of my mind. Yet the OSR itself caters to gamers with at least some experience with any earlier flavor of Dungeons & Dragons and roleplaying games, whether someone played once in high school or has been playing regularly for years. It’s not exactly a clear entry point for newcomers to the roleplaying game hobby. Since OSR titles are primarily available through online venues, they’re not visible in hobby, game, or book stores – unlike the current edition of D&D – and none of the OSR games have really, to my estimation, catered to complete beginners.... Until now. Nathan J. Hill’s The Basic Hack, an iteration of David Black’s The Black Hack, incorporates a few elements and a distillation of the OSR gaming experience I feel can offer an entry point for new gamers, either in the hands of an experienced gamemaster or even on their own.

Evaluating Player Choice

Every game offers players different choices. Some, particularly kids games like Candyland and Snakes and Ladders, offer no choices amid their extremely structured play experiences (and one might argue whether they’re tecnically “games”). Others like roleplaying games revel in the concept that “anything can be attempted” by providing an environment with seemingly infinite choices. Analyzing the degree of player choice in individual games can help us evaluate their suitability for different audiences or even our own gaming interest.

While contemplating the issue of player choice I’m reminded of two graphics in Damon Knight’s Creating Short Fiction, my handy go-to reference when I need inspiration in that field. In the section on “Using Constraints” Knight provides two illustrations to demonstrate how restricting story elements can limit characters. One looks like a well in which the character crouches beneath a stone cave-in, the other look like the symbol of chaos with a character and question mark in the middle. This also represents the restraints of player choice in games. In the former the character/player has few or no choices, hence limiting the story/game experience; in the latter the character/player has infinite choices with little guidance where to proceed. In most instances games should avoid offering no or too few choices. In some cases, particularly roleplaying games, players enjoy having too many choices; they’re often narrowed by in-game situations or character race or class limitations. New players might prefer games with a handful of choices each turn. Experienced gamers might prefer having numerous options open. This may explain the renewed popularity of Euro-style board games and the esoteric reputation roleplaying games retain among the general, non-gaming public. The more choices available to players the more daunting games seem to newcomers; yet that wealth of choice also attracts game enthusiasts to more complex game experiences like wargames and roleplaying games.

The Role Game Cons Play

I’m no pollster, nor am I a statistician; but I’d love to run a survey across the spectrum of the adventure gaming hobby to see how often gamers attend conventions of any size. What percentage never attend a convention each year? What percentage gets to a premiere event like GenCon? How important are conventions to the average gamer? My own involvement with gaming conventions (or media conventions with gaming tracks) has varied as I’ve grown and changed as a gamer. They offer opportunities to game with others, hang out with members of the gaming community, discover new games, and shop with vendors; but how important is the convention experience to the average gamer?

Running Valley of the Ape
at Barrage.

Many hobbies sponsor conventions to promote their pursuits, showcase vendors, and provide a forum for participants to share their enthusiasm. Given adventure gaming’s social nature it makes sense that conventions have played a key role in both promoting the hobby but helping it evolve. Reading Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World one sees how early conventions like the GenCon shows in Lake Geneva (established in 1968) and the Origins Game Fair (started in 1975) brought together enthusiast-designers such as Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, Rob Kuntz, and Jeff Perrin (to name a scant few) to share ideas and forge partnerships in developing new games...not to mention gamers eager for play experiences and new product. Reading the game magazines of the time (primarily Dragon Magazine) one sees a host of ads for game conventions and reports of activities there, giving average gamers the impression attending such cons was a much a part of the hobby as creating characters, devising scenarios, and running adventures. The magazine and other publications also ran listings for smaller, regional conventions that might prove more accessible to enthusiasts.

Persistence & Professionalism

Several factors came together last week to remind me of two important elements from my own game-writing experience: persistence and professionalism. I’m puttering around tidying up parts of my office (along with other bits in the house long-neglected in my fight against the Lords of Chaos and their glaciers of clutter); I stumbled upon some letters and materials from my earliest game submissions in my high school days, embarrassing tidbits from a time when I didn’t quite know what I was doing. My brother-in-law’s family got me Stephen King’s On Writing for Christmas, in which I’m finding some inspiration and re-affirmation. It’s all reminding me how much persistence and professionalism have played a role in my growth as a writer.