The problem with the murder mystery card game

Okay, it's a complete wash. After playtesting it with people and weathering enough criticism that would make lesser men cry, I can put into words what the problem is.

The impetus of Are You A Werewolf? is the fear of being eliminated. It is visceral and immediate. The impetus of a murder mystery (in general) is the cerebral accomplishment of solving the mystery. To cast a murder mystery in the guise of an easily playable party game is to be at odds with itself. A reason AYAWW works with large numbers of players is that people CAN leave the game.

So, there are two directions I can go: one is to make a more fully playable party game (in which case, the murder mystery genre would be scrapped in favor of a more exciting setting), or it could go into a fully rendered thinking-man's game, complete with roleplaying and/or deductive reasoning clues that would eventually point to the murderer as a matter of logic, instead of trying to divine guilt through social deduction. The current state of what I was working on was to create rules for a cerebral game based on social game rules, and it didn't work.

I want to buy Clue: the card game, to see how that game is played, and see if there is a mechanic or two that could tweak my delight in deduction without reinventing the wheel.

EDIT: Found the rules to Clue: the card game here: http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/308/ProjectReqs/ClueCardGame/ClueCardGameRules.html

 It's similar to the board game: the murderer, the location, and the vehicle are selected and must be deducted by eliminating all other possibilities.

There are some differences I still want in my game: I want the murderer to be a player, chosen in secret. Perhaps this is decided at the beginning or during the game. I'm thinking of a gin rummy type of game: collect the 5 W's (or c/m/o: see last entry) and call gin, or in this case say you are the murderer. Place the cards face down, see if people can guess them? How can this game be something other than just a who/with what/where game like Clue?

card game logistic update

One of the things I wanted to do in the game was to avoid added math/complexity without purpose.  Sometimes I look at roleplay-related games that do not depend specifically on minute levels of data and think that the addition of numerical values (such as hit points) to what can be described as a binary condition (alive/dead) is sometimes fluff on the part of game designers. Sure, a game can use a number, an adjective, or any other sort of description to determine the condition of a player or character in a game, but when the action has to be fast, or if the tactical aspect of a game is not as important, things can be pared down to their bare minimum, or even combined to another feature of the game so as to remove as many obfuscating points as possible. Hit points becomes alive/dead. Mana points can be set to a certain number of actions per round. The underlying logic is indeed an exercise in mathematical analysis, but the playing of the game doesn't have to be.

Then there's the other problem of obfuscation: details within a game that add no additional tactical benefit. One could say that the whole roleplaying aspect of Are You A Werewolf, where the facilitator names the town and describes how the victim was killed each night, is a part of this. Yes, it adds depth to the game and I find it highly enjoyable, but it is optional and should not be enforced. I believe that the "professions" of each character I had in the previous post about the card game falls into this category. Except for the special cards (Murderer, Politician, Patsy, etc), the cards handed out to people should be the same. Maybe call it "Partygoer" or "Suspect".

In the end, I feel that the enforcement of professions on these cards, without any gameplay affect, might be too much. Let the players roleplay (or not) as they will.

Murder Mystery Card Game rules

Just a placeholder for this card game I'm thinking up. It's a party game similar to Mafia or Are You A Werewolf. This entry will be edited as the game takes shape.

I know you can't copyright game mechanics, but like most people, I can't help but put my creations out on the internet vainly for everyone to see. Let's just hope I try to make the game and don't do nothing again, like every time I have a great idea. Lazy me.

BARE BONES BASIC RULES

• For 6 or more players.
• A facilitator is desired; at a bare minimum, someone has to set up the deck and deal them out.
• The facilitator starts the game by taking out the murderer card from the deck and shuffling the rest. Then he or she counts out enough cards for the party, minus one, then adds the murderer card. The resulting stack should have enough cards for one card for each player. The cards are shuffled and dealt, face down. The cards must remain completely secret from everyone else until the end of the game!
• The facilitator announces the setup. ("There has been a murder tonight! The murderer is someone in this room!")
• Each card has a profession (or is the murderer) and some yes/no combination of capability, motive, and opportunity (C/M/O) - almost always 2 out of 3, but the murderer has 3 out of 3 C/M/O.
• The last player who has lost a pet goes first.
• During a player's turn, the player gets to ask two kinds of questions.
• One yes/no question about C/M/O to a second player of their choosing. ("Did you have the opportunity to commit this murder?") The second player must tell the truth about what is printed on their card, whether the answer is yes or no.
• The first player may ask any number of other questions of any sort to any and all players during the turn, including "Are you the murderer?" or what their profession is. The questioned player may lie about any question not related to C/M/O. These additional questions can be asked before or after (or both) the one C/M/O question. The turn is over when the first player has no further questions.

• Play continues clockwise. The next player can ask questions of a different or the same person, as they choose.
• After 3 of the players take a turn, everyone votes on who is the murderer. This person goes to "jail". If it is the murderer, game is over, everyone but the murderer wins. If not, play continues. The player in jail loses his or her turn for the rest of the game (if they haven't taken it already), but they can vote.
• Play continues with another 3 people taking their turns. After another three people take their turn, voting occurs again.
• Each person only gets one turn in the game, unless they are jailed before they can take it. When the last person's turn is used up, the party has one last vote to try and jail the murderer. (The game cannot end on two votes in a row!)
• If the murderer is still not caught, the game is over and the murderer wins.

DELUXE RULES

• At the beginning of the game, the facilitator uses his or her boundless imagination to create a scenario. Then, he or she explains who was murdered, and how, where and with what the victim was murdered. Each time a player is asked a C/M/O question, they must explain why the answer is no, or why they are not the murderer if the answer is yes, in the vein of the profession on the card. ("As a famous actor, I simply would not have had the opportunity to slip away and murder the victim!")
• Alibis: at any time during the game, two or more people can proclaim they are each other's alibi. This means that both players are exempt from being voted on. People who have already said no to a C/M/O question (and are automatically not the murderer), cannot have alibis. Either player in an alibi can choose to cancel it at any time. If someone holds an alibi with the murderer at the end of the game, that person is a double loser! (Optional Rule: the next game a double loser plays, the loser has to take the "Drunkard/Fool" card face up before the cards are even dealt!)

PROFESSIONS
Come a landsman, a tinsman, a tinker or a tailor
a doctor, a lawyer, a soldier or a sailor
a rich man, a poor man, a fool or a witty
Don't let her die an old maid, but take her out of pity.
(Possible name: Take Her Out Of Pity, from the song)


Any list of professions must have three variations (so as not to memorize the C/M/O list of any one profession). This also prevents the murderer from being easily found due to pretending to be a unique profession that another player already has.

Of course, if you just throw out professions willy nilly, the deck would get huge, and the types of professions would be harder to memorize. I already know there's going to be a profession list on one of the cards for reference.


SPECIAL CARDS

• Special cards are professions that can be added to the deck. It is suggested that they be added in this listed order.
• Patsy: Has all three C/M/O, but is not the murderer. (Suggested for 6+ players)
• Politician: Can take his turn, even if jailed. (Suggested for 9+ players)
• Drunkard/Fool(?): Has none of the C/M/O. (Suggested for 12 + players)

What do these rules imply? 

It's different from Mafia. It's not all social deduction, until it is.You might think there's some easy deduction going on. Anyone who answers no to a C/M/O question is automatically not the murderer. Easy, except...you cannot win the game through logical deduction alone unless you are very lucky. The game lures you in with a simple logic puzzle, then hits you with a decision to made on incomplete information. It might take a pen and paper to keep track. Perhaps the facilitator could keep track.


Since most professions have 2 out of 3 C/M/O's most of the time, It is thought that any group, after all the turns have gone, have eliminated ~1/3 of the players as suspects. This, of course, may vary through luck, but it's obvious that there has to be guesswork involved. This is where the "social deduction" comes in. Adding in the ability to ask people unrelated questions (including, "Are you the murderer?") adds in the opportunity to watch people faces; how do they lie? Are they hiding something?

Players should familiarize themselves with the professions on the cards, for if they become the murderer, they will have to pretend to be another profession (which a sharp sleuth would catch if it was made up).

UNDERLYING MATH

The underlying math dictates the gameplay, much like Mafia. It is shown that the Mafia normally keeps ~50% chance of winning any game, but in reality is likely to win due to "social deduction" hence the name of the genre. Due to the fact there is never more than one killer, the mechanics to keep the chances of success balanced in my game are modified. Given that each player has a 1/3 chance of being ruled out (if someone asks them a C/M/O question they can respond 'no' to), the choices for murderer are 2/3 of the people. (Of course, luck might provide more or less help depending on who gets to answer 'no'.) There is a vote that removes a second person, but how often should that happen? By designating it as every three turns, it narrows the suspect list down to ~1/3 of the players. This keeps the possible suspects at roughly 1/3 no matter how many people are playing. This makes the average number of final suspects very small: 2 in a six player game, 3 in a nine player game, and so on. This is why it is suggested that, of the special cards, the Patsy is added first. It artificially adds an additional suspect to give the murderer a better chance of not being chosen. Then, as the number of players rises, the card additions give greater and greater advantages to the innocents to counter the number of final suspects as it goes up.

The number of players dictates the chances of the murderer getting caught in several different ways. First, the greater the number of players, the harder it is to find the murderer (though as I explained above, there are mechanics that help). Also, if there is a number of players not divisible by 3, the players get an extra round of voting. Therefore, a group of players whose number is 3x+1 has the best chance of finding the murderer, as it gives you an extra vote for the fewest number of additional players.

The smaller the number of players, the more luck is involved in finding the murderer. The chances of eliminating greater than 1/3 of the players as suspects is high if there are only 6 players, as compared to 18, due to a lack of precision.

Background information for my D&D 5e game

The following is a starting exposition note for players in my new D&D 5e game. Read this before you make a character!

The Land

You start in the town of Lessop, on the island of Torsfit, which is about 50 miles wide, the size of the main Hawaiian Island. On the island are a number of towns, wilderness, and small mountains. Torsfit is the westernmost island in a chain of islands called the Wild Islands, ostensibly belonging to the Kingdom of Fanlong. Since Lessop is the port town on the eastern edge of Torsfit, you get lots of ship traffic from the rest of the kingdom that service the isle and the other towns on it. The town has a good economy of tradesmen and merchants. 

Other port towns on the island include the sleepy Refport on the southwestern side, and the demi-human Diamondsilt to the north. Inland from the shore, mountains rise up fairly steeply, though a few small villages reside inland, mostly existing for lumber and other resources.

Most of the Wild Islands are considered diverse; Torsfit is no exception, though Diamondsilt to the north seems to be heavily inhabited with elves, dwarves, and halflings. Any race that can speak the common language can be found here. Strangely, within the past 20 years, upright, bipedal animal people have been appearing in the area, coming in on traveling ships from far away. They speak, they wear clothes, and they work hard, so not much fuss was made about them in Lessop. Even now one of those horse people is working at the blacksmith shop.

The Maritime Decree

The kingdom of Fanlong once attempted to cement his rule and expand his reach by imposing a series of regulatory laws known as the “Kingsland Law” over the islands. The law stated that any resource acquired from outside civilized portions of the kingdom, but within its borders, was property of the king.

This law had long put a damper on profiteering and free enterprise. If a nearby monster infestation didn’t actively harm the townsfolk, there was no reason to go clear it out, seeing as how any treasure – even something as basic as monster hides – belonged to the king. This was fine back when the kingdom was small and sparsely populated; the king was a benevolent dictator whose mission was the well being of his people. As the kingdom’s borders expanded and the population grew, the law took on a tyrannical bent.

This obviously created years of economic stagnation while the royal court flourished. This very month, near revolt, King Bern passed the Maritime Decree which abolished Kingsland Law. Tariffs were decreased to nearly zero within the kingdom. Trade regulations were loosened. 

Adventurers in Lessop turn their eyes to Lessop Lookout, the tall, sheer mountain standing between Lessop and the rest of the island, cutting the city off except for two roads that travel near either shore. Once, before the Wild Islands came under Fanlong rule, the columned tholos at the top of the mountain was a lookout for ships, and the tunnels inside the mountain were for siege defense. Now, the citizens of Lessop do not go near the place, for fear of haunting or worse. Even the wooded path between the mountain and Lessop is considered haunted. Now that the Maritime Decree has been passed, perhaps it is time to go see if the place is truly haunted.

The Pantheon and History

The gods that rule over this world and the history of the world are inextricable. One influences the other. Wars are fought above and below. No god is apart from the fate of the world.

The origin myth shared by the dominant intelligent races of the world was that the universe was made by four supreme gods, working together. They took upon themselves the different tasks needed to create life – creation, destruction, thought, purpose – for one goal: to create “children” capable of intelligent thought and eventual ascendance. Original worshipers of these deities thought that this was because of love for the world, a sentiment still shared by the majority of faithful today. 

Aira: elder goddess of creation, earth, life, love, sex, and nature. The world is named Airath in reference to her. She is depicted as a blonde woman, vines growing around her arms and legs, and is considered the most powerful of the gods, but also the most tied to the fate of the world. Sometimes she is depicted in a white robe or naked, and sometimes pregnant. She is the patron of parents, children, farmers, druids, and rangers. (NG)

Pheargo: elder god of destruction, fire, death, prophecy, and renewal. He is depicted as a pale, thin, bald man with a reddish black robe, hood over his head, a long knife in his hands. Not many people worship only him; he is usually revered as part of the larger whole of elder gods. He is considered deceased. His place in the heavens was taken by Kentaulo (see below). (LN)

Tria: elder goddess of thought, air, war, and light. She is depicted as a dark haired woman in full plate armor. She is often prayed to at the start of battle. She is a patron of warriors, wizards, and sages. (LG)

Dafisio: elder god of purpose, water, hope, and inspiration. Dafisio is depicted as a musician and witty storyteller, thin with a broad, thin mustache. He is considered “The First Bard”. Sometimes trickery is assigned to him, but he is not necessarily a god of lies. He is a patron of bards and leaders. (CG)

The combination of the goddesses of sex and violence was a neat package that many bawdy men were drawn to. "The Two Sisters" is considered a religion by the barest of margins, more an excuse for pirates to rape and pillage than anything else. However, there is some truth to the perverted nature of the two goddesses, alone with no others to temper them. They bore a son between them, Grapp. He was green and ugly. But he was no less a god. 

Grapp: lesser god of fear, anger, and tyranny. He is worshiped by "greenskins": orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, etc. He is depicted as ugly to the fairer races, though a Grapp worshipper sees nothing wrong with him. Each greenskin race depicts him as one of their own, though always with green skin. (NE)

There is also a popular, unorganized, generic faith of worshiping all four elder gods at once. It does not have any clerical power to speak of, only symbols split into four quadrants, with the colors reminiscent of each deity's dominion in each quadrant.

In the first age, a human named Kaijent became powerful and challenged the gods to his place among them. The gods did not kill the man for his arrogance, but did not agree that this challenge was what the purpose of his life was. Kaijent forced his way to the heavens regardless, and took his mantle as the fifth god in the world.

Kaijent: ascended god of will and magic. He is depicted as a monk; head shaved, loose, billowy clothing, wielding a staff. He is a patron of individuals, anarchists, and sorcerers. (TN)

In the second age, a portal opened in the heavens and a blackness came forth, a chaotic alien essence that threatened the five gods and the universe they reigned over. Both gods and mortals fought this blackness and drove it back, damaging the world in the process; a whole continent was eaten away, while another was sundered in half by the very forces trying to save the planet. This was known as the Black War. Pheargo died, but before he did, he passed his gifts on to his steward, Kentaulo. The second mortal ascended into the heavens, though he is considered to only be a steward of the heavens, and that he is only a humble intermediary to the forces of nature that he commands. Still, he gives the gift of power to his clerics and paladins like any other. Strangely enough, whether a Cleric or Paladin worships Pheargo, Kentaulo, or both, the powers granted are the same. Even the denouncement of either of the gods (in the case of, for example, Pheargo purists) does not affect their powers.

Kentaulo: ascended god, steward of Pheargo. He holds dominion over the same areas that Pheargo once did. He is depicted how he is remembered in life: a black robed youth, once a cleric of Pheargo, bearing two glowing sickles that represent the twins Burden and Gift, that the god bestowed upon him. (LG)

One individual intelligence from the black universe remained, named Mahkeon, though the gods do not say why, when it should have been eradicated from existence. Mahkeon survives as a being on par with the gods, and has worshipers itself. It is considered to be a god of chaos, darkness, lies, and oblivion, whose followers are slowly, gladly consumed with madness.

Mahkeon: invading god of chaos and madness. He is not depicted the same way twice. It is said he is unable to take a form that makes sense to mortal eyes. (CE)

In the third age, Dafisio slowly grew insane, making the whole of his church insane as well. His madness threw the world into turmoil. Nearly 800 years after the black war, Mahkeon had gathered power and allies, attempting to destroy Dafisio and replace him. A former paladin, once cursed by an insane Dafisio but still loyal to what he represented, took upon the mantle of purpose. She is considered a steward of the elder god's power, much like Kentaulo.

M'Hairi: ascended god, steward of Dafisio. She is depicted as a tall, stout, armored woman with the head of a horse, wielding a war hammer. (LG)

**************************

Like many RPG fans, I've created a world for running my D&D games in. The first campaign ran in 2e in the 90's. Then I re-ran the storyline in 3.5e around 2010 or so. This time around, I am using the 5e rules, but also fast-forwarding the timeline hundreds of years. I told my players in the last campaign that the stuff they did will be mythologized in the next campaign. Time to make good on the claim! The most obvious shout-out is to Kent, the Pheargo cleric who eventually ascended to the pantheon to be the steward of death. (Thanks, DJ!) Less obvious is the barbarian dully named Thor...one of those shrug and move on moments, I guess. After the campaign, his happily-ever-after was the reestablishment and repopulation of this barbarian people. The island name of Torsfit is a neologism literally meaning "Thor's Foot". Few non-elf NPC's will have remembered the source of the island's name. 

D&D 5e Player's Handbook

I picked up the Player's Handbook first thing last Friday. I've been reading it, helping friends make characters for fun, and thinking about running a game some time in the future. Here's my thoughts on it so far:

- They kept the layout designers from 4e. So much art, so much a work of art. It's beautiful.

- They're taking the "flavor" route and writing things out in paragraphs. Sure, there are the normal charts: ability score bonuses, items and their cost and weight...you know, the usual. But there's a lot of plain English. This can be good and bad. The way older editions (1e, 2e, BECMI) read like textbooks or instruction manuals. Bad for creativity, good for reference. Once I get past the beauty of the book, I'm going to tabulate this thing with the little 3M page stickies. I'll be labeling Races, Classes, Combat, Spells, Armor, and so on. Perhaps the DM screen - which I know they're going to sell eventually - will be more efficient.

- Warlocks are an advanced class. I can't even get a character name out of my players, but to set up a backstory detailing how you interact with your infernal patron? That's a lot of pure imagination right off the bat. I'm going to enjoy the ramifications of such a class, though. Someone choose Warlock!

- The index isn't bad. That's way more important than anyone realizes.

- The first chapter is an okay character creation summary section. It doesn't summarize the races when it says pick a race, for example. Unless you know it by heart, you have to read the entire chapter on races to know which race to play. In comparison to, say, Werewolf: the Forsaken (the last game I ran), the creation summary section is less informational. Just as a talking point, though, I have to ask myself: is summarizing the "Bone Shadow" tribe as this kind of werewolf who behaves like this and takes these powers, all on one page, a credit to the game world? It's a credit to speeding up character creation, for sure. It may lend itself to flat, two-dimensional characters. But does the impatient character creator, grumpily ignoring most of the chapter on races, make a ONE dimensional character as soon as he chooses a race? Would he even know what it means to be a dragonborn? At least, the new Werewolf player knows his Bone Shadow stereotype. The new D&D 5e player less so. I don't know whether that's a bad thing. I don't know how much pandering to bad, impatient players I and the book need to do.

- WTF is up with those triangular silver coins? They'd poke you in the pocket, get the edges snapped off, and generally would be strange to carry around. Bleh.

- There needs to be a sentence saying how many skill proficiencies a character has at start, and where they come from. (Class, Background, etc.) My friends would choose their class proficiencies, thinking that was all they were going to get, and then they get more. Well then!

All in all, I'm liking it more than 3e, 3.5e, and 4e. It's on a par with 2e rules-wise, but on par with 4e beauty-wise. I had high expectations, and the book is meeting them fairly well.

Canon and the zombification of IP

In talking about Disney's decision to not use the existing Extended Universe for further Star Wars media, The Mary Sue blog launched into a rant about the loss of meaning for canon. In short, the article claims that canon used to mean the separation of fanfic from authorized works, but now that even authorized work by the same company isn't necessarily included in the timeline (Star Wars novels as compared to the movies, for example), that the meaning, and even the need, for canon within fictional works is null and void.


Comic book continuities did it first. They hold a broader picture and an understanding of how to manage multiple continuities, if not necessarily elegance in their solution. Both Marvel and DC have many universes, one of which is the main universe which all the comics take place. (Marvel even says that our mundane real-life existence is a numbered universe in their pantheon.) The divisions of realities are different in that there is frequent crossover and knowledge of one another, but the writers make an explicit statement that multiple realities exist. Not so for Star Wars and other properties, but the time should come, in my humble opinion, to assume this is always the case.


The Star Wars universe does have their own system. In the Wikipedia article, G-canon is the films and anything said by George Lucas. T-canon is television canon, C-Canon is a continuity canon that includes the novels, and so on.


So what is the problem, according to The Mary Sue? Quote: "all it does is give copyright holders...a tool with which to exert control over our culture." I can somewhat see their point - that they want control over their own culture - that geeks today are more and more at the whim of companies since fandom is our life. That there is forever a renewed interest in classics that are in the public domain - Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Shakespeare - shows that people want and need to reinterpret. So, in a sense, The Mary Sue and others who may agree with the sentiment are like Martin Luther, nailing a list to the church door, demanding a reformation. Likewise, I see that this division - what the crowd wants, and what the authority is willing to give them, like Protestant and Catholic - will continue indefinitely.


I don't know of a concrete answer. Maybe someone will think of something. Here's the only idea I could come up with - make a metastory IP whose property is already divided, and no one setting is paramount to the others. Purposefully make a movie, then make an equally expensive movie that completely blows canon out of the water. Then do it again and again, keeping the main themes intact. DC sort of does that with constant movie reinventions and universe realignments in the comics, but it fails because they are trying to get one setting that sticks, and then running with it. They don't want to un-canon-ize. But maybe, just maybe, that little trick where the sidekick takes on the superhero's persona when the main superhero dies just might be what everyone is looking for, metaphorically speaking. Keep the major themes, drop the protectiveness of what has to be. Keep the Batman, drop the Bruce Wayne, forever.


The problem with my idea, and with this whole sentiment of destroying the idea of canon, is that details create believability. In the tradition of Tolkien and Lucas, the more rabbit holes you can go down in a world, the more doors you can open in a level of a video game, the more believable and immersive it is. It would be a huge waste of time and money to create this huge playground, lucrative to the company, then dispose of it for no reason. Except that's what copyright law originally did - let the IP linger in the hands of the descendants for awhile to sustain them, and then it becomes property of the people. Does anyone believe that the descendants of Lewis Carroll are being shafted right now? Is George Romero, who accidentally let Night of the Living Dead become public domain by not renewing his copyright, suffering?


George Lucas has retired from Star Wars, for the most part. As bad as the prequels were, they were still his creations. Everyone who said that George Lucas ruined everyone's childhood by destroying Star Wars must realize that Disney only has good favor right now because they are a stand-in for the cypher that existed in everyone's minds called 'George Lucas' replacement'. But underneath, it is still one of those companies that runs IP into the ground. Disney, WB, DC, Marvel, every IP holder in the world whose last name isn't Watterson. Star Wars, Batman, Harry Potter - they will never die. The zombies aren't us - it is the media we consume.


I want to mention my half-assed solution again: Keep the Batman, drop the Bruce Wayne. Or, more generally, keep the superhero concept in movies, but don't keep banking on the popular ones over and over. The theme of (in this instance) superheroes can be even more universal, like the theme of buddy movies, or car chases. But it has to constantly be reinvented. Yes, the trope of buddy movies can be considered zombified if there's nothing new to the trope, ever, and one is just stuck in their summer lineup rotely every year. People will take the buddy movie and purposefully make it different, very different, just to be fresh. So far, it has worked with Disney/Marvel (no more grittification, let's just go down the snark hole and let tech get impossibly magical). And when that runs dry, drop it. Sony's Spiderman and Fox's X-men should already be dropped. If I ever wrote a popular book and sold the movie rights, I'd want to put in a reboot clause. An acquisition of this IP is allowed one iteration. No reboots or retroactive continuity is allowed.

The cancellation of Vampire: the MMORPG, and thoughts on White Wolf in general

Yesterday, CCP (the company behind EVE Online, and the company that merged with White Wolf in 2006) announced that the long-awaited Vampire MMO project was cancelled. A round of layoffs accompanied this news.

The project felt like vaporware from day one. In spite of reading about a CCP employee's defense of their work ethic in my extended G+ circles, everything about the original announcement and years of delay felt like that sort of guy (you know the one) that promises the moon but never delivers. Of course, this is not how we should define CCP; after all, they made EVE Online, a massively popular and long-running sci-fi MMO, so they have most definitely followed through before. I should rather say that it can be compared to that one guy who has lots of money, throwing huge parties, but when the money runs out (or the guy just gets tired of partying) the lights turn on and a game of musical chairs - with very few chairs - ensues. The rich guy doesn't care, it's just some money wasted, not a livelihood. I'd very much like to think of CCP this way. But more likely, I think CCP thought they could leverage a moderately well-known intellectual property in RPG circles into a game, then dropped it when the IP went stale.

I played White Wolf tabletop games for most of the 90's and a fair bit of the 2000's. I even attended some games this decade. So how does the news of the Vampire MMO's demise hit me? It depends on how you define death. When did White Wolf 'die' - the end of the old World of Darkness campaign? The end of the 90's grunge era? Where along the declining sales curve is 'death'? Does death mean the end of relevance, or the end of sales altogether?

White Wolf was this amazing concept in my eyes in the 90's. Roleplaying, but a modern day setting! And you can be evil! And you can do it in real life like those boffer games! Everyone is magical! In college, we played it every Saturday and Sunday, or even more frequently. It was the 'it' game - high fantasy was old hat (though an occasional D&D game was had) and World of Warcraft had not been invented yet. Everyone was sarcastic, and black t-shirts and trenchcoats were in. The terrorist-influenced 2000's made the aloof, godless monsters irrelevant to our fears and attention.

I felt it, when the vampires started to become irrelevant in me as well. I was 28 on 9/11, and continued to play in the local Mind's Eye Theater troupe for the next few years, but attendance was falling. Sticking with the troupe for so long taught me a good lesson in hindsight - know when to cut bait. I even returned last year to try to get back into it, but a few almost-forgotten acquaintances sitting around someone's living room, almost indistinguishable from a tabletop game, was not anywhere close to the fun I had once had. The grognard suppressed in my head says that I was only pursuing what's popular, and not being faithful to a system that works.

My inner grognard would have its chance. From 2012 to 2014, I ran a Werewolf: the Forsaken game. The game was used quite differently from other White Wolf games I had been in - it was used to tell an insular story. Our gaming group was (and is) almost secretive in our shared game storyline; we aren't connected to other gaming groups, telling each other of our exploits. This is not really the White Wolf game I remember, but then again, that is an issue many old players had with the new World of Darkness - much of the 90's sensibility was gone, replaced with a generic horror - not bland, just non-quirky. As a whole, I approve of the new World of Darkness games and enjoy them more, but the reason that is so is because I needed to escape the past - escape the 90's. It gave me what I wanted - a way forward - but some complained that White Wolf killed the goose that laid the golden egg (old WoD).

The MMO that CCP was making was Vampire: the Masquerade. That's old World of Darkness. Knowing this brought up feelings of remembering the old days, but also a fear of being stuck in the past. Not just me, but also White Wolf. Who - en masse who, not individually who - cares about the old White Wolf, or any White Wolf product in general? White Wolf pushed nWoD so hard when the new line came out, but it turned out to be their last hope before taking a downward turn.

Companies survive by changing. That could mean scrapping everything, or acquiring startups, or making many branches and seeing which ones succeed. White Wolf, like many other companies, may have seemed like their diversification efforts were tepid, but they did have a TV show, other video games, a collectible card game, and novels. The digitalization of media consumption (and the ensuing financial fallout) may have also contributed. They tried many things...but nothing else stuck.

So this announcement was a blip on the radar for me, reminding of a time when White Wolf was popular. I might miss the now-cancelled MMO - but I missed it since the first announcement.

"That"

Something that has majorly bugged me in script writing is the use of the word "that" when "the" would suffice.

(Bad guy runs off with a briefcase MacGuffin.)
Movie Star: Let's go get that briefcase!

I know it's technically permissible. In English, it denotes the selection of a particular object - however, in spoken English, especially in television and movies, it is inserted into situations that sound unnatural. Oh, that briefcase? I had no idea which briefcase it was until you said it was that one! Often, the object being referred to is not in sight (so the speaker cannot point to it), and often it is not the object of the previous person's statement (so the speaker cannot argue that the object is a clear antecedent). And always, it seems, the object is one of a kind, and would never be confused with another object of the same kind in the context of the scene.

There is no reason for using the word that in these situations. It is redundant, clunky, and it knocks my right out of my suspension of disbelief. The actor is destined to fail to make bad writing seem natural. Maybe overstating that in a sentence is a part of some linguistic pattern elsewhere in the world, but not in any American dialogue I have ever heard.

While we're at it, I'd like to tell you about how much I hate the phrase "Hang on!" used in EVERY wild ride in a TV show or movie throughout history...but I'll stop now.

Hacks.

Dread: the game, a review

Last night I ran a game of Dread: the Game. (If you haven't played this neat game, in short, it is this: it's a roleplaying game where, instead of rolling dice, you take a turn at a Jenga tower. If it falls, you die.) I have some good and not so good things to report on it.

Well, let's get the bad out of the way first. It takes 30 or so pulls for any given Jenga tower to even start to be precarious. We had over 40 pulls in the game, and the tower did not fall until the very end. People had died, sure, but in inescapable situations, and even at each other's hands, not from the main mechanic of the game which is supposed to kill people. Given that the game I ran was a) meant to be a one shot adventure, and b) had a larger than usual number of players, I would expect the deaths to come often enough with the number of pulls they were making. We were even drinking beer, and the Jenga tower was sitting on and end table in the middle of the room which was on carpet. The tower swayed, but never fell until it got purposefully knocked over (in the game, this means the character dies but succeeds in his or her action heroically). Near the end of the evening, I was simply killing people off by GM's fiat - they were getting tired of the game, and so was I.

The problem with Dread - the number of pulls it takes to knock over the tower -  could be fixed. Each person makes two or even three pulls per attempted action. Still, it was an unexpected problem that put a damper on the fun, in my opinion. The official rules say one pull on the pile per action; I don't know if the game creators realized that, by the time you make 30 pulls, everyone is tired of the tower not falling. Players kept commenting about how the tower needed to fall, and people needed to die. Players were rationalizing reasons for them to off other players, or just go ahead and put themselves into inescapable situations in a sort of player-driven suicide. We'll know better what to do next time, if we play it again, but the main mechanic of the game is a heck of an important thing to get wrong.

What was good about the game? The mechanic was novel. The rules were simple. The "making characters" section made sense, but wasn't necessarily anything we could have thought up out of the blue. Playing Jenga is fun and nerve wracking, and that lends drama to keeping your character alive.

Some of the good things about the game that people really enjoyed - the intriguing assigned characters, the story, the backstabbing - that was all me. Well, maybe not the backstabbing; we're all a vindictive, competitive bunch who enjoyed locking other characters outside the front door to be eaten by the Big Bad. So we made the fun for ourselves using the game as a framework.

I added a house rule that every person had exactly one thing that didn't require a pull, and one thing that required two. (What you were good at, and what you suck at.) Maybe next time I'll only put in what you suck at - anything to keep the number of turns at the Jenga tower high!

If you like the numbers game of roleplaying games, this game is not for you. It's a short game, there's no leveling up, there's no loot. Everyone enjoyed a good horror romp though. For better or worse, the Dread the Game system worked for us. Though really, we will all probably go back to playing Are You A Werewolf? next week.

When Game Mechanics and Psychology meet

While mulling about that killer board game rattling around in the back of my mind that will never get published, I googled "game mechanics". I came up with a mechanic that isn't used too much in board or card games, but wanted to see where else it was used. From there I said to myself, "What kind of different game mechanics are there?"

There are the usual good resources like Wikipedia, but there were a few websites that gave me pause. Websites about a company's game-making strategies or a gamification wiki show how insidiously meta the industry can become. Examples such as Blissful Productivity, Extinction, and Loss Aversion read more like psychology textbooks than descriptors of game mechanics. I feel that there are two categories being mixed together here: game mechanics used by the player and game mechanics used on the player. I would want to enjoy studying the former, and understand that studying the latter is important in designing games, though probably less enjoyable for me. I would very much like to categorize the two separately. Perhaps call them game mechanics and game conditionings? (Named after classical conditioning, a la Pavlov.) Or some sort of word that shows that it is what a game uses to entice players to play.

A statistical analysis: distributing pre-made characters

Last post, I described the problem of distributing pre-made characters to a group of picky roleplayers. Players get to choose or are assigned a character. If they are assigned a character, they may not like it. Let's see what method of distribution works the best.

Let's have ten players and ten pre-made characters. Each player would be satisfied, for example,  playing 5 of those characters. The odds of a player getting a character he or she enjoys in a random draw would be 0.5. The odds that all players would get a character they enjoy would be 1024 to 1 (0.098%). Consider it like ten coin tosses, and we calculate the odds of getting ten heads in ten tosses.  It would seem fair, since no one person or group of people would have preferential treatment, but odds are, one or more people would not like their character.

Now, imagine each player chose a character, one by one, until they were all gone. Let's not think about how we decide what order to have players choose in. The odds of each person having a character they would enjoy shrinks as the pool of characters shrink. However, the first five picks would have a chance of 100% that they'd find a character they like, because each player likes 5 characters, and less than 5 characters have been chosen, guaranteeing at least one they enjoy. This creates a better opportunity for those who get to choose first, however, it creates the air of unfairness for those who have to choose last.

Enjoyment (all) = 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 0.5 * 0.4 * 0.3 * 0.2 * 0.1 = 0.12% (833.33 to 1)

Now imagine a random draw + trading option. Half of the people will get something they like, half will not. Of those that do not, they are allowed to trade characters. 2 pairs of players could trade if the other person had something they liked. Therefore, the odds of satisfying every player is zero if we have an odd number of unsatisfied players. But what are the odds of either two, four, six or eight players having a character they do not like? Again, we use the coin toss analogy:

Odds of an even number of heads on a coin toss = 0.205 + 0.205 + 0.044 + 0.044 = 0.498

So, it's almost a 50% chance that there are an even number of characters that can be traded. The math seeing if two players can trade is pretty complex, so I will skip it. Suffice to say that it's a greater than 50% chance one or more people will be unhappy.

What about letting players choose the five characters beforehand, and the GM (me) doling out who gets what? What are the odds of each character getting chosen by at least one player? The odds of any of the ten characters not getting chosen by a player is 1024 to 1 (0.097%). This sounds like the best option.

Obviously, there are many confounding issues to the analysis. Maybe players are more or less picky. Maybe some characters seem really fun to play, and some are so boring or unimportant no one wants to play them. Maybe there are some players who would be happy playing anything.

Hopefully you've enjoyed my crappy math. Feel free to correct mistakes.

Dread: the Game aka that Jenga Game, and a few homebrew specifics

I've mentioned Dread: the Game here before. In short, it is a roleplaying game where instead of rolling dice, you pull from a Jenga tower for conflict resolution. Pull from the tower, succeed in an action. Don't pull. and you fail. If the tower falls, the character dies. There are other rules for further effects, but you get the gist of it.

The setting is going to be a farm where the farmer has recently died, and each character has a reason to be there the day before the property auction - the bereaved daughter, the ex-wife, the farmhand, the neighbor, the state executor, real estate buyers, a reporter, the banker, a cop. (Some of my players may be reading this blog, so no spoilers. But yes, Dread is a horror game, so that's what they should be expecting.)

I chose to pre-make characters to have them relate to one another in a specific way. Each character knows of the other but isn't very close - the daughter lived out of state, the ex-wife was married to the farmer when the daughter was too young to remember, the neighbor wasn't too neighborly over the years, the cop and the banker have said hello at the coffeeshop once or twice, etc. This mirrors the general familiarity players have with each other's characters at the beginning of campaigns. A player may say that their character has a past with this other character, but unless they sit down together and write a novel about their backstory, how close are they, really? This way, each character has the familiarity of knowing each other in a small town without having to deal with being too close. I think it is the perfect analogy for "you meet in the tavern" beginnings of your usual hack and slash game.

A tough decision was choosing how to distribute the characters. Complete randomness may create unsatisfied players. Players choosing one by one means the last few players to choose will scrape the bottom of the barrel. For now, I have decided to distribute randomly, then allow people to trade characters if both agree.

There's a juicy mathematical analysis there, I just know it! Maybe next post.

I've been drawing up the layout of the farm and each building. I've detailed the plots and various things that will be happening. Here's hoping it will be loads of fun for everyone.

The Anti-Monomyth

What sort of story would you get if you did the opposite of Joseph Campbell's monomyth? Of course, you would take measures to create a compelling story, but let's see what we can accomplish by setting up plot points that fly in the face of the monomyth.

 

Let's look at each point of the Hero's Journey and do the opposite of what it entails.

1. Call To Adventure - The opposite of starting our hero's journey is to have the quest start in media res. You could say that the true opposite would be starting the story at the middle or end of the hero's journey. The sheriff from No Country For Old Men comes to mind.

Also, just to add one last bit of contrariness, the protagonist will be a woman, just because. So we have a woman who has faced her destiny in her life's battle, and that battle is either in the middle or possibly even almost at an end. And her name could be Erinnella Isabella Sharona Coachella, because short names like "Luke" and "Neo" are all about the namelessness of a nothing child growing up and achieving great things and great names, and this is opposite day.

2. Refusal of the Call - nah, she's been doing this for years and jumps at the cry for help, like Batman responding to the Bat signal.

3. Supernatural Aid - Pshaw. She fixes situations with her own two hands. Those two hands may pull the trigger of a gun, or punch a bad guy, or even write a scathing report like Lois Lane destroying Lexcorp's reputation with an article in the Daily Planet. Just make sure that guns, or writing, or even her own skills are not given "magical" properties. I don't mean that literally, I mean don't ascribe her set of skills as something esoteric and unattainable. If you aren't careful, even her willpower can be supernaturalized (a la Green Lantern). What she does, others can do. She's good at the right things, but never the greatest in the world at any of them, and never should people be in awe of any one skill.

4. Crossing the First Threshold and 5. Belly of the Whale - It's a moot point. If she's in the thick of things, why does she need a push out the door? What would change her? (Oh, I'm sure something could change her, but let's not worry about that just yet.)


6. Road of Trials - Let's not get this confused with mere conflict within a story. Sure, there's conflict - let's say, a cabal of international terrorists brought together to overcome the constant threat of our heroine's heroics. She might win, she might lose, but she's not going to discover a new inner strength in the process.

7. Meeting With the Goddess - Obviously this can take on a religious or spiritual quality, though it can also be represented by the higher goals or morality or state. Let's just say our heroine knows exactly what she's doing and why she's doing it.

8. Woman as the Temptress - Here the male focus of the monomyth is revealed. Skip it, unless we want Fernando to swoop in and seduce her. Whatever.

9. Atonement With The Father - Nah. Any large, foreboding father figures will just be dealt with. "You faked your death and manipulated me from the shadows? Oh well. Just going to continue on my mission, screw you like everyone else."

10. Apotheosis and 11. The Ultimate Boon - If the heroine is some sort of international spy like we are painting her to be, we have to realize that the good guys help others - that's just what they do. Giving boons to society is so broad. Jeez, Joe. Now do-gooding is under the umbrella of the monomyth. What's next, montages?

12. Refusal of the Return - Like we mentioned before, she has no family and is generally unattached.

13. The Magic Flight - Are you saying that thrilling getaways are now part of the monomyth?

14. Rescue From Without and 15. Crossing of the Return Threshold - Nah, the story is already about self-reliance.

16. Master of Two Worlds - Again, stages of discovery are moot in a story about a well-versed protagonist.

17. Freedom To Live - I thought the monomyth had consumed everything. I was wrong. IT ATE FREEDOM ITSELF.

So, from this, we have an experienced heroine (say, an international spy) who is in the thick of her career and jumps into the fray at any call for help. She does not have esoteric powers of any sort, just her own skill. She is the same, scene to scene - she has no huge character growth, and is generally unattached. She is confident in what she is doing. In spite of Campbell trying to greedily swallow the concepts whole, she a) is good and fights evil, b) makes thrilling getaways after accomplishing her goals, and c) lives freely outside of the yoke of ignorance.


We have created Erin, the Esurance Girl.