Re-Invention

I'll be honest with you.  Re-inventing yourself is a bitch.  Seriously.

If you've known me for a while, then you know that I set out to re-invent myself a few years ago.  To make a long story as short as I can make it, bad shit happened.  It freaked me out.  I mean, it literally caused me to completely doubt life as I'd known it up to that point.  It illuminated me to the fleeting nature of our existence and all that.  I went through some seriously rough times.  In short, somebody died.  I blamed myself.  I decided I could no longer live within the status quo.  I struggled with how to change the status quo while being too scared/stressed/whatever to think rationally.  I jumped into the first escape pod I could find.

"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death."
- Anais Nin

If you've ever undergone a major life re-organization, you understand.  If you've ever gone through post-traumatic stress, you understand.  I was there.  I was trying to figure out how to get out of being something I no longer wanted to be, while figuring out what I wanted to be... hell, what I could be.  I believed, at the time, that the job I was in contained my only marketable skill set.  That was a huge obstacle.  What I really wanted to do...  What I had always wanted to do, was write.  I have always considered myself a writer, even when I hadn't created a single piece of writing not directly related to my job for quite some time.  Yet, I did write things for my job.  So, I was writing in some form.

I decided that I wanted to re-organize my life so that I could begin to pursue life as a writer.  I started a blog for the dual purposes of getting my thoughts and feelings out there in front of me and to get used to writing every day, whether I felt like it or not.  I got a job in the video game industry, albeit in retail management, but still working with video games.  There I was able to combine my love for gaming with my years of leadership experience.  But things got complicated, as things often do.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped writing.  I got sucked into the daily grind and lost focus.  It's easy to do.  There are bills to pay, family and friends to spend time with, there is work to be done.  I took me almost two years to discover that I had lost the path again.

Now, I'm back.  I may not be completely on the road yet.  I haven't gotten to the point of publication yet.  But I'm at least headed back towards the right road.  I'm writing again.  I can't say for sure that life won't bite me in the ass again.  It has such sharp teeth.  I am trying to avoid being pulled back towards the old status quo.  I'm trying to focus on my goals.  I am visualizing the outcome.

I am (and I can't stress enough how important, how vitally essential this is) surrounding myself with people who have their eyes on a similar prize.  Sure, right now the contact is all online.  I am following them on Twitter.  Some of them are following me on Twitter as well.  I need this community in order to see that it can be done.  They have already given me so much, mostly without even realizing it.

Yesterday, this community gave me several things.  If you aspire to be a writer, as I do, or any sort of creative artist, from musician to graphic designer, you need to check out these links.

Daniel B. O'Shea is writing a serial novel on his blog.  This is amazing.  Yesterday, he wrote about moving the ball.

Jason L. Blair, creator of the Little Fears role-playing game, told us about Operation: Awesome.

Author and game designer Jess Hartley shared some inspiring news with the world yesterday.

These stories tell me that it can be done.  It's just up to me.  I have to keep moving the ball.  I have to keep putting the pieces into place and not let myself get discouraged with the pace of my progress.  I have to start my own version of "Operation: Awesome" and set measurable goals.  I have to apply myself and get words on pages, no matter what it takes.  But first I have to educate myself on process.  And I have to also find time for reading and research (which does include video games, especially in the genre I'm going to be writing, horror/thriller).


Here's to moving the ball.

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The Rationale for Simple

I know.  I know.  The last word in the title should be "simplicity" but "simple" is just so much more... simple.

I've been thinking a lot about the objectives of the game I've been working on.  Which I am calling The Broken Veil.  At least for now.

Anyway, objectives.  What do I want the game to accomplish?

• Atmosphere - I want to create an atmosphere of dread and horror.  I want the players to be scared.  I want the game to have the feel of a gritty survival horror video game.
• Easy-to-Learn - I want the core mechanics to be easy to learn.
• Quick Yet Robust Character Creation - I want the players to be able to quickly create a character that they can identify with and customize.
• Dramatic Support - I want the system to support the atmosphere and drama, not take the players out of the game.

With that in mind, I'm giving strong consideration to reducing the number of Attributes to 3 Core Attributes:

• Body - This attribute represents the character's physical abilities, from strength to agility to endurance.  
• Mind - This attribute represents the character's mental abilities, including intelligence, reasoning and wit.
• Spirit - This attribute represents the character's social/emotional strength, resilience and flexibility.

In addition to an adjective-based rank in each of the three attributes, the player would select a primary and secondary attribute, with the remaining attribute becoming the tertiary.  Skills associated with the primary attribute would be easiest to learn and advance, with secondary being next easiest.

Following the adjective-based theme of character creation, the prime Skills are also descriptive.  The player would write down a number of descriptive phrases for the character, based on the Skills she wishes to possess.  For example: Player 1 is creating a character named Justine, who is a reporter for the local newspaper (cliched, but this is an example).  He decides that she is going to be "witty" "flirtatious" and "easy to talk to."  These are the Skills that are going to help her get the good stories despite not being the best writer at the local rag.  Perhaps the Justine is "agile" as well.  Depending on the number of points the player wants the spend, the the character gets a rank in each of these Skills from Mediocre to Excellent (the default level for a character who doesn't possess the Skill is Poor).  Note that these names are not written in stone.  I am working on the names of the Skills I plan on using.  In addition to Attributes and Skills, there are also Gifts and Faults.  Gifts and Faults aren't ranked.  The character either possesses them or doesn't.  

What do you think of a system that keeps the required Attributes simple, but allows the player to customize characters through skill depth?  

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In Space No One Can Hear You Game

If you know me well as a gamer, you know that my gaming preferences lean away from sci-fi gaming.  This goes not only for tabletop rpg's, but also video games.  Sure, I've played some Mass Effect.  I've played most of the Halo games (though I am considering trading them in... GASP!).  I've played Dead Space.  I've loved me some Fallout 3.  When I was younger... okay, much younger, I played a tabletop rpg called Gamma World.  Does anybody remember Gamma World?  I think WotC did a 3E/D20 remake of the game that never really took off (there were actually 5 editions of the game), then it was lumped in as a campaign type for D20 Future.  Now, they're actually re-booting the game again for an October, 2010 launch.

Also, if you know me well as a gamer, you know that my above mentioned discrimination against the sci-fi genre actually bothers me.  I've explored it numerous times, prodding it with sharp sticks.  Picking at it like a scabbed-over, weeks-old sore.  I've squeezed the icky pus out of it.  I've tried to figure it out.  I have conclusions.  I'm not sure if they're final conclusions.  But they're what I have at this point.  I'll still keep prodding at it.

What brings me to write about this today, you ask?  Okay, so you didn't actually ask.  Actually, my last few in-post questions have gone unanswered.  But I'm stubborn.  I'm a persistent bastard.  I'm going to keep at it, because that's what I do.  What brings me to write about this today is a short post over at Gameplaywright where Will Hindmarch asks a seemingly simple question.

"Why don't sci-fi games sell like fantasy games do?"

There it is.

Will got me picking at that scab again.

Will has a good point.  In order to try to sell sci-fi games, especially of the tabletop rpg variety, the designer mixes in strong elements of fantasy.  Gamma World did it.  Warhammer 40K is an excellent example of the phenomenon.  D20 Modern/D20 Future were redolent with fantasy elements (doesn't help that they were WotC products).

There are some excellent comments on Will's short post.  Rob Donoghue mentions the lack of a "shared shorthand" akin to fantasy's "Tolkien standard."  Several others talk about the fragmentation of the sci-fi fan base.  There are several other great ones to read if you click the link.

For me, the conclusion I have come up with thus far is fairly simple.  It's space that does me in.  There's just too damn much of it.  Justin Alexander writes that "Sci-fi games are often guilty of selling the setting instead of selling a game."  He's right.  The infinite boundaries of space are an attractive selling point.  The writers plug in some cool weapons and some neat looking alien races.  They throw in some spaceships and a backstory for the world that is supposed to draw the consumer in and give them plenty of room to customize the setting, bt then they drop the ball.

The truth is, there's just too damn much space to fill in... well, in space.

If you look at the sci-fi games I've played and enjoyed, video or otherwise, most of them are pretty tightly focused.  They aren't concerned with the infinite expanse of space, but rather with the human (or inhuman) drama of fairly tight locational boundaries.  Whether they are a single spaceship (Dead Space's Ishimura), a single city (Fallout 3's DC Wasteland), or a single planet (as in Gamma World or Borderlands), the focus is tight enough to provide a large enough setting to encourage diverse encounters and scenarios, but small enough to provide boundaries.

Sometimes, a canvas can be too large.

Giant empty swaths of blank space to fill can be intimidating and stifle creativity.  Sure, we love Star Wars and Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, but we aren't creating those settings as we play.  We're just partaking in someone else's creation as we watch the movies, or expanding on it slightly as we play the games (but gaming in those settings is still too limitless for me).

An example of a focused sci-fi game (so far as I've seen it) is David Hill's Maschine Zeit.  I've written a bit about it here previously.  It does feature a setting where space travel is a given.  But it concentrates that setting on the human and inhuman dramas that play out in focused, if not confined, locations.  David has done a good job of setting specific areas of exploration and interest and encouraging play in manageable bits.

My idea for a sci-fi game?  Take sci-fi back to its roots.  Focus on a single planetary system.  Make space travel limited.  Short distances are possible, but the longer the voyage, the riskier it is.  Exponentially.  The traveling fleet is old and unreliable.  Something happened in the past that has taken away the money or incentive to build new ships.  Maybe this is a somewhat post-apocalyptic game.  The characters are in an outpost system, far from the space traveling civilization to which they once belonged.  Some war or other catastrophe has caused most, if not all, of the military and space-worthy crews and vessels to have been long since redeployed.  Now, this small outpost is cobbling together some ships for bold adventurers to take huge risks to attempt to explore nearby planets and learn what happened, or just gather resources and pool knowledge.  Star Trek was once described as "Wagon Train to the stars." I think that this brings us back to a limited, focused setting that feels more true to that concept.  We're in a lawless frontier.  Scope is manageable.  As characters become more accomplished, enterprising GM's may wish to introduce technology that can expand the world.  It's like a space western.  I like it.

Damn.  Now I have more ideas on my plate.

What do you think?  Feel free to post your thoughts about any of this.

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The Tearing of the Veil: Another Option for Gamemasters

About two weeks ago, I wrote a post outlining one possible explanation for the bizarre conditions that exist in the world of the game I am writing.  I am still working on the game, poring through mechanics and solidifying the pre-game story of the world.  I am also still working on a title and am leaning towards something like: Through Broken Veil or The Broken Veil or something.  Who knows.  It will change again.


For now, I would like to throw out another teaser.  Much like Star Wormwood and the Hopi Prophecies of the Fifth World, here is another option for the gamemaster on how the world of the game got to be the way it is, how the Veil Between Worlds came to be torn, causing the Shift.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,

Out of SPACE - out of time.
- "Dream-Land" by Edgar Allan Poe

It was hard to believe that it was already April.  Nazi Germany was losing the the war on all fronts.  This wasn't how it was supposed to happen.  Heinrich Himmler and Lanz von Liebenfels had made fantastic promises of an unlimited supply of fresh troops to fight for the Reich.  They claimed they knew how to access Ultima Thule and call forth the guardians of the place, those ubersoldat of lost Atlantis, to fight for the glory of the Fatherland.  He had done everything they had asked.  The castle at Wewelsburg had been prepared according to their specifications.  The mosaic and the twelve columns had been meticulously put into place.  He had financed the Schafer expedition to Tibet to find the Black Sun Artifact, which they had taken to Wewelsburg.  He had annexed Austria and transferred the Hofburg Spear to their possession.He had publicly renounced the teachings of Liebenfels and "banned" him from publishing his works. He had even publicly severed all ties with and formally disbanded the Thule Gesellschaft.  They told him that this was necessary to prevent the enemies of the Fatherland from learning of their true plan.  In reality, Liebenfels, through Himmler, was one of his closest advisors and the Thule Society was secretly alive and well.

Himmler had come to him with the plan more than eight years ago and had not embraced it at first, but when they told him about tearing open the Veil and gaining access to Ultima Thule and its armies of ubersoldat, when he learned of their knowledge of these things, he agreed to give him the resources necessary to carry out the operation.  Delays.  There were always delays.  The Veil was supposed to have been torn years ago.  Time had grown short.  But still, they  had come through enough times to warrant his continued support.  After all, last July they had come to him with the news that there would be an attempt on his life, but not to worry.  They said that "the Horseman" would save him from death.  "The Horseman" turned out to be Heinz Brandt, who moved the bomb just in time to save him.  Brandt, a former equestrian gold medal winner at the 1936 Olympics, had died from injuries sustained in the blast, but "the Horseman" had done exactly as they had said.

Now they had told him that it was his destiny to cross the Veil and lead the Atlantean Armies to victory alongside the German Wehrmacht.  They asking him to make the ultimate sacrifice.  In order to step through the Veil that had been torn open, he would have to take his own life.  His armies had held the barbarians back from the gates as long as they could.  They were frighteningly close now, but the time was upon him.  The time was upon them all.  When  Himmler had first told him of the need to sacrifice himself to accomplish their plans, he had called his guards in and had Himmler arrested.  Now, it somehow seemed less crazy.  Tonight was Walpurgis Night.  A night when it was even easier to pass through the torn Veil.  Using the Black Sun artifact and the Spear of Destiny, it was his time to become "Der Neue Messias" the New Messiah.

---

When it was over, Liebenfels claimed that the ritual was unsuccessful.  That Hitler was of racial stock too inferior to have been selected as Der Neue Messias.  Still, there were signs that at least some parts of the ritual had been effective.  The Veil was still slightly torn.  The sacrifice had apparently not gone unnoticed.  If someone brought the Black Sun Artifact and the Spear of Destiny back together, it might be possible to complete the ritual and tear the Veil open wide enough to pass through into Ultima Thule.  As long as his calculations had been correct...

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The Hollow Kingdom: Camelot

I've been thinking for several weeks about writing a post on Camelot as the perfect fantasy setting.  A few days ago, I got the prod that I needed to make this post a reality.  Thanks to Justin Achilli for kicking me into action.

"Ask ev'ry person if he's heard the story;
And tell it strong and clear if he has not:
That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory
Called Camelot."

Camelot.  It's one of the most enduring "fantasy worlds" ever created.  The earliest stories of Camelot, of King Arthur and his court, were written in the 8th century.  That means that for about the past 1300 years, there have been stories, poems, movies, songs, video games, and all sorts of things created, all based on this same fantastic kingdom.  Forgotten Realms, eat your heart out.  Azeroth, you're just a baby.  Greyhawk?  A drop in the ocean of time.  Even you Middle Earth, are a youngster compared to that grand-master of fantasy worlds, Camelot.

This is a world so enduring, so accessible, that it became the symbol of a period of American history known for both its prosperity and its turbulence.  Like the Camelot of the medieval romances, John F. Kennedy's American Camelot was known for sterling ideals and unrivaled prosperity, set against a backdrop of lies, betrayal, family rivalries and, ultimately the destruction of the ideal.

Almost everyone knows the story.  The boy, Arthur, is merely an innocent lad.  He is seemingly not destined for power or greatness, but he is chosen by the universe to lead.  He establishes a grand kingdom.  A seat of reason and enlightenment called Camelot.  From there, Arthur leads his kingdom to a time of great peace and unparalleled achievement.  Chivalry rules the day.  Knights pick flowers for the ladies.  Things can't get any better.

"The candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long."
        - Dr. Eldon Tyrell, Blade Runner

Everyone also knows the rest of the story.  The king's love and bride betrays him.  His family, his queen, his best friend all set the stage for the fall that must come.  We know it must, because nothing that seemingly perfect can last forever.  Even Kennedy's American Camelot ended in a dramatic, violent collapse.  The thing is, with any Camelot, we know it is coming right from the beginning.  We can sense it.  There is an undercurrent of impending doom even in the beauty and perfection.  It is the imperfect fantasy.

The imperfect fantasy.  That's the thing.  I've spent a lot of time over many years constructing fantasy worlds for my players.  If there's one thing that most world builders know, it's that the perfect fantasy is just too damn boring.  There has to be conflict to move the story.  You have to know, in the back of your mind, that Camelot is likely to fall.  Almost sure to collapse.  But for that one special band of heroes.

Look at our literary fantasy worlds.  Middle Earth is on the verge of falling to the Dark Lord of Mordor.  There is corruption everywhere.  It is only by the successes, against all odds and all reason, of the most unlikely band of heroes, that the dark tide is beaten back.  This is not the story of a perfect kingdom.

Look at our comic books.  Gotham is beset by vile villains on all sides.  Crime is rampant.  The city's leading philanthropist is murdered in cold blood on the streets of his dark Camelot.  If it were not true, Gotham would have no need of the Dark Knight.

Look at our video games.  Rapture, the ideal society, is sinking into chaos while Andrew Ryan practices at golf.  Frank Fontaine plots to control the citizenry.

There stories of Camelots are innumerable.  There is always the veneer of prosperity and perfection, but under it all lies the ugly truth.  The queen is false.  The best friend a betrayer.  The energies of the realm's protectors are spent in fruitless pursuits.  They are off questing for their holy grails while the kingdom's seamy underside is asserting itself.  The hero's family are plotting against him.  It is up to the most unlikely of heroes to, if not attempt to save the kingdom, at least to tell its tale so that Camelot may live on.  Sometimes they succeed.  Sometimes they fail.  That is in the hands of those who weave the story.  Maybe your protagonists are agents of the fall.  That is up to you.

In the end, it isn't Camelot's shining example of the ideal society that makes it the perfect fantasy setting.  It's the coming fall that makes it engaging.  It's the imperfection that makes it the enduring legend.  After all, it's but a thin veil that separates the shining Camelot from the abyss.  It could all come apart at any moment.  With as little as a single bullet or a well-placed spear.

Do you find this model to be present in any fantasy worlds you may have built?  Are there any examples in popular culture that I've missed (I'm sure there are)?

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Alan Wake: A Geekcentric Review

Yesterday afternoon I finished Alan Wake.  As most of my regular readers know, I am a horror junkie.  I love all things horror (okay, so all quality things), be it novels, short stories, video games or movies (though I'm not too keen on random and gratuitous splatters of gore).  I know this game fits more into the suspense-thriller genre, but it's close enough.  In fact, one of the things I loved about this game are the homages it pays, whether intentionally or unintentionally, to other great horror icons from Stephen King to The Twilight Zone to Silent Hill, Bioshock and even some scenes reminiscent of Resident Evil and the Left 4 Dead games.  Now, I've read reviews that complained about this title's facial animations and I know that there are people who will like this game and people who will dislike it.  Screw all that.  Welcome to:

A Geekcentric Review: Alan Wake Edition

Just so we're on the same page here, this isn't IGN or Ko-freakin-taku here.  I have my own gaming preferences and this review will reflect that.  I also have to include some frame of reference to the tabletop horror rpg I'm working on, because I did play it with that in mind.  Please note, that I'll keep any spoilers at the end of the review, appropriately labeled, and won't betray any major plot points.

The Story:  Alan Wake is the story of a writer who is suffering from debilitating (for a writer anyway) writer's block.  He and his wife take a trip to the seemingly idyllic small town of Bright Falls, WA for a relaxing vacation. While in Bright Falls, Alan starts to live through the events of a novel he wrote, but doesn't remember writing.  Things in Bright Falls get much more sinister at night and Alan's only feeble protection from the evils besetting the town is light.  This light can come from anything from tiny flashlights to giant spotlights.  It is up to Alan to save himself, the town, and those he holds dear from the evil that hangs over (and under) the town.

I really like the story in this game.  It kept me engaged and wondering what was going to happen next.  The manipulation of light and shadow added an interesting dimension to the game.  There are also some great plot twists along the way.  The biggest weaknesses in this area are the novel excerpts you find along the way, which are poorly written, leading me to believe that Alan isn't that great of a writer to begin with; and the times when story is sacrificed for gameplay.  The latter was particularly evident during the farm scene when the game briefly leaves its strong narrative roots and ventures into arcade shooting gallery territory.

The game is structured into episodes, like a television series, and plays like a tv adaptation of a novel.  Alan spends much of the game running his internal monologue or narration so that you know what he's thinking and how he feels.  I like the structure of the game very much, and I found that the narrative monologue helped cut down on some of what in most games becomes artificial and forced expositional dialogue.  There are a few flashbacks in the game, but they are not too jarring and are handled fairly well.

The Graphics:  The visuals in this game fall into a few different categories, some of which are handled better than others.  The wide vistas of Bright Falls and surrounding area are beautiful.  I found myself occasionally stopping to admire some of the more breathtaking views in the game.  The character modeling is uneven and goes from adequate and occasionally good to distractingly bad.  Alan must use some strong hair gel to keep it shellacked to his head even during strenuous physical activity.  I didn't find the facial animations to be particularly distracting.  I also didn't see too much extraneous and inappropriate hand gesturing (see Premonition, Deadly for an example).  The vehicles and other props are handled pretty well, as are the enemies that Alan encounters along the way.

I love the way the cinematics are incorporated into the game.  I often found my attention pulled in by a cinematic without even realizing it until I saw the graphics shift back into gameplay mode.  Throughout the game are radios and televisions that Alan can turn on to watch the live action Night Springs tv show (a la The Twilight Zone) or listen to the friendly local radio personality.

The Controls:  The controls are the biggest weakness of Alan Wake.  Thankfully, the game is structured in such a fashion that it never becomes a game-breaking concern.  The left analog/left bumper combination to get Alan to dodge attacks is unwieldy at best, and at worst doesn't work at all.  I did have this cost me Alan's life a few times when a dodge didn't register and I was pummeled by an enemy.  The other side effect of the dodge mechanic is that most of the time, when Alan runs, he starts with a strange looking stumble step, as the interface thinks you are trying to dodge before it realizes you are just running.  Shooting at enemies is also tricky and takes getting used to the games reticule being attached to Alan's flashlight beam.  I often found myself hitting the left trigger to unnecessarily boost the flashlight beam before pulling the right trigger to fire.  This cost me battery life on the flashlight, but I imagine it was reflexive due to the controls of games like Call of Duty that use that left trigger, right trigger combo.  The flashlight boosting mechanic was cool, if a bit metagame, but was difficult to pull off with vehicle headlights.  I often found myself changing direction unintentionally when I needed to boost the car headlights to take out an enemy.  As far as the driving controls go, I think this game nailed them.  I thought they were better even than Grand Theft Auto IV, with a more stable camera.

EDIT:  I realized that I forgot to mention contextual prompts...  I hate them.  I despise contextual prompts.  They kill my suspension of disbelief and remind me that I'm playing a game.  Resident Evil 5 did this constantly, prompting me to "press B, press B, press B, PRESS A, now hold down the left analog stick and swizzle it from side to side" and then making me repeat the scene if I didn't get the sequence and timing correct.  Terrible.  Alan Wake has some contextual prompt (such as starting generators, etc.), but they follow my cardinal rule of contextual prompts:  If you're going to use them, make them do the same thing every time. Remedy follows this, so they don't drive me crazy or kill suspension of disbelief.  The contextual prompts here are done pretty well.

Soundtrack:  This game has one of the best video game soundtracks I've ever experienced.  The music is well selected and utilized to optimal dramatic effect.  I love the music between episodes and always listened to the entire song.

Spoilery Stuff:  This paragraph (and only this one) contains some moderate spoilers.  If you don't want that, just skip it!  I noticed two fairly serious plot holes in this game.  The first is with Emil, who we never really meet.  We are warned about him, being told that he was Thomas Zane's apprentice and told to beware betrayal by Emil or a supposed ally like him.  Only it is never developed.  Also, there is a scene in the Sheriff's Office when Alan's agent, Barry Wheeler (who starts the game as a pretty annoying character, but is stealing scenes by the end), is on the telephone alerting a network of people that is dubbed "Night Springs" (like the in-game television series) to help combat the evil, but who never show up to help out.  I like the ambiguous ending and have been pondering the significance of the game's last line since I finished it.  Also, where does the cardboard Alan Wake standee disappear to?  Barry spends so much time carrying it around that I expected it to have some significance.  I also expected the radio host to have a more prominent role in the story.

Overall:  I think this is an excellent game overall.  It handled some of the themes that I plan on tackling with my tabletop rpg pretty well, such as the division of the action in to manageable bits and the shift from the "normal" world into a world where the paranormal is ordinary and back again.  I've read a lot of discussions about how this game isn't scary at all, but I think it is scary and atmospheric and well done.

There you have it, folks.  My take on Alan Wake.  I loved this game, even if it does have a few weaknesses.  I definitely recommend it for all of you survival horror and suspense fans out there.  I am anxiously awaiting the sequel.

Have you played Alan Wake?  If so, let me know what you thought!

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My Gaming Evolution

Since I started using Twitter again, it's been a rare day that I don't come across a link or three that lead to interesting reading.  Like most people, I retweet the ones that I like.  I usually use TweetDeck or (more recently) HootSuite to send them to both Facebook and Twitter, since I have almost 400 people on my Facebook friends list and only about 30 followers on Twitter.  In my post last night, I shared a number of them here.

One "meme" that I've seen on gaming blogs lately is the sharing of your "RPG DNA."  This means sharing what I think of as your gamer biography.  Sharing the influences that you've had, the games that you've played, since the very beginning of your life as a gamer, that have shaped your development into who you are as a gamer today.  Back in February, Rob Donoghue of Evil Hat Productions shared his.  Several others responded to the meme (links at the bottom of Rob's post), including the "Chatty DM" Philippe-Antoine Menard.  His second contribution to the meme was published yesterday, while I was mentally chewing on a piece that I'd read the previous day.

After reading all of these RPG DNA profiles, I was struck by how sheltered my life as a gamer was when I was younger.  As I've previously shared, I began playing in 6th grade, at age 11.  Some kids I knew at school bought the AD&D hardcover books to start playing the game, but they quickly lost patience with reading all of those pages of text and consulting the dictionary for unknown words, so they just passed them along to me so that I could read them and then teach them how to play.  Thus was my entry into gaming.

From then (1982) until I got married and started working full-time as a high school teacher in 1992-93, my gaming consisted mainly of a steady diet of Basic/Expert/etc. Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  As I posted last week, I hacked out my own game, Terrorist Wars, which we played off and on for a few years, along with Top Secret, Boot Hill, Star Frontiers and Gamma World (notice what all those games have in common? hmmmm).  I also played some Stormbringer, and in the mid-80's Twilight: 2000.  I even tried my hand at some Rolemaster, but it never stuck.

In the mid-90's, disappointed by 2nd Edition AD&D and an overworked new teacher and newlywed, I took a break from gaming.  After a few years, I began quietly introducing some of my students to gaming and fostering the interest of those who were already gamers.  I used to leave my classroom open late one day each week for the gamers to play while I worked in my office.  This was dangerous, since I taught in an extremely conservative rural southern school whose administrators still saw role-playing games as inappropriate material.  It wasn't until 1998-99 that I began playing again.

After a move back to the town where my parents lived in 1999, I was unfortunate enough to live in the path of Hurricane Floyd.  The storm caused extensive damage to my area and left me without power for a week (my generator was enough to run a single lamp and the refrigerator).  The school where I was teaching also closed for the week.  So, I spent my days at a FLGS.  I struck up a sort of friendship with the owner and a few of his employees and when 3rd Edition D&D was released, I was tapped to be the store DM.  I always had dozens of people who wanted to get into my games and I did this until a change in ownership and atmosphere at the FLGS.  Throughout the 1st decade of the 21st century, I played exclusively 3.x D&D and D20 Modern until I went through a life "reorganization" in 2007 and stopped gaming for a few years.  When I started gaming again, I quickly discovered that I had grown out of D&D/D20 or something.  I drifted over to White Wolf's Storyteller system and found Hunter: The Vigil.  Due to some life challenges lately (including starting to write again), I haven't gamed in a few months and turned my Hunter game over to one of my players to run.

Since I turned my game over, I've gone back to "gaming school" to write my own game and I've discovered something else.  The vague, general unease I had been feeling during my return to gaming over the past two years is likely due to another evolution in my gaming preferences.  I wasn't really able to put a handle on my thoughts until Tuesday night, when I read the piece by Jesse Burneko over at Play Passionately (Thanks go to Jef Godesky for tweeting the link) about the "social risks of story creation."  That article blew me away.  I've been turning it over and over in my mind ever since I first read it.  I knew I needed to not only link to it, but also to write a response to it.

Jesse articulates beautifully what I've been thinking, but haven't been able to quite grasp in a full, coherent manner.  He connected, for me, all the dots I've been seeing, but didn't know how to interpret.  Jesse writes that "a good story must reveal something about the characters as real human beings no matter how fantastical their circumstances."  He goes on to mention his craving for "emotional intimacy, revelation and resolution that speaks to recognizable human issues."  This goes beyond the role-playing vs. roll-playing discussion.  This speaks directly to the quality and resonance of the role-playing story creation experience.

Then, he hits the nail on the head and taps it home:

"Since role-playing happens face-to-face getting that kind of emotional resonance requires a degree of honesty, self-reflection and social vulnerability in ways that I think many gamers find uncomfortable.  Indeed I think that a great number of 'story oriented' gamers have spent a great deal of time and energy developing techniques that remove that need for vulnerability.  By removing that risk these techniques not only diminish the emotional rewards of story creation but also unintentionally introduce new social tensions and stresses that further complicate the role-playing experience."

Think about that for a minute.  He is basically saying that some gamers develop a defense mechanism to decrease the social/emotional risks of gaming, which decreases the chances of them receiving the desired outcome of their gaming experience.

Later in the piece, he elaborates:

"Somewhat ironically I believe that such behavior is an attempt to reduce tension.  I have come to the conclusion that many gamers value drama but actually shy away from tension.  By drama I mean emotive character play such as lying, betrayal, threats, grand speeches, mysterious behavior and so forth.  By tension I mean actual trepidation over potential outcomes when characters come into active conflict.  In many ways, it is emotionally safer for a player to manipulate his character into a calculated dramatic failure rather than honestly pushing the character’s agenda with no certainty to how things will resolve."

To me, this ties into the basic social insecurities of gamers.  We are not the most socially/emotionally adept creatures ever to grace the face of the earth.  Most of us have passion in spades, which leaves us emotionally vulnerable.  We have also adapted to being slightly outside the circle of conventional social norms.  This means that we've developed defense mechanisms to protect us and reduce our vulnerability.  I've been at tables where a lack of emotional trust has made navigating the game the role-playing equivalent of whistling through a minefield.  This lack of trust and emotional connection between everyone at the table, and believe me all it takes is one person who has fallen into these patterns to cause the behavior to spread like wildfire around the table, leads into a downward spiral of dramatic one-upsmanship:

"Emotional engagement has ceased to arise from honest connection with the characters and their crises and moved into the social arena where 'dramatic effect' is to be owned and delivered to each other with calculated effect.  The behavior often leads to social competition under the guise of co-operation as players begin to 'one up' each other for status and recognition over their dramatic contributions."

I have seen countless hurt feelings and misunderstandings arise from this behavior.  I'm also definitely not innocent in the lack of trust department.  We all share the geek DNA and we all fall into the common geek social traps from time to time, especially if we fail to understand the problem and commit to its solution.  I definitely wasn't aware of what was happening at the time, but I've seen one of the best games I've ever run dissolve under the weight of this emotional baggage, where the mechanics "ceased to resolve imagined tension between characters within the fiction and instead... moved to resolving real creative tension among the players."  The "wrestling match between the players over narrative direction" that Jesse mentions takes over the game.  At that point, neither the players nor the gamemaster is in control.  Instead, the social/emotional tensions are in control of the game and nobody enjoys the end result.

The revelatory part of this piece however, lies in Jesse's suggested paradigm shift (for me at least, and most players I've ever played with) from defining characters based on their abilities and capabilities to defining characters based on their crisis.  He's right.  Looking at characters based on their abilities and capabilities leads to a "niche-driven spotlight rotation method" that can and often does "lead to immense disappointment and frustration."  Not only are players disappointed with their share of the "spotlight" time, which is never enough in this system, but they are also disappointed when their character fails at something in which they have invested a great deal of game resources in ensuring that they will succeed.  These failures are directly at odds with how the players have defined their characters, resulting in the necessity for the player to redefine that character.  I've also seen the lack of sufficient spotlight time, especially if the character's capabilities were ill-designed for the story as it evolved, cause a player to have to redefine character.

To this end, Jesse has laid out the deceptively simple solution to a problem that has dogged me for years:

"The key to avoiding this disappointment is to shift focus away from thinking about what the character is supposed to accomplish and start thinking about the character in terms of what crisis he is confronting.  When a player invests in the character’s crisis the paths to satisfaction become less confined.  If my character is defined by his struggle with his religion then any set of events and resolutions which speak to that struggle will be satisfactory.  Maybe he drives his family away with his zealousness.  Maybe he abandons it all together.  Maybe he learns to keep it quiet so he can co-exist with his best friend.  What happens almost doesn’t matter because what the player and the group care about is the character’s struggle with his religion.

That isn’t to say that a character’s approach to that struggle isn’t important.  If part of the character is that he’s willing to shoot someone to back up his religious beliefs then that matters.  In fact, it’s vital.   But saying, 'This is a guy who’s willing to back up his beliefs with a gun' is very different from saying, 'This is a guy who never misses a shot.'  The former raises questions and introduces elements of narrative risk.  Who is he going to shoot?  What happens if he succeeds?  What happens if he fails?  The later introduces a comfort zone in which the character can safely take action without risk to his image or ego."

BINGO! YAHTZEE!  DING DING DING!!!  LADIES AND GENTLEMEN WE HAVE A WINNER!

It seems so simple, yet so revelatory at the same time.  It's a paradigm shift for most of us, I believe.  Those can be incredibly difficult when we are trying to give up decades of habits, ingrained defense mechanisms and conditioned responses.  He is asking us to think about the game differently.

Ironically, in that game I mentioned earlier that dissolved into social conflict, one of the things I had the players do during character creation was to "build-in" a crisis for the character.  One character was dealing with the aftermath of losing the wife and child he loved so dearly due to alcoholism fueled spousal abuse, the stress of which caused him to make mistakes at his construction job that resulted in the deaths of some of the men under his supervision.  Another character was an actor whose lover died in his arms on the set due to a prop malfunction.  I just failed to utilize these crises fully over the next 18 months of play.  At some point, they took a back seat to the "story" that we were creating.  It didn't help that we were using D20 Modern, which lends itself to ability defined characters, in my opinion.

So, once we make the shift to crisis-defined characters, the natural question seems to be, "How do I decide what crisis to use?"  Jesse cautions us not to just pick a standard literary conflict, like the stereotypical "religious figure who has issues with his faith."  He urges us, and I believe this is a key concept especially in a game like the horror game I am working on, to pull "from something that personally frightens you or that you struggle with."  He gives some excellent examples in the piece itself, which I consider a must read for all tabletop gamers.  This allows the players to "buy in" to the game on a personal, emotional level, which seems to naturally circumvent the emotional guarding that was discussed earlier, ironically by increasing the emotional exposure and vulnerability.

The one caveat here is that this has a chance to fail and that chance can be greatly affected by your group.  If you fear failure and the social risk involved, this will not work.  Not every player can play every type of game, even if they want to be at the table for other reasons.  Everyone has to commit to sinking or swimming together and if the game doesn't work, moving on to something else.  Jesse's final paragraph seals it all together for me, so I will leave you to check out this excellent article for yourself.  Hmmm... three links.  Have I recommended it strongly enough yet?

I kind of combined two topics here (and wrote an extremely long post in the process), but I feel that the evolution of my RPG DNA was a key component of the epiphanies induced by Jesse's piece.  I definitely feel that I am about to explore some "passionate gaming" at this point in my gaming life.  It is definitely a logical step and coincides with what I am trying to do with the game I'm developing.

So, where are you in your gaming life?  What is your RPG DNA?  Do you "play passionately?"

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Behind the Shift

This morning I was having some internal debate with myself about mechanics vs. setting in THE GAME.  Thankfully, it didn't come to blows.  It remained a civilized discussion.  The internal discussion revolved around which sections I am working on writing and in which order (setting my writing plan).  At the core of it is one of those chicken or egg questions that can be answered different ways by different people, but I think defines the core of any game (notice that in any incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons, the mechanics are the first thing in the book, while in the White Wolf games, the setting comes first).  What comes first, the setting or the mechanics?

Obviously to me, the setting comes first.  When I began to hatch this diabolical plot to actually sit down and write the game I wanted to play, I had to define the setting first.  I didn't decide on a set of mechanics, then build a setting to fit.  For that matter, are setting and mechanics independent of one another, or can they be?

When I think of setting, I am thinking of more than just the world in which the action of the game takes place.  I am thinking more along the lines of the "story-world."  In my mind, the "story-world" is the combination of the meta plot of the setting and the environmental factors that directly influence, or are directly influenced by the circumstances of the world that are unique to this particular game setting.

For this game in particular, my first thought was that I needed a world that was dark and threatening.  Also, I wanted it to take place in the modern world.  From there, I started listing some preferences.  I didn't want the game to rely on the typical tropes of modern horror tabletop role-playing games.  Hence, I wasn't too keen on zombies, ghosts, vampires, werewolves or mages being the major players in the game world.  Those are all excellent horror tropes, and work well, but I wanted a departure from that.  The average horror gamer knows a lot about all of those things.  Hell, the average gamer or would-be gamer knows many different varieties of them, their ecology, their habits, how they live (unlive?), how they are destroyed, etc.  There are tabletop rpg's out there that handle all of those tropes quite well.  That is not territory I wished to tread.

I also decided early on that it was a must that the characters play ordinary schmoes.  I didn't want supers or monsters as characters.  I didn't even want characters who knew what  the hell they were getting into.  I wanted "Joe the Plumber."  I think that some Cthulhu games (not Delta Green) manage that pretty well, but I don't want the characters in my game to have the gradual spiral into insanity be their only option.  As I've written before, pre-existing games come with a built-in mindset.  Players who know the game almost unfailingly play it a certain way.  So, if I announced that I was playing a certain game, even if I set it in a completely different world and changed most of the rules, but called it... I don't know... Picking Daisies With Cthulhu or Vampire: The Office, people would approach the "hybrid" game the same way they approach a typical game of CoC or Vampire.

So, I knew I wanted ordinary people as characters in today's modern world.  I also knew that I had to do something that would enforce that this was a horror game.  I had to isolate the characters and, vicariously, the players as well.  One additional concern I had was something that has always struck me about horror games in general:  It is damned hard to instill and maintain that feeling of horror (or dread or terror) for long.  In a movie, you have a two hour (or so) timeframe.  In a novel, the reader can put the book down when the tension needs to be released.  I wanted a game mechanic that reinforces breaks in tension at the appropriate points.  Who is to determine these points?  That is where "the shift" was born.

"The Shift" is the defining feature of the setting.  It in fact makes the setting what it is.  Yet, at its heart, it is also a mechanic (perhaps also the defining one) .  To me, it is a marriage of setting and mechanic.  When the players (and the characters) first realize "the Shift" is happening, or even worse has already happened, that reinforces the horror.  It is an unknown thing.  It is dangerous.  It is surreal and extra-normal.  It gives the players the sense, like good music in any drama, thriller or horror movie, that "something is about to happen."  The gamemaster can make the Shift happen when appropriate to the story.  Or maybe the players can, through their characters, eventually find ways (albeit unreliable ones) to spark the event.  Then, when the tension needs to be ramped down, or cut off completely, when the players need to piss or eat or smoke or just tell jokes and talk about video games (or better yet, tell jokes about video games), the Shift can happen again.  The characters are back in the real world.  The immediate danger is past.  The characters have time to rest, research, resupply, and recuperate.  The 4 R's.  The scene, the episode, is over.  Then, before plunging them back into the unknown, the gamemaster and players can do a brief recap of events and  prepare for the next episode.

Props to Alan Wake for showing me what that structure could do for (and to) a game.  I started working on this a few months before that game was released and had no idea that I would see glimpses of the potential for what I was working on actively demonstrated in that game.  Silent Hill has always used it, but Alan Wake makes it even more of a narrative technique.

Now, it's your turn.  What games have you played that have a setting/mechanic feature that reinforces the game to you?  What is that setting element/mechanic?  They can be video games, board games or tabletop role-playing games.  Share with me!

Photo Credit: Stephen Calsbeek

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Game Hacking in the Cold War Era

If you read my first post on Geekcentricity, you know the bare bones on how I was first introduced to role-playing games.  That was almost 30 years ago.  I know, I'm ancient.  I'm that old guy saying, "back in my day, we walked ten miles to school in four feet of snow."  But there were some great things, as far as gaming goes, happening then.  The first was, in the days before the internet (yes, Virginia, there really was a time when we didn't have that) - accessibility.

Back in the early 1980's, there were "mom & pop" toy stores around town.  There was even one in the local mall.  That toy store, which was later bought out by a national chain and then closed, was where I bought most of my first Dungeons & Dragons books, dice and miniatures.

There was another large toy store a few miles down the road from the mall that also carried Dungeons & Dragons materials until the whole anti-D&D craze took off in the area.  The one benefit of that is that when they discontinued everything in the gaming section, I was there with my friends to buy it all at greatly reduced prices.  I even found an original printing of Deities & Demigods, with the two extra chapters, that had fallen behind the rack long ago.  They sold it to me for $5.  Most of the adventures were marked down to $2.  We cleared that place out in a hedonistic frenzy of consumerism.

There were even a few dedicated gaming stores around town then.  If it was published, you could go to one of them and purchase it.  Every now and then, my friends and I would find a way to make the nearly two hour pilgrimage to the Green Dragon in Charleston.  I think it's still there, though I haven't been in years.

Now, we have the internet for accessibility.  There are still some exciting things going on in the hobby.  To me, the most exciting is the number of "indie" game publishers quietly turning out excellent products in the shadows of the juggernauts (Wizards of the Coast, White Wolf, etc.).  There are dozens of small companies and individuals creating some great games with either fresh ideas or revisitations of classic ideas in new ways.  I've heard many people say that the tabletop rpg hobby is dying, being eaten alive by console gaming and mmorpgs.  Personally, I think there is a renaissance on the horizon.  The electronic publishing formats, coupled with technology like the iPad, have a universe of untapped potential to change the gaming hobby as we know it.

Personally, I just hope to get something out there that somebody wants to play.  I want to write something that I want to play and then make it accessible to others.  I'm not talking about a revolution.  I'm just talking about finding a hole, a niche, and filling it.

Back in the early 1980's, D&D was the only game in town and Ronald Reagan was playing cold war chess with Leonid Brezhnev.  I wanted to play a game that reflected all of the cold war angst that was in the air.  The problem was, it didn't exist.  Sure, there was something close.   A little game called Top Secret.  Which was close, but not quite what I wanted.  To use modern video games as an analogy, Top Secret was Splinter Cell when I wanted Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  It was also brand new and not very fleshed out.

So I did a little game hacking.  I worked from my beloved Mack Bolan: The Executioner series of books (along with all the other tie-in series') by Don Pendleton (and others).  I borrowed a few things from Top Secret, but mostly just hacked Dungeons & Dragons into a game that I called Terrorist Wars.  It was about as immature an effort as you would expect from a twelve year old kid.  It was about as comprehensive and complete as anything an obsessed twelve year old could create.  I filled a pretty thick loose-leaf notebook (on college-ruled paper - I always use college-ruled paper) full of rules.  I had stats for just about every gun you could think of (I got them from a Mack Bolan weapons locker book I had and created stats for them).  I had character classes from Soldier to Spy to Assassin, complete with character advancement charts and everything else that standard D&D classes had in the Players' Handbook.

The game was actually pretty popular among my friends for a few years and several groups I played with seemed to always want to play Terrorist Wars instead of Dungeons & Dragons.  I was always happy to oblige and constantly revised it.  Somewhere around 1985-1986, the game got put away and never taken out again.  Maybe it was Glasnost.  Or maybe we had finally outgrown the game.  Either way, I look back fondly on my first game hack.

Okay gamers.  Here's my question of the day: Have you ever hacked a role-playing game and made a new game out of the rules?  Tell me about it.  What was it called?  What was it about?  Did you ever play it?  How did it go?

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Turd Pudding

In the proud tradition of "Shepherd's Pie" (or Sheppard's Pie, as the case may be)... I bring you "Turd Pudding"...

As promised, I have a quick teaser with some information on the game I've been working on, which I'm giving a new working title (since it's what I've been calling it anyway lately and since nobody really like the first working title - which was way too long).  But first, a few words about Geekcentricity and search engines.

If you run a blog or a website, there are a few tools available that can give you a picture, or more like a few snapshots, of what your web traffic is like.  I primarily use two of those tools: Google Analytics and Sitemeter.  Before you chastise me for even caring about who visits my site and/or how often, you should know that I realize how inaccurate these things are.  A percentage of my readers get their Geekcentricity fix from the RSS feed.  I use Feedburner to track that, but with all of these tools, I know I still don't get a realistic picture of my traffic.

Why do I bother?  Because it amuses me.  I basically track it for shits and giggles.  And yes.  I can giggle with the best of schoolgirls.

Where was I?  Oh, right.  Tracking worthless statistics with inaccurate tools.  Gotcha.  I'm a baseball fan, so I know all about worthless statistics.  When I go to a game, I don't just watch the game while consuming overpriced food and drink that will speed me to an early heart attack.  I do all that with a pencil and scorepad in hand.  Also, I was DMing when TSR introduced the Comeliness stat, so don't even chastise me about useless statistics.

Sometimes, though... Sometimes I find something interesting.  For example, when I first started Geekcentricity, I got a few visits from someone at LucasArts.  I was all geeked out.  Someone from LucasArts visited my new little blog!  It was like being visited by angels.  Then I started to wonder if I'd inadvertently screwed up and violated copyright or something.  Since my door is still intact, I have to assume that I didn't.  I just wish whoever it was would come back and check out the site now.

Another thing I find amusing is looking at what search engine terms people use to find Geekcentricity.  They used to just be boring and predictable.  I used to read Chuck Wendig's posts where he mentioned the bizarre shit people typed into Google to find his Terrible Minds blog and wonder how he got listed as a result for some of those searches, and lament over why I didn't get any hits from interesting searches.  I lament no more.  Instead of lamenting, I can share some of the wacky shit people have entered to find this place.

Fittingly, the two most common search terms people have been using to get here are geekcentricity and geekcentricity.com.  The 3rd most common result is still "i4e iPhone" which I have never used, reviewed or discussed here.  Below that is the ever popular "'mi llamo es' 'Bob Brent Spiner'" and my two strangest search terms "laxatives she shits herself" and "pissing video."  What the hell?!?  Unless I've been sleep posting (again), I've never written about these things.  You won't find either of those things here anywhere, I promise. Just don't look behind that door.

In case you missed my whole Geek Day post, I've been spending some time playing Alan Wake the last few days and I am really impressed.  The game is divided into episodes (which I mentioned as a preference in my post yesterday).  Each episode after the first begins with an intro of "In the Last Episode of Alan Wake" much like a television series.  I also have to say that the soundtrack is the best in any video game I've ever played (not exaggerating, I pay attention to music), with the music being arranged and positioned just like it would be in a tv series.  I also can't wait to play the travesty that is Deadly Premonition.  The more I read about this game, the more anticipation I build up for it.  Not to mention that I still need to finish Bioshock 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction and haven't even started Red Dead Redemption yet.  Did I mention that Alpha Protocol releases in a few weeks?  More on that title closer to launch.

Finally, I haven't written much about my game over the past few days.  I had a busy weekend with the day job, but I've been working on it whenever I can.  I have two things I can share with you.

First, the working title.  I knew that my previous one was not the best, but for my own brain's sake, I needed to call it something.  I also  knew that I'd probably burn through a dozen or more working titles before I settle on one that's worth using.  With that in mind, I have a new working title.  For the time being, I'll be using:
The Dark Shift.

What do you think?  I am again soliciting your feedback for this working title.  Please, let me know.

I have also settled on the core attributes I will be using in character creation.

Since a portion of my backstory for the game is derived from Hopi prophecies about the coming of the "Fifth World" (too bad that title is already in use for an RPG by Jef Godesky), I will be dividing attributes into three categories: Body, Mind and Spirit.  The attributes in each category are as follows:

Body
Strength
Stamina
Agility

Mind
Intelligence
Reasoning
Perception

Spirit
Will
Stability
Charm

Each attribute will be ranked on an expanded 9-point Fudge scale (which uses adjectives to describe all traits) as follows:

• (Legendary)
• Excellent 
• Great
• Good
• Fair
• Mediocre
• Poor
• Terrible
• Abysmal

Legendary is in parentheses because it is a level on par with the Strength of Hercules, the Reasoning of Stephen Hawking, or the Charm of Don Juan. 

I'll let you process the above and be back in a few days with more detailed explanations.  Comments are welcome.  Just keep in mind that I have more than this written and have not posted the full explanations of everything at this point, but if you're familiar with Fudge, you should be able to dig into it pretty quickly.

Also, I can see the need at some near future point, to move the more specific game information to a more private location.  With that in mind, I will be creating a site accessible to my playtest group and others who will be giving input into the process.  Stay tuned for details on that as well.

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Geekcentricity's Gaming Guide - Video Version

You've been naughty.  I thought we had an agreement.  In my last post, I said that I was going to show you mine, but first you had to show me yours.  Well, nobody bared their dirty little naked video game secrets for me.  What am I supposed to do, just show you mine without your reciprocation?  What do you think I am?  An exhibitionist?  Easy?

Okay.  You're right.  I am easy.  But you've still been naughty.  You all deserve to be spanked.  Except you.  Yeah, that's right.  YOU. You still deserve it, but you'd enjoy it too much.  Everyone else, line up and prepare for your punishment.

Since I can't virtually spank anyone (I don't even have a copy of Record of Agarest War for XBOX 360 to pretend with either), the only punishment I have available is to go ahead and share my little manifesto on what I look for in a video game.

The other day I was browsing my feed reader and came across an excellent post on Kotaku by Luke Plunkett called "What Are You Looking For In A Video Game?"  Working in the video game industry (and I use a loose definition of the term) for the past few years, I have often thought about this question.  I'm pretty selective in my game purchases.  When I purchase a game, I usually don't run home, play it all the way through in one sitting and then rush back to the store to trade it in on something shiny and new.  I usually purchase games for the long haul.  I make a commitment.  It's rare that I ever trade a game in.  If it's not something I'm going to want to keep, then I usually don't make the purchase.  That's what rental is for.  Of course, I'm a collector.  If I love a movie, I buy the DVD.  I have a huge book collection.  I have close to a thousand audio CD's.  Hell, I even own a ton of LP's on vinyl and almost as many audio cassettes (thought my 8-track collection disappeared somewhere along the way).  No, if I am going to drop $60 or so on a game, it had better be worth keeping.

My preferences in video games may not be anything like yours, but I have standards.  Sometimes I lower them to get what I want, but hey, who doesn't, right?  So, if you want to know what I look for in a video game, then you have come to the right place.  Using Luke's post as a guide (and some gratuitous alliteration, here is my:

Geekcentricity's Gaming Guide - Video Version

Story Is King -  I'm not saying that the game has to have the equivalent of a Pulitzer or Hugo award quality story, but I like the events of the game to be basically story-driven.  I know that it's been debated whether or not games can tell an effective story, and Chuck Wendig has several excellent posts on his blog about this very topic (here, here, here, and here).  If you're interested in the topic, I highly recommend reading them.  Regardless, I like to feel that there is a story driving the action and that I am advancing that story as I play the game.  Also, the story must be interesting/intriguing to me.  An example of this is Grand Theft Auto IV.  Now, a GTA game, or most "sandbox" games for that matter, doesn't usually have a strong story to drive it.  This one, and the subsequent Lost & Damned and Ballad of Gay Tony expansions, were exceptions.  From the first trailer, where we learn about our protagonist, Niko Bellic, the poor immigrant who came to our country trying to escape his sordid past and make a better future only to find that this new land of opportunity was just as soaked in blood, corruption and violence as the world he left behind, I was hooked.  Sure, that story has been done countless times in almost every medium imaginable, but there's a reason for that.  I love books and movies, and I'm okay if a game plays like a movie with the player getting to make some of the decisions that affect the direction of the story.  Which brings me to...

Decisions That Matter -  I like it when the choices I make have some impact on the direction of the story.  I don't care if you have the most well-crafted story ever presented in video game form; if you don't let the player (me) affect that story with the decisions I make in the game, your not going to hold my interest.  A few years ago, I was really looking forward to the game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.  I love mob stories.  I'm a huge fan of the Godfather movies, along with Reservoir Dogs and other "crimeland cinema."  The story behind Kane & Lynch is a good one, I just got the feeling when I was playing that the writers thought it was so good that they didn't want me to ruin it.  In other words, I don't just want to press buttons because that's what I'm supposed to do when my button pressing doesn't affect the outcome (except potentially causing my character's death).

Contextual Prompts Kill Me -  I am definitely not a fan of gratuitous contextual prompts.  To me, these are a metagame conceit.  They kill my suspension of disbelief.  I don't have great hand-eye coordination or reflexes.  I don't want to have a "press A 16 times in rapid succession then press B and hold it for 3 seconds" pissing contest with a machine.  Why am I pressing "A" all in this context when for the rest of the game, that button does something else?  Make the controls consistent and not a county fair midway contest.  Resident Evil 5, while a good game overall, was full of pointless contextual prompt pissing contests that pulled me out of the engaging story and reminded me that I was holding a controller.  Instead, keep me in the story and let me use the same controls I learned at the beginning of the game.  Even though I'm a huge fan of survival horror (and horror in general) Resident Evil 5 got traded in as soon as I finished it (and I had the collector's edition).  I almost never do that.  I just hated replaying the same 10 minute scene a dozen times just because I couldn't get the button sequence straight.  Leading me right into...

Accessibility -  Like I said, I don't have great hand-eye coordination or reflexes.  Blame my mother for smoking when she was pregnant if you want, just don't make a game unplayable to me because of it.  When I read a book, the author doesn't make me do strength tests to see if I'm worthy of getting to the ending (unless we're talking about Stephen King's The Stand: Complete & Uncut Edition).  When I watch a movie, I don't have to press random buttons on the remote control to get to the next scene.  The "Play" button always does the same thing.  Don't make me learn complex button sequences (see above).  Don't make me feel stupid and uncoordinated by forcing me to repeat large sections of the game ad nauseam until my eyes glaze over and I start to drool on my controller.  Let me get immersed into the game and keep it moving forward. the aforementioned Kane & Lynch and Resident Evil 5 are offenders here, while Bioshock is a great example of how to keep me immersed in the story by keeping the game accessible.  Accessibility also goes for the supplemental materials that are packaged with, or available for, a game.  I want a clear, well written instruction manual.  I want the option of a quality strategy guide (I like the printed book better than having to stop playing, get up and walk to the computer, find the information I need, then go back to the 360 and start playing again) with maps and clear, concise descriptions and bulleted lists of things like achievemens and such.

Social Experience If Appropriate -  Sometimes I purchase a game so that I can enjoy playing online with my friends.  Like it or not, gaming has become a social medium.  Back in my old life (and profession), I used to play the occasional round of golf for the social connections that came with chasing a small, round, white object across acres of chemically treated grass, braving snakes and sometimes even large alligators (because my golf balls were always equipped with homing devices that sought out water, woods, and even sand).  Now, in some circumstances, video games serve the same function for me as a round of golf did then (and a video game is cheaper than a single round of golf).  So, I do own some games just for purely social reasons.  One of the best social games I've played is Call of Duty: World at War.  Besides having Kiefer Sutherland as one of its voice actors, it allows players on XBOX Live that are in a party together to stay in party chat.  Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 doesn't allow this, so it isn't as good as a social experience.  Party chat allows me to talk to my friends and saves me from having to listen to all of the 8 year old kids curse like salty sailors while they teabag each other.  Just as importantly, don't try to shoehorn a social experience into a game that doesn't lend itself to that.  Some games just don't need a social element.  The original Bioshock is a work of art and a complete game, without a multiplayer option.  Same for Fallout 3.  Have you ever played the multiplayer on Bioshock 2?  This is a game that didn't need a social element.  Don't force it.  So many games are trying to be Call of Duty to capture a segment of  that multiplayer audience.  There are enough Call of Duty clones out there already, so stick to what your game does best.  And yes, Dead Space 2 design team, I'm talking to you.

Quality Acting  - The acting, voice or motion capture, doesn't have to be Oscar quality, but it shouldn't look like something from the big screen on MST3K (somebody seriously needs to make a show like that for video games).  Bad acting is bad acting no matter the medium.  Good acting, like Mark Hamill as the Joker in Batman: Arkham Asylum, can take a good game and turn it into a great game.  Like I said before, just being chastised by Jack Bauer, I mean Kiefer Sutherland,  in Call of Duty: World at War, made me want to do better, so that I could hear him say, "Nice work, Marines!"  Even animation should be considered along with the acting.  Don't have the character make inane and inappropriate hand gestures while talking, or give her a flirtatious, inviting facial expression while she's telling me about the giant creatures who kidnapped her child.

Beauty Is Only Pixel Deep, But It's Important -   I want to play games that look good.  If I want to play something that looks like it was made 20 years ago, I'll pull out my NES.  There are some games being made today with incredible visual realism.  LA Noir looks like it's going to be a revolutionary game in this aspect (especially if Red Dead Redemption is indicative of where Rockstar is going graphically).  Good graphics are, to me, as important as good controls.  Graphics problems (among other things) killed Alone In the Dark and made The Saboteur less than it could have been.  On the other hand, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a beautiful, nearly photorealistic game.  Color is an important consideration here.  Fallout 3 used some green hues to give the world that post-apocalyptic look, but looking at that green-tinted scenery for hours on end made me feel nauseous.  Try changing your HUD color to blue to save your eyes on that one (I'm glad the player gets that option in Fallout 3).

Controls That Make Sense -  If you've ever played the Saw game, you probably found it next to impossible to shoot with any accuracy (unfortunately, Alan Wake is proving fairly difficult in this regard as well).  Give me a control scheme that makes sense and stick with it.  The Medal of Honor games had a great control scheme.  I like the controls in them better than in the Call of Duty games.  The designers of both franchises understand that you need to be consistent though.

If I Wanted To Ride the Rails, I'd Take the Train -  I love traveling by train.  Actually, it's my preferred method of travel.  I don't have to drive, but I do have the time to relax en route to my destination (airplanes just get me there too fast) and the freedom to get up and move around.  I just don't like games that treat me like I'm on a railroad.  I don't want to be given only one path between point A and point B.  Scene blocks are the bane of my existence.  It really bothers me when I'm walking down a street in a game and I suddenly come to a jumbled stack of debris that blocks my path.  I know... My beloved Silent Hill games are egregious offenders in this category.  I believe that even a survival horror game can be made with a wider path, if not an open-world environment.  Kane & Lynch (yes, I keep picking on this title) was a game that punished the player for trying to take an alternate path between objectives.  If you tried to deviate even a little, the game forced you back onto the tracks.  Dragon Age: Origins, for all of its visual beauty, was also a bit on the restrictive side in this regard.  On the other end of the spectrum, I rarely felt boxed in on Bioshock.  Also, Rockstar is the king of open-world games.  They give me choices and let me forge my own way through the landscape.  Also, Fallout 3 has such a huge world that just exploring it can take dozens of hours.

Time is Money -  Time and money are both things I never seem to have enough of.  When I was a teenager, my friends and I used to have games of Risk that lasted for weeks (our parents loved having the board set up on a table in the middle of the living room for long periods of time).  We used to play Dungeons & Dragons almost every day (sometimes all day... sometimes all day & all night and all day the next day).  I no longer have the luxury of time.  I work a more than full time job.  I have a family (my wife & dog count as a family).  I have household responsibilities and recently started a small business.  I also have my writing projects.  Every now and then, I even need to sleep.  I don't have anywhere near as much time for games as I would like.  Even though I love huge, immersive open-world games with hundreds of hours of content (Fallout 3, Fable II and GTA IV, I'm staring at YOU), I rarely have the time to make a sizable dent in them.  So, those games take me years to finish.  Yes.  You read that correctly.  Not months.  Years.  Hell, I'm a fast reader.  I can read a 300 page book in about 6 hours.  Still, because of the size and scope of it, Stephen King's The Stand: Complete & Uncut Edition (one of my favorite books) took me about 3 months to read (so maybe King did give me an endurance test on that one).  I even have to plan my schedule carefully to fit in a 2 hour movie (don't even get me started on fitting in a trip to the time sink known as Wal-Mart - I have a theory that time passes differently there than in the outside world), and once I get behind on a tv series, it takes me forever to catch up (Supernatural, I promise I'll be catching up soon).  For these reasons, I like my games to be built with modern time commitments in mind.  An ideal game, for me, would be about 6-8 hours long OR divided into segments of manageable length.  I finished Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in a single sitting.  So far, Alan Wake is working well in that respect.  It's constructed in an episodic format, like a television series, with episodes that are self-contained enough that I can stop playing after I finish one and not feel like I've lost all momentum in the story if I don't get to play again for a few days.  For all its faults, Alone In the Dark was built in similar fashion.  Even GTA IV gives me short story arcs/missions so that I can do the same thing.  On the other hand, Fable II is a game I look at on the shelf and am not sure when I'll be able to get back to it.  I don't remember where I was in the story and quickly lost all momentum after not playing it for a while.  The time I spend gaming is a valuable investment and I want to spend it wisely.

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So, there you have it.  My gaming manifesto.  I realize that some of these points fly in the face of conventional thoughts about video games.  So what?  It's my list.  You're welcome, in fact I encourage you, to make your own list.

I've shown you mine.  It's hanging out here for the whole world to see.  I even wrote it while on some heavy pain medication (I rarely take anything stronger than OTC Ibuprofen, so this has been adventure).  Now it's your turn.  Show me yours.  What do you look for in a video game?

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Star Wormwood, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Backstory

Note:  Before you read below and assume I've gone completely batshit insane and have joined the ranks of those predicting the end of the world in 2012, I want to warn you that this is all backstory for the game I'm working on.  I'm still crazy, but the following is just one possible explanation I will be including as to what causes the incredible conditions of the game world.  I will explain more in a near future post.

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"On the 17th of June, around 9 in the AM, we observed an unusual natural occurrence. In the N Karelinski village (200 verst N of Kirensk) the peasants saw to the North-West, rather high above the horizon, some strangely bright (impossible to look at) bluish-white heavenly body, which for 10 minutes moved downwards. The body appeared as a "pipe", i.e. a cylinder. The sky was cloudless, only a small dark cloud was observed in the general direction of the bright body. It was hot and dry. As the body neared the ground (forest), the bright body seemed to smudge, and then turned into a giant billow of black smoke, and a loud knocking (not thunder) was heard, as if large stones were falling, or artillery was fired. All buildings shook. At the same time the cloud began emitting flames of uncertain shapes. All villagers were stricken with panic and took to the streets, women cried, thinking it was the end of the world.

The author of these lines was meantime in the forest about 6 verst N of Kirensk, and heard to the NE some kind of artillery barrage, that repeated in intervals of 15 minutes at least 10 times. In Kirensk in a few buildings in the walls facing north-east window glass shook."
                  - Sibir Newspaper, 2 July, 1908

30 June, 1908 - 0 hours, 13 minutes, 35 seconds Greenwich Mean Time:   A powerful explosion occurs near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in a sparsely populated region of Siberia.  The cause of the explosion sparks decades of debate, with the most commonly held explanation being the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment approximately 3-6 miles above the Earth's surface.  The energy of the blast is believed to have been the equivalent of 10-15 megatons of TNT, or about 1,000 times as powerful as the atomic bomb that would later be dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.  The blast leveled more than 1,000 square miles of forest.

"Kezhemskoe village. On the 17th an unusual atmospheric event was observed. At 7:43 the noise akin to a strong wind was heard. Immediately afterwards a horrific thump sounded, followed by an earthquake which literally shook the buildings, as if they were hit by a large log or a heavy rock. The first thump was followed by a second, and then a third. Then the interval between the first and the third thumps were accompanied by an unusual underground rattle, similar to a railway upon which dozens of trains are travelling at the same time. Afterwards for 5 to 6 minutes an exact likeness of artillery fire was heard: 50 to 60 salvoes in short, equal intervals, which got progressively weaker. After 1.5 - 2 minutes after one of the 'barrages' six more thumps were heard, like cannon firing, but individual, loud and accompanied by tremors.

The sky, at the first sight, appeared to be clear. There was no wind and no clouds. However upon closer inspection to the north, i.e. where most of the thumps were heard, a kind of an ashen cloud was seen near the horizon..."
                  - Krasnoyaretz Newspaper, 13 July, 1908

 13 August, 1930 - 08:00 local time:  During the annual Perseid meteor shower, three house-sized meteorites fall from the sky near the Curuca River in Brazil, close to the Peruvian border.  The blast energy, which registered on seismographs in La Paz, Bolivia, is believed to have been close to 1 megaton of TNT.  Less than a tenth of the energy released in the Tunguska Incident, but still many times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  The resulting fire burned in the Brazilian Amazon for months, deforesting an extremely large area.

"When the sun began to rise on the morning of 13 August 1930 like any other morning, little did the inhabitants along the banks of the River Curuçá in the Brazilian Amazonas region, near the Peruvian frontier, realise what was about to happen. The women of the community had started washing clothing and the fishermen and rubber-tappers had begun their days work. Suddenly, at about eight o'clock, the sun became blood-red and a darkness fell over the region. A large cloud of red dust filled the air, and then a fine white ash descended to cover the trees and plants. There then followed ear-piercing whistling sounds, three in total, after which three mighty explosions were heard in rapid succession. Immediately after the explosions, the whole forest became a blazing inferno which lasted for several months, depopulating a large area. These terrifying events caused the inhabitants to believe they were about to face death."
   - John McFarland, The Day the Earth Trembled

6 June, 2002:  As India and Pakistan stared each other down with nuclear threats over the disputed Kashmir region, early warning satellites detected an explosion in the Earth's atmosphere roughly the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.  Instead of occurring in the disputed region, this blast took place over the Mediterranean Sea.  It was the result of the atmospheric entry of an asteroid about 30 feet in diameter that had approached the Earth undetected until the blast occurred.  If the explosion had taken place 3 hours earlier, on the same latitude, India and Pakistan are likely to have escalated their conflict into a nuclear war.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Dyer

"And this is the Ninth and Last Sign: You will hear of a dwelling-place in the heavens, above the earth, that shall fall with a great crash. It will appear as a blue star. Very soon after this, the ceremonies of my people will cease."
- White Feather, Hopi Elder of the Bear Clan Tribe, "Prophecy of the Blue Star Kachina"

¹When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. ²And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets.
 ³Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne. ⁴The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel's hand.⁵Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.
 ⁶Then the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to sound them. ⁷The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.
 ⁸The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, ⁹a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.
 ¹⁰The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— ¹¹the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.
 ¹²The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night.
 ¹³As I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: "Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!"
                    ~ Revelation 8 (NIV)

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