Game book layout: the four parts

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In trying to layout some of our recent game projects, I’ve noticed some common components in every book, which has led me to the conclusion that every game book really consists of four parts:

  1. Character Generation/Creation (Chargen)
  2. Game Rules
  3. Setting
  4. GM Section

Different games put these sections in different orders or interweave one or more of them into single sections, and put different levels of emphasis on each one. Some games even go so far separate those sections into different books.

Is there a right order for these? Although I’ve put them in an order above that is purely to show that they are four in number. Often Character Creation and Game Rules are intertwined, and the same with Setting and GM Section. Likewise, the GM Section will often contain Game Rules that are not applicable to players. Sometimes games will make the split into Player Section and GM Section, with sub-sections of Game Rules and Setting. Usually Chargen is bundled under the Player Section in that case.

Let’s take a few quick examples (from memory, so apologies if there are any inaccuracies):

  • GURPS – Chargen comes first, bleeding into Game Rules, and finally GM Section. There is very little Setting in the main book. Many supplements exist with Setting, and many of those also include extra Chargen, Rules and GM Section.
  • Pendragon (4th Ed) – Chargen is again first, bleeding into Setting. Then Game Rules, with more Setting, and finally a GM Section with more Setting. The Setting is tightly interwoven throughout the entire book, which is why Pendragon ranks highly in my estimation. Supplements follow that same pattern.
  • SLA Industries – Setting comes first, then Chargen and Game Rules, with many of the Rules surrounded and influenced by Setting. The GM Section is comparatively small.
  • 23rd Letter – A little bit of Setting, followed by Chargen and Game Rules and then a GM Section which includes more Setting (given the conspiratorial nature of the game).

I think what is important is that your game (or our games) consciously include all of these sections, whether or not they are labelled this way, or are separate sections. Any game will need to have components that fall under those four headings in order to be complete.

Do you have a preferred order for these? Seen a game which didn’t have all four? Is there one that must be there that I’m blatantly missing?

Originally written for lategaming.com.

Learning and Fear

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I just recently finished taking a course as a rescue diver. In it, I learned techniques for dealing with a panicked diver on the surface and underwater, dealing with unconscious divers, rescue breathing, CPR and many other things I’d never done before.

The instructor pointed out that I kept apologizing every time I did something wrongly. She pointed out that I’d never done it before, and that I was on the course to learn how to do it. This seemed obvious, as soon as she mentioned it, but it got me to thinking about why I was apologizing.

There’s an old saying about not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. People apply this to themselves as they get older as a way to say they can’t learn anything new.

The conclusion I reached is that I was apologizing for being incompetent. I’m used to being good at the things I do: whether it’s professionally or personally, after 31 years on the planet I’ve become reasonably competent at a whole bunch of things. Trying to learn new skills makes me incompetent again, and there’s a fear of failure that goes with that. It’s a lot easier to deal with now that I’ve acknowledged it – this fear is purely a fear of appearing foolish or incompetent.

Next time I’m learning something new, I just need to acknowledge that it’s OK to be incompetent :-)

Dolphins

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I was out on a boat trip just off the coast when we spotted some dolphins. The adults came over by the boat and led us away from where the babies were feeding, which of course made for some great photos. Here are a few – apologies for small file size, but uploading from here is a pain.

Dolphin 1
Dolphin 2
Dolphin 3

Solo: What’s in a name?

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I’ve seen a bunch of name generators, especially around generating random fantasy names, or names that look Tolkien-esque. However, this random name generator is for normal first and last names, as might be found in the USA. I can set an obscurity factor (from 1 to 100) and select a gender. It uses US census data as the source for the names.

The names

My character is going to be from the Midwest, so I want a reasonably common name – I’ve set the obscurity factor to 40 (to rule out names like Modesto and Britt). Here’s what I got:

  1. Toby Sandvik
  2. Darrin Ruta
  3. Dominick Purdon
  4. Emmett Krane
  5. Toby Rayne
  6. Cary Montpas
  7. Santos Gettle
  8. Winston Citrano
  9. Darnell Laskowitz
  10. Van Arnaud

I’ve opted for Toby Rayne. It’s nice and short and has a good ring to it, and I’ve been watching a lot of The West Wing lately. I also like the name Winston Citrano, so I’ll use that for his best buddy. I figure Toby’s middle name will be the same as his dad’s first name, so let’s find out who Dad is, using the name generator but ignoring the surname. I’ll run through Dad, Mom, Wife, Big Sister and Daughter:

  • Dad – Charles (Charlie)
  • Mom – Rebecca
  • Wife – Joanna
  • Sister – Erica
  • Daughter – Catherine (Katie)

Given the names that have come up, I’ve decided that Mom is part-Jewish, but that the family are loosely Christian (i.e. church at Christmas). I also decided that Dad ran his own auto repair shop.

The updated R-map now looks like this:

Originally written for lategaming.com.

Solo: The Hero’s Journey (Part 3)

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After generating all the names for the main people in Toby’s life, I came up with a bunch of background – all of this just came to me as I typed it into an IM to Matt. I think having the location and other basics already decided made all this detail very easy to come up with.

[aidan] I’ve decided my character grew up in Grand Rapids.
[aidan] So he’s a Michigan boy.
[aidan] but the other side of Michigan.
[aidan] And that’s where his folks still live.
[aidan] His sister lives in Chicago, and works in advertising.
[aidan] Toby works in the bookstore because he can have flexible enough hours to pick up his daughter after school, although he has to usually do one day in a weekend, which he hates.
[aidan] Toby and Joanna have been married 8 years, and have a relatively affordable mortgage on a 3-bed house in Ann Arbor.
[aidan] Toby drives an old blue Chevy Camaro that is half transport, half restoration project. In the winter, he drives an old Ford truck. He likes old cars. Joanna has a Prius.
[aidan] He is in reasonable shape – not superfit, but not overweight. Plays basketball once a week with the guys from work, and leads a fairly active life with his daugther: park trips, bike rides, etc.
[aidan] He has short dark curly hair with smatterings of grey, and is clean shaven.
[aidan] Joanna’s hair is medium brown and straight. She has green eyes, Toby’s are grey-blue.
[aidan] Katie looks like her mom 🙂
[aidan] He’s pretty smart, but his wife is smarter (and Katie’s smarter than both of them). He reads a lot, particularly history, politics, philosophy, American literature and the odd thriller.
[aidan] They both like to drink wine.
[aidan] They are both members of the Democrats, and the whole family will help out at political rallies, campaigns, etc.
[mj] Other important people. His boss. Other assistant managers?
[mj] lol, for later
[aidan] Heh, yeah. I’ll add more in.

Part of the reason we’re blogging all of this is to show how we are generating this character in a narrative way, how the story starts without any real role-playing, and to give everyone a feel for the main characters so that it becomes easy to follow along with the story once it starts.

I know Matt is busy working on story – I can see he has protected some pages on our internal wiki and filled them full of notes – so I expect once I’ve finished with rounding off this character, we’ll be underway.

Originally written for lategaming.com.

Solo: The Hero’s Journey (Part 1)

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[09:15:14] So, have you thought about where you want to set Solo?
[09:16:11] Nope. ? A lot of that is up to you. Want to be a yank?
[09:18:07] It makes things easier to visualise in some regards, because we’re so brainwashed by Hollywood. However, it’s also very clichéd as a result. I’ve no desire to roleplay someone from N.I. though.
[09:22:50] I’ve zero desire to set a game here. For me it would be started either in some city in the US or a major city in the UK
[09:27:03] *nod* Let’s go with the US. It’s easier for other people to read too.
[09:29:01] which city rings and sings for you?
[09:34:13] One with a bit of character. Pick from Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle.
[09:36:04] Instinct says to pick Philadelphia but let’s go with Ann Arbor
[09:36:27] OK 🙂
[09:45:34] I can be from Michigan.
[09:48:44] you can be whatever you want to be
[09:54:52] Aye, but that’s a good starting point.
[09:55:26] Somewhere in Middle America works for me. I’m just reading the Wikipedia article.
[09:57:11] I looked at Ann Arbor as a possible living place, during one of my many interviews last year.
[09:59:24] 114K people. So not far from the size of Lisburn.
[10:00:37] Right. But close to Detroit. Population 6m.
[10:01:13] Though it has UMich so….BIG DIFFERENCE
[10:01:32] Yeah.
[10:01:57] Which is tough because I’m a Buckeye fan.
[10:01:51] What’s Buckeye?
[10:02:12] Ohio State
[10:04:33] So pick somewhere in Ohio?
[10:05:55] No, Ann Arbor is great.
[10:07:23] I’ve never been there 🙂
[10:07:45] Columbus works
[10:08:57] I love Columbus. It’s a beautiful city.
[10:09:16] But I’d rather it be Ann Arbor.
[10:10:11] Okay. As of December 2006, Democrats hold the mayorship and all council seats. It’s a hot-bed for left wing politics.
[10:17:28] pot is decriminalised…
[10:29:35] “Ann Arbor is also home to the headquarters of Google’s AdWords program” Borders Books *started* in Ann Arbor. Domino’s Pizza is HQ’d there too.
[10:30:05] OK, cool.
[10:30:15] I’ve got stuff to think about now.
[10:48:29] OK, I have a character concept.
[10:48:37] Something near and dear to my heart 🙂
[10:49:19] He’s one of the assistant managers at the Ann Arbor Border’s branch.
[10:49:34] Mid-30s, married, 1 child.
[10:49:59] Child is 5, and his wife works as a lecturer at UMich.
[13:20:21] Wikipedia says: “With tongue-in-cheek reference to the city’s liberal political leanings, some occasionally refer to Ann Arbor as The People’s Republic of Ann Arbor or 25 square miles surrounded by reality,”
[13:24:36] Yeah, I had in mind someone who was reasonably politically active.
[13:25:07] He’s not from Ann Arbor originally, but his wife works at the university, which is why he stayed.

First iteration of Hero’s R-map

Originally written for lategaming.com.

225 days

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SI 1995/3297, also known as “The Duration of Copyright and Rights in Performances Regulations 1995”, this UK law came into effect on January 1st 1996. At its most basic, it extended the copyright for any written work from 50 years after the author’s death, to 70 years. Any work which had already become public domain prior to 1st January 1996 remained public domain.

H. G. Wells died on the 13th August, 1946. All of his works thus missed becoming public domain in the UK by 225 days, and now remain copyright to his estate until 2016. Bizarrely, his works are public domain in the USA.

We’re currently investigating whether it is still feasible to publish War of the Worlds: Earth after learning of this curious quirk of legality.

Originally written for lategaming.com.

WotW: Earth – Vox Populi

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“Have you seen my Jim? Have you seen him? My son? About four feet tall, blond hair, covered in freckles? … what about you, sir? Have you seen my Jim? He’s about four feet tall–“

– worried mother, Ealing, Day 1 after the end of the invasion

“We opened fire with the mortars, next. I tell ya there was nothing like that feeling when we first got one of ’em. After that bleedin’ Heat Ray had wiped out ‘alf the squadron, including Sergeant ‘arkins, remember ‘im? Sometimes I wish those Invaders ‘adn’t all been killed by the measles, or whatever it was. That way, we’d get to kill ’em proper.”

– Corporal James Walker, East Surrey Regiment, Day 10

“The wing itself is curved like a teardrop, causing the air to move over the top of it. The air below the wing is thus at a lower pressure than the air above, causing lift. It is brilliant in its simplicity, and eminently reproducible.”

– Hiram James Maxim, addressing the Royal Society, Week 3

“Of course I’m sure. I ‘ad it from Bert Tate’s sister, y’know the one with the big ears, who ‘ad it from her brovver-in-law. ‘E’s a sergeant in the Buffs and ‘e saw one of the Fightin’ Machines go down into the water near Margate. There’s been nothin’ about anythin’ being recovered in Margate. I reckon we could make a bloomin’ fortune.”

– overheard in a pub near Canterbury, Week 5

“If you thought Black Strawberries were strange, you should see the Black Barley that’s growing round our way. Not sure I’d drink the Black Beer that might come from it.”

– farm hand, Sussex, Week 37

Originally written for lategaming.com.

Twitter P2P

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From mj:

They break out the infrastructure and make it P2P. This could shift the responsibility for uptime to others and allow them to host their own options for advertising or value-added services. Maybe even license the software out so there are a bazillion twitter servers out there. This would be the method by which Twitter could sneak up and murder Instant Messaging in it’s sleep. I tweeted recently that Twitter was not Broadcast IM. But, of course, it is.

Reminds me a bit of Zed’s UTU project.

To speak to some of the other points that mj makes (and bear in mind I’m only a recent Twitter user), I think that Twitter could monetise easily enough. There is definitely a stigma against running adverts on your website – I know I don’t do it on any of the sites that I run, even though I know I would make some money. But consider the sorts of users who use Twitter a lot – they are the same sorts of people who are happy to pay $10-$25 for an app to allow them to use Twitter more easily.

Twitter haven’t charged anything for their API or the right to use their service as a platform for making money, which no doubt has earned them a lot of kudos and is probably another reason for the large uptake. I’m certain that a portion of those people who use their service every day, n times a day, would be willing to pay that $10-$25 for improved services. I think mj is right with things like being able to add pictures, having URLs automatically “tinied”, being able to make their own look and feel to posts and so forth. Would it make enough?

I don’t know how many users Twitter has, but I’m willing to be that all of the active ones fall squarely in “Early Adopter” (if you subscribe to the Crossing the Chasm metaphor). In using the Twitter site, I’ve been a bit underwhelmed by it’s functionality. Keep the free service, improve it gradually, but innovate like crazy in a pay-for service.

One possible ego-stroking mechanism. Make it such that you must be on the pay-for service if you have more than 100 people following you.