Guest Post over at Geek Feminism - Ableism in RPGs

I've got a guest post over at the Geek Feminism blog.

It's all about ableism in RPGs. You can access it directly here.

You know you've got a bad rule when ...

Starting off this thread, just to see if anyone is interested in playing with me.

"You know you've got a bad rule when ..."

it requires multiple books to explain.

Keep it going in the comments!

These are the Rules, that I've just made up

So, let's have a little moment to breathe about the rules in the game. When I buy a game, I tend to sit down and go over the other stuff and save the rules for last. The reason for that is that I'm a huge proponent of saving the worst bit for the end. I hate rules, I do. I used to love them when I was younger, because they were the structure on which my gaming house was built. They were comfortating, and familiar and if you knew them well you could do whatever you wanted.

Then I got older, and then I realized rules were kind of like the house that you couldn't remodel. Well, you can (I figured out that later) but if you had someone in your game who loved rules above the game itself, doing anything that went beyond the rules was like pulling teeth. It was hard, painful and left you frustrated more often than now.

Now that I'm even older, and I've done this writing a book or two thing, I've come to realize that rules are just there for when you need them, and the less you need them the better. Often times, rules can get in the way of a good story. That's why there's this term called "Rule Zero" which is, when put succinctly is, "if you don't like it and it doesn't work, throw it the hell out."

There are many reasons why a rule doesn't work. It's overly complicated, or overy specific. If a rule can only apply to when you're falling out of a burning building and landing on concrete, then it's a bad rule. If the rule takes you more than a minute to figure out, then it's a bad rule. If you have to dig through three different books to find the various references on those rules to make sure you've got it right, then it's a bad rule. We can play the bad rule game all day, really. It's fun, I should start a thread where we play the, "It's a bad rule when.." game where you fill in the end. It'll probably be just me playing, but I've been known to entertain myself.

Anyway, a friend sent me on towards this website, Story Games. I'd admit that I'm a little hesitant to do it, mainly because while I was lurking I came across the following thread. So someone played an IaWa game and it didn't quite follow the rules of the book. Now, I know this game because I was in it. I was one of the people who got co-opted to be the co-leader for the game. I'm not ashamed to admit it despite the fact that there was a lot of whining on that thread about how we didn't follow the rules.

I kid you not. After the description there was a note from the writer/creator of In a Wicked Age and he said, and I quote:

"Huh. Discouraging.

-Vincent"

My first though was, "Seriously? Seriously? Well, how about you fuck right off."

You see, I'm of the opinion that if you're playing one of my games that's awesome, period ... end of sentence. Have fun, do whatever the hell you want with it. You don't like this rule, or that rule? Throw them out, make a new one! You think the game is good, but it inspires you to write your own because you think you cane make it better. Rock on sister! Just be prepared to have me read what you did and do the same to you because it's going to have the same effect on me.

"Huh, discouraging?"

I've got news for you. I do love In A Wicked Age. However, what I dislike the most about it is the whole fucking rule system. I've read the book several times and the timing issues makes me scratch my head again and again. I don't care if you got it and it's just like this. I've had people try to explain it to me and it still makes me scratch my head. It's like Burning Wheel in that regard, beautiful book wonderful idea but at some point in time I throw my hands up in the air and say, "Screw this noise" and I go back to reading A Penny For My Thoughts so I can understand that I'm not a moron.

When you write a game, and people don't really get it, then the fault lies not with the reader but with the writer for failing to communicate the rules and ideas behind their game. I know this, I fail on a regular basis when it comes to how I write my stuff. Why? Because this writing thing is hard. However, if someone plays a game a certain way I'm not going to tell them to stop. My first words are going to be, "Keep playing!" Because they main reason for all of this is to have fun, and if they're having fun then more power to them and less wanking off for me. It also lets me sit down and know where I messed up and where I need to be better in communicating my ideas.

"Discouraging."

My second thought, "Really? Really? How about you fuck right off."

Signal Boost - RPGirl zine - Looking for Submission

Hey there anyone who reads this thing.

RPGirl Zine is lookin for women to submit articles for the next 'zine.

Details can be found here.

DCG - Abilities - Attack

Not all cards will have the ability to damage others. In fact, unless you specifically make them deal damage, no card intrinsically attacks others. There is no attack value like you would find on a lot of other CCGs. Instead, what we've done is given an Attack ability. When you use this ability, the number next to the attack ability gets added to the damage done in a combat. The downside, like anytime you use any ability, is that the character's defense will drop.

It's a trade off between damage dealing and damage receiving.

Geasa Review - Playtest at Dreamation 2010

Hey Folks!

Diabolik and Rich from Bacon Ice Cream Productions talked about Geasa. They got to play it at Dreamation, and it was a good time. I suggest you should listen to it!

Check out the link for more details.

Dreamation 2010 - The Review

I got back from Dreamation and I have to say that I love all the double exposure cons. I do. They're were I got to meet a lot of people that I love and play a lot of new and exciting stuff.

Let me give you the highlights of what we ended up doing and then we'll talk more about the Con.

1. Playtest Geasa a couple of times.

There was one official slot of playtesting, which went really well. I think it's one of those games which is turning out to be a lot like Suitors. It didn't take a lot of tweaking to get the type of game that I wanted. Suitors went through three incarnations before it pretty much stayed as is. Geasa is looking like it's going to be just the first incarnation is going to do it. I might make one change, which is to give people stats of 4, 3, 3 and 2 rather than 4, 3, 2 and 2 but that hasn't seemed to be a problem.

The big problem is the amount of selection anxiety people seem to have. Because the game is showing that it really needs at least one person to take the lead, and make a strong decision. Otherwise people end up wondering what the hell they should be doing. Personally, I think with good examples in the book and more experience running the game at cons this can be mitigated. It seems to be a game that once one pass has happened people get it, and then they can get into it. The trick is going to get them going into it.

Our first game ended up being in the SF genre. This is interesting as the first one ended up with a Janitor who used to be a Nuclear Engineer but couldn't find a job doing that on the station. We had a Bartender who was looking for her long lost son. A ship Psychologist who was afraid of space and a Captain who wanted to get off the station while making life as miserable for the rest of the crew. It was pretty sweet.

The second one was a modern day setting, with a Priest, a Fisherman, an Assassin and a Town Drunk. It was a challenge to see the game try to deal with these disparate characters, and some of the Fae that were created were weird, but the game didn't suffer at all from it.


2. CyberGen LARP

We had about 30 people show up again for the CyberGeneration LARP. It was another bundle of chaos mixed up with some interesting stuff. We've finally got some sort of "plot" going, as in that one group has managed to get involved with the Eden Cabal. There was a suggestion that two things happen. The first is that there starts to be a little bit of plot. Nothing huge and railroading, but more let's have the rest of the world interact with the players because otherwise they end up all over the place and we spend our time running after them.

The second thing is that I'm going to be dumping most of the responsibility of running NAGA with the judges they have and focusing on the LARPs. The only time I had a slot go off was when I was unable to physically do it (like 1 hour after running a 5 hour LARP). This means that there will be two slots to come and play CyberGeneration during the day. Good time there.


3. Playing games with other people

So I got to check out a couple of games, which I don't normally get to do. One of them was The Fisherman's Wife by Julia Bond Ellingboe. I had a great time playing that game and enjoyed it's many austere qualities and the drama that exists between the two characters being tempted and either succumbing or rising to the occasion.

I got to see Brennan's How We Came To Live Here. I didn't get a chance to play, but I'm going to remedy that for Anime North. It looks really interesting, incredibly interesting actually. I want to go through the book and see what others think of it too.

I also got to play in a Zombie LARP. Not just any LARP. An Apocalyptic Zombie LARP. Which translates into me talking in a Southern accent for a while, bashing Zombies with a boffer wrench and make bad TV references all night. Seriously, amazing time. If you're in the area I recommend that you check out Dystopia Rising. Go play in their LARP or show up at DEX and play there.

All in all there were many good times to be had.