The road to Bravery

Say what you will about Facebook, but I certainly appreciate the thing. Without it, I wouldn’t be writing this article.

One day, I beheld a status in Facebook. One of my contacts was asking if anyone knew any game designers who would be interested in making a card game. His friend’s friend (or somesuch) had apparently heard that Guy Windsor, a modern swordmaster, was scouting out game designers for a swordfighting card game project. I tossed a message at him, introduced myself and asked for a chance at a face-to-face meeting. One train voyage to Swordschool at Helsinki later, I was selected for the job.

When I went to meet Guy for the first time, I knew pretty much nothing of real swordfighting. Most of my nearly nonexistent sword experience came from boffer-fighting, which has very little to do with Fiore’s art, and from couple of my acquaintances who have had taken his lessons. Having grown up with lighsabers and video games, I found the idea of realistic swordfighting dull. So I was a bit afraid of what I was going in to.

But my fears were unfounded. Guy was a very jovial person, and we got along very well. And the art itself was a game unto itself. All the elements were already in place; The four Virtues were just begging to become resources to be managed, the seven basic blows of the sword were instant cards, and the logic of swordfighting became quickly clear. Well, quickly and quickly.

The first thing I requested from the swordmaster himself was a simple summary on how a typical duel, or ”bout”, goes. What I got was several emails worth of descriptions and a flowchart. After that, I spent about a month learning theoretical swordsmanship. I kept polishing and pruning the flowchart, and compressed concepts such as parries, attacks, binds and such until I had a fair understanding in what happens when two competent people wish to hit each other with sharpened steel.

Readability and design elegance at its best

Then came the first prototype. Forged in the flames of Openoffice Writer, I condensed Fiore’s art into a handful of keywords and 5-page flowchart. The prototype was ugly as hell, and confusing to boot. But thankfully I had Cryo, the gaming club of Oulu University, and their keen gamers to help me playtest the thing. After a couple of playtests I got confirmation; The system was logical.

After the first playtests, I pretty much just polished the system, listening to feedback, asking questions about authenticity and doing other things (such as designing Salvage Team). And just before Ropecon we got the prototype art ready. But since our artist was already working above and beyond original call of duty, I sneaked off with the prototype assets and printed out the second prototype, which was easier on the eye, easier to read, and just plain better.

So here is the history of Audatia from the perspective of the game designer. Be a dear and purchase it from Indiegogo so I can finish the fight.

Also, hello! I’m still not dead, despite what my posting frequency would indicate.

Salvage Team

In addition to not writing anything here, I’ve been doing an IndieGOGO-campaign for Games&Tales’ new board game project: Salvage Team! And I shall continue to not write anything here, because so much has already been written around the campaign and Games&Tales’ website. Go check them out, if you wish to have your mind blown. And enjoy the pretty picture.

 

New Release: Banners of Betrayal

Ding ding ding!

Cards of Banners of Betrayal. Behold thy elegance!

My first game has now been released! (I’ll just ignore Eko-Twist) The moniker for this grand endeavor is Banners of Betrayal, and it is available at TheGameCrafter. Check it out, if you are interested in a fun and light card game with surprisingly deep design philosophy behind, and so very awesome art by Jussi Alarauhio in front.

Frontloading the rules

My work and personal interests often force me to explain game rules to people. And since I tend to play a bit more complex games than Alias, this is usually a large dilemma: The more information a player has, the greater his chance of winning the game is. But there is only so much information one can frontload to the players at the start of the game. So the question is: How much information should you frontload to new players?

Explaining stuff takes ages. Let’s take Battlestar Galactica as an example: You need to explain the turn order, the loyalty card mechanic, space combat rules, skill challenge mechanic, titles, different locations, character properties, cylon activities and general strategy. I have seen only few people internalize Galactica completely on the first explanation. Everyone else will forget pretty much everything and ask mid-game.

Then the other end, just playing the game and taking in the rules as they come. This is an easier and faster method, but it will almost certainly cause the new player to lose. Case in point: Game of Thrones, second edition. The game has a boatload of tiny little rules that you need to be aware of. Like Ports and retreating rules. The first game is going to be a learning experience, and players who know the rules already have a clear advantage.

These are the two extremes of rules explanation. My own tactic is to just explain the turn order and things you can do to the players, and let the larger strategies unfold. I rarely explain things that do not need the input of the new players, in order to decrease the rules load. This works somewhat well, and usually confusion arises when several people explain the game. In those cases everyone pitches in some mechanic, usually not in any specific order, and chaos ensues for the new player.

Games&Tales acknowledges this dilemma, and tries to incorporate a tutorial system for our more complex games. A simple and easy-to-explain game mode, which takes a lot less time to complete. More rules modules can then be bolted on top of this core module, creating the final game. This also enables the players to select the level of complexity they want to play the game with. Because we can.

 

Dreamland Initiative

You may be aware that I am working as a Game Designer in Games&Tales Ltd, a cross-media company (also available on Facebook!). I’ve been working in several projects, and finally I know how much I can say about them. So, as a first post whose subject is related to my work, I’ll be writing about a roleplaying game I’ve designed to the setting that our writer and CEO have created: Dreamland Initiative.

About 1500 years into the future, Mankind has expanded into space. As time went by, humanity evolved into three distinctive major physio-sociological groups. Dreamland Initiative focuses on one of these groups; The Archaists, who voluntarily decided to stop advancing technology and genetics beyond a certain point. In the midst of an interstellar war between the human factions, a small Archaist research team makes a strange discovery: With a certain extract, a strong-willed individual can experience something called a Dream Projection: Seeing other people, beings and parts of the galaxy in their dream, and maybe even affect them. Of course, sensing a way to boost their obsolete and relatively weak army and fleet, the Archaist Military takes control of the project and starts using it to scout for resources and alien contacts in the galaxy. They create an operation called Dreamland Initiative.

In the game, players are strong-willed individuals from the Archaist colonies who have been chosen as volunteers for the Initiative. These individuals, called Agents, are packed in small science corvettes, where they are given dream therapy, taught to have lucid dreams, and given memory-boosting drugs. After the Agents are deemed ready, they are injected with a large dose of the Dream Extract and their mind is hopefully sent to somewhere where they can scout for useful resources or alien contacts. Focus on the word “hopefully”. After the session, the Agents are debriefed extensively before the next session.

So this is the premise of the game. I have GM’d about half a dozen sessions of DI now, and every one has been a blast. Since pretty much the whole game takes place in a dream, everything is possible. In the sessions, players have taken part in interstellar reality cooking shows, been the chief caretakers of a medieval castle and nobles and gladiators in ancient Rome. The juxtaposition of a haphazard military operation and a subconscious interpretation of events happening in other parts of reality is a large part of the fun, along with the rapid degeneration of coherency of the dream. Dreamland Initiative is one of those games that is extremely difficult to explain, but I’ll try.’

Each character has three attributes that define how the character solves problems. These are the base dice pools for any rolls in the game. In addition, every character has Willpower, which is a pool of tokens the player can spend to miscellaneous effects. Then, every character has at least three Identity Feature/Trauma pairs. Each Identity Feature is a single object or attribute that is integral to the character. An avid teacher might have Laser Pointer, an artist a sketchbook, or a soldier a weapon. These Identity Features appear to the character in the dream, and they are potent tools with which to safely affect the dream world. Each Identity Feature is paired with a Trauma. This is a phobia, a traumatic event or some other important negative thing in the character’s past. Spiders, spaceship crash or loneliness are examples of Traumas.

The game has a Coherency Tracker at the middle of the table, where everyone can see the coherency of the dream. At the start, the dream is very life-like and ordered. As players interact with the game world, the dream starts to become more chaotic and dream-like. Objects start to randomly appear. Doors lead to other places. Suddenly the players find themselves in a completely different place. Mechanically, every time the players attempt something non-trivial in the game world, the player who leads will roll dice. If he can use his or any assisting players’ Identity Features, he gets one more die for every feature. On a success, the player succeeds and nothing happens. On a failure, the Coherency Tracker goes down one step, and every Trauma from the used Identity Features trigger in the dream world. The thing is, the player who failed must explain how they happen. If the explanation does not make sense within the current dream context, the Coherency Tracker goes down further.

This is one of the games I’ve been designing nowadays. It is still being playtested, and the background might change drastically. But I would love to know what you think about Dreamland Initiative so far, so comments would be appreciated!

EDIT: Added a link to Games&Tales website. Check it out!