What the eye can see

Right now the eye is half closed, sleeping and waiting the arrival of those days when free time and gaming is plenty. Some of you who have been faithful readers might still be around. Thanks for your patience! I have managed to get a few sessions of gaming in the last months and will have a few posts coming in the near future. Still, I make no promises and posting will probably continue to be sparse for a while more.

Take care, and game on.

Just something that needed to be said

I think some people need to see this.

On hiatus

As if it is not bleeding obvious, I'm not gaming much at all right now. I hate it, and am quite drain for ideas to write about when I am not getting regular feedback from actual games.

It will continue to be quiet around here some more.

Hang around and The Eye will, hopefully, open up and peer at the world again.

The hangover

I got a bunch of emails today that made me sad. Today I got refunds from IndieGoGo for "Of Unknown Provenance", "Machinations of the Space Princess", "The Unbegotten Citadel" and "The Land that Exuded Evil".

Damn.

I really wanted to see those adventures...

Some thoughts on crowdfunding

(edit: Jim Raggi have chimed in on the specific case of Monte Cook, on The Mule Abides blog, and apparently Monte did promote his project, even more than others, but not where I saw it. I still think video is key, as per below)

I guess everyone right now is looking at LotFP, and the big crowdfunding campaign of Jim Raggi. So am I, and I'm thinking a bit about what this tells us. Everyone has an opinion, I know. These are mine.

So. There were 19 adventures up for funding. Four of those funded. That is a success rate of 21%, which is not great. But, I think the interesting part is how far the 79% got. 3 got in the 54-27% funded and the rest (often far) less than 30% funded. Those numbers talk louder than if most had gotten around 50% but not funded.

This might tell us a few things. Let's assume one: gamers have a limited amount of money, and Jim's hypothesis that "Each author's fans would follow them to their adventure here." is wrong. In that case it would explain the campaign was so "top heavy". Is that true? Well, if they pledgers where mostly from existing LotFP fans, that would be true. I've heard many gamers talk about how they have to pick and choose these days so I think that part is true. It would be bad for LotFP if the outreach has failed and the author has not managed to pull in their fans. There are two sides to that coin.

I think Jim's assumption is quite sound. Probably each author should be able to pull in their fans, getting a solid ground for funding. If they all have a big enough crowd to begin with. For some of the creators, I have no idea if that is true. Maybe. I know the Monte Cook example have been used before, and I'm going to use it again. I think the assumption rests upon the crucial idea that the authors could rally their fans to their cause. I suggest that for that to happen either the publisher or the author would have to do some marketing.

If we look at the projects that did well, It's clear that marketing played a factor. Vincent Baker did Q&A videos, Jeff Rients did videos of "design notes" and Brockie added extra stuff which related to him and his previous activities and creations and finally Green announced it would get published no matter what. Those who have analyzed the numbers claim to see clear spikes in contributions when those "added value" actions took place.

I'm going to hold up Monte Cook as the anti-example here. He did no marketing that I noticed, at all, until the Ptolus pdf. Also, it was not an addition that felt tied in to the project. Also, I think most of the expected hard core fans have Ptolus already. I wonder about the other projects that achieved under 20% if those authors did any promotion? Face it, if money is tight, you need to work to get some of it. Talk about it on your blog, get interviewed, pitch in extras. Also, do a video.

When I have contributed to Kickstarter projects I have noticed that they seem to include a video pitching the project. Every guide to how to succeed in crowdfunding seem to suggest you need a video. I claim Jeff and Vincent have proven that advice to be correct.

I'd like to hail the hero of LotFP promotion, Jennifer Steen (of the Jennisodes fame). Her interviews with the project creators was great. I think more of that special sauce would have helped the 79%. Why would I chip in money when you don't want to tell me about your project? Jenn did I great job there. 

The last thought I have on the matter relates to the upper tier of the whole shebang.  


When I think about an offer where I have to shell out $100+ in order to maybe get something, I withhold my funds. Come one. If I see no money on any project I would feel like an idiot taking the chance to put down $100. If I had 19 projects almost all funded, it would make more sense. Needless to say, if someone has to plunk down a few hundred for the campaign to get past that bump, it wont happen. Nobody puts down money for something which seem to have a slim chance of happening. 

This part of the campaign is where I think James Raggi didn't think it through enough from a consumer perspective. High tiers should be for those stretch goals a couple of hundred percent above fully funded. Otherwise they don't make sense.


All in all it was an interesting experiment and kudos to James Raggi for exploring the limits! 


Personally I supported a few of the winning bids, and even though I'm really pumped up about Vincent Baker's project, I'm sad I wont get to see what Monte Cook could do.

Summertime

I love summer. Finally some heat for these old bones, and no more of that cloak of darkness that descends over you in winter.

But, I never get to play any games during summer! Since everyone is away on summer vacation it's even harder than usual to get people together. I hate it.

So, I sigh and read games, not play them. It makes it hard to write anything inspired here, since I lack the input of real play.

But.

How about this idea.

A big starship has crashed, and sits there with the nose buried in the soil, smoking. The imperial marines are sent there, in case the aliens are hostile, since it's clearly a warship. But, something is leaking out, into the soil. It's the aliens reality leaking...

Things are about to get interesting for our brave team.

Maybe I'll type it all up.

How to not write a game

Last night I had some time to browse a game I have borrowed from a friend, Dresden Files the rpg. This is a game that have been talked about a lot, and most of it very positive. I did find some points of it so grating I had to put the book down. What do you do then? Gripe online!

In Dresden Files, the pages a very "designed". In my view, overly so. For example, some parts of the pages are designed to look like someone took a highlighter pen to some words and sentences. Personally I have never been able to use highlighter pens. For me they are of no use. I don't read like that. Sometimes I have read books bought second hand, and underlining or highlighting drives me up the wall. If anything, I take notes on a separate paper, never in the book I read! Having a thing like that in a printed book, by design, drives me nuts. It makes my eyes stop at intervals which are not natural to my way of reading. Quite jarring.

The other design element is sticky notes. Yes, they have small "sticky notes", with faux hand writing in the sidebars of the text! To me it just makes the text on the page drown in the clutter of notes. Adding insult to injury, the few times I stopped reading and glanced at those notes, almost all of them contained snarky remarks of a very annoying nature. I mean, if you add something to the text, add least make sure it adds information!

Since it's very easy to complain, I'm also going to say how I think it should be done.

The best game book I ever read is the 2nd ed. rules book for Unknown Armies. What's so good about it? It's clear and understandable. There are no witty quotes or snarky sidebars, just a clearly presented text with illustrations not interfering with the text. The text is different from the majority of gaming prose, though. It is not detached. Instead it is personal, and with a very clear author voice. For some that is a killer, and for those I direct you to SPI's DragonQuest, which is as formal as it gets.

But, I'd like to emphasize that in Unknown Armies, the voice never hinders the important function of the text, to get the information across on how to play the game. You can read one sentence after the other and the information flows naturally. The combination of all these factors are sadly quite rare, and one reason why I have sought out Greg Stolze's writing since.

Character personality as crunch

I read a post on The Douchey DM, by Stu from Happy Jacks RPG Podcast. He posts on the topic of whether character personality chould be part of the game mechanics. I have on more than one occasion in both posts and blog comments mentioned how I by far prefer to randomly generate my characters and than designing them through, e.g., point by systems.
For me it works better by far to play the character and in play develop personality traits. When I don't, I find more often than not that I run out of ideas and the character becomes a one trick pony.

Now, what happens when the character personality and psychology is supported by game mechanics?

I think the crunch heavy game, where I get to game (so to speak) the personality, it works better for me. Even if I decide beforehand some character traits, I tend to get more out of them if I can use them as an excuse to roll dice. Maybe it's because most games have some kind of mechanic for those traits to change and develop. It kind of is a way to support my implied way of developing a character with a game system.

Interestingly enough, many new school game, like those from the Forge community, are not only quite crunch heavy but also quite "in your face" when it comes to supporting the psychology and personality of the character and its relationships with game mechanics.

Thus, we have three groups of games.

1. the old school game where there's not much game mechanical support for anything but combat.
2. the 2nd generation game where the designers left the random tables behind and you "can build anything". Premier examples are GURPS and Hero.
3. the new school game with few rules, but they often focus on the character personalities and interpersonal activities.

What I find interesting is how this is also something of a chronological series. Really new games and old ones have interesting similarities for supporting a style of play where you "game the personalities of your character. One game by leaving you to your own devices, and the other by focusing the rules on that thing.

For me this explains why I find some games so fascinating, but still can't make them work for me. This is also why I do things like this, where I try to merge the qualities I like most from games of different eras and generations. The true test of skills would of course be to find a way to hack GURPS to be what I want.

Forgotten Realms Personalities - what levels are they again?

Everyone knows about Elminster, right? Lot of people have also heard of some dark skinned elf with some feline companion from some kind of novel or three, right? Mary Sue, anyone?

So everyone knows that there are multiple high level personalities in the Forgotten Realms. Many of us feel that those long lists of people in the setting books are slightly intimidating. Is there any space for the stories of my character?

I decided to sum the level of the named personalities in the grey box for Forgotten Realms, FR1 Waterdeep and FR5 The Savage Frontier (all for 1st ed. AD&D) and see what the average level is of them. It might give you a hint of what might be the best books to use, and if FR is a place for your heroes to make their mark. The results are interesting.

Grey Box - 9
Waterdeep - 6.5
Savage Frontier - 13.333

What do you say about that? Considering the box is detailing a significant part of a whole continent, it's not surprising to have a few level 26 individuals in there. But, the average lands right in the sweet spot for "name level", which kind of makes sense if these are the people who are significant enough to stand out. They have begun to make their mark in the world, which with player characters happens at "name level". Maybe FR is not so filled with demigods after all?

Lets then look at the metropolis, Waterdeep. Considering this is the most densely populated place in the realms, you would imagine this is a place you are quite likely to find those big wigs.  Interestingly, there are some character in the upper teens, but not as many as I expected. The movers and shakers are described in vague terms, and the so called "Lords of Waterdeep" are actually secret, which makes it easy to slip in a player character or two in there.

Then, finally, we have Paul Jaquays. While I have a healthy amount of respect for the man as a dungeon designer, I think I know where I don't like his world building. In the Savage Frontier we have him fleshing out the wilds around Waterdeep and he adds a few high level personalities. By adding in his marvellous The Enchanted Wood adventure material for DragonQuest (which I happen to have an extra copy of, if anyone is interested), he manages to up the epic feel quite a bit. I remember someone posted that they felt FR5 was a bit much, when a section about random events mentioned two flying castles with dragons crawling over them passing overhead, locked in a wizardly duel. I think I agree. This book adds way to much. In my FR I think I will pass on it, however much I like Jaquays' dungeons.

I don't have many more of the earliest FR books for 1st ed. Since Ed Greenwood wrote the one on the Red Wizards, and they are all over the Grey Box as the big evil force, I feel tempted to to a similar analysis of that one. I have Moonshae, but it feels a bit separated from the rest of the world.

So, while it seems like the reputation FR has of a myriad of high powered NPCs is not totally unfounded, I think it is not found in all the sources. Personally I can't stand game novels, and I have stayed away from most of the 2nd ed. source books as well, since most of those are written after the novels started to flow out of TSR. If those are ignored, and some source books are screened, I think there are space left in the Forgotten Realms for your heroes.

A campaign which uses the Grey Box as a basis, adds Waterdeep and takes that Old West feel, might be a "Greenwood-ian" realms, and one wherein your adventures might not only fit, but also make an impact on the world. That's how I would run it.

Where to start a campaign in the Forgotten Realms?

It has been fairly quiet around here a while now. I have been playing some D&D 3rd ed. but it is summertime and the regular slow down when everyone is on vacation this or that week until September.

Like I wrote before, I have been reading DragonQuest and different Forgotten Realms source books, and nurturing some hope of combining the two. Today's question is where to place the "home base" and centre of adventures? I'm going to think out loud somewhat.

Ed Greenwood detail the Dalelands in the grey boxed set, and it's clear that that area and the kingdom of Cormyr is where his players spent a lot of the early years. I have the module FRQ1 Haunted Halls of Eveningstar, which is situated in Cormyr, but suitably close to the "wilderlands" and the "borderlands" or high adventure. Sure sounds like a nice place to start off, eh?

One good thing with Eveningstar is that there are enough NPC detailed for them to be fun to interact with without being drowned in them. Also, the average level is actually around 5-ish and that makes them "within reach" so to speak. Secondly, there's a dungeon near, and a small keep with traps and some badlands with monsters. A little bit of everything, wilderness, "city" and dungeon.

The Dalelands then. There are lots of people to interact with in Shadowdale, but maybe a little too many. In the grey box there's a census report of every stead and its inhabitants! I'm vary of trying to fit a bunch of PC in there. Maybe it can be used as a blue print for another similar dale, but frankly I am a bit confused. What did TSR think you would use all that data for? The good thing is there are some small hills with nasty rumours, some holes in the ground and some intrigue. I'm not sure about the Dalelands, though. It feels like Harn in a way, and for me that is not positive. Who's pig is that again? How many silver does a farm hand need to be paid per fortnight? Anyone?

The third alternative is the city of Waterdeep. Now, that would mean no wilderness adventure, and the dungeons would in all likelihood mean Undermountain. That sound kind of intriguing. The myriad of NPCs is another thing to think about. How many movers and shakes do I want to juggle? A quick sum shows that interestingly enough, the average level of the named personalities of Waterdeep is actually just 6.5! Considering FR has a reputation of NPC demigods that is very interesting! I foresee many opportunities for players to make a difference in a not too distant future with that kind of competition. Suddenly Waterdeep looks like it just passed the Dalelands in my personal list of starting locales. There's enough going on, and you could easily find work both honest and more shady. Eveningstar is slighly smaller and manageable, though.

I'd love to hear if anyone has any experiences to share. The feel I got from the grey box of something like the Old West, with an interesting dichotomy between the wild and the civilized intrigue me, and I'm still pondering how to emphasize that, in whatever local I choose as a starting point.