Articles, Level One Wonk

On Complexity

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Games are complex systems, and as such gamers have incredibly eclectic relationships with complexity. This is true across the ecosystem; tabletop RPGs might have Honey Heist and GURPS while digital gamers have Candy Crush and Dwarf Fortress. Gaming has always had room for one-pagers to sit alongside clockwork behemoths and all coexist. Unfortunately, as is wont to occur, someone mistakes a preference for a judgment, and then we just have Twitter, where GURPS is the butt of a joke but somehow all indie games are just make-believe story circles.

The problem with trying to have a real discussion about preferences for complexity in games as well as rules density in games is twofold. First, complexity and rules density aren’t related. Second, and perhaps equally important, is that a game’s tendency towards having either physical rules or narrative rules is also not related to either complexity or rules density. Because the world likes making things difficult, though, there are confounding factors that do make these elements correlate. This muddies the waters because many associate a complex game with a game that has a lot of rules, and many also associate indie, narrative games with low complexity. These assumptions are both wrong, or at least flawed.

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Articles, Crowdfunding Carnival

Crowdfunding Carnival: March, 2022

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Step right up, step right up! The Crowdfunding Carnival is continuing for March, and we’ve got a doozy of a month to look at. In the wake of Zine Month, where are all those dollars going? And how was Zine Month, anyway? Seamus hit the games but I’ll be hitting the numbers, comparing Zine Month with ZineQuests of years past and seeing if we can’t draw a few conclusions.

Like last month, the quantitative part of the Crowdfunding Carnival comes from a start-of-month snapshot done the Monday before the article goes live. While this can’t capture every campaign that goes down over the timeframe, it at least gives us an idea of where the funding needles are pointing for Kickstarter, Gamefound, and Indiegogo. And for March, the needles are pointing up. There is about $400,000 more funding in play at the start of March than there was at the start of February, and over twice as many projects. And while this snapshot doesn’t give us a whole story, both Zine Month and some general pickup coming out of the post-holiday slump can share the credit for this uplift.

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Articles, Indie Frontiers

Zine Month Round Up #5

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Practicing a new (and literally newer than most) language via a roleplaying game.  The exchange between the distance between two people and the people themselves. A doomed mech pilot trying to help the survivors of their people reach safety. Delving in the darkness, maybe never to return. Saving the Jewish people by masquerading as Queens. We’ve done it once, twice, thrice, and four times before, let’s check out one last batch of Zine Month games and make it five, then have a serious talk about itchfunding!

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Articles, Level One Wonk

When The Game Blows Up

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You have a great idea for a new campaign. You explain it to your group, and everyone’s on board. Session Zero goes great, it seems like everyone has made interesting characters and is totally bought in to the premise. Then you start playing. For whatever reason, things just aren’t hitting the same way that everyone thought. Then comes the big inciting action. This will drive everyone to really dive in, right? Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe everyone’s looking across the table awkwardly. Maybe someone gets upset, maybe not. Whatever happened, the game blew up, and now it’s time to pick up the pieces.

When most of the hobby assumes that you’ll pick one game and play it forever, there’s not a lot said about the risks of trying something new. Even among those inveterate RPG collectors with four dozen different systems in their bookshelf, there were never that many games that were really *out there* until recently…and even now, the vast majority of games sold hew to a common template. So, when the range of experiences and expectations is fairly narrow, you have to be prepared for what happens when you step outside of those experiences and expectations and something unpleasant happens.

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Adventure Log, Articles

Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp Part 9

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The big day had come, and Hydropolis was feeling the heat. With the Future of the Midwest conference in full swing, every edgerunner in the city was looking over their shoulder at the corporate operatives and East Coast tourists trying to scope out the action. For CabbageCorp, though, the Future of the Midwest was looking shaky. While local agricorps like Biotechnica, Continental Brands, and Petrochem had been snubbed from the agenda, Jayhawk Agritech got the keynote slot with Dr. William Squires. Or at least that’s what the team thought.

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Articles, Indie Frontiers

Zine Month Round Up #4

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Artificial intelligences trapped in a video game. A baker’s dozen of bounty hunters. High adventure on the high seas. A quantum camping trip. The story of a skyship through the ages. We’re more than halfway through Zine Month 2022 and… nowhere near halfway through covering every project, gosh, who could? But we’ve got another five of them that are worth your time and quite possibly your money, so let’s count it off with Round Up # one, two, ah one, two, three, Four!

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Articles, System Split

System Split Redux: Legend of the Five Rings (AEG and FFG/EDGE)

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A while ago I had a bit of a hot take off the press. At the time I had played the Beginners Box for Legend of the Five Rings 5th edition produced by Fantasy Flight Gaming and then, in purely coincidental timing, played in a campaign of 4th edition that had been written by AEG. Excited, and with childhood memories rekindled, I ran to write up the differences I have seen between the two. So, why do I mention it?

It’s been a few years since that article was written, and the world proceeded to break time with the years of 2020 and 2021. With a slew of personal life changes, and with a need for incredible caution for social gatherings, my choice in games became dictated by what I could find online. Over the last two years, I’ve had a healthy diet of games run in 4th edition and finally had the chance to build characters and play in a campaign using the full 5th edition rules. As I reflected, I began to wonder: had I done a disservice by rushing to put something out? Sometimes we become too excited at a new prospect, and become so eager to champion it that we don’t get the full picture. There is also another element in play now as well: time. Back when I did my first crack at a System Split, FFG were the new kids on the block, with their hands on a shiny new property and some interesting ideas on how to freshen things up. Now, not only have they released the full rules and published several expansion books for Legend of the Five Rings and reorganized. EDGE Studio has now taken over the IP, and while books continue to be published, and the system itself remains mostly intact, I feel like it’s worth circling back and taking a deeper, more nuanced dive into the differences between the two systems.  Overall, with some time and space, I have come to believe that FFG created their version with a firm eye on past editions, but there are noticeable differences that might sway both gamerunners and players in one direction or the other.

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