My Nokia 920 arrived today

It's a nice heavy-feeling device. It has a crisp screen and the embellishments added to the Windows Phone 8 OS seem very good. There's a problem for me though: my life is on Google (email, contacts, feeds, community memberships) and Dropbox, and the OS and marketplace (i.e. app store) don't support that.

I think I might have to go back to my Android phone. I can't be lugging two (charged) smart-phones around with me and the Android OS and app store offer all the things that matter to me. Can I be bothered to switch from GMail to Outlook.com, DropBox to SkyDrive, etc? If the MS services were demonstrably better, then perhaps I could... but they're clearly not.

A quandary.

Why can't I search for projects on Kickstarter that haven't yet reached their target?

Over the last couple of weeks I've spent a little more browsing Kickstarter than previously and I noticed something that seems unusual, and a little frustrating. Specifically, if I'm looking to find projects that I'm interested in I can do that pretty easily using the search facility. But if I want to filter that list down to projects I can help out, or projects that haven't ended yet, I can't! This seems like such an oversight that I've been wondering if it's actually an intentional design choice on the part of the Kickstarter devs. I can't quite think of a good reason why that would be though.

John Harper nails risk-taking in RPGs

Over on John Harper's grounded and yet pulse-pounding blog, The Mighty Atom, he posted a great reply to one of his commenters.  It captures really eloquently an aspect of RPG design that is dear to my heart: providing incentive for players to attempt dangerous things that really feel risky, without killing those characters left, right and center.

If you like talking about story-telling games

And other stuff that ranges all the way to a full-on nerdfest, head over to the friendly story-games site. That's it.

Where are the Ability Check rules?

I have recently acquired some pristine 2nd Ed AD&D hardbacks (they really are lovely). One thing I've noticed is that it mentions in both the Players Handbook and the Dungeon Master Guide that you can use ability checks like a Saving Throw as appropriate. However, I can't find a single place in either book where it describes how to perform such a check. Presumably it's a case of rolling a d20 and getting lower than the ability in question. The slightly odd thing about that though is that this is mentioned under the Saving Throw rules, and Saving Throws are roll high. Don't you just hate it when an important rule is left out?!

Torchlight Careers is born

Just thought I'd link to my wife's new website, designed by yours truly.

 Her company is called Torchlight Careers and she specialises in careers and employability counselling and advice. Since her background is in education and teaching, she's particularly suited to providing careers services for schools and other educational establishments.

Tech-wise, the site runs on Heroku's cloud service and is implemented with Ruby, Sinatra and ActiveRecord. Not many hits yet, but I really need to work on getting it more visible. Heroku has been an absolute dream to work with - I highly recommend it.

Thoughts on the In A Wicked Age RPG

I first ran this a year or two ago for a small group of friends.  The players all liked it - I wasn't so sure.

The other day I got a chance to try to again.  It suited perfectly the fact that I had no time to prepare.  It was satisfactorily story-rich, allowing us to weave an interesting (to us) tale of a boy, a ring, magic and a prophecy, all played out in modern-day London.  However, there were a couple of things that didn't ring true for me:

1.  Because characters and Particular Strengths are created by the group, everything in the story is transparent.  I don't like this because it means I can't hold back surprises for the players, and my group enjoy them.  (In this session I fudged it and kept some Particular Strengths secret until I wanted them to explode into an appropriate scene.)
2.  The dice mechanics are hard and unintuitive.  For example, remembering what round we were in during a conflict was tricky - I'm sure we got it wrong at times - as was working out who was answering who in challenges involving three or four characters.
3.  Negotiating the outcome of a conflict just didn't appeal to us.  I don't quite understand what sort of group does get off on this - it just held up the game in a way that seemed jarring to us.

I love the Oracles, the quick-play possibilities and the idea behind the escalating rolls in a conflict.  But the things I've outlined above make me think I probably won't play it again.

Here's something I wrote a while back.

Roleplaying games have gone all narrative these days.  It’s hard to move (in RPG circles) without bumping into one story-focussed rule system or other.  I’ve played both types and this is an attempt to marshal my thoughts and opinions on them.  Somewhere, I feel, there’s a game that’s just perfect for my style of GM’ing but I think I’m going to have to write it myself.   Realm Guard (a hack of the Mouse Guard RPG) has really been ringing a lot of bells for me recently.  I like the way I don’t have to do much prep for a game, partly because I’m pretty comfortable with the Midde-earth setting and also because the twists inherent in the game rules make for fun emergent gameplay.  I also like that the conflicts give everyone playing room for juicy narration while not tossing out the reassuring crunch of plenty of dice-rolling.

So, I’ve been really enthused about the hobby by the very existence of Realm Guard.  But an interesting and rather surprising result of playing this game is that I feel I’ve arrived in a place where I have a clear view of my favourite parts of both story-based and more traditional RPGs. 

This is where I’ve arrived:

1.     Realm Guard has taught me that assisted storytelling has its place but that the assistance is mostly for me as the GM.  There’s no actual need for players to feel the pressure to narrate or tell a story.  Often it feels positively awkward to have to narrate every roll.

2.     Players want to roll dice.  Dicing to see if you succeed or fail spectacularly is fundamentally exciting.

3.     Chaosium’s Basic Role-Playing system (BRP) was really a very good crunchy system, and still is.

I’m now thinking there ought to be room for a game system that assists (rather than requires) storytelling, lets the game hang on a single die roll when it matters and has a good deal of crunch.

So, if we were to build a Frankenstein’s Monster of a system, taking the best parts from several other games and sewing them together, what might it look like?  Something like this maybe…

·      When a character fails at something they can actually, succeed but with a condition, based on the severity of the failure.

·      When a character fails at something they can actually succeed, but the GM introduces a twist.

·      Players have characters that look different to each other in numerical terms.  Less of that fluffy trait stuff.  An ability either applies or it doesn’t!

·      Players can choose how much to risk in certain situations, based on how much they want something to happen.

15 games in 15 minutes

I'm late to the game here (about a year!) but I just noticed this was doing the rounds of RPG blogs. So here are the 15 RPGs that influenced me most, put together in 15 minutes no less!

• Fighting Fantasy 
• Elfquest
• AD&D
• Runequest (3rd)
• Hawkmoon (1st, BRP)
• Judge Dredd (1st)
• Call of Cthulhu
• TMNT
• Conan (TSR)
• Skyrealms of Jorune
• GURPS
• Talislanta
• Baldur's Gate II
• Dying Earth
• My Life With Master

And they're roughly in the order I encountered them I think.

Must... resist...

Saturday morning. Decided to write this instead of firing up the Xbox. That's the other thing that makes video games take up too much of my free time: they're easy to have a crack at when you haven't got much time. Somehow when I think I might have just a fifteen minute window, starting on something creative or picking up a book seems pointless.

The comparison between book and game is actually an interesting one. Picking up a book, it takes me longer to lose myself in that activity than it does firing up a video game. With a game I've lost myself in about 10 seconds. Maybe that's the real draw.

So, I'm recognising this, but at the same time I'm appalled by statements like this...

Films, TV, even hallowed books, are just rubbish because they don't involve me, It's a sea of blandness.

- Peter Molyneux, 2010

Video games and me

I hate video games. They're like a drug and I'm addicted. I love them too of course. I expect most players of video games just play and enjoy them, but since I'm me I have to analyse my behaviour on a tiringly frequent basis.

My problem with video games is two-fold really. First off, they're often the easiest thing to pick up and spend my free time on if I don't want to sit and think about what I'm doing. There are all sorts of things that would give me more satisfaction - reading, writing, designing games, Programming For Fun, going for a walk, watching a film... You see? All sorts of things. Video games are insidious though, being a lethal combination of 'easy to pick up' and 'immediately immersive'. That's pretty much their defining strength too. So, that's the first reason I don't like them: it's hard to not pick one up.

My second problem is that they stifle one's imagination. And not just while you're playing the game, afterwards too. I blogged about this here. Clearly I didn't manage to ditch my gaming habits. There you go - video games are a drug and I'm addicted.

The bigger picture of what this might be doing to us culturally flits through my mind now and then. I can't believe it's good.

Early morning

I had to bring Abe downstairs at 5.45am this morning. He's waking up wide awake at this time - has been for a couple of weeks now. He would actually lie in his cot happily enough for a while but his kicking and chatting keeps his Mum from sleeping.

So it's the early shift for me. I don't actually mind it that much. Once I've mustered the energy to get out of bed it's nice to bring him down, change him and then have breakfast. Abe will sit in his high-chair and watch me while I make tea and porridge. He's generally pretty chilled at this point in the morning - he yawns a lot and will go back down to sleep by about 8am normally. Recently (especially since we acquired a 'bouncer' from my brother & family) I've been able to play some Xbox while he amuses himself. This morning he didn't like it for long, so we may have turned a corner with that though. Bah.

Right now Abe's watching Pingu and it's 10 to seven. Oscar is prowling around me, mewing for attention, while I sit tapping away on my macbook on the floor by the swing chair. Abe mewls a bit every few seconds too - he's getting a bit bored of Pingu, so best sign off...

No time...

Well, we had a baby on the 6th April. It was a boy and I'm told they are often more demanding. I can believe it. I've been thinking about starting a diary of our life with him but I've only just now got round to it.

A quick update then. His name is Abe and he was born pretty much bang-on the due date. That means he's just over 18 weeks old now. The first few weeks were pretty rough. I think my advice for prospective parents based on that time would be twofold:
* Listen to lots of people's advice and read as many books and articles as you can stomach, but don't decide in advance or fret about following any of it. Treat it purely as information gathering.
* Accept that there's going to be a 'culture shock'. I thought we'd adapt easily - being somewhat mature parents we'd had the chance to speak to and observe many other parents (mostly friends and family) - but it still smacks you in the head. Still, it's not that bad, and it does pass fairly quickly.

Right now Abe is upstairs being put to bed by his mum. Tonight he's quite upset and hasn't gone down easily - first he wouldn't feed because he was over-tired, then he went down and woke up again because, erm... well, it might have been his teeth. Oh yes, he's teething we think. He's been sucking his hands a lot over the last few weeks.

We have a routine. We've not leapt to make one but one seems to have evolved fairly naturally. He has a bath about 6.30pm and then goes up to our bedroom for a long feed. After that he goes into his cot next to our bed. It's a travel cot since he outgrew his Moses basket.

Realm Guard RPG

Realm Guard is a hack of the Mouse Guard RPG, changing the setting to Middle-earth and the player-characters to Rangers of the North. So far I've run two sessions and I'm loving it. It allows emergent story and assisted story-telling with relatively little prep from me. I normally see prep as a bit of a drag and leave it until the last minute; with these rules and setting I've been much more disposed to sitting down and thinking ahead. It's got me rifling through some of the more obtuse Tolkien writings too. All good.

Next session this Friday with a bit of luck.