At some point during the evolution of video games, some inspired designer realized that by adding secondary achievements of varying difficulty, gamers actually feel like they are achieving something by playing the game. Needless to say I have achieved a lot since I started toying with Little Big Planet 2, and I say this with my tongue only halfway in my cheek.  It isn’t a game you play so much as a game you play with. Sure, there is a story mode packed with beautiful and challenging levels, but it serves more as inspiration and a source of materials for the creation of your own levels in the robust level creating mode.

For years it was easy to label video games as passive escapism (a prejudice I found insulting coming from a population that spends 4 hours a day watching cable television) but that argument has been buried in an increasingly deeper grave as game companies continue to revolutionize the genre with devices that actively engage the audience such as the Wiimote and  Kinect. While the Little Big Planet games don’t put you through the contortions of the Kinect, developers at Media Molecule have achieved something equally as inspired. They have created an art form. That might seem like a bold statement, but all you need to do is spend a few minutes exploring the massive amount of user-created content to see just what can be done with the level creator (remembering Sturgeon’s Law that 90 percent of everything is crap; you will certainly have to wade through some online rubbish to find the gems). Players are making not only playable levels but movies and music as well. It truly feels as though anything is possible with the creation mode.

Personally, I enjoy working through the story levels with my fiance, then scratching my own creative itch in the world creator when I have some free time. I’m currently working on a bit of a narrative level as I try to figure out all the tools the editor makes available. Not sure exactly what the end product will be but knowing me it will probably have a dragon in it… I’ll be sure to let everyone know when it’s done and up in the Little Big universe.

In my first Game Design Diary (GDD) I briefly discussed the inception and general concept of Heroes of Ismia, the 2-4 player fantasy adventure board game I’ve been developing toward prototype. The initial idea was to create a game that combined my two favorite genres, fantasy adventure and resource management. In this GDD I’ll discuss the resource collection and management mechanics of the game.

Central to the Heroes of Ismia experience are the resource collection cubes. We’ll be rolling a lot of these bad boys, so best get familiar with them. Resource cubes are custom-made D6s with symbols for each of the 4 resources and two wild sides. A certain number of these cubes are rolled every time you use the “gather resource” action, essential for acquiring the different resources required for many of the game’s quests.

Gather Resource Action: In a game turn, each player has two actions to do whatever they want with. By far, the two most common actions are moving and gathering resources. To gather a resource, first declare which resource you will attempt to gather (wood, stone, gold or magic), then determine how many resource cubes you get to roll. The base number of cubes to roll is one, all other bonuses are added to this. Players receive collection bonuses according to their race (dwarves gather stone well, while halflings are quite good at pinching gold), their class (wizards positively overflow with magic, and a fighter’s ax helps her harvest wood), their location on the game board (there’s a lot of stone in the mountains and if you want trees, head to the forest) and any card or item that might give a miscellaneous bonus. If gathering gold, a halfling (+2) rogue (+1) in a city (+1) would roll 5 cubes.

Next, gather up all your cubes, give ‘em a toss and collect only the declared resource. The aforementioned halfling rolled 5 cubes which landed showing wood, stone, gold and 2 wilds. The lucky halfling nabbed 3 gold (1 gold plus 2 wild) from some unsuspecting Ismian.

This collection mechanic has remained unchanged since day one and has provided endless shouts of triumph and dismay throughout play testing, but there was no real management aspect to the resources. Players could walk around the board toting thousands of pounds of wood and stone with no repercussions, completing all of their gathering quests in rapid succession. Not only did it seem ridiculous that the characters would carry 15 blocks of stone around on their adventures, the sudden advancement through several levels at a time gave the game a surging/stuttering pace.

Resource Caps: The quick and easy fix was to put a cap on the number of resources each character can carry at once, having the added effect of creating even greater differentiation amongst the character classes. Powerful fighters can tote around a lot more than the other classes. Scrawny mages can’t carry very much, but they have a mana pool so their magic doesn’t count against their resource limit. To make things even more interesting, I limited the actual number of resources available on the board, based on number of players, to promote competition and munchkining at the table.

Read the next GDD to find out all about nasty monsters when I discuss the combat mechanic.

To get my mind off my cold feet, I started thinking about my tea, trying to guess when it was the perfect temperature to take my first sip. I’m not very patient and half the time I end up taking a sip too soon, scorching the hell out of my tongue. I hate that; there’s nothing worse than a burnt tongue. I get some kind of pleasure in other kinds of pain. When I sprain my ankle, I enjoy the attention I get from my limp. I like the tingling pleasure of pressing my bruises. But there really isn’t any pleasure in a burnt tongue. Nobody can see it; nobody’d know unless I told them, but then it’s like I’m asking for sympathy, and I hate that. So, inevitably I’ll just brood and feel sorry for myself, but I won’t get any pleasure from it. That’s why I spend so much time trying to figure out the exact instant when my tea is just the right temperature. There’s nothing like that moment when you can comfortably take your first big sip of Earl Grey tea. The only problem is you have to drink it really fast because it’ll get too cold real quick, and there’s nothing worse than cold tea.

I sat there for a while, watching the steam skate along the surface of the hot brown liquid, like kids on a frozen lake, before breaking away and drifting up into nothingness. I was thinking about that little girl who gave me the white paper flower and wondering if she liked ice-skating and tea. She would probably put honey in it till you couldn’t taste the tea anymore, till it just tasted like hot honey. I love that about kids, how everything’s so sweet, and they’re never lonely.

Thinking about kids and honey and everything made me kinda lose track of time, so I wasn’t sure if my tea would be cool enough, but I took a sip all the same. It was great, really just right. The warmth had this soothing effect on my stomach. I don’t handle alcohol too well and I was starting to feel like I was gonna be sick or something, but the tea calmed everything down right away. It also helped clear the stain from my mind, made me feel a bit more comfortable sitting in the crowded cafe. But I didn’t stay there long. I drank my tea real quick, so it didn’t get too cold. Then I got up, put the last of my change in the tip jar next to Buddha, looked at Audrey, in the eyes this time, and said goodbye.

© Reed A Raymond 2011

I have been playing D&D4e with the same group of friends for almost 3 years now.  As the long-term DM of this particular group of ragtag adventurers, I have learned a lot about running a game, building on a history of playing and DMing that stretches back to AD&D2.  In all this time as a DM, I have rarely sat down to record my ideas, observations, or fixes of the various systems I have played.  I am writing today to change that.  As a companion to my Game Design Diary, I will also write a Dungeon Master’s Journal.  Here I will talk about D&D with a focus on tips for running the game, house rules, and maybe an occasional encounter or adventure idea.

With this first DMJ, I’d like to tackle an issue that came up in my group’s last session that brought the game to a crashing halt: Healing Surges.

The biggest problem with D&D3e was the imbalance of character classes.  At higher level, wizards were ridiculously powerful, able to unleash an arsenal of spells to devastate their foes while the rest of the party sat back and watched the fireworks. When the wizard’s spells were depleted, the party would rest, rinse, repeat. D&D4e did a great job of evening the playing field by creating different types of powers for each class (at-will, encounter, daily) that allow adventurers to forge ahead and continue adventuring even after many party resources are expended.

However, in solving one hinderance to the eight hour adventuring day, they introduced another in the form of healing surges.

For those of you unfamiliar with 4e, healing surges are a game mechanic that represent a character’s life force.  There are numerous powers and abilities that allow injured heroes to spend these healing surges enabling them to battle valiantly through the hordes of villainous ne’er-do-wells. The mechanic effectively recreates the exhausting toll hacking-monsters-to-shreds-all-day would take on one’s body, limiting the number of encounters heroes can safely handle before packing it in and resting for 8 hours. The adventurers in my group usually run out of surges after three or four encounters, then find a place to hole up and rest.

The dilemma regarding healing surges that surfaced last session was caused by both the urgent need for rest  and the necessity of haste as their target ran deeper into his  fortress.  On the one hand, if the party pushed valiantly onward, through several more encounters, to face the evil magister and foil his nefarious plans, they would certainly parish due to their diminished pool of healing surges. Conversely, stopping to rest for eight hours would give the villain an opportunity to redouble his defenses, replace lost guards or simply disappear off the map. Not to mention the simple fact that it just doesn’t make sense to stop and rest in the middle of such a situation.  It is an instance where a game mechanic can break the verisimilitude of the experience.

So what’s the solution? I have a few suggestions for house rules that might help the party in situations like this:

House Rule #1: The rule that I will implement in my game will replenish 1 healing surge per tier at each milestone (1 at heroic, 2 at paragon, 3 at epic). This will not only allow the party to handle more encounters before an extended rest, it will make milestones even more rewarding and create incentive to continue adventuring.

House Rule #2: Healing during short rest doesn’t use surges. This makes the use of healing surges a strictly tactical decision, made on the battlefield in the thick of an encounter.

House Rule #3: Get rid of healing surges all together! This extreme option would undermine the power of certain classes, particularly the cleric, but might be viable with certain party make-ups. Surge value would still be used for all powers that allow the use of healing surges, I would simply change the wording of all powers and effects to “regain hit points as if you had spent a healing surge.”

So what do you think? Are healing surges really the villain I make them out to be? Have you had similar issues in your own game? Do you have a different house rule to deal with the same problem? Leave a comment with your thoughts.

Last week I recorded my initial impressions of Dragon Age 2 in what some might call a scathing review of the game.  I hadn’t set out to write such a negative review, but, having only a couple of days with the game and preconceptions still fully intact, it was much easier to focus on where the game fell short of my expectations than to see where it excelled.

Now I find myself playing my own apologist as I find myself fully engrossed in the game’s plot, characters, world. Much of my criticism in the previous post still stands, I just find myself more forgiving.  For example, my complaint of reused environments is only reinforced, which makes the world feel smaller and less real than in Origins, but more often than not I ignore the sameness as I look to the next plot point or revelation.

One thing DA2 has done well, possibly as a result of the smallness of the world in which it takes place, is make you feel more a part of the culture of the world, more involved in the politics and day-to-day life of Hawke’s hometown of Kirkwall. As the game progresses, more and more characters know Hawke’s name, and Hawke moves up in the world, going from a hovel in the slums to a villa in Hightown.

While I stand by much of my earlier criticism, my complaint about the game’s pace has turned moot.  The combat does still feel a bit too fast, but as the monsters get tougher and the combats last longer, I find myself able to issue the orders and tactically manage combat as I had in Origins. Similarly, the quick turn around of quests felt rushed and seemed to cheapen their significance at first.  One week on, I find the abundance of fast, easy to complete quests addictive .  It’s hard to turn off the game when you could finish just one more quest in less than 10 minutes.

All in all, while Dragon Age 2 didn’t entirely live up to expectations and pales in comparison to its predecessor, I am still thoroughly enjoying it, and if one can dismiss preconceptions and see the game as a unique, stand-alone title it has a lot to offer.

Final RARscore: Growing on me

Anyway, I was going through my wallet to pay for my tea and I came across this little drawing of a flower on a white piece of paper. It had been in my wallet for a few weeks and I’d forgotten about it. When I saw it, the burning started up in my eyes again and I was afraid I was gonna cry, it made me so happy. It gave me this warm feeling all over, like someone else was inside my body with me. The white paper flower was given to me by this little girl a couple weeks back. It was the day I moved out of my old flat and I was taking a break from hauling boxes and stuff. I was sitting on this park bench across from my old building, thinking about the city I was gonna be moving to and the cold and the fog, when she walked right up to me. She didn’t sit down or anything, she just walked up and stood in front of me. Kids can be so brave, they really crack me up sometimes. I almost started laughing right there, but I didn’t want to be rude, so I introduced myself instead. She reached into the pocket of her red dress and pulled out this little piece of white paper. She told me no one should have to feel lonely, and she pushed the paper into my hand, then ran off down the sidewalk.

On the paper, there was this drawing of a flower with six petals and a little leaf; I think it was supposed to be a daisy or something, I don’t know. But it really was a pretty good drawing, especially for a little girl like her. She’s probably gonna grow up to be a regular Cezanne or something. Anyway, it made me feel real good, so I put it in my wallet. I was gonna pin it up on this board where I put all my favorite pictures and articles and stuff, but I kinda forgot until I saw it again, looking for my tea money.

I paid for my tea with my last three bucks and sat down over by the window. All the other tables were taken so I couldn’t get any closer to the fire. I remember being real miserable because I could feel the cold sliding down the window and pooling around my Docs. That was when I found myself envying the guy over by the fire, taking up three spaces on the couch. Envying his ease and his warmth.

© Reed A Raymond 2011

Those who’ve been following this site know that I’ve been immersed in Dragon Age 2 for the last couple of days, and I’m writing today to weigh in on some of my initial thoughts about the game. A warning that this review focusses largely on my criticism of the game, with a more positive discussion of the story and what works coming in the future.

It was apparent from the outset, with the framed narrative of the hero’s story being told by one of his companions, that the game is a departure in style from Dragon Age Origins. Rather than being cast into the world of Garret Hawke, we are fed our own story by one of Hawke’s companions as he is interrogated by a Templar captain. So far, this seems an unnecessary plot gimmick that only serves to weaken my interest in the story. As with all framed narratives, the reader/viewer/gamer should be weary of unreliable narrators (in DA2, the narrator is a rogue who starts by lying, so we already know he’s unreliable) and must understand that the story they experience isn’t necessarily the story that happened. In many cases this is an intriguing possibility that leaves the audience questioning the truth, but in a Role-Playing game, I find the disconnect from the protagonist (supposedly yours truly) an unwelcome barrier between player and character.

This is not to say that the story is uninteresting or even that I completely disagree with the choice to frame the story.  There is plenty of time for the plot to mature and the frame to alter in unexpected ways.  I feel as though I am still playing the prologue and considering the quality of the writing team on Dragon Age Origins, I fully expect the unexpected, it just hasn’t happened yet. I’m prepared to eat my words in a future post.

Another striking departure from Origins is the darkness of the story, or more accurately the lack thereof. A large part of Origin’s intrigue and success was born from the gritty, noir-esque storytelling, complete with femmes fatal.  It was post zombie apocalypse meets Chinatown with a healthy dose of George R.R. Martin in the mix. Up to this point, DA2 has been positively cheery by comparison, with a bright color palette to match a happy Garret Hawke in his new home. Granted, I’m preparing for a venture into the Deep Roads, at which point I thoroughly expect everything to change. Like “The Lord of the Rings” begins with a celebration before the clouds of the Dark Lord finally reach the Shire, I’m sure the mood of DA2 will shift and I’m enjoying every second of the wait.

So far I’ve focussed only on aspects of the game that I readily admit may change as I continue through the game, like critiquing a book after reading half of chapter one, but I do have a thing or two to say about the gameplay and production.

First off, the menus and skill trees are far more difficult to navigate and less intuitive than in Origins, with gear more difficult to inspect and skills tricky to select. When choosing a dialogue path, more often than not Hawke says something drastically different that what I intended.  In one example, I selected the dialogue option “Were you expecting someone else?” and Hawke threateningly said “Did you expect me to attack you?”

The flow of combat feels very different, like it’s in fast forward.  Origins had a great tactical combat system, which ostensibly still exists, but the hasted combat makes targeting and control difficult. If the action were slowed down just a fraction it would improve dramatically. We would at least be able to appreciate all those crazy, kick-ass combat maneuvers our characters are pulling off.

There are a few more details that lead me to think the game was rushed toward production. At times dialogue is clipped (the same bits in both of my characters) and building and cave interiors have an irritating tendency to repeat in different locations.

Unfortunately this review has been fairly negative, maybe because I was initially expecting something closer to the original. It does say something for the game that I am excited to finish up this review to start playing again. I’ll post again with my views of all the things the game is doing right.  For now, its time to kick some darkspawn butt!

RARscore: Not as good as the first one…Yet

Just a quick update on the 3d work today.  I’d hoped to get a lot more time to work with Maya this week, but once again things have been pretty busy.  I did spend a lot of time with Illustrator designing a tee shirt and some wedding invites, but I’ll save Illustrator for another post.

Most of the work that I have done on the model is around the eyes, and I added the neck which, while the most striking change since last post, was actually quite fast and easy. I simply adjusted the vertices on the bottom of the neck where I wanted the neck to be, selected the faces, then used the “extrude face” tool to pull the neck out of the bottom of the head. After that it was just a matter of sculpting the general shape.  Fine tuning, as always, will come later.

The character in the story is supposed to be a tired old fisherman and up to this point, the model has had some pretty taut skin for an old dude, so it’s time for wrinkles! I’m modeling some wrinkles directly into the model and others will be created with textures.  To create the wrinkles, I use the “split face” tool to create three parallel lines where I want the wrinkle to be.  Pushing the vertices of the middle line in and pulling the top line out a little creates a nice deep fold in the smoothed model. I’ve carved in some crow’s-feet at the corner of his eyes and started work on some deep wrinkles around the eyelids. It still needs a lot of work though, and just as I was really getting into aging this poor guy, the mail arrived.  I rushed out to check, and sure enough, my eagerly awaited copy of Dragon Age 2 had arrived one day early! So Maya went off and I rushed to the kitchen to do some pre-epic-gaming-session chores, poured myself a frosty glass of home-brew and popped in the game.

I’ll expound on DA2 in the next post. For now I’ll be thoroughly immersing myself in stylistic noir fantasy.

Till next time…

Pretty soon I came across this little spot. It looked real busy, but I went in anyway. I hate social situations when I’m drunk but I hate the cold even more. It was funny because when I was outside, my face was freezing and my body was warm, but when I opened the door and the warm air from inside spilled out and all around me, my face got warm and my body felt real cold. My pea coat was holding out the heat. I almost took it off but I didn’t wanna look like an idiot walking around with a jacket hung over my arm like a fucking waiter.

The cafe was made up real nice and cozy. They even had this old wood burning stove over in the corner where all the heat was coming from. It was a nice stove, one of those little black ones, like the kind we had when I was a kid up the coast in Mendocino. The cafe was really just one little room so the stove kept it pretty hot in there. Some guy had his mug sitting on top of it, where you’re supposed to put a pot or a kettle, and he was keeping his coffee warm that way. He looked really at home, all spread out on the couch next to the stove, reading a book of poems by Yeats, or Keats, I couldn’t quite make out the name, and I didn’t really care. His comfort bothered me because I’m never comfortable like that in public. I really prefer to be at home, on my own couch, or my bean bag chair with the soccer ball pattern. I  envied his comfort and wished he was drunk and not me. But that wasn’t until after I ordered my tea.

The girl behind the counter was about my age and really pretty in a Hepburn kinda way. Audrey, not Katharine. As I ordered my Earl Grey tea, I spent the whole time looking at a little wooden Buddha that was sitting next to the tip jar. Audrey probably thought I was acting weird, but I’m not sure because I wasn’t looking at her at all. That made it all bearable. As long as I don’t know that someone thinks I’m strange, I don’t mind. That little Buddha didn’t care that I was drunk. It reminded me of this tapestry I had hanging up in my living room back at my apartment. My friend gave it to me a couple years ago when he came back from a trip to Tibet. It was one of my favorite things, a real conversation starter. I always have gotten a kick outta that Eastern stuff.

The tea cost me two-fifty. I’m always surprised at the cost of tea these days, I mean, it’s just leaves and water, right. The really good stuff doesn’t even come in a bag; you’ve gotta get your own damn tea-steeper and everything. I had this great one shaped like a yin-yang. I got it out of a catalogue and paid almost a fortune for it, really. But I bet it was the best looking damn tea-steeper in the city. Maybe I should get into the tea business if people are paying two-fucking-fifty for some dried up leaves and you don’t even have to give them a goddamn bag.

© Reed A Raymond 2011

I’ve been working on Heroes of Ismia for about a year, and the process of designing and developing my own board game has been a fascinating and rewarding experience. As I get closer to prototyping, I would like to share some of my designs for feedback, as well as discuss the mechanics and creative process that brought the game to the state it is at now.

One year ago, when I set out to make my own board game, I took about an hour pondering the various genres of games I love to play: fantasy adventure, resource management, role playing. I decided I would make a game featuring aspects of all these genres, and by the end of the hour, I had the skeletal framework of a game I could play in my head. One week later I had a playable mock-up.

My very patient and supportive fiance sat down with me and we ran through the game. The first run was remarkably playable all the way to the endgame, where the mathematics became a little unbalanced. Since then, the game has come a long way. Combat has become more dynamic and fun, new skills, items and quests have been implemented, and the mechanics have been tweaked for faster gameplay.

In this inaugural Game Design Diary, I’ll give a quick summary of the game in its current iteration, with upcoming diaries focussed on more specific aspects of the game I am currently refining or designing.

The game itself is a quest-based fantasy adventure game, in which you chose a hero at the onset of gameplay and are tasked with an Epic Quest which you must finish before any other player. Each hero has a class and a race that determines their skills and abilities that will aid in their quest for glory.

Throughout the course of the game, the heroes visit different locations on the board acquiring quests, then killing monsters, and collecting resources to complete said quests. When a quest is completed, the hero gains a level and sometimes a new power to help fight more difficult monsters.

There are many items and actions that players may use to help them in their journey. Powerful cards may be acquired that make gathering resources more effective or travel more efficient. Items may be purchased in town that aid in combat or otherwise augment your hero.

All this killing monsters, managing resources and completing quests is well and good but as the saying goes, a hero is only as good as his weapon (or something like that) and what would a Hero of Ismia be without a powerful artifact to help in completing his or her Epic Quest. An important part of every hero’s journey is exploring the world in search of an artifact to help them complete their Epic Quest. Finding your artifact early can often mean the difference between victory and defeat. Not only can the artifact aid you on the way to your destiny, it is required before a hero even attempt his or her Epic Quest.

So those are the basics of my game, The Heroes of Ismia: make a character, gather resources, kill monsters, complete quests, find your artifact, fulfill your destiny.

My next Game Design Diary will go into more detail on one aspect of the game as I work on refining and polishing it for playability.