coffeestain

I suspect this is going to be an interesting thread. The majority of responses on the first couple of pages indicate that the most common checks in these folks’ games are perception and knowledge tests of various sorts.

Why? Why are you keeping information from your players? I can see how these sorts of tests can be useful from time to time, but if you ever catch yourself about to call for a perception or knowlege check, ask yourself: Will what happens immediately after this test be just as interesting if the test is failed as if it’s successful? If the answer is no, just let the players succeed.

On September 13th, I decided I need a new career. Or, rather, that I need a career. I currently work in telecommunications doing data entry, troubleshooting, and process improvement for a purchasing and provisioning department. It’s a decent job with decent pay in a great company, but it’s nothing I want to spend the rest of my life doing. Telecommunications just doesn’t excite me like it excites (I assume) some folks, and I’m getting more and more burnt out on what I do.

So, I was sitting at my computer, sort of taking stock of my life. I looked around and I saw two things: Games and animals. I enjoy my games and I want them to be a hobby for the rest of my life. But I love my animals, and I’m always fascinated by the idea of making their lives better. I decided, on the spot, that I’ll pursue a career in the veterinary field.

I talked things over with Hanzo for a while and he agreed it’d be a good move for me, a move toward something that could make me happy. So we started looking into school options and such, immediately. The next day, I applied for a job at a local emergency veterinary clinic as an overnight veterinary assistant. I interview this Wednesday.

Wish me luck! These are exciting times.

Last night, Sarah and I played our first game of Dreamblade. Dreamblade is a new collectable miniatures game by Wizards of the Coast and is strongly related to Magic the Gathering which is, in my eyes, a condemnation. However, Dreamblade is really very cool and I’m intending on playing it despite the fact that it’s collectable.

First of all, Dreamblade is very appealing thematically. The premise is that each player takes on the role of a psychic, fighting over a dream landscape by using nightmare minions from one of four factions: Fear, Passion, Valor, and Madness. The game is played on a nice looking mat that represents the dreamscape battleground. As opposed to Axis & Allies or the Star Wars miniatures games, Dreamblade plays more like Chess (Battlechess, actually) than a traditional wargame. The miniatures are beautiful, and a database of all available miniatures can be found here.

Dreamblade games seem to be pretty short, with no real setup time required. It seems to me that an average game lasts around half an hour. The game rules are easy to learn, but have a great deal of strategy buried beneath them, and each player makes many important decisions each game round. There’s some randomness involved in the game, but not enough that strong tactics are any less crucial. Being able to recognize strong combinations of figures and build synergistic forces is important, but actual play decisions seem as much or more so.

If you’re at all interested, I urge you to check out the online demo and the virtual starter and booster you can find in here.

Here, John Harper very succinctly gives an example of excellent scene framing:

“I want to get the Hand of Flame back from the Count. Let’s sneak into his castle!”

“Okay, you’re over the wall on the south side, in the Count’s rose garden. You’ve timed the guard routes, and you’re about to make your next move, when a guard walks back into the rose garden. He should be over by the reflecting pool by now! And he’s carrying a torch. The Count’s guards don’t usually carry torches. He’s bent over, looking for something. That’s when you notice it. A glove. Snagged on a rose thorn not six inches from your head. You look back at the guard. Yeah, he has only one glove tucked into his belt. He’s headed right for you. What now?”

The lesson I’ve learned about scene framing: start with something that can’t be ignored. If I decide not to skip over the sneaking stuff, then there better be some sneaking stuff worth seeing. “Roll stealth to sneak in” is super lame. But with a strong scene frame, now we have a bang right in the player’s face. Sure, now we can roll stealth and stuff, but it’s about this circumstance, right now, up close and personal.

This is totally awesome. When framing a scene, ask the following:

1) What can you make awesome?
2) What can’t be ignored?
3) What targets the player’s flags?

As I’m sure you can tell by the recent spat of posts, I’m currently playtesting Nathan Paoletta’s exclusive play-by-email game, Countdown. It seems to be going well, if slowly, and the characters we’ve created are pretty cool. We’ve got the whole urban magic vibe going on.

Brendan Atkins drew a portrait of our characters based on our character creation emails. You can see little Mao right there!

This is a totally awesome exercise for anyone interested in pacing, scene framing, or giving your players what they want right now.

Frame My Scene