Roleplaying versus Acting

I can't sleep just yet.

How is roleplaying different from acting? Is it motive? respect? performance for an audience? goal?

Do we, as humans, simply instinctively know that someone is roleplaying or acting?

Or is there a difference? I found this quote attributed to Robert de Niro:

One of the things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price.

Dungeons and Dragons, 4th edition

For the record, I do not yet have an opinion on the forthcoming 4th edition of D&D. It's largely not relevant to me, since I'm not roleplaying enough and I'm not a big fan of straight Tolkien fantasy, but I'm curious as to what has changed over the years.

I know one of the design goals aims to incorporate more online experience, and I've heard that some of the rules aim to include more indie/narrativist/story-oriented/player-driven play that's at the bleeding edge of the definition of roleplaying game. Do I think D&D is going to be a hippy-love-fest game? I doubt it seriously. Do I want to have the option for more play, less single-player driven play, and severely reduced prep time for the GM? Hell, yes.

I don't think D&D can become the kind of game I want to play, and I'm okay with that.

UPDATE: Purple Pawn reports that the books have been leaked onto the net a week before release.

Muse, where art thou?

Game Chef is due Monday night/Tuesday morning. So far, I haven't written or produced much.

My trend of aternating years of awesome continues, but I want to break it.

Game Chef

Gorsh has kindly reminded me that this year's Game Chef kicks off tomorrow.

The event has slipped my mind, even though Andy K shouted out an email last week or so. This year looks to have some interesting things for artists, so I'll be sure to let a few folks know.

I haven't roleplayed more than a handful of times since I've been home. I don't know where my muse is wrt game design. Probably having lunch with Maslow. Work blocks the Game Chef and Story-Games forums, and I'm not the most active member of the community. Last year, the quantity of participants turned the event into much more of a group event, with different people in different feedback groups to foster interaction; it worked swimmingly.

Right now, I'm going to take my last year's GC entry, brush off the dust, and read it. I welcome you to play it.

I'm tapping in for this year.

What makes a good game?

A few days ago, I played Junta (BGG, BUY ME!) for the first time. I've had this game on my radar for years, one of the older classics from the 80s (really 1978) that I had heard about but had never personally played.

I didn't love the game. I'm not sure it got a fair shake at the table. Pushing around chits and looking at old badly worded perforated cards didn't help my enjoyment factor- let's just say I'm spoiled by games with real components. I know that I want to give it another go at some point, because I'm pretty convinced there's a good game in there somewhere. But all that is beside the point.

A bit more research on BGG turned up a great quote from Filip Wiltgren:

Up until, say, 2 years ago [2004] I thought that Junta was an OK game.

But playing Junta at a gaming club was a real eye opener for me. I went from a tight gaming group where every game was good to an environment where I didn't know the players very well. And I discovered that a good game is a game that can be played with people you don't particularily know/care about and still be fun - it's when the game itself is fun, not the company playing it.

There is a ton a truth in that quote.

When you can pick up a game — hell, any activity — and enjoy it with your friends, that's super awesome and congrats. But a shared activity does not a good game make- I learned this lesson to my embarrasment about a year and a half ago, when I tried to play a game that came out of several episodes of 1000 Blank White Cards (BGG, WP) with a group of relative strangers who didn't get any of the references.

I like this reminder; It's a good wake-up call.

Serendipitous Interactive Fiction discovery

I've recently started reading up on Inform 7, a natural-language approach to writing and coding up interactive fiction.

When I think IF, I think Zork ("You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here." So familiar, and so evocative). Right after Zork, I usually think Zork II and Zork III, but also the other classics of Infocom: Planetfall and Suspended, the Enchanter trilogy and Wishbringer. All of these I played on my trusty Commodore 64, but I distinctly remember playing the first Zork on a Compaq luggable in the mid-80s at my aunt's house in Houston, running off five-and-a-quarter-inch disks. I know I owned and never finished Stationfall, the Hitch-Hiker's game (briefly played on an Amiga), Ballyhoo and Hollywood Hijinx. Thanks to the wonderful series of tubes and Bittorrent, I can play all of these and more. I'm primarily using a great multi-game engine called Spatterlight for Mac OS X, which rules- I'm a big fan of using one app that pulls double (or triple, or quadruple, or quintuple, or...) duty instead of several.

I've also started searching for other, good, IF to play. As much as I love the old classics, they have a tiny bit of roughness around the edges- lack of UNDO and the inability to use X for EXAMINE keep cropping up out of habit. Save early, save often. But the medium has evolved in the last score years.

While doing research for game suggestions, I started at the no-frills but hugely complete Baf's Guide. I wandered into one of the IF newsgroups and happily discovered that the thirteenth annual IF Comp is in full swing. It's too late to submit an entry, but it's not too late to donate a prize or play and vote. Who knows what this year brings?

Improv game design and procrastination hacks

Here's a twofer quickie.

I posted the latest improv game design experiment over on the Flywheel. I know that it doesn't get updated super frequently, so here's your excuse to go check it out for some freshness.

I came across this list of procrastination hacks by some fellow who posted the list as a means to hack procrastination. Since I'm about to have my machine off for a few hours while I calibrate my battery, I'm going to hit #8, #12, and at least #3 on a few things I want to do.

James Ernest on design

I generally don't like to just quote-and-link, but I can't help it sometimes.

Cheapass' James Ernest has an article in Make magazine on game design. Some of it is pretty basic and introductory stuff, but this quote stands out as particularly insightful.

I like to say that there are two kinds of novice game designers: those who make houses out of doors, and those who make roads out of walls. The "house made of doors" game has no clear goal but offers many ways to get there. The "road made of walls" has a clear objective, the end of the road, with obstacles along the way. But a good game combines these two - a road made of doors, with a clear goal and multiple ways to achieve it.

Definitely a different way of thinking about design.

Game Chef Top Eight

The results are in!

I didn't make the Top Eight, but my game ranked in the top third against some pretty stiff competition.

But never fear! This is only incentive to make my game(s) better.

Game inventors make game designers look crazy

Or maybe it's jut reality television.

Check out this five-minute video from YouTube (direct link for my RSS friends). You've got a fellow on the American Inventor reality show pitching his game, Bulletball, which looks like ping-pong without paddles, or handball played on a circular surface. Inventor (not "designer") Marc Griffin pitches his game with an enthusiasm that just doesn't seem all there. Maybe it's an editing trick?


Digging a little deeper, I found an interview with Griffin where he talks more about the game and his life, defending himself as accepting the trade-off of looking foolish for national exposure for his game. I can respect that. I can't respect selling one's house and living in a car for what looks like a bad game.

I certainly don't think it would make the Olympics. Maybe I'm wrong.

Game Chef Status Update

Hooray! I have my first draft of my entry done, with just under 24 hours left until the final deadline. Plenty of time for revisions, layout, and feedback.

Ack! Game Chef!

The ingredients are live. Are you game?

Please forgive my irregular posting in the next two weeks; with any luck, I'll be glued to my laptop and over-caffeinated, writing like mad. Please keep your fingers crossed for me and my muse!

Game Chef 2007

Less than forty-eight short hours until this year's Game Chef!

If you're not familiar, the Game Chef competition is an intense challenge to create an entire roleplaying game from scratch in two weeks (this year, so much time!) based around a common set of limitations. This is obviously influenced more than a bit by the Iron Chef, where chefs create dishes that must incorporate certain ingredients, but the community owes a lot to NaNoWriMo or the twenty-four hour comic event.

It's about pushing yourself. I won in 2005, and was less than inspired in 2006. I work better under deadlines or external pressure, and I'm really looking forward for the opportunity to write, create, and compete again.

Playtesting and prototypes

I've got another boardgame design post up over on the Flywheel. I talk a little more about prototyping than playtesting in this post, but the other guys talk about their playtesting efforts. Good stuff over there.

Honeypot now available!

Please allow me to direct your attention to Marc Majcher's Honeypot, a nifty new two-player abstract strategy game from Gizmet Gameworks.

I had a hand in the playtesting and rules editing, plus I suggested the title. You can see some of the ready-for-assembly game bits over on Marc's Flickr channel.

Design

Once again, Yehuda has it right, in talking about his Menorah Game: "I can't really be called a game designer unless I am regularly sitting down to the business. I may as well be living in LA and call myself an actor."

I've got a dozen or so game projects on and off the stove in various stages of completion. Am I a game designer?

I've got one roleplaying game self-published and sort of selling. Am I a game designer?

I'm considering starting an imprint with a friend to put out games. Am I a game publisher?

I usually don't think of myself as a game designer. Right now, I think that would be a fine thing to do for a living.

Myshbackforward: Didj, Game Chef, Movie

Slashdot (News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters.) runs news stories and articles. Occasionally, one will merit a second glance as the story develops; they editorial staff (such as they are) dub this a Slashback. In the same vein, welcome to the Myshbackforward, as I give you a quick update.

Earlier today, I tested out my cut, bored, epoxied — and now waxed agave didj. I originally thought that it played extremely poorly, but with a bit of beeswax as a mouthpiece, I found it much easier to play. Still with very little backpressure, the didj's length and the laws of physics dictate that it's a very low note. I'll try to get a recording accessible to the intarweb.

I just got back from a brainstorming session for this year's Game Chef Competition. It felt really good to get the old noodle working again. To cut to the chase, this year's theme forces a time constraint on the game, and the ingredient menu suggests a Chinese menu- Pick three from Column A (Ancient, Committee, Emotion, Glass) or three from Column B (Actor, Law, Steel, Team). I believe that the time is trickier than it appears at first blush, and successfully working within these constraints may actually be harder than making good thematic use of the ingredients. I'll blog more about this later, but this year's time constraints really force oneself to think about the structure of the game/story.

And speaking of story, tomorrow marks the premiere of Gretchen, a movie my brother worked on. If you already plan to attend SXSW, you might see me there!