So let’s talk about Shambles.

The Free Preview editions were printed and distributed at Dundracon a couple years (wow) ago.  For reasons I won’t go into here, I was at that convention for maybe 12 hours before RealLife happened and I had to go deal with it.  As a result, we had this huge launch - a couple hundred Free Preview editions, that each included a DVD of Night Of The Living Dead, posters and so on - and I couldn’t be there to run games or answer questions and so on.

As a result, I got kinda bitter about the experience, and I consciously or unconsciously pushed Shambles to the back burner.  I ran a couple games at conventions, when people asked me specifically, but for the most part I left it all alone.

At KublaCon this year, I was asked by several people if I was going to be running Shambles.  While this happened at every convention, it finally clicked this time.  I needed to get this game wrapped up, for myself and for everyone else.

One of the things that made the game easy to put on the back burner was Art.  I can’t draw, you see.  And we only got enough art for the Free Preview because I know several people who CAN draw, and who were kind enough to draw me a picture or two.

When Will (of Wargolem Games, who did the layout for Shambles) first compiled his list of desired art, it looked biggish, but since I don’t draw I didn’t really have a frame of reference for how much work was there.  Until I handed it to one of my friends, who laughed heartily, told me I was insane, and said I could have two of the following : Good, Fast Or Cheap.  We pared the list down until we had enough art for a preview, distributed it amongst the people who had time to draw for free, and eventually we able to put out a decent preview.  And though I may not name them by name here (for my own weird privacy reasons), I WOULD NOT BE WHERE I AM TODAY WITHOUT THEIR HELP, AND I OWE THEM A DEBT OF GRATITUDE.

However, the “Good, Fast, Cheap” dilemma proved to be very true.  Not only that, the book lacked artistic cohesion, as there were several artists providing illustration and each artist had a distinct style.  I came to terms with the fact that if I wanted the art for the book done right, I was going to have to pay.

So, on the heels of Kublacon, and feeling like I might be able to pay for the art, I set about looking for an artist.  I posted a Craigslist ad, got a ton of responses, and just as I was entering late negotiations with a promising prospect, I got whalloped with a couple big bills.  The process was going to be delayed.

In the intervening period, I heard from a previous acquaintance who had previously agreed to do the art, but later was unable due to other obligations.  Those obligations having passed, they indicated that they could take on the work when I was ready.

We came to terms, and they are working on art for Shambles as I write this.  I’m not foolhardy enough to assign target dates or anything, but I’ve made more progress with Shambles in the last two months than I have in the last two years.

So, that’s your update, and a rundown of what’s happened in the intervening quiet period.  Also, I did three posts here this week. That’s more than I did all year in 2007.

So I’ve been working on a full writeup of that Straight Paranoia game I did at KublaCon this year, and I’ve started to realize something.

This is kinda hard.

Maybe I’m just not in the right headspace for this today.  But I think the reality is that I underestimated how much information is really necessary to write something like this up.

Anyone who has watched me run a game can attest that most of my games are run off cocktail napkins and paper scraps.  Paranoia and Convention Games being what they are, it’s hard to write extensive character backgrounds and set up complex plot scenarios.  Most of the time such things are used primarily to stuff into laser wounds or start large fires in the HVAC ducts, and I’ve adopted a GM system that revolves primarily around having a Mission Briefing, Some Interesting Gear, and not going any further than that.

So when I set out to write up the Straight module I recently ran, I found myself getting to the Mission Briefing, and character kits, and I just sorta… ground… to… a… halt.  In practice, that’s exactly how it played out - I had the breifing, and great character backgrounds, but was absolutely unable to write any further.

So now, here I am trying to write up the module after a playthrough, and I have to fill in all those sorts of things that may come up for other people.  Like, well, the Briefing Officer’s name, or maybe her skills.

The experience has me reflective and introspective, much like I was after I initially ran the scenario.  I’ve always said that I didn’t do extensive game prep because I spent little time using the game prep materials and more time flying from the seat of my pants to deal with unexpected player curveballs.  Now, I’m not sure which one really came first, and I think that I’ve probably been using “player curveballs” as an excuse to not prepare fully.

My earliest experiences as a GM were alcohol-fueled descents into madness that centered around Changeling (though what we played bore only a passing resemblence to the actual game).  I can remember doing some game prep for these games, but remember also that it was a difficult group to control, one which sometimes intentionally went left when the plot was going right.  I was flying blind fairly early.  Sometimes it worked.  Sometimes it didn’t.

It’s not like this is a new or unique problem - I haven’t talked to a GM who hasn’t had to deal with this particular issue.  But today’s experiences have gotten me thinking.

Maybe it’s not that I have to fly by the seat of my pants, and maybe I don’t really have to be prepared for anything.  Maybe I just feel most comfortable when I’m improvising.  Or worse, maybe I’d not capable of anything else.

Food for thought (my own, at least).

-D

PS - because I’ve written so much about Paranoia lately, the next post will not mention it at all.

When I’m setting up to run a Paranoia game at a convention, I usually have to spend the first 15-60 minutes explaining the setting, or at the very least my take of the setting, to first-time players (or people who’ve not played in one of my games).  That can get tiresome for me, and while it’s good to review for some people who are regulars, it can take away from valuable gaming time.

For longer campaigns, Mongoose has put out The Little Red Book and it works great as a players-only rulebook.  But it’s A - a little too much information to give to players in a one-off game, and B - it’s ten bucks a hit, which makes it expensive if you want to buy one for each player.

What I’d prefer to have, is a slimmer and cheaper (free?) book, maybe 8-12 pages tops, about the size of the Paranoia intro that Mongoose put out for Free RPG day this year.  Something with minimal rules basics, a setting intro, and an important chart or two, that’s geared exclusively for the First Time Player Who May Never Return.

In absence of such a book, for the last convention I wrote up a two-page summary of the world and system, that I could print and give to each player.  While entirely free of charts and meaningful info, the sheets served as a basic intro and saved me going over the high-level stuff.

In the interest of sharing, and with hopes of not getting angry emails from Mongoose, Here Is A PDF of the intro I put together.  It is only passingly entertaining, but someone may find it useful.  Clearance : Infrared.

As anyone who is reading this has probably figured out, I haven’t been posting here very often.  There’s a lot of reasons for that, but I’m not going to go into them right now.  What I will say, however, is that I’m going to try to start posting here a little more often.  I have some backlog of prop stuff to post - nothing terribly exciting, but some things to help fill in the gaps a little.  And I have some general game stuff to post as well.  I’m going to aim for two posts a week.  We’ll see how that goes.

In general news, the Paranoia games I ran at Dundracon and KublaCon this year went well, and I’m excited to see the 25th anniversary edition of Paranoia that’s coming out (Did you pre-order yours?  I know I did!”).

I was setting up to try and run a longer Paranoia campaign this year, something maybe monthly or weekly, but I didn’t feel like I had the time to give it the attention it needed, so I held off.  But I think I still have something in the works.  Maybe next year…

Been playing Battlestations once a month, which is a fantastic game.  Good group of people.  You should try it.

Work on Shambles stopped for a long time, held up by art.  It looks like that may be changing.  Knock on wood, maybe it will all finally come together.

I’ve put in to run a horror game in the winter at a smaller, more intimate convention.  The last one I ran went really well.  This one is going to be very different.  And ambitious.

The backlog of “Games I Need To Write” is very long.  I’m hoping that posting here will help motivate me to work on them.

More later.

I’ve been running Paranoia games at local conventions ever since XP was released.  Running games in a convention setting can really be a crapshoot.  You don’t know what kind of players you’re going to get, if they are going to follow what you’re trying to do, or if they are coming in with set expectations.

My experience running Paranoia told me that people expect ZAP style games, with heavy clone deaths.  And to that end, that’s what I delivered (there’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here).  If players didn’t end the session having to deal with deep debt and genetic drift, I believed I had done something wrong.  A typical scenario averaged 32 player deaths.

Over time, I’d read a few statements from various people indicating that Straight style Paranoia was heavily underutilized, if not outright ignored.  I knew there was a lot of Grim to be had in that setting, but I hadn’t ever actually tried it.  This past weekend at Kublacon, I decided to give straight Paranoia a chance.

I started with 30 or so auto-generated characters, and I skimmed them looking for characters with both interesting mutant powers, and at least one competent skill.  From these, I created extensive character backgrounds that led them to where they were now.  I was attempting to paint a more Brazil-like Alpha Complex - I wanted things to be absurd, and funny at times, but with an overarching sense of danger and forboding.  Eight characters came out the other side of this process, each with a wide range of fears, plot hooks and subtexts.  I felt like I had some very interesting characters, though I hadn’t figured out quite what to do with them yet.

In the end, I sent them on a fairly straight-forward escort mission.  The Troubleshooters had to accompany a highly-visible entertainer to his debut performance.  When they arrived at his dressing room, he and his assistant had been assassinated with weapons assigned to the Troubleshooters.  Oh, and a squad of Vulture Squadron Troopers were en route to assist in the escort.  It was a fairly basic ‘Get away, find out who did it, clear your name’ plot.

Before the session started, I made it clear that this was going to be a different kind of Paranoia game than what people may be used to, and I set the stage.  In this Alpha Complex, you don’t kill people.  You never have.  Violence is something visited upon other citizens by IntSec goons in riot gear.  Sometimes things get blown up but, those were treasonous acts done by terrorists.  You’re an accountant, who for some unknown reason got assigned the task of escorting this famous guy someplace.

Looking at the players who showed up, I had eight people.  Four had gotten into the game officially, four were hoping to crash.  I knew four of them pretty well from other game groups (three of them were crashing).  Of the rest, I only recognized one.  I had been in a game with him earlier in the weekend (a Paranoia game, as it turns out).  I had a feeling that if anyone there would ignore the preface and buck the Straight setting, it would be him.

Seven hours later (at 3:00am) one player had dropped out because he couldn’t stay awake.  Everyone was drowsy, but there was still a lot of plot left to go.  However, in the interest of saving people’s internal organs, we wrapped up with narrative.  The game had a suitable level of tension, as the players really were intent on keeping their clone alive, and as they immersed themselves in the plot points and seriousness of the setup.

Player Deaths : 1

Only one player had gotten to his second clone, and it was the player I expected (the one I recognized from earlier in the weekend).  Rather than get into the Straight plot, he set about playing as he was no doubt accustomed to playing Paranoia - with no regard for his own life or the lives of his teammates.  The other players realized he was a jeopardy to their ability to lay low and clear their names, and so his second clone spent most of its life gagged and bound in a trash processing facility in a subsector.  As frustrating as this was for the player personally (it clearly was), I was disinclined to throw him a bone when everyone else had so clearly laid the smack down.  It also bothered me personally that his previous clone died from lethal radiation exposure (R&D Equipment), and his response to this was to clothe himself in a dead man’s bloody suit, and attempt to drag his dying body (that was losing hair, teeth, fingernails and more) to the stage so he could, as near as I could tell, attempt to lecture people to sleep.

I digress.  Let’s talk about the other players, the ones who stuck around.  When queried for feedback, they all indicated they’d had a great time, and that it was a very different kind of Paranoia.  As a GM and game designer, the experience taught me many things, but most of all it taught me that Straight Paranoia Can Work.  I intend to try it again, with one caveat : Next time, the game description will be more explicit about the fact that the game is straight.  I may even list it as a straight horror game, depending on the scenario I put together.

If you’ve gamed at a convention before, you know that the people who show up to play range from all over the map.  I have met some amazing gamers at conventions, but for every one of them I’ve met a lousy player with whom I would not share the table again.  Everyone has been in a game with That Guy - and sometimes I’m sure I’ve been That Guy in someone else’s game.  People expect Paranoia to be absurd - and as Paranoia GMs, we’ve enforced if not built that expectation.  But there is a whole lot of potential in running Straight Paranoia.  Just make sure the players know what to expect.

I wrote a series for IBM on putting together an Arduino-based Laser Tag game called ‘Duino Tag.  I held off on putting up any info here until the whole series was published. But now, all three parts are up.  You have to register at IBM developerWorks to read the whole series, but registration is free.

Part One - Gun Basics

Part Two - Firing The Gun

Part Three - Registering Hits

I also have basic parts kits available here if you want to take a crack at it.  You’ll need to provide your own Arduino and case, as well as some other minor bits (wire, battery, etc).

Here’s what the gun looks like that I built as a prototype:

This was a dream project for me.  If you read the articles, the rules of the game hinge around the idea that you get 6 shots before your gun may explode, and you can get hit 6 times before you’re officially out.

Sound familiar?  It should.  I built it with Paranoia in mind.

In Paranoia, you get 6 clones.  And you can fire a barrel 6 times before it starts to overhead, with potentially disastrous consequences.

I have always wanted tabletop prop guns for my Paranoia games.  These would be perfect for ZAP mode of play, when you roll for Hit Location nearly as often as you succeed in the mission.

I’m not quite there yet - I still need to work in removable barrels.  but with a Referee gun (described in the series) this could be what gets me one step closer to that Paranoia DARP I’ve been threatening…

I’m gradually putting a few things up on eBay for sale. More of the laser cut goodies I’ve been putting together. Like these:

Take A Look

Part 2 of the series I wrote for IBM developerWorks went up last week and I didn’t get a chance to mention it. You can view the article here

As I said in Part 1, This series is aimed for the beginning programmer who wants to use PHP to develop simple scripts that can be used in various types of gaming.

I have written a three part series for IBM developerWorks called “30 game scripts you can write in PHP.” This series is aimed for the beginning programmer who wants to use PHP to develop simple scripts that can be used in various types of gaming.

Part One Has Just Been Published. I hope you enjoy it.