A Look Back At Glitch Con 2012

Over the course of this past weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to attend Glitch Con 2012 over in Bentonville.  This was a fan run and oriented convention that focused on Sci-Fi, Anime, Steampunk, and Gaming.  For those of you who do not know what this means, it was basically a big gathering of hundreds of various fanboys and fangirls of all types and ages.  We all came together over the course of three days, Friday through Sunday, in order to hang out, buy and sell awesome products, listen to various experts and celebrities in our beloved nerdy fields, dress in crazy costumes, dance, laugh, talk, and play games.  It was an amazing experience and three of the best days of my life for quite some time.

Let me run you through a quick overview of what I did and saw during the convention.  A few of the things I did and the lessons I learned will merit posts of their own, which I'll get to soon.  But for now I'll try to capture as much of the awesome as I can without making a novel long post.

On Friday I arrived in the early afternoon and started things off by having a look around, purchasing a few books, getting them and some more than I brought signed, and just really getting a feel for the place.  I grabbed a few gaming books from John Wick and a couple of paperbacks from Kevin J. Anderson.  I loved spending time with both of these guys over the course of the weekend, but more on that later.

After that I went to my first panel entitled "Creation of LARP" which was run by the aforementioned John Wick.  LARP stands for Live Action RolePlaying for those that don't know.  In the panel he talked about the LARP games he has designed and played, including Houses of the Blooded and the Legend of the Five Rings LARPs (both games that he created btw).  He also talked about his opinion and views on LARPing in general and how to design a good game.  There were some good things there that apply to any type of RPG in my opinion, like allowing players the freedom to take risks, encouraging emotional investment, and realizing that the other players are an audience.  I enjoyed the talk and it made me very excited about the fact that I would be able to do some LARPing at the con.  In fact I kinda threw out my plans for the rest of Friday in order to do just that.

After the panel I joined a group of about 20 or so folks in the LARP room, which was basically the outer living room area of two joined hotel rooms, and the emptied out bedroom of one of them.  These were John's room btw, and I felt it was quite awesome of him to host the games in what amounted to his personal area for the weekend.  I'm going to do a separate post on the LARPs that I played in, both the L5R one that night, and the Houses of the Blooded one the next night.  For now I will just say they were tons of fun, and the Houses LARP was the single best gaming experience I have had in years.

After the L5R game I had the privilege to play test a new card game that John is developing.  It is called the Houses of the Blooded Card Game, and is obviously set in the game world for that game (which I'll do another post on probably).  The game was very fun and employed some mechanics that I loved.  Since it is in play testing and it is now my property I am not going to divulge any real details here.  I will say you get to play one of the six noble houses, that each one has a wonderfully unique thematic feel, that the game feels like it should based on the inspiration, and that House Fox is best.  John will be bringing the game to the public via Kickstarter at some point, and I'll be buying it definitely.

 After a late night playing that card game I went home, crashed for a few hours, and then came back to the con mid-morning to run a game of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.  I had four players, and made up a fun little scenario where Dr. Doom used the Sinister Six (my version of it) to steal some items from safety deposit boxes and help his crazy, evil plans.  The heroes (Iron Man, Storm, Spiderman, and Colossus) took down the Sinister Six, and even managed to defeat all the Doombots that came in to try and help, including the one that was actually masquerading as the Dr. himself.  It was quite a bit of fun for me, and everyone else seemed to enjoy it.  John Wick even added a bit to the end by asking if Dr. Doom had called anyone a cretin, to which I responded by having the real Dr. Doom show up and do that very thing.

After that I went to my first writing panel with Kevin J. Anderson titled "Things I Wish A Pro Had Told Me".  His co-panelist was his wife, Rebecca Moesta (another author).  They talked about some of the various tips and advice that they wish they could have received early on in their career.  They told us things like Heinlein's Rules of Writing, and ways to be professional.  I enjoyed listening to these two very talented writers and was definitely feeling a bit of fanboy-ness towards KJA.  After that I went to a great panel about Game Design with John and followed that up with a panel on Media and Literature with KJA, Moesta, John, and another author named Richard Knaak.

After that panel it was time for another LARP and some more hanging out with John, his wonderful wife Ro, and a group of his other friends, who were all cool folks that I was super happy to meet.  Seriously one of the best nights I could have ever hoped for.

Sunday morning brought me a bunch more panels to attend.  The first one I went to was "Collaborating in Writing" with Wick, Moesta, Anderson, and a romance writer Claire Ashgrove.  The panel was a bunch of anecdotes and stories about the subject, and was great.  I followed that up with a panel on "Exciting Seconday Characters" with Anderson, Moesta, and Ashgrove.  Very informative, and I learned that KJA almost killed off one of my favorite characters back in the day, and thankfully his wife stopped him.

The next two hours I sat around and listened to John talk.  The two panels were titled "L5R" and "Collectible Card Game Design".  He talked about the L5R world and shared stories of designing it in the first one, and then talked about card games design and his upcoming HotB card game.  He also shared some fun general stories and talked about how Pro Wrestling related to Roleplaying Games.  After that he and his folks were pretty much done with the Con, so I bade some absolutely amazing people goodbye for now and went upstairs to the gaming room for a few board games before I left.

As I said over the course of this post, I had an amazing time and the convention was wonderful.  I was able to get a lot of great advice and information for some awesome people in the fields that I love.  I learned a lot about game design, writing, and storytelling.  I made some new friends, and had some great new experiences.  The con was very well run and had tons of great content.  They are moving locations next year and are going to have even more room, so I'm looking forward to that.

But I think the biggest and most important moment of the whole thing came during one of John's panels.  I can't remember which one it was exactly, but someone basically asked him why he got into game design, and he said "A lack of desire to do anything else."  At first that seems a bit joking or flippant, but it really resonated with me.  I am never more excited, happy, or alive than when I am playing, designing, teaching, and building games and stories.  It is something I have loved doing for years.  I have never really taken it seriously as a possible career path until just recently though.  After all it isn't something that you'd normally think about as a job, and as John also said "there is no money in game design."

Now I know I can't do anything crazy like quit my job tomorrow and start trying to make a living as a game designer.  I'm fairly certain that unless I become very lucky I will always have to have some other form of employment.  I'm working on figuring that out.  The realization that I love explaining things to people, learning things, and telling stories makes me think I should very seriously look into teaching.  But beyond that I now feel that I'm truly okay with the concept of trying to make games for people on a serious and professional level.  That and writing.  I may never become a best selling author, but I love telling stories and creating worlds and characters, so I'm going to do some sort of writing.  I've got a whole lot of ideas, some of them are even in progress right now.  I'm certain it will be a bumpy road, but it is wonderful to feel like I'm actually on a road instead of just wandering aimlessly.  I look forward to the journey.

One last little note, I befriended John on Facebook, and these posts get cross posted over to there.  So, while I do not really expect him to read this, if for some reason he does I just wanted to say "Thank You."

Cortex Plus Design Diary 02: Components of Character, Part 3

Upon looking at the list of different Trait types for all the Cortex Plus games I have noticed that a few patterns emerge.

First off you can find the Distinctions Trait in every game.  I think this is very telling of the quality and design of the Margaret Weis Productions games.  Distinctions are all about the character of your PC, and all of these games do a wonderful job of exuding and promoting character through mechanics.  It is one of my favourite things about them.

Next let's look at what else is common across all four games.  Though the name and details may change, there is always a type of Trait that deals with the skills and training of the character, as well as one that deals with the physical abilities, be they natural, preternatural, or supernatural.  Since the use of these type of abilities is the most logical way to take actions and just plain do things, this completely makes sense.

Relational Traits are the next most common, appearing in three of the four games.  The only one without them is Dragon Brigade, so technically they are in all of the published games.  They are more of the focus in some games, Smallville, than others, Marvel, but they are there.  I'm very happy to see them too.  I love mechanically codifying relationships and social connections in roleplaying games.  Yes, there is a good amount of debate about whether you should have this or that amount of social mechanics, and how you should "just roleplay it."  But I really think, if you put the weight and consistency of mechanics behind your social roleplay, as long as you stay in the mindset of putting fun and story first, you only help out the roleplay.

The last of the five categories of Traits I'm going to talk about are ones that deal with morals and values.  Two of the games, and only one of the published ones, have an explicit Trait type that deals with this topic.  But I think the subject is there in the others, it just isn't focused on as much.  Also, in Marvel and Leverage you are playing superheroes and Robin Hood types respectively.  So to a degree an amount of moral viewpoint is already pre-set by the very character types.

So as I move towards creating a system where one can customize Cortex Plus to whatever setting you want, I'll be looking at five distinct Trait categories:  Character, Relational, Skill, Physical, and Morality

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love Cortex Plus.  The Traits system is just so wonderfully flexible and modular.  It strongly integrates great roleplay aspects, like unique character qualities and relationships, into the mechanics.  And at the end of the day, in all my experiences, it has been just a ton of plain old fun.

Next up is stripping the setting and fluff off of Smallville character creation and looking at its base framework, but that will wait till later in the week.  Next few days will have the start of a serial story and some game reviews.

Cortex Plus Design Diary 02: Components of Character, Part 1

For this second entry I'm going to be examining the character sheets from each of the various Cortex Plus games and giving a summary of the various types of traits that make up each one.  I'm hoping this lays a good groundwork for letting you guys understand what I'm talking about when I get to putting together the setting-less character creation systems.

I think one of the coolest things about the Cortex Plus games is that each one has specific traits and abilities that make up their characters that really contribute to reinforcing the feel and theme of the given game; but at the same time these all work very similarly so knowledge of one gives you a big stepping stone for learning the next.  So lets jump right in.

First off is Marvel, since I know that one the best.  A character sheet in Marvel is composed of the following Traits:  Affiliations, Distinctions, Power Sets, and Specialties.  Note for those that know Marvel, yes there are also Milestones on the sheet; but since those aren't a Trait I won't be dealing with them in this discussion. Wait till the discussion on Advancement.  So what are each of those things?

Affiliations:  The Affiliations trait deals with your hero's performance and preference in situations based on how many other heroes are helping him.  There are three levels; Solo, Buddy, and Team; or by yourself, with one other hero, or with two or more other heroes respectively.  Each hero has a d6, a d8, and a d10 in Affiliations; the lowest going into the one they are least comfortable in and the highest into the most comfortable one.  For instance Wolverine gets a d10 Solo, Spiderman gets a d10 Buddy, and most of the Fantastic Four get a d10 Team.  This trait fits in very thematically with the superhero genre.  It, like many other traits, provides good cues for RP.  Also, it gives a little bit of a boost to the Solo guys, who can't give or accept helping dice while Solo, but hey at least they get to use that d10.

Distinctions:  The Distinctions trait is very similar to Aspects from FATE for anyone who has experience with that system.  For those that don't, Distinctions are short sentences or phrases or even just a few words that articulate and encapsulate something essential about the person and character of your hero.  They might be catchphrases or personality descriptions or backgrounds, but what they do is capture the essence of who *insert superhero name here* is.  For example, Spiderman has Wisecracker, Iron Man has Billionaire Playboy, and Captain America has Sentinel of Liberty.  The best Distinctions (just like the best Aspects) can be taken both negatively and positively depending on the situation, and there are mechanical benefits to using them either way.

Power Sets:  These make up the mechanical and physical bulk of the character sheets in Marvel.  Each is grouped by a common theme or source of the powers, and is composed of three elements:  Powers, SFX, and Limits.  The Powers are basically a list of various super-powers that a character has, like Invisibility, Superhuman Strength, Enhanced Senses, Telepathy, Web-Slinging, etc.  Each one is assigned a die based on the strength of the power.  Its a simple enough way of handling this that you can represent a large amount of different abilities, without a mountain of rules for how each specific one works differently.  I like it quite a bit. I have heard some arguments that it doesn't have enough granularity to really represent the differences in powers between different heroes (i.e. one heroes Superhuman Strength d8 functions mechanically exactly like another Telepathy d8) but hey I think it works just fine.  I'm totally okay with losing elements of simulation in order to make a smoother running game.

Power Sets also have SFX (Special Effects) and Limits.  These have proven to be very thematic and really help to customize the power sets to each of the heroes and make the similar collections of dice feel distinct to each one.  A SFX is basically a narrowly focused special circumstance where you can do something extra and cool with a power.  Like doing and Area Attack, going Berserk, or Unleashing a big power.  Limits are ways for both the GM and the Player to shut down various powers either when its dramatically interesting to do so, or when a player wants to sacrifice one power to help them with another.  As I said before, these both really do a great job of playing up the theme of a given hero, but bringing out their signature tricks and their personal flaws.

Specialties:  The last Trait type in Marvel is Specialties.  These are basically skill sets that are broad in scope and application.  They are things like Combat Mastery or Science Expert; which basically denote knowledge, skill, training, and resources in any and all areas of Combat and Science respectively.  They fill the same role as the various big skill lists in other RPGs, but do so in a less specific manner that allows them to be more free-form; which I kinda like.  I do still love big lone skill lists, and spending mountains of skill points like in D&D; but this captures the essence of that in an easier manner and fits much better into the feel of the Cortex Plus system.

So that finishes up the various Traits in Marvel Heroic RPG, and brings me up to around 900 words.  I think I'll cut this post here and I'll tackle the other games in another post or two.  I'm less familiar with the other games, by not having played them, so descriptions of the various traits in them will probably be a little less wordy.  I don't really want to expound too much on the mechanics behind the Traits in these particular posts; more just the theme and feel of them.

Also, for those folks that I think are reading these, what do you think on the length of the posts so far?  Am I rambling to long, should I edit a bit more?  Are they good so far?  Please let me know if you have feedback on it, I'd love to know so I can improve.

Design Diary 02:  Components of Character, Part 2

Cortex Plus Design Diary 01: Looking Under The Hood (Character Creation)

One of the regular weekly posts that I intend to start making is going to be a RPG Design Diary. The intent is to look at various RPGs, analyze them, talk about my own RPG projects, and the like. Hopefully I'll create a least a couple of different completed projects out of all this, as well as providing insight into various game systems from my point of view.

The first topic I'm going to tackle is analyzing Cortex Plus, by Margaret Weis Productions, in an attempt to both better understand it myself and to help move myself towards a place where I can hack together a, for lack of a better term, “setting-less” version of the game that I can adapt to use in various different games in the future, in all sorts of settings.

I'm going to look at all the current applications of the Cortex Plus system that exist: Smallville, Leverage, Marvel, and the Dragon Brigade Quick start. Fair warning, the Dragon Brigade one is a short one short quick start product, so there isn't much meat to work with there. Also, I have not played either Smallville or Leverage; so my knowledge of them will be purely book knowledge, not applied knowledge.

The above links are mostly to RPGGeek.com pages for the games, because the current MWP website doesn't have much content on it, and what is there is basically for Marvel.  About the only content on the site for other games are the forums and a downloads page.

I'm going to start off at the place that most people start when they are looking at a RPG: Character Creation. Let's take a look at how each system handles creating characters, and then I might talk about what I want character creation in my version to look like.

Dragon Brigade – The quick start uses pre-made characters. Nothing really to say there about the process of creating characters. The actual Dragon Brigade game is not out yet; just the one PDF(which you can get ahold of here). I'll analyze the various traits and things that make up the character sheets in each game in a later post; so I'll have more to say then.

Marvel – This one does not really have any sort of organized or codified character creation system in the book. Margaret Weis Productions basically provides you with all the various pieces of characters in the GM section of the book. They basically say, decide in your mind what you think a character and his power level would be like, then assign dice and powers to fit that, and just don't be a jackass about min-maxing.  Oh and MWP's download page has a PDF of a random character generator if you want to just roll random dice to make your hero.

Leverage – To create your Crew member in Leverage you are basically picking various items from lists or groups and assigning them at each of seven distinct steps. The first thing you do is detail your Background. This is open ended, you basically write down various bits of info about your past, personality, experience, and the like. Then you pick your Primary and Secondary roles from the list of crew member types; and assign a d10 and a d8 to them respectively.

Next you take a pool of die types to each of your Attributes, which are things like Agility, Strength, and Willpower. After that you come up with a Distinction, which is a short phrase that describes your character. Then you play through and introductory session called the Recruitment Job. In this you end up assigning the rest of the character traits, like Specialties, which are kinda like extra bonuses in focused skill areas and Talents, which are kinda like powers/feats.

There is also an option for skipping the Recruitment Job and just assigning all that as well. I do like the idea of the Recruitment Job, it plays in to another RPG concept that I'm working on. This also really feels as close to old school RPGs as any of the Cortex Plus games; in that you do a step by step process and pick from lists and the like.

Smallville – I'm just going to go ahead and say that this is one of my favorite character creation systems.....EVER! It is really cool, tons of fun, and makes great, interconnected characters. The system is dubbed Pathways. You use a big sheet of butcher paper, or a white board, or a battle mat or something like that and end up drawing out this big diagram that shows how the PCs, NPCs, locations, etc. are all connected. It is a lot of fun to do and makes a very useful tool both for characters to connect to each other and the GM to build future plots.

You start off by making a few decisions. Where is your setting, at least initially for the character creation? What time period are you in? How far along the Pathways are you going to go when making characters? The last one is a kinda Rookies vs. Veterans feel determiner for the game.

You then consult a chart that is basically a 5x5 table (or 5x9 if you go all the way to the Identity lifepath stage by going for more of the Veteran feel). Each row represents a different stage of development that you characters (called Lead in Smallville) goes through. The first five that you will always go through are Origin, Youth, Focus, Road, Life Changing Event. The remaining four that are optional at this point are Priority, Modus Operandi, Motivation, and Identity. The columns represent different groupings of backgrounds, priorities, and social stratum that your character will be in and move through. For instance the options on Origin are Rich, Ordinary, Gifted, Strange, Alien.

Moving through the Pathways chart is a fairly easy to understand method. You go down one row and can choose to slide left or right one column if you desire to do so. This has both positives and negatives in my opinion. The positives are that you have easy guidelines to follow, your choices will fit thematically together fairly well, and you won't be jumping into something that will give you random bonuses that you don't need. But it can also come across as limiting; where you literally may find it impossible to choose 2 or 3 of the options at the next step below you. (Side note: The book does say that you can jump to any column if your group decides that's how they want to do things; but they suggest doing it the normal way)

Looking ahead to wherever you have determined your stopping point to be and planning backwards before you build forwards can definitely be a big help if there is a specific goal you are shooting for. Also, the names of the different stages you will pick are usually quite descriptive; but not all encompassing. Sure according to the chart you can't go from Rich to Outsider mechanically; but that doesn't mean you can't work those themes into your roleplay.

At each of these stages you will also be doing two things. One is drawing and making connections on the Pathway Map, which was that big diagram you draw on the butcher paper. The second is adding and increasing mechanical stats and abilities on your character sheet. An example of adding to the Pathway Map is that at the Origin step everyone draws a square and puts their Lead's name in it. Then all the squares are connected to all the other squares with arrowed lines. Then each player connects their Lead square to a new Circle with a line; the Circle represents an NPC. You'll keep doing this at each step; adding in new NPCs, Locations, and Assets; connecting them all to each other, and defining the nature of the connecting relationships.

You also increase the various traits on your character sheet at each step. For instance the Geek lifepath step lets you add in a new Distinction, step up a Distinction, and step up a Relationships, Asset, or Resource. Stepping up means raising the die type associated with it, i.e. from a d4 to a d6. Don't worry that you don't know what any of these different types of traits and things in game terms means, I'll be analyzing what is on each of the character sheets for each game next; and then going into talking about my ideas for a setting-less character creation system that uses the best of all of them.

Till next time, thanks for reading and happy gaming.

Design Diary 02:  Components of Character, Part 1