What I’ve learned from a fictional idiot. (or, Why Misery Bubblegum is an Awesome Game)

Posted on August 23, 2010 by mcdaldno

Who likes watching The Office? I really like watching The Office. Admittedly, this last season has been a bit of a let-down, but it sits next to 30 Rock as being one of my favourite comedies around.

For those who don’t watch it obsessively, let me fill you in: it’s about a boring office that does uninspiring sales work. It’s led by a boss named Michael Scott.

Michael Scott is a catastrophically incompetent manager, in that he is silly, rambunctious, takes everything personally, falls in love with employees, and never seems to do any work. But also, he’s weirdly personable, and for this reason manages to make incredible sales, and for this reason is necessary to the company. So, he definitely has redeeming qualities, but is seen in the office as a loose cannon and an inept dork.

Throughout the series, he gets involved with several women. And here’s the thing: they’re all hot and successful. None of these relationships go very well, but it’s undeniable: Michael is attractive to hot, successful women. And furthermore, when he’s in a relationship, he proves himself to be loyal and interested in solving people’s problems – traits that caused him problems in the office, but that make him shine in these new circumstances.

In the office, Michael is a circus-gone-haywire. In the dating world, however, he’s got this allure. And when his friends need him, he’s there. So, here’s what I’ve remembered, while watching The Office: divorced from context and circumstance, characters become radically different. And here’s what else I’ve remembered: characters contain multitudes.

Michael is made interesting by his contradictions – that he could be so bad a manager, and still have the most effective branch in the company; that he could be so annoying, and yet attract such fine ladies. His refusing to let things go is a fault in the office, but translates to loyalty and attentiveness in relationships. Michael contains multitudes. His contradictions make him more interesting. That he is a different person in different contexts is what makes him feel human.

Too often, in my writing and in story games that I play, I am concerned with communicating the singular essence of a character, the fundamental truth of their personality. That’s a failing. It’d be like trying to sustain life by only breathing in, and never out.  Whatever time I spend building up that image of a character, I should spend time undermining it in turn. In the end, I should be looking at a character as variable and contradictory as myself, or someone I love and live with.

Which brings me to Misery Bubblegum, a game by Tony Lower-Bausch. It’s a roleplaying game that uses special cards. You create a character by “clicking” together two cards that you’re dealt at random, like Roguish Hustler or Vain Dreamer. The game plays out in 60-90 minutes, telling the story of some anime high school drama. It’s fast and fun!

The best part is Tony’s advice for playing multiple episodes. Keep the same characters, but deal the cards randomly again. So, Mitso might be a Roguish Hustler in the first episode, and a Cowardly Champion in the next. That’s fine! that’s more than fine, that’s amazing! Characters contain multitudes, remember? Mitso was a cocky play-by-his-own-rules dude, but now that people are looking up to him, he’s shirking his duties and looking for a way out.

Misery Bubblegum does something mid-episode that brings home this concept as well. Things happen through the playing of cards. These cards include: Afraid, Need For: Love, Lonely, Brave, etc. Emotionally charged things that imply a lot about your character. And you draw them at random, and are expected to say these things about your character if you want to win conflicts.

And when Tony first explained the idea to me, I was a little leery. So, just because I draw an Afraid card, I need to have my character be afraid? In play, though, it shone. Because every character had moments of fear, moments of bravery, moments of love and moments of loneliness. And when those things contradicted one another, they only served to make the character more interesting. These simple characters became rich.

I’ve started re-watching Buffy. Any guesses what makes it such an awesome show?

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Not Knowing, and Not Needing To

Posted on August 2, 2010 by mcdaldno

Today I was walking with Kaleigh and the family dog, through a trail in the woods. It used to be a railroad track, long ago, but it’s been converted to a lovely walking trail.

So, we’re walking through the forest, almost back at home already. And the dog, Moxie, she disappears for a minute. And comes back with some big, ugly looking bone. There’s meat clinging to it, and it’s disgusting. We’re like two minutes away from home too, and Moxie doesn’t seem to want to let it go. She’s got this big, hulking animal bone with rotting meat stuck to it.

And we’re throwing sticks for her, hoping she’ll abandon the bone and chase them. Of course, she doesn’t. We tell her to drop it, and of course, she doesn’t. We’re worried she’s going to try to bring it back to the house, and we don’t want to try to pry it out of her mouth or anything.

So, it’s not a crisis by any means, but there’s this looming feeling of dread for those last few minutes as she trumps towards the house with a hefty bit of carcass in her mouth. And then, just at the last minute, before we break free of the forest into the quiet cul-de-sac where we live, she trots off the path and begins burying it. It takes her a good couple minutes to dig and bury it, but she comes trotting back with a big stupid dog grin on her face.

I don’t think Moxie planned that burial all along, because I’m positive that she’s one of the dumbest dogs ever. I think it just occurred to her at the last minute, that she should save it – that she had better food at home, but maybe, some day, this bone would be useful out in these woods.

It reminded me of a certain feeling. When I’m writing a poem, or designing a game, or working on any of a thousand ill-thought-out projects, there’s this feeling of joyful vigor. If asked to explain why I was pouring so much energy into such a project, I’d be hard pressed to come up with a good explanation; most of my projects are flights of fancy, or things that only reveal their importance much later.

Later, I’ll likely abandon the project, but that doesn’t feel like a bad thing. It feels like I’m burying another bone at the edge of the forest, that it’s not gone, that it’s set aside for when I want it again. And if that’s never, that’s fine. Moxie doesn’t really think she’s going to need that bone some day. I don’t really think I’m going to need that half-finished project some day. It’s just… nice. It’s nice to feel invigorated by work, and not feel the need to justify that vigor. It’s nice to have the luxury to bury your work, without ceremony, and only ever return if you feel energized to do so. It’s nice to feel accountable only to your own spirit.

And those bones that litter the edge of your forest, they’re not waste. Because it doesn’t take completeness to feel accomplishment. For Moxie, the very act of carrying that bone around was an accomplishment. Burying it was an accomplishment. Moving on was an easy and joyful task.

It’s nice to not know. It’s nice to feel okay about not knowing. The bones will still be where you buried them, should you ever need them.

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Things That Have Changed

Posted on July 22, 2010 by mcdaldno

Brian Peters asked me:

“Can you tell me some about what’s sweeter and tastier about this new edition [of Perfect]? Game-wise, I mean.”

Brian, I’d absolutely love to tell you about some of the changes I’ve made from the first edition book and the upcoming one. Right now, I’ll focus on two: I’ve changed how Aspects work, and I’ve added Holds.

In the first version, a large part of character creation was creating Aspects. You’d give them a name, and then spend time fiddling with balancing out levels and numbers and strategizing, all before knowing how the game played out or what your choices really meant. The system for building your Aspects was broken – there were a few winning combinations that you’d be silly not to take. Some of the decisions you were making at this pre-game stage (specifically, choosing Fallouts) would have mechanical significance that as a new player would be extremely hard to predict – Fallouts are dangerous across multiple rounds or even sessions of play, not so much in an immediate, concrete moment. Before play, Aspects were complicated and hard to get a grip on.

During play, Aspects were tedious. Since your only way to get ahead in the game was to constantly rely on your small number of Aspects, you are struggling to work “Scent of My Mother’s Perfume” and “Vicious Like a Caged Animal” into every single scene. So the system was leading you down a stale and contrived path.

That whole system has been cleaned up, in a major way. You have a Resources score. In a given scene, you decide what your Resources are in that scene, and invoke those numbers that way. During character creation, your choices are dead easy: you can have Resources 6, or you can have Resources 5 and take 2 points worth of Contacts (a slightly more volatile option). The named-traits-called-Aspects thing still exists, in a different role. You create 3 Aspects, which are phrases that demonstrate things you rely on: Sharp Wit, Flawless Liar, My Father Taught Me a Code, Unremarkable Face, etc. You can invoke 1 per cycle, for a re-roll (a BIG deal in Perfect). So, now almost all of the mechanical strategizing has been taking out of character creation, and getting started with the game takes about fifteen minutes less. Play is much more about manipulating immediate resources, and much less about rely on fallback strengths.

The other new thing is Holds. I saved it for last because it’s best. In the old version of Perfect, the inspectors were always after you, once you’d committed a crime. There were lots of chases and interrogations and invasive home searches, even when it didn’t fit a character’s narrative, because that’s how the game was structured.

There was no, “Jacob, you don’t know me. My name is Inspector Raleigh. I’ve been watching you for quite some time. I’m glad you managed to make it.”

There was no Inspector looming in the shadows, collecting evidence and building a repertoire of perfect emotional weapons, biding his time. And mechanically, there wasn’t any way for the antagonist to build up resources without just intentionally losing a bunch of times, which really weakened the authority of the inspectors! Now, when you’re the antagonist, you have two choices: do you attempt to capture the criminal, or do you establish a Hold?

Holds are things that will come back to haunt the protagonist character later. They come in two flavours: Minor Holds (evidence, witness testimonies, etc – things that help the antagonist win a test), and Major Holds (secret fears, emotional weaponry, hopes and dreams, the names of loved ones – things that both help the antagonist win a test, and double the stakes). Holds change the pacing of the game. They lend it “quiet, too quiet” moments, and then they bring the hammer down and smash everything to pieces.

Source material where Holds are ruthlessly accumulated and then dropped all at once: A Clockwork Orange. Source material where the antagonist is focused on constantly weedling down a character: Quills. Holds in A Clockwork Orange might be stuff like: He loved the music of Beethoven; “Singing in the Rain”.

So, those are two changes I’m really excited about with the new system. Mechanical resources that don’t require a lot of forehead-scratching during character creation, and that lend themselves to dynamic and fluid stories; and, a way for the antagonist to bide their time, to get their dirty little strings deeper into your head before they start tugging.

Hopefully that stuff excites you too!

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Perfect is up on Kickstarter!

Posted on July 22, 2010 by mcdaldno

First of all, there’s a really cool fundraising website called Kickstarter. You have an art project, you set a goal, and people pledge towards that goal. Their incentive is partially the fact that different pledges earn you different rewards – in the case of a book, your reward might be pre-orders. In the case of an independent movie, your reward might be behind-the-scenes footage and deluxe DVDs.

I’ve been working on a game called Perfect since the start of 2006. And it’s finished. It’s ready to face an editor, and I’m ready to take it into inDesign and knock it senseless (senseless and beautiful). And pending that, it’s ready to print.

Except, all it needs is money. That’s where you, and Kickstarter, come in. The game is up on Kickstarter, and your pledges not only support my art, they earn you a piece of it! There are unique rewards at $5, $35, $50, $100 and $1500. It’s really awesome. I’m really excited. You should get your money into my hands, so that this thing can happen!

The Kickstarter page can hook you up with that widget, if you want to re-post it anywhere. It’s super simple to copy & paste the code into any page, forum post or blog post that accepts HTML. Also, there’s a short little link you can copy and send to people.

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I write like . . .

Posted on July 18, 2010 by mcdaldno

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

That’s interesting.

I’ve only ever read one thing by Cory Doctorow, and I liked it. I’d say that it’s an interesting result, but not an incorrect one.

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Simple, Single-Purpose Elegance

Posted on July 4, 2010 by mcdaldno

I hate Facebook.

There’s lots of reasons to hate it, but I hate it for the reason that it is obtuse and sprawling. The worst part is that I used to love it. And back then, when we were starry-eyed for one another, I swear that it was a different creature altogether. I swear that it changed, more than I did.

This is going to get around to talking about story games in a minute, but give me time to bitch about Facebook first, okay? See, Facebook is now a mess of Walls, status updates, pages, groups, events, apps, social network games, ads, albums, chat windows and boxes. I have a hard time looking at a Facebook page and establishing a clear vision of what it’s supposed to do.

Facebook used to have a vision, right? College students and alumni could sign up with a college email, and then they’d be able to find their friends, write on walls, and view people’s pictures. It was a time magnet for people wanting to creep the hundreds of photos that their ex Courtney has up. Excellent. A simple and elegant social site. Now, it has traded in that vision for extra tools. It’s become a big, sprawling box of tools, something unwieldy.

Perhaps I’m weird, but I want everything in the world to have a clear and immediate purpose, to have a clear and immediate big picture. I don’t care if it’s important or not, I just want it to know what it is.

And now, I want to take a moment and share with you some of my favourite stuff on the internet, and unpack why it’s my favourite.

Twitter
Twitter is the perfect example of what I wish Facebook was comfortable being: a site with a clear role. A simple, single-purpose elegance. Twitter is a place where you can talk to yourself about what you’re doing, name-drop the people you’re hanging out with, and watch other people do the same. It’s like a perpetual, narcissistic chatroom. You can reply and retweet, follow people and whatever. Or not. You can just spit out little 140-character tidbits about what you are doing on your day off.

Now, Twitter is constantly adding new features, just like Facebook. So, how are they different? First of all, Twitter’s features are unobtuse and unobtrusive. Some (hashtags, @replies, new search options) are an increase in functionality without an increase in visible stuff. Others (lists, retweet button) are quiet & available, obvious in their purpose. In all cases, Twitter’s features increase functionality without detracting from core elegance, and reinforce what Twitter is supposed to be about: dropping little updates, and watching your friends do the same.

750Words
I’m absolutely in love with this site right now. It’s a beautiful middle-ground between Livejournal and Nanowrimo and Twitter. Here’s how it works: you log onto a private journal. Along the top of the page, there’s a very-sleek simple calendar showing you which days this month you’ve written and which you’ve missed. On the bottom of the page, there’s a word counter. Write until you have 750 words or more.

It’s inspired by an exercise called morning pages, wherein a writer starts their day by writing three pages. Usually journals and untidy thoughts. So, a really simple purpose. What does 750 Words bring to the table? Well, first of all, the main journaling page is simple and tidy. There are no distractions in your virtual workspace. The calendar along the top (just a series of thirty checkboxes, with completed days filled in) is a powerful, powerful motivator – seeing a skipped box isn’t fun, and there’s a drive to fill today’s. The real-time word count along the bottom is another powerful motivator. So, the main workspace is motivating and uncluttered, a perfect environment in which to write. It’s also accessible from anywhere, a bonus over real-world journals that you need to lug around with you if you want them handy.

But here’s the cool bit! Once you’ve hit your goal, click the little word count link. It takes you to an analysis page, which breaks down your words-per-minute, total time, number of distractions and total words written. It graphs that in comparison to your record best. And then it analyzes your post and tells you about your mood, your writing topics, and your common words. It’s not always right, but it’s a fun feature. FINALLY! You can earn badges for writing a certain number of days in a row (badges at 1, 3, 5, 10, 30, 100).

So, there are all these features. But, here’s the cool thing: they don’t cloud the site’s functionality. They support the core vision (daily writing and self analysis). The badges motivate, the analysis tools invite you to take a look at what you’re writing. Everything about the site supports its core vision, and every feature is unobtrusive and purposeful.

Canabalt
Perhaps the best video game I’ve ever played. Canabalt follows a man in a tuxedo, only a couple pixels tall, as he makes a “daring escape” from a crumbling city. He runs along rooftops automatically, and you click your one button to make him jump. Jump from rooftop to rooftop!

The game is super, super slick. Great music, great graphics, great pacing. And it’s simple: your only control is jump. He’ll run progressively faster and faster, and the only way to slow him down is to crash into some obstacles (there are crates and garbage cans scattered across these roofs). Some buildings are covered in cracks, and start collapsing the moment you land on them. Sometimes, you need to jump through a “window” and run through a building. Finally, there are two types of bombs: little ones, that land on top of a building and that you shouldn’t hit; big ones, that obliterate a building upon contact, that you need to jump on top of to make it through the level. There’s a “tweet your score” button, and you can tweet how many meters you ran before falling. That’s it. On the ipod version, you have two different soundtrack options.

So,
This all relates to story games and game design. You can already see how, right?
Continue reading →

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Posted in Design Diary, Telling Stories Together | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Ribbon Drive, on sale

Posted on July 3, 2010 by mcdaldno

I’m putting Ribbon Drive on sale, while I work to sell through the last of the current print run. It’s an interesting sale model: pay cost, plus what you want to.

The physical product is really pretty. It’s sold as a booklet + compilation CD, in a DVD case. The entire book is full colour, featuring the photography and layout of Kevin Allen Jr. Whilst pretty, the cost of the game has been a deterrent for some (as its retailed for $30CDN). And I hate the idea that the price tag would turn people off. So I’m doing two things to combat that:

1.) In the future, I’m doing away with the boxed set, and just releasing a book. I’m in the process of laying that out right now.

2.) For the rest of the current print run (of which I have perhaps 50 copies), I’m offering a super cool sale. It’s a sale where you pay [cost + what you want to].

[Cost + What You Want To Pay]
Here’s how this works: it costs me about $9 to ship the game anywhere in the world. And producing it costs me $8 per copy. So, the cost portion is $16.
Figure out how much you want to pay me on top of that. A buck? Five? Ten? Combine [cost + what you want to pay]. Enter that amount, and the game is on its way!

Click on the RIBBON DRIVE page for more info, and for the button you click to pay me.

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What are story games? And why?

Posted on June 27, 2010 by mcdaldno

Let this post act as a primer, for anyone who’s interested in story games. Too few people know what story games are. There is a huge wealth of amazing, creative, social people in the world. People I’d love to play games and tell stories with.

This post is an attempt to paint a picture for those people. If you’re one of them, welcome. Here’s this thing I do:

Stories are vital. They’re the reasons our hearts beat. They’re how we make sense of emotions, and fortunes, and the days of our lives. When we don’t take time to honor and cherish stories, we fall back upon only the necessary ones. The ones that help us cope, that reinforce our pre-made choices. We fall back upon the belabored and uncontested stories.

When we step outside of ourselves, and seek stories out on purpose, we hit a great diversity. There are things we hate, and love, and things that change us. We change some things in return. Exploring a story can fill us with awe. It can also be tiring.

Games are vital. They are playful, and engaging. They give us a chance to succeed, but also the freedom not to fret over our success. If you don’t win at a game, your life is still OK afterwards. When something takes the form of a game, it becomes instantly lighter and more playful.

So, marrying these two things, that’s a pretty obvious first step, right?

Continue reading →

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Self Evaluation

Posted on June 12, 2010 by mcdaldno

[Soul-searching post edited and replaced with decision-making post.]

Alright, on this, the 15th of June, I’ve verified my desire to keep blogging. Thanks for the comments, Willem & Joe & d7.

I’ve also restored all of my previous posts. Though, I scrapped their previous categories and tags, and rebuilt those components from scratch. Because if I’m on board, I’m manic and obsessive.

I’m hoping to get back to what I’m good at: talking about communication and experience and what games mean to us.

Stay tuned, y’all. I’ll be writing more.

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[Design Diary] Cheap: Design The Game, Not Its Reviews

Posted on May 28, 2010 by mcdaldno

This is the second post in a series I’m calling Design Diary, where I revisit past game design efforts and unpack some of the lessons that I’ve learned from them. The game in question this time around is cheap, which requires participants to dive headlong into a nightmarish world where they are trapped in someone else’s story, exploited by some unseen narrator. Only by noticing and exploiting the patterns and symbols of the narrator’s story can they ever earn a chance to take down their dark master.

It was a game about exploitation, victimization, manipulation, strangeness, absurdity, and revenge. And it had potential. It was messy and intense, but it had potential. But I crashed that potential into the ground, by trying to design cheap‘s reviews rather than cheap itself. Allow me to unpack that.

Design The Game, Not Its Reviews

I decided, pretty early on, that cheap was going to be a cutting edge game, an intense game, an avant garde game.  I dreamed of its potential, and how it might be received. While I didn’t realize it at the time so much, I made bad design decisions in an attempt to manufacture those dreamed-of reviews. I didn’t make the design decisions that best expressed the game, or my goals for the game, or that achieved any certain effect on play. I made the design decisions that I thought would get excited, shocked, anxious reactions.

I dreamed of various bizarre distribution schemes for the game. One being that only those who had beaten the game and killed their narrator were allowed to learn the rules of the game. And, if they wanted to be “certified” to re-teach the game to others, they could pay a licensing fee to do so. Like, really bizarre ideas. 100% gimmick. Oh, context: you’re never told the rules of the game. You figure them out through playing.

To design a game from intended reaction upward… is to be self-indulgent, conceited, to disservice your game. Design the game, not its reviews.

That’s it, the one lesson learned from this one. The game has the potential to be awesome. All I have to do is stop trying to make it awesome, and start trying to actually make it.

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