Beginnings are always a challenge, and I'd been thinking a lot on\u00a0what would be an\u00a0appropriate way to start off this blog. \u00a0I've been into tabletop role-playing games since the mid-80s, and while it's been some number of years since my gaming heyday, I like to think that even without regular games to attend that I've been doing a decent job of keeping up with developments in\u00a0the hobby. \u00a0More recently, though (say, in the past few years), the explosion of\u00a0small-press games and narrative-focused systems have thoroughly reinvigorated my interest, and my somewhat reluctant attempts to get involved in more social media have connected me with game designers, industry professionals, and other fans in a way that I have found to be extremely cool. \u00a0The culmination of all these changes came to a head last week in my attendance of this year's Metatopia, a gaming convention geared toward designers and the projects that they\u00a0are currently developing. \u00a0What I want to do for this report (and hopefully more reports to come!) is go over some highlights of the games I\u00a0played and other experiences I enjoyed.<\/p>\n
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Metatopia is helmed\u00a0by Double Exposure<\/a>, the same people who head up DexCon, Dreamation, and other RPG cons and events. \u00a0(They are also, incidentally, also behind Envoy<\/a>, an organization dedicated to bringing together game companies, cons, gaming groups, and GMs.) \u00a0I was a semi-regular attendee of DexCon for many years, since it was held in Morristown, NJ and was in such close striking distance from New York. \u00a0(DexCon and ConnCon were my go-to \"local\" cons back in the day.) \u00a0Being familiar with the people involved, I expected a well-run con, and I certainly wasn't disappointed in that regard. \u00a0The way Metatopia differs from other cons, though, is that instead of attendees filling their schedules with various games run by volunteer GMs, attendees to Metatopia fill their schedules with playtests run by the various games' designers and a wide selection of panels and discussions on various topics of interest to the game design industry. \u00a0It is a unique and wonderful con experience, especially if you're interested in the nuts and bolts of what fuels role-playing game systems, which I very much am.<\/p>\n I'll say overall that I had an amazing time at Metatopia. \u00a0I met some great people that I've been admiring from afar for a while, met some other great people for the first time, learned a lot about the game development process and what a designer has to go through before a game goes to market, and found it a personally fulfilling experience to get back to a con and take advantage of the opportunity to stretch my gaming legs. \u00a0What follow are some of the bigger highlights of my weekend.<\/p>\n Disclaimer: The games\u00a0mentioned here are\u00a0currently in development, and so everything I describe about them is subject to change. \u00a0It also means that as of this writing, none of them are yet on the market. \u00a0If anything here interests you, I highly recommend that you keep an eye on the designers' media outlets to keep up-to-date with the latest news.<\/p>\n Epiphany<\/em><\/span> This game was a blast to play. \u00a0I don't get that many chances these days to enjoy story games like this, so the experience was both desired and novel for me, and I enjoyed it immensely. \u00a0James and Kat both introduced and presented the game. \u00a0James participated in the playtest as a Fate, and Kat observed, answered questions, and took notes. \u00a0My fellow attendee-players were both\u00a0One Shot<\/em> fans as well, and they were both outstanding to have in the game. \u00a0Meeting James and Kat face-to-face for the first time was a little overwhelming and a lot surreal. \u00a0Because I listen to them for what amounts to a few hours every week, their voices are intimately familiar to me, so it was pretty weird for my eyes to tell my brain \"stranger\" and my ears to tell my brain \"friend.\" \u00a0That said, they are both as delightful and fun in person as they are to listen to on the podcasts, and while I did manage to act the fool a bit when fanboying over them, I still feel like I didn't get to express half of how I felt about meeting them. \u00a0So the combined experience of meeting those two and playing in their game was one of the major highlights of the convention for me.<\/p>\n Project: Dark<\/em> and DarkNet<\/em><\/span> Project: Dark<\/em> is a game that Will Hindmarch crowdfunded through Kickstarter. \u00a0(Full disclosure: I am a proud backer. \u00a0Do I even need to do full disclosure here? \u00a0This isn't an objective review. \u00a0I'm an unabashed fan.) \u00a0The game centers\u00a0on the exploits of...well, let's not mince words...thieves. \u00a0Which is to say that the entire game is geared toward stealth, infiltration, deception, trickery, and other hallmarks of the thieving trade. \u00a0The system is card-based instead of dice-based, which is always an interesting change of pace. \u00a0This card-based task resolution is interesting to me since it's more an issue of resource management than playing the odds; it's like if you were playing a dice-based mechanic, but you knew ahead of time what your rolls would be. \u00a0It also bears mentioning that the system uses ordinary playing cards, but instead of everyone just using a deck of cards as a randomizer, the contents of each player's deck is customized based on their character sheet. \u00a0Because the game is so heavily interested in stealth and infiltration, characters are dealing with their environment as much as inter-personal conflict, and the system reflects this well. \u00a0(For example, the harder your surroundings or circumstances make it to be stealthy, the fewer cards you can hold in your hand.) \u00a0This game's mechanics also make good use of the cards both as a value marker\u00a0and<\/em> as tokens; when taking an action, you can play cards to either add value to your \"roll\" or affect the scale of the result, but not both. \u00a0Like I said: resource management. \u00a0The suits of cards are also mechanically significant, which in turn makes them narratively significant. \u00a0To go back to the dice-based analogy, it's not only like knowing what your next roll will be, it's like knowing your next roll can be either a good \"fighting\" roll or a good \"diplomacy\" roll, but not a good \"hiding\" roll; as a player, you would probably direct your character's actions differently than you normally would.<\/p>\n The default setting of\u00a0Project: Dark<\/em> is familiar fantasy ground. \u00a0DarkNet<\/em> is the near future sci-fi incarnation of the setting, bringing in more hacker-like elements to the game. \u00a0The computer systems in\u00a0DarkNet<\/em>, unlike the usual cyberpunk fare, are\u00a0more AR than VR (\"augmented reality\" as opposed to \"virtual reality\"). \u00a0This subtle difference allows for more seamless in- and out-of-computer play, both in transitioning between the two as well as playing both simultaneously. \u00a0I'll also note that this playtest session was followed by a lengthy impromptu discussion afterward, which demonstrates both what Metatopia is all about and also the richness of the ideas in this setting.<\/p>\n The playtest was quite fun. \u00a0In a group of thieves, I played a \"bruiser\" type, so during the actual infiltration, I felt like as long as things were going right for us, my character didn't have to exercise his particular talents. \u00a0This meant that I didn't get a lot of firsthand experience with using the system, but I had a mighty fine time in the game regardless, and I got to absorb by watching others how the thing plays. \u00a0One effect of the hand-of-cards mechanic is that, because I drew a quite strong starting hand for my character, I was able to go through the game completely confident that I could handle any physical conflict that arose. \u00a0(I also was aware that, once said conflict was handled, I was unlikely to draw another hand so strong until the deck was reshuffled.) \u00a0So the randomness of the cards dictates not directly\u00a0whether your character succeeds or fails, but more drives how he acts and the decisions he makes. \u00a0I think\u00a0it will take some getting used to by people accustomed\u00a0to dice, and it came out during testing that it's not an easy mechanic\u00a0to teach or describe; it needs a demonstration to really click. \u00a0It strikes me as a difficult game to run well; there's a lot to juggle and keep in mind (see earlier comments about PCs vs. environment as well as PCs vs. NPCs). \u00a0I should also mentioned that the GM does not have cards, but\u00a0does<\/em> appear to use dice rolls, so that's a thing. \u00a0Oh, and there are jokers in the deck. \u00a0When jokers come out, it basically signals that some complication or so is going to arise, and it goes into the GMs arsenal. \u00a0I like this mechanic, as the players become aware of the mounting possibility of something going wrong as they take more actions. \u00a0I believe the GM dice rolls and joker mechanic are there to sort of keep the GM honest, as it were, and show that they can't just screw with the players on a whim.<\/p>\n To be continued...<\/strong> Beginnings are always a challenge, and I'd been thinking a lot on\u00a0what would be an\u00a0appropriate way to start off this blog. \u00a0I've been into tabletop role-playing games since the mid-80s, and while it's been some number of years since my … Continue reading
\nJames D'Amato\u00a0<\/strong>and Kat Murphy<\/strong> (oneshotpodcast.com<\/a>)
\nI spend a lot of my time these days with podcasts, and RPG podcasts in particular. \u00a0In the \"actual play\" genre, my hands-down favorite is\u00a0One Shot<\/em> (alongside its recently-added sister show,\u00a0Campaign<\/em>). \u00a0The hosts of those shows, James and Kat, ran some alpha playtests of a\u00a0game they're designing called\u00a0Epiphany<\/em>. \u00a0The concept of the game is to tell the story of a flawed individual who is saved or improved through some kind of \"magical realism\" scenario, like in the movies\u00a0Groundhog Day<\/em> or\u00a0Freaky Friday<\/em>. \u00a0The game seems geared toward self-contained, single-session scenarios, in the mold of things like\u00a0Fiasco<\/em> and\u00a0Psi*Run<\/em>. \u00a0The system is heavily narrative-focused, in that while dice\u00a0are<\/em> used as a resolution mechanic, it is not so much for success\/failure task resolution as it is for deciding narrative direction and control. \u00a0The single-protagonist model is very interesting, as it casts one player as the individual undergoing these experiences and the other players as something akin to co-GMs who manage the external influences. \u00a0I say \"akin\" because it differs from traditional co-GMing in that the \"Fates\" (as they're called in the game) do not confer or conspire before the game, except insofar as the entire group confers to decide the nature of the scenario. \u00a0The play style therefore relies heavily on improv play, which is no surprise given James' and Kat's backgrounds in improv. \u00a0There are currency mechanics in the game as well as sliding power scales which can tilt the scales of narrative control between the protagonist's player\u00a0and the Fates. \u00a0Each \"side\" has their own goal for various acts of the story, but in broad strokes, the group as a whole is working toward the same general plot, so this scans as a cooperative story game above all else, in my opinion.<\/p>\n
\nWill Hindmarch<\/strong> (wordstudio.net<\/a>)
\nI\u00a0consider myself a Will Hindmarch fan. \u00a0He's a game designer and writer, which, since I'm pretty much a game player and reader, is basically where most of\u00a0my fandom goes anyway. \u00a0I could talk about stuff\u00a0like\u00a0Things We Think About Games<\/em><\/a> or\u00a0Always\/Never\/Now<\/em><\/a> or Odyssey: Journey and Change<\/em><\/a>, but that's just the regular level of my fanhood. \u00a0I could talk about the alchemical magic of Storium <\/a>and what a life-changer that<\/em> is, but even that doesn't fully capture my admiration. \u00a0Will is definitely a doer, but he is also a thinker and a talker and a...feeler, I guess, if that's a thing besides an antenna. \u00a0It's difficult for me to put into words how I respect not only the man's work, but his\u00a0process<\/em>, his presentation. \u00a0Meeting him was another pretty big deal for me, and again I feel that I was unable to convey the weight of that for me at the time, though I stammered through a kind of half-baked attempt. \u00a0(Fun fact: one of the players from the\u00a0Epiphany<\/em> game was also an observer at this\u00a0DarkNet<\/em> game, and that was my only contact with that person at this con, so somewhere out there is someone who thinks I am just a nutty game design fanboy. \u00a0Which I guess is fair enough, but I don't ordinarily wear it on my sleeve like that.)<\/p>\n
\nThat seems like enough for now. \u00a0More Metatopia wrap-up coming soon in Part 2!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"