design » Free Spacer

Aliens: Wrinkled Foreheads vs. Tentacles

Game Design, World Building 4 Responses »

May 102010

Aliens are integral to the setting of my upcoming Space RPG Free Spacer. When I began to create the Free Spacer setting, I had many decisions to make about the people that would populate the Milky Way Galaxy. Would I have Aliens and, if so, what sort do I have? Here are my choices and their emergent repercussions.

Life out there…

The first and foremost question is: Do we have aliens or not? This is mainly a choice based on the possibility of life in our Galaxy. How plentiful is life and how evolved is it? Our current scientific research shows a lot of potential for basic life, even in our own solar system. With this great potential for life, Free Spacer needs to have aliens. So what about alien people? It is conceited to believe that humans are the most evolved life form in the galaxy. So amongst the billions of different life forms in the galaxy some must be at least as evolved as humans.

What to call them?

There are three standard terms used in science and Sci-fi intelligent alien life forms, Sentience, Sapience, and Sophonts:

Sentience is a capacity to sense and/or perceive subjectively.

Sapience is often defined as wisdom, or the ability of an organism or entity to act with appropriate judgment.

Sophont: An intelligent being; a being with a base reasoning capacity roughly equivalent to or greater than that of a human being. The word does not apply to machines unless they have true artificial intelligence, rather than mere processing capacity.

So using these definitions Sentience is out, not particularly rigorous. It could as easily apply to a great ape or maybe even a cat, as they sense the outside world subjectively. This leaves Sapience and Sophont. Personally I like the word Sophont, it was coined during the golden age of Science Fiction by Poul Anderson and used by the great Spider Robinson. Sapient is a useful word as nearly everyone knows what it means. I’m going to use both with Sophont as the noun and Sapient as the adverb.

Actually Alien, but Understandable

Now that I have decided to have Aliens and what to call them, how alien do I make my Sophonts? The alieness of a Sophont can be gauged on a scale between Star Trek style wrinkled forehead humans to completely incomprehensible.

Gene Roddenberry chose to use the wrinkled forehead aliens to let his audience see the actor’s eyes. He wanted his audience to understand the aliens and identify with them. This idea is just as important in an RPG, players need to understand the Alien they are playing. Still it is unlikely that life out there will look just like humans. I want my Aliens to be much more alien than that.

One of the other pillars of design for Free Spacer is that the stories told are the Gamemasters stories. This pillar meant that I needed to have an Alien Generator to let Gamemasters easily create their own Aliens.

Having these very alien Sophonts in Free Spacer immediately ran into problems. The first issue was that highly variable Sophonts made the size of rooms and the use of devices impossible to design. So I had to create guidelines, for sapient life. These guidelines are integrated into every aspect of Free Spacer’s Milky Way. Technology, conveniences, ship design, and even social practices between societies are based on what my aliens are like.

Post-mortem

Although my aliens are not much stranger than those in Star Wars, their alieness had an interesting repercussion, explaining them. When telling players about the aliens or hiring an artist to do alien concepts, it was difficult to describe these very alien Sophonts without reverting to a silly simplification. Still now that it is done, the extra work describing these aliens seems to be working out. I have ten very different original alien species and they are looking great.

Jobs & Your Project

Community, Game Design No Responses »

Jan 252010

One of the most difficult parts of designing an RPG or doing any other project is the necessity of working another job on the side. Lately I have been working a contract; doing design and project management on a Nintendo DS title and is severely limiting my bandwidth for Free Spacer.

On breaks at work and in the evenings after work I find it incredibly difficult to get into work mode, even to write a blog. It is like changing from 2^nd to 5^th gear, I stall. Fixing this is not easy; working harder isn’t always possible I need to develop another strategy. So what is my problem? Is it a time management issue? Or something else?

There is a lot of information out there on Time management and as I did research and found lots of info on time management for writing. While these experiments seemed like they would be very informative, any long term use of time management techniques could in themselves be quite a time waste. These techniques have not solved the issue, but may have led me to the answer.

Some people work out or go to classes, I myself have been able to do this. The difference seems to be, the schedule, responsibility, and deadline. I am scheduled to be there at a particular time and I feel guilty if I skip it. Is it as simple as scheduling the time and insuring that there is a goal to meet? That is the new plan; I’ll give it a try, schedule it, and get the work done.

Playtest Reports Suck

Game Design No Responses »

Nov 302009

When I first conceived of this blog, one of its primary missions was to report on the playtesting of Free Spacer. This has been an utter failure!

We have finished four Playtest sessions and they have been very successful. Chargen is locked and we’re on to tasks.

Still, every time I sit down to write about a playtest, I just cannot finish one to my satisfaction. This has led me to one inescapable conclusion, Playtest Reports Suck and let me tell you why:

Playtest require Interpretation; One cannot merely convey the data from a playtest; it must be boiled down, looked at from all directions, and slept on. Often the fact that something garners a reaction is more important than the reaction itself. Most important is when someone has an issue with something I am worried about.
Playtests are digested; Once a Playtest is done, I leap into action fixing, changing, and editing the game; little of the Playtest notes survive the effort.
Playtest results are specific; Anyone outside this project would find the notes incomprehensible, even once interpreted, unless I explained huge chunks of the game.
Playtest Reports take too long; It would take me almost as long to write a fleshed out understandable Playtest report as it does to integrate the results into the game. I’d rather be refining the game.
Playtest Reports are boring; Playtest Reports aren’t that interesting really. They’re all: “this person didn’t like this and suggested that…” Not exactly narrative excitement and if you’ve ever read the Silmarillion you’ll know what I mean.

So you won’t hear much directly from me about individual Playtests, instead I’ll keep you up to date in this blog in a variety of subject driven articles, rants, and musings.

Dawn of a Space Roleplaying Game

Game Design No Responses »

Nov 262009

It all began Christmas 2008, I was Game Mastering and modding so much that friends we’re asking, “Why don’t you just make your own game?” I am professional game designer in Vancouver (Ex- EA: Blackbox and Backbone Vancouver) so I understand the consequences of making my own game. Knowing, somewhat, what I was getting into I decided to jump into the void and build Free Spacer.

Now, eleven month later, everything is going to plan. Honest… of course, I didn’t have a plan when I started, except the lofty goal of creating the Science Fiction Roleplaying game, I‘d always wanted. There is a lot more to designing a RPG than a lofty goal.

Currently I am on Stage 7 on my ten stages of game design:

Idea; this is the fun part. Brainstorm and come up with a list. Answer the question, “What do I want in a Game? What do I want in a RPG world?”
Validate; Eliminate the junk and find a core concept. Remember it is a game, not a story. It needs to be the cradle of great things, not the baby. If you want to have babies, Game Master, we all need more Game Masters.
Structure; Create a skeleton with your core concept as the base, design goals as the limbs, and your core mechanic as the spine.
Build; Build up from the core concept toward you design goals. You mechanics should support the needs of your game. Is your game about underwater combat? Parliamentary Scheming? Create game mechanics to do what you want characters to do in your game.
World; Develop a game world or setting that supports your desired Gameplay. Create a vast underwater battlefield for your underwater combat game or a complicated Bureaucracy of intrigue for your Parliamentary Scheming game.
Playtest; Once you believe your game works get people to start trying it.
Repeat stage 4 to 6; Expect to change things, but change them to stem from your core concept and fulfill your design goals, as long as you hold on to that skeleton the strange places solutions take your game can only make it stronger.
Write; It is fine to have a great game, but you need to make it clear, concise, and understandable. Explain it well and you’ll discover holes.
Edit; Yes, fix spelling and grammar, it is embarrassing if you don’t, but make sure everything you need is in the game and nothing that isn’t. You can always make supplements or split the books like D&D. The most important thing is a clear understandable core book.
Layout; You are going to need to layout your book for print or digital distribution. Layout will make it understandable and easy to read as a whole.

Just as I begin, Ryan Dancey kills White Wolf

Community 1 Response »

Nov 222009

As I sit down and attempt to write this first blog to document the design and production of my first traditional Roleplaying game, Free Spacer a couple interesting things have happened.

On November 6, 2009, in an article for Gamasutra “Q&A: CCP On Keeping EVE Online Fresh And Growing”

Christian Nutt asked Ryan Dancey an interesting question:

Can you fill me in on the status of White Wolf, the physical game company CCP acquired in Atlanta?

And Ryan Dancey said the most extraordinary thing:

It’s just an imprint… White Wolf used to have a fairly large staff. It doesn’t anymore. It’s focusing primarily on the World of Darkness RPG products. It’s not doing some of the things it used to do; board games and other card games and things. The focus of the company [CCP] is on making MMOs and our legacy table top business is a legacy business.

So White Wolf is now “just an imprint” that a far fall from the number two RPG company, but I suppose after CPP saved it from bankruptcy it’s unsurprising. Seems strange that they bothered to reboot World of Darkness to be a “legacy business” babysat by a downsized White Wolf and grumpy old Mr. Dancey. It is a bit depressing to see the RPG world with only one superpower, but could this perhaps be an opportunity for small scale operations? I hope so, because with the increasing acceptance of Gaming (Video, Board, and RPG) in popular culture I think the industry could actually expand. Not with White Wolf’s help though as CPP considers the “table top business… …a legacy business.”

I guess we’ll all have to work a little bit harder to push our secret geek subculture. I’m doing my part, I’ve been designing my Science Fiction RPG Free Spacer since January 2009 and we have finally begun playtesting. I believe It is all coming together.

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