Free Space » Free Spacer

Playtesting: a N00b perspective

Jun 222010

OK, so picture this scene:

You’re exploring an abandoned RRS mining facility. The air inside is breathable and you and your crew go exploring in one of the larger areas. This area contains a great deal of rubble, vats full of toxic stuff and a pool of the same dominates the room.

At the other end of the room, right in front of the doors you and the crew need to get to, a nice little war is beginning. Upon closer inspection, the warring parties are Nar weevils and Kar’jah fighting for dominion of this toxic space.

Essentially, you’ve got furry bugs and plant-monkeys between you and your goal – but you also have guns and your shield skill kicks ass (being the crew’s shield mechanic does have its privileges).

This was the opening to my first playtest session of Free Spacer.

While one of our team members tried repeatedly to toss a metal locker in the toxic goo to see what would happen, the rest of us started in on the killing.

I learned very quickly to appreciate being able to pool my dice in defence or offence as the battle progressed.

Two plant-monkeys coming at you? More shields! Taking an aimed shot at a fuzzy bug from a reasonably safe spot? More fire power! We ended up with a room full of scorched enemy, minimal damage to the team and a locker that refused to be moved.

The next room got even more interesting.

I’m one of the first into the loading dock- but I’ve managed to completely misunderstand that sneaking into a place is a declared mode of movement. I did not declare it and might as well be wearing a giant “shoot me” sign.

This will not go well. A ragtag crew from a ship near the facility are hiding at the back of the room and preparing to take shots at me as I stand around behind a flimsy shelter.

My dice pool (most of which is in defence) is my saving grace. I take hits for sure, but my shields are good enough that the guy shooting me takes damage as the shots bounce back and hit him. Ha! How do you like those awesome dice rolls jerk?

There are no rules about what you need to roll to successfully moon an enemy though (I know because I asked).

More of the crew come in and they manage to find better spots to hide in. My new goal is to repeatedly shoot the guy who fired on me first – and then pick off the two people with him. I take several aimed shots and coupled with my uncanny ability to roll zeroes (zeroes are good – you get a re-roll) I still can’t seem to kill the guy.

My fellow crewmembers rally magnificently and even though they are wounded, we manage to kill all but a couple of guys who run away, and in my head are shrieking with fear like little girls.

I look at our battle board of carnage and decide my first Free Spacer triumph must be expressed artistically (and anyway, the markers were left within my reach and I’m a compulsive doodler). Here is the scene of the evening’s victory:

Victory!

And what did I learn this evening? Keep your shields up, take aimed shots and remember: over time, moderate damage = death.

-Renee McTavish is a writer, new FS playtester and would one day like to tame one of the plant-monkeys as a butler. See more of her stuff at Rambleicious.ca.

RPGs: Boards, Boxes, & Cards

Community No Responses »

Feb 012010

In June 2008, Dungeon and Dragons: 4^th edition was released and, love it or hate it, was a revolution in Roleplaying. D&D 4e brought new conventions from board games and collectable card games into Roleplaying. The new D&D emphasises miniatures and tactical maps.

At the end of last year, November 2009, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay upped the ante, with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3^rd edition. The game is a huge box set with D&D 4e style action cards, Talisman style character cards, and special dice.

It seems that the big game companies are attempting to make our hobby more accessible. Do box sets and fancy dice make RPGs more accessible? Green Ronin’s new box set, Dragon Age RPG, seems show that they think so, but I remember the Basic D&D box set. This isn’t exactly a new approach, so the real question is, will it work? The ICv2 Review didn’t seem to think so and the RPG.net Review was a little more reserved. I think it would be great if it did; I would love to see more people playing RPGs, but I doubt it.

It seems to me that the difference between RPGs and Board Games is not the addition of fiddly-bits, the cards, and the dice; rather it is in the casual vs. campaign style play. Most Board Games are one off experiences. You play once and when that game is over, it is over. If you want to play next week, you play the game again. It is a series of evenings, playing games while most RPGs are a serial experience; you play one game that continues from session to session. Series versus serial Gameplay is the gap they’re trying to jump and I guess we’ll see if they’re jumping in the right direction.

Science Fiction; Setting versus Genre

Game Design, World Building No Responses »

Jan 062010

Science fiction has been around for a long time, in the 2nd century the first Science Fiction story Lucian‘s True History was written and in 1902 the second film ever made was Georges Melies’ A Trip to the Moon. Even with this long history, Science Fiction is generally misunderstood.

The most commonly misunderstood aspect of Sci-fi is the difference between Sci-fi the genre and Sci-fi the setting. Simply put, a setting is the place, time, and world where the story is set, while a genre is the purpose, intention, and raison d’être of a particular work.

I have had people on multiple occasions tell me that they don’t like Sci-fi because it is too scary. These people are confusing genre and setting; they’re talking about the Horror genre in a Sci-fi setting. Another good example is Star Wars; Star Wars is obviously set in a Sci-Fi setting, but the genre is heroic sword and sorcery fantasy.

In Science Fiction setting can be defined by its list of tropes. You can be pretty sure something is a Sci-fi setting if it’s set in the future, different realities, other timelines, elsewhere in the galaxy, or uses nonexistent science and technology. No matter the background variation, the central requirement for the Science Fiction setting is that science or technology is a key aspect.

Science Fiction as a genre is historically difficult to define, but here is my attempt at defining the genre of Science Fiction:

Sci-fi is fundamentally a genre of scientific speculation, change, and tracing the results of theory to answer questions of “what if?”

This definition places works like Star Wars and Jason X outside the Sci-fi genre, but stories like those by Asimov and Bradbury, films and television like Star Trek and Blade Runner, and games like Rifts and Traveller squarely within it.

Sci-fi Warnings, Predictions, & Remembrance

A stalwart tradition of Sci-fi is to warn or predict the outcome of scientific progress or historic repetition; this tradition seems to stem from Science fiction’s tendency to teach, preach, or allegorise. Three classic examples:

Prediction; Jules Verne’s story of a journey to the moon in his, De la Terre à la Lune.
Warning; The Cyber Punk subgenre is a warning of the building powers of corporations and the merging of human and machines.
Remembrance; Nearly every sci-fi show has had at least one episode showing future Nazi’s, warning the audience that once forgotten the mistakes of the past will repeat.

Hard versus Soft Sci-fi

The major division in Science fiction is usually considered to be the Hard versus Soft Sci-fi. The core difference between hard and soft Sci-fi is the difference between hard (physical) and soft (social) sciences, but due to the simultaneous use of both in most contemporary Sci-fi; the difference between Hard and Soft is often cited as the degree of scientific rigor used.

Sci-fi & Space RPGs

Despite the rising popularity of Science Fiction, partially driven by visual effects, Sci-fi RPGs, especially Space RPGs, are a small part of the RPG community. In the world of Sci-fi RPGs there are only a few contenders:

Traveller; The original 1970s Space RPG, the newest version published by Mongoose.
Warhammer 40k RPGs; A long anticipated set of three RPGs(Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and the upcoming Deathwatch)in the popular 40K war game Universe.
Star Wars; the current Star Wars RPG fits WotC’s semi-4^th edition fantasy rule set to a Tee.
TV & Movie Licensed Games; Made to allow players to experience the film or TV world, tend to be great source books that use a standardised rule set like D20 or the Cortex System.
Rifts & GURPS; These generic systems have space and sci-fi source books with settings and specific mechanics.
Indies; Indie Games and Homebrews are legion. They are abundant on the internet and are often only setting that work with a published game system such as D20 or Fudge. Promoted by sites like The Forge, published on the internet on sites such as IPR or RPGNow, and through publishers such as Mongoose Publishing’s Flaming Cobra Imprint or Studio 2.

Science Fiction & Free Spacer

It is into this relatively small universe of Science Fiction RPGs that that my upcoming Space RPG, Free Spacer, embarks. While designing Free Spacer I rigorously built game mechanics and setting on theoretical hard and a few soft sciences. I used this science as a base with several RPG design goals as guidelines. I projected the effects of these sciences on people and societies and allowed the world to evolve into the distant future creating an internally consistent galaxy with few artificial constraints. My hope is that Technological limits, economies, and customs, will be set by the fictional sciences and will be the basis for an inherently Science Fiction setting and mechanics.

What is a Roleplaying Game?

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Dec 082009

Nearly every Roleplaying Game book has a very strange section in it; called “What is a Roleplaying Game?” Like most gamers I just took this for granted, but when I started to plan Free Spacer, I started to wonder if this section was even necessary. I’ve never run across a novel with a “What is Narrative literature?” section or a Cookbook with a “What is a Recipe book?” section. Although, back in the day they had a similar chapter in Choose your own Adventure books; so does this mean that “What is…”sections are only for oddities? Are Roleplaying games so strange that every book requires a section to explain itself?

Is it evangelism? Are we trying to spread the word and bring others into the hobby? Still doesn’t make sense that RPG books have a “What is…” section. You’re already holding the book, perhaps you looked at it out of curiosity in the store, but are you going to flip to the “What are…” section?

So yes, Free Spacer won’t have a “What is a Roleplaying Game?” section. Instead it will have a treatise on Science Fiction RPGs.

Although I still don’t know why so many people want to tell you what a Roleplaying Game is when you already bought the book, I to tell you here, first the Dictionary Definition, then my definitions:

RPG or TRPG; Referring to Traditional Roleplaying games, Table-Top RPGs or Pen & Paper RPGs. A TRPG is played by a group of people each taking the role of a Player Character (PC) with one as the Game Master (GM). Each player declares their actions and dialogue as it pertains to their characters role in the world and story. The GM is responsible for describing the fictional world, people, and creatures around the PCs and the results of their actions.
Story Games; these are also sometimes called RPGs, but have a much simpler game mechanics centred on giving players more narrative control.
LARP; Live Action Role Playing refers to a RPG where players get up and act out their roles. Game Mechanics are even simpler than Story games and players often dress in costumes and use props.
Wargames; never called RPG, but important to know about. Wargames are the genesis of RPGs; Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson invented RPGs as a way to play out battles and tell stories with a single character rather than an army. Besides their historical link, some RPGs use miniatures in the same manner as Wargames do.
CRPG; Often inaccurately called RPGs, Computer Roleplaying Games require little roleplaying, but trace their mechanics back to the TRPG.
MMORPG; a Massively Multi-player Online Roleplaying Game is basically a CRPG that you play online with massive number of players. MMORPGs usually have less story, but online player interactions.

Do you want more definitions? Try John H. Kim’s excellent “What is an RPG?” website or if you like Podcasts you can try Fear the Boot’s seven part series on RPGs for “non-gamers”: Ep#1, Ep#2, Ep#3,Ep#4, Ep#5, Ep#6, and EP#7.

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.

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