Rocking out with the Mesopotamians

Mesopotamians is part of the Indie Megamix Mixtape, a collection of micro RPG's. On a whole, they aren't the most polished games but they are usually a lot more polished than the micro games I've read from things like 24-Hour contests.

That said, Mesopotamians is probably the least polished game I've seen in the Indie Megamix Mixtape. It literally feels like it's missing whole chunks of rules, enough to make me wonder how playable it is. However, the pieces that are there are really fun.

In Mesopotamians, you play ancient Mesopotamian kings who have been brought back from the dead to lead the undead armies of an evil sorceress. However, you've instead decided to form a rock band and go on the road in an econovan.

The econovan serves as the dice pool for the group. When there's a crisis point, a chosen player will roll the four dice on it. And here's the first interesting part. You assign the four dice to four different areas. The actual crisis, the band's money situation, the band's success as a rock group and how close the sorceress is to conquering the world.

And the second interesting bit is the the characters are just collections of pre-rolled dice. And, after the van dice are rolled, you can swap your dice for van dice. So, the game has an interesting dice juggling mechanic. I don't know how well it works but it is a different way of managing a dice pool.

Here's the structure of game play. Roleplay a scene until you reach a crisis point. That's it.

And that's my issue with Mesopotamians. There isn't any structure to the game play. There's a theme and there's a conflict resolution mechanic but nothing to tie them together. There's nothing in the game that tells you how to play the game.

Okay, given the audience that will be buying the Indie Megamix Mixtape, this isn't exactly a game killer.. The folks who I used to play indie games with back in the Midwest wouldn't have a problem with having just roleplay a scene to work with. But given the number of possible one-shot narrative games that one could play that do offer a structure to work with, that Mesopotamians isn't a strong choice.

Which is a shame because I love the theme. No complicated explanation or justification. Just Gilgamesh and Hammurabi and company forming a rock band. It's funny and absurd and it's going to stick in my head far longer than games that are much more playable

On the Ridge - A Game Poem

I have to admit that this is a hack of Jason Morningstar's Game Poem The Last Stand. It started out with me trying to adjust it so that it could be played by email and I ultimately ended up with a different game.

On the Ridge - A Game Poem

Required: 

Two to six players

Four index cards

A pen or marker to write in the index cards

Four six-sided dice per player

You are the sole survivors of your squad. You stand alone together on the ridge with the enemy coming over. You can put up a good fight but you know that you will die in the end. How well will you stand your ground? How well will you live your last moments?

Take a moment to decide the setting of the ridge. It can be anywhere. A real life historical setting, contemporary, fantasy or science fiction. Go around the table. Everyone come up with the name of their character and one sentence to describe what they are like.

Write down "SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR", "SOMETHNG TO DIE FOR", "YOUR GREATEST FEAR", "WHY YOU HATE YOUR COUNTRY", one on each of the index cards. Then roll one die for each player for each card. So, if you have three players, there should be three dice on each card.

Choose someone to begin the battle. They will take a die from a card and describe a short scene about their character in the battle, using both the theme of the card and the dice roll. Then, the next player will do the same. When the last player has taken a die and described a scene, start again with the player to the left of the start player. Continue until everyone has taken four dice and had four scenes.

It is possible, actually extremely likely that a character will die before their fourth scene. The player of a dead character will still take a die and describe a scene. However, it will describe the absence of their character, still reflecting the theme of the card.

Die Roll Table:

1 - Somehow, through some miracle of fate, you have escaped getting hurt.

2 - You try to avoid the battle via a dirty act of cowardice but you are still wounded.

3&4 - You are wounded in battle

5 - You are wounded but you have made a real difference in the battle

6 - Blaze of glory. You die but you have made a real difference for your side in your death

If a player receives their second wound, they will die during that scene.

After everyone has had four scenes, if anyone has survived the battle, which means they have taken three or four ones, that player or players will narrate an epilogue scene.

Otherwise, everyone should just nod to each other. The battle is over. 

Writing my own game poems?

Game Poems are a short form RPG, designed to be done in about fifteen minutes. The first game that used the term was Stoke-Birmingham 0-0, which consisted of pretending to be bored and depressed sports fans for fifteen minutes. (Seriously, I wonder what Andy Warhol would think of think of Norwegian LARPs)

I've been looking into Game Poems to try and find one that could easily be adapted for play-by-post. My usual crew is busy during the summer but I've been jonesing to play with them so I wanted something that could be done in three to five posts apiece. 

And, honestly, I haven't found anything that seems really adaptable. Which makes sense. The form was clearly designed to be played in the moment, which doesn't really work with play-by-post.

So I've decided to actually try writing some myself, with the hope that I'd come up with something playable. 

I can't actually say it's harder than I expected since I pretty much expected it to be tricky. I will say a lot of my ideas, after I got them on paper, were clearly unsayable, although they were interesting thought exercise.

In general, Game Poems seem to have elements of improv exercises, narrative RPG and party games. It's a bit like a photograph as a role playing game. There's just enough room for one idea, one emotion. So you have to make sure they have some punch.

And they are addictive to write. The eternal question is if they're any good.

Games for seasons

The Since I left the world of playing in a weekly Dungeon and Dragons game that plays all year round, I have realized that different seasons favor different flavors of role playing games. I'm not talking about one-shots, although that's probably the case too. I mean shorter campaigns, ones that last one to three months.  

I was already aware that my old Indie group tended to play more serious, even sorrowful, games in the last few months of the year, fall into winter. Games that had a lot of bleed. Keeping in touch with them and occasionally playing with them online, that has continued to be the place.

And I have realized that my oldest DM, who has long stopped trying to run never ending campaigns, now regularly runs short campaigns every spring. Until I started to really think about it, I didn't really realize that.

So, at least in my circles, it seems like spring is the time for adventure and the end of the year is the time for sorrows. And no one ever seems to be up for gaming in January and February, when we're recovering from the holidays and gearing up for the new year.

For years, summer has also been an off season. Vacations and conventions and general summer time activities. However, I am now wondering if there are good systems or themes for summer. The fact that I live in Arizona and we're going through a heat wave and have to spend as much time inside as possible has nothing to do with that, I'm sure.

While I was reading InSpectres, a game that is totally going to get a blog entry of its own, I found myself thinking that it was both a system that I wanted to try and that it would make a good campaign for the summer time.

At the heart of that idea is because it is a very light and light-hearted game with a lot of comedic elements that also has a strong through line for a campaign, running your own Ghostbusters-style franchise. It's not serious or full or bleed but it does have an ongoing storyline to keep coming back to.

I've decided that a summer campaign should be like summer reading. Light and maybe with lots of explosions. Something everyone can laugh and have fun with but doesn't require that much raw, bleeding feelings.

 

You know, most of the comedy games I've played have been more suited for one-shots. Finding ones aimed at campaigns isn't as easy. (Although I've been in comedic 'regular' games) My theater friends all tell me that tragedy is easy. Comedy is hard. But I think summer calls for comedy.

How do you keep up with games?

I had given up trying to keep up with the latest games a while back. Time and money and storage space just made it both prohibitive and not that fun. In fact, I've thought that it might be a good rule of thumb to wait until a game has been out for a year before thinking about buying it.

(Shut up, games I back via Kickstarter and therefore buy before they even come out :P)

However, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, it seems like there are a lot more games coming out every year. Keeping up with what's coming out seems a lot more work than when I started playing board games ten years ago. Um, make that fifteen year ago. Let me get my cane.

Kickstarter has been definitely part of that change. The way that Kickstarter has changed the world of gaming in so many ways that it boggles the mind.

However, the game market has changed a lot in general. When I started playing designer board games, Rio Grande was my main source for games from Europe with Mayfair being a close second. Brick and mortar game stores in my limited experience were more focused on war games and role playing games with walls of miniatures and one shelf of board games. Ordering online was my only way to get a lot of the games that were out there.

In short, we now have a market that is a lot more encouraging to both designers and publishers.

When I started, designer board games were a lot more niche. Which, frankly made it easier to keep up with. There is a much broader audience in this country in particular but I bet in general too. I won't be surprised if there ends up being some kind of bubble due to market saturation but I also think the hobby will survive that. The environment really has changed.

I also don't feel bad that I can't keep up with it all. I would rather see an ocean of riches rather than a small pond.

Going back to the Indie Megamix Mixtape

It's been a while since I looked at the Indie Megamix Tape, a three Volume set of micro RPGs that was created to raise money for indie designers who need medical help. My personal experience taught me not to binge but treat every game as a separate experience and spread out reading them.

Even so, I did get burned out after reading the first ten games on the first 'tape' so I took a break. After all, the games aren't going anywhere and they are all short enough that if I want a little RPG reading fix, I can spend a few minutes looking over one.

Nobody Wanna See Us Together is a two-page exercise in narrative role playing. Two players play lovers or friends or partners and everyone else plays folks who want to see them broken up.

I'm not going to go into the mechanics, which are minimal, since the entire thing is only two pages long so I'd basically just reciting the entire game. You play out a series of scenes with 'friends' talking to one of the lovers, the lovers alone together or the lovers against the world.

The rules make it clear that it doesn't have to be lovers. It could be any relationship, even a warrior and their magic sword. And, unlike some tiny rule sets, I believe that of Nobody Wanna See Us Together. The framework will work with any of those combinations.

I'll be honest. While I liked some of the structure of Nobody Wanna See Us Together, I wasn't left with any interest in playing it. On the other hand, I am interested in using the structure for writing. So I definitely got something out of reading it. 

Pocket Ops is clever but is it clever enough?

IMy latest print-and-play project was making the demo copy of the Grand Gamers Guild's Pocket Ops for the precise goal of actually playing it to see if I wanted to back the Kickstarter for the full print-and-play files. Which is kind of the point of demo PnP but I usually don't finish them in time :P

Stripped down to the basics, Pocket Ops is a Tic Tac Toe variation. Before you make your move, your opponent guesses where you will place your stone and, if they get it right, blocks your move. The demo comes with one special piece, that assassin, that can take the place of an already placed stone. The full game will come with other special pieces.

It was a five minute build. Two decks of nine cards for guessing your opponent's moves, a tiny board and I used tokens from my PnP tool box. 

On the one hand, Pocket Ops is much better than Tic Tac Toe. Super simple modifications that are very easy to explain, Pocket Ops definitely achieves its goal of taking a game everyone knows and giving it a designer spin.

On the other hand, we still weren't that engaged by it. A lot of the time, we had blocks of null moves because we were able to call each other's bluff. And the three by three board ultimately felt cramped and limited, part of what made the bluffing less interesting.

I'm torn, really. I think that Pocket Ops is a super clever idea and a take on Tic Tac Toe that makes the game more interesting without being fiddle. But, at the same time, we weren't that excited by it.

Keep in mind, short and tiny games have become a hobby of mine. I have played a lot of them over the last few years. And Pocket Ops just doesn't make the list of ones I would automatically reach for or be jonesing to play.

So we've decided that Pocket Ops isn't for us. At the same time, it is a clever enough design that I do intend to keep on following the company.