A Full Slate...

Another semester, and that means new projects to add to my list of 'things to do' on top of the work I'll be doing for Cubicle 7's Doctor Who Line this year (the programme's 50th anniversary). By the time this years is done, I'll have hopefully produced more material than in the previous two years combined.

FOR GLORY!!!
While this is from last Semester, it has always been intended to be one of the tent pole items for Jabberwocky Media, which means that prototyping and play-testing are continuing apace.  I've moved on from the vertical slice testing, which had only about 1/3rd of the cards, and have made all the corrections to the set, which is now being updated to a full prototype.  

By the end of this month, I should be able to send out a digital version for some of my game designer buddies to playtest and after that, I'll build the final design and send it off for printing and distribution, hopefully sometime in the summer before Gencon.

AAARGH!!!
My business partner Angelo came up with a brilliant little game about Pirates that is much more family friendly and easy to play than For Glory, which is by its nature as a Sword & Sorcery Role-Playing Board Game, somewhat more detailed and less appropriate for kids. It is also likely the first of our games to hit the shelves and then be converted into a fun little App for mobile devices for that reason.

The players in the game take the role of a pirate captain seeking to sink their enemy or capture their ship. Each Turn represents the ships moving towards each other, starting out at a distance, eventually closing to broadsides range and then moving off to a distance and turning around again for another pass. Each Turn a few pirates are assigned to tasks on the ship, from loading and firing cannons, to fighting fires, bailing water, forming boarding parties, etc. You'll manage a dwindling crew, dwindling resources and the results of catastrophic damage as the game moves on, trying to keep your ship afloat while sending the opponent down to Davy Jones Locker! Aaargh!!!

RAAARGH!!!
The Game Lab project I am working on for this semester is an arena style combat app for Tablets in which mad scientists create or capture giant monsters and then send them out to fight the monsters of other geniuses in a bid to take over a city, defend it or extort it to provide money for their researches.

The arena, in this case is a city or town populated by terrified citizens, soldiers and the occasional superhero, the latter two helping or hindering the monster (depending on its goals and alignment) and citizens serving as a source of renown for the owners of good monsters, money for the owners of bad monsters or food for ugly monsters.

The monsters themselves are custom built from a ‘body bank’ of parts and powers, and are indirectly controlled by ‘prodding’ them into certain actions, which may or may not be successful if the monster is tired, hurt or being made to do things against its nature.

The full project is some ways away, and we are currently working on a demo  that only includes 2 pre-built monsters, some citizens and a single city map. Hopefully that will be enough to get us Kickstarter funding for the full game.

BARBARIANS OF HEAVY METAL GAMESLATE

My second class this semester is Experimental Game Lab, and  I'm finally going to get the Gameslate fully realized (click the tag below for more info on that project) after my programmer on Barbarians of Lemuria got too busy to finish that. Fortunately, all the lessons and code from that project will be very useful for completing this one.

The truly cool thing about it is that I will finally be publishing the long-awaited Barbarians of Heavy Metal, my take on 3025 Battletech if the universe was based on Heavy Metal culture. You can find all my initial musings and design ideas on the game here. More on that in a future post.

So lot's to do, but hopefully a very productive year that will give Jabberwocky Media the attention and income it needs to go full time after I graduate...

 

The New Table-Top RPG Paradigm...

I got a comment on a thread about my Playbook app over on RPG.Net, and as grad school has given me some new tools for thinking on the subject, I thought I'd post up the comment and my reply (which is a more direct and precise statement of what I'm trying to achieve and why than the OP) here.

THE COMMENT

A friend pointed me towards your thread after a blog post I'd made wondering why there weren't games like this being made. Clearly there are. =)

There are two things I'm curious about regarding your approach to the product:

- The first is: Why did you opt to design it so that multiple devices would be needed?

- The second is: Why did you feel it important for it to feel like it was just like a tabletop game?

Part of what sparked my blog post was the number of other games that have play-and-pass modes for the iPhone, like Settlers of Catan. My thought was that you could have one game that you could play at any time anywhere you like. With the GM being the primary controller of the device, then passing it onto players when they need to take action.

From you description it seems like you are targeting a narrow margin of players who (a) want to maintain the feel of the standard TTRPG and (b) play with people that have multiple devices of the same format. When it seems like this is something you could approach from a new direction and bring new people into the hobby.

THE REPLY

You don't need to have multiple devices. You could easily just let the GM use the tablet to keep track of everything himself, use a combination of the tablet and traditional paraphernalia, like dice and paper record sheets for players, etc. It's just designed to work that way as the full realization of a shift in play style from the pen and paper of old to the digital play-style that future portable computing devices offer.

As far as the importance of the TTRPG paradigm, I spoke to that in the OP, but I'll reiterate the thought process here with a more personal reason behind the design. Basically, it boils down to the areas in which a TTRPG is different from a CRPG that make it a viable and interesting form of entertainment in the modern age:

1. TTRPGs allow more freeform story-telling than CRPGs with much less work and in a much more flexible setting.

2. TTRPGs are primarily a face to face social form of game play more in line with board games than CRPGs.

3. TTRPGs are, for the most part, more portable and can be played in a wider variety of real world settings (from the dining room table to a pub to the park) than a CRPG.

4. TTRPGs (and this is going to get a bit academic, here) exist in a more immediate acoustic form of space than the strict visual space of the hyper-mediated CRPG, which is a very different play experience.

And then there are the very practical reasons:

5. Print is becoming increasingly impractical as medium of distribution for independent designers. PDFs, which are simply print in a digital format, are very passive and still require the GM and players to utilize extensive external paraphernalia. Modern digital tools are very generic and require you to already have the game and then you (or somebody else) must program its parameters into the system, and most aren't very portable and take little advantage of the current technology, like the ability to 'flip' information (in our case secret messages, dice results, or even wounds) from one device user to another using simple wi-fi.

6. Humans, themselves, are quickly adapting mentally to incorporate the presence of smart-phones, tablets, social media and other forms of instant communication not as simple tools but as literal extensions of their bodies and identities. To not adapt a pre-digital art form to this new paradigm and take full advantage of it is to, IMO, relegate it to the dustbin of history.

And now for the very personal reasons. Basically, I find the TTRPG experience to be superior to the CRPG in a number of ways. The way they encourage spending time with my friends and family in a positive social environment, the way I can choose the people I want to share that environment with, the way they stimulate my imagination and don't limit it, the way they encourage me to tell my own stories, and the way I can leave the house on a nice day, go down to the park and sit around on the grass and play games with my buddies while watching my kid play football and generally interact with the world outside instead of sitting around in front of a computer screen and shutting myself off from it.

In all I am passionate about what is a historically unique hobby that is, by my reckoning and by the reckoning of others in the industry, slowly aging and failing to truly keep up with the ever-changing face of human-technology interaction. I want to see it thrive and survive, to evolve into a form that will give it a whole new appeal for future generations right up until the time they finally create the SquID or holodeck, either one of which will probably kill every other form of media interaction stone-dead.

To do this I'm taking the basic strengths of TTRPGs and:

1. Digitizing everything necessary to play in order to free the GM and player up from having to carry around anything but a very portable smart-device.

2. Automating as many of the basic rules as possible so that the need to flip through books, mark changes, or do math or any form of number crunching and accounting is eliminated as a distraction from game-play and allow the users to exist in a much more immediate, acoustic brain-space.

3. And finally, putting it all in a single package that resembles the boxed sets of old, but in a format that takes into account the new human-technology paradigm.

Long post, but I hope that answers your question... 

Analyzing the Playbook Concept using the lens of Remediation...

Continuing on from my previous post, in which I applied precepts from my class reading to a better understanding of the strength's and weaknesses of my Playbook concept, I will now analyze it through the lenses of Immediacy, Hyper-immediacy and Remediation (based upon the theories of Bolter and Gruslin in Remediation: Understanding New Media). If you're not in my EMAC class and have no idea what I'm talking about, here is a definition of those terms along with some of the ways in which they are applied and the occasional personal commentary on the implications from yours truly.

IMMEDIACY

When you are experiencing a 'virtual reality,' whether a story in a book, a movie or a video game, most mediums attempt to give you a sense of 'immediacy,' or in other words, they try to make you feel as though 'you're there' in whatever ways are possible within the limitations of that medium. The main way of achieving this goal is to make the source of mediation, the technology being applied to bring you into this alternate reality, fade into the background and achieve transparency so that you don't notice it at all.

The goal of most painting, particularly the work of the Great Masters, for example, is to provide you with a window into another place or time. Films give you an active picture into that world and video games give an interactive experience that goes beyond film. Even these mediums, however, must provide extremely moving or immersive experiences in order to distract you from the tech behind them, and only a true VR device, like the Subquantum Interference Device (SquID) seen in the movie Strange Days, could even approach the true Holy Grail of Immediacy.

Personally, while I like the concept of 'being there,' the reality of a technology that can produce true immediacy has many social and psychological pitfalls that must be acknowledged before we plunge headlong into it as we have done with every other piece of technology that has come down the pike. A good example is the concept of the 'Nanobox' computer that has no video-screen. Instead of viewing the output of the computer from a small window, nanites in your body receive transmissions from the box and 'intercept' sensory signals going to your brain and 'edit' them to provide the appropriate feedback. True Immediacy is achieved as everything you see, hear, touch, taste or feel is indistinguishable from that which your normal senses provide you.

The dangers of such a technology are as plentiful as the benefits. The first and foremost is addiction to an unreal existence. Why leave the house, socialize, have children or act on any basic human impulse if everything you've every wanted, particularly sex, is available via 'the box,' with all the consequences and downsides edited out? We see this already with folks addicted to their internet connection and spending more time interfacing with their computers than real live human beings. Just imagine the world of inactive, anti-social lardbutts we could have with true VR.

And then there's the problem of hackers. Think of what they can do now and extrapolate that to actually hacking your senses. They could fool you into doing anything, like walking off a cliff, 'defending' yourself from an axe wielding maniac who is actually your wife asking you what you want for dinner, or trapping you in a VR world of Lovecraftian horrors.

Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I think I'll stick to a medium that keeps one foot in reality.

HYPER-MEDIACY

While the history of mediation is focused on fading into the background to convince you that you're actually 'there,' there are certain instances where a medium will actively work to keep you aware of everything that is going on around it and provide 'fulfillment' by satiating every sense you have with disparate data-streams. Rather than a structured experience, like watching a movie from beginning to end, Hyper-media seeks to provide a smorgasbord of possibilities for you to take in as you will.

The modern cable news is a perfect example of this, with the news anchor talking at you, video playing in a window over their shoulder and a ticker-tape of unrelated news running at the bottom of the screen, you can choose which bits of news you want to absorb without changing a channel. Computer desktops do the same, presenting you with multiple windows of information arranged in whatever fashion you feel is important.

Even the Rock Concert is an exercise in Hyper-immediacy, as the sights, sounds, smells and everything else that typically goes on there is actually part and parcel of the experience that goes beyond the music itself. If you've ever been to a Pink Floyd concert, you'll know exactly what I mean: listening to them and seeing them in concert are two entirely different experiences. the first is immediate and internal, the second is all about the external

Hyper-mediacy has the benefit of being more free-form, open to discontinuity and the mixing of data elements that can lead to 'aha!' moments. The problem with it, unfortunately, is that it is unfocused and can divide attention to a point where much is taken in but little is understood or internalized. In addition, in cases where all the elements are necessary to provide a certain experience, like a rock concert, missing one or two of those vital disparate elements can lead to a lack of fulfillment.

A personal example for me would include certain styles of eating establishments. When I go to El Chico to have a Tex-Mex dinner, one of the things I expect ( and the reason I've gone there for years) is an authentic 'eating experience.' I don't just want the food to be Mexican, I want the walls to look like stucco, the hangings and colors to be of the appropriate style and the music to be Tejano. There's been a push to modernize the palce in the last year, with shiny modern interiors, pop music, etc., that really makes the experience no different from On the Border, El Fenix or any other restaurant, now, so Angelina's ( a little independent place) has become my new El Chico. It may sound silly, but I don't want to hear Lady Gaga while I'm eating at a mexican restaurant. It makes me feel like I'm in a nightclub, not Mexico.

REMEDIATION

By the definition of the authors of Remediation: Understanding New Media, Remediation is three things:

1. The Mediation of Mediation: Basically, the recreation of one medium (whether immediate or hyper-mediate) through another. Making a movie out of a comic book, for instance. It doesn't improve on the comic book, necessarily, it just moves it to another medium.

2. The Inseparability of Mediation and Reality: In other words, no matter how Immediate a Mediator/technology is, there is no existing technology that can completely free you from the knowledge that what you are experiencing is not reality.

3. Reform: Using a previous form of mediation to 'fix' or improve upon an earlier form of mediation. Photography should precise images that couldn't be recreated as accurately by hand, Film shows that reality in motion, computer games allow you to interact with that imagery, etc. or social sites like Facebook are better than email because they are real-time, more visually interesting and easier to manage large groups with.

In a nutshell, Remediation is the process of taking an existing medium and 'updating' or 're-purposing' it for a new technology or medium. And this is where The Playbook comes in...

THE PLAYBOOK AS REMEDIATION THROUGH REFORM
Computer RPGs are Table Top Role-Playing Games as filtered  through the Remediation concept of Reform. Basically, they took the fantasy gaming aspect of D&D and other games of that medium and 'improved' upon them by giving them visuals and automating rules tasks to provide an improved sense of Immediacy.

The Playbook, by intent, is a Remediation by Reform of CRPGs and TTRPGs. It presumes the following weaknesses in both the parent and child formats:

1. TTRPGs are a Hyper-media experience that lacks intended Immediacy because external processes (like referencing rules) tend to take the players out of the story far too often. It also requires a great deal of external paraphenalia that one must be conscious of, like dice, miniatures, a playing surface, etc. that distract from the story and focus play on the Visual space and not the Acoustic.

2. CRPGs improve immediacy through rules automation but limit the Acoustic space of the TTRPG, which increases Hyper-Immediacy, by limiting player options to whatever the programmer managed to put into the program and focusing their attention on a new distraction in the form of status bars and info boxes.

3. Neither is truly at home in the others environment. You can play TTRPG's online through social media, but the Hyper-media experience is unfulfilling for many, lacking in various aesthetic considerations that are the appeal of TTRPG's, namely face to face social interaction (with all the banter and BSing that goes along with it), and the further reduction in Immediacy that the distraction of operating all the technology adds to the already present distraction of rules-books, minis and etc. CRPGs, on the other hand, limit player interaction with the environment and also suffer form the distractions of technology, including glitches, bugs and all the other that never affects the low-tech TTRPG.

The one thing the Playbook must do to address these points if to first realize that the TTRPG experience is, by nature a Hyper-media experience, no matter how badly the players try to create Immediacy during play. You must reference a character sheet, you must roll dice in some form, etc. in order to play the game. On the other hand, Immediacy is a big part of the 'experience' so anything that can reduce that Hyper-Immediacy to a minimum is a boon, and that mainly involves keeping players interacting face to face and making sure that their ability to shape the environment of the game, through the interaction of their characters with the game world in any way they choose and the game master permits, is un-compromised. Keeping that in mind, here is how we address the weaknesses mentioned above:

1. Automate as many game tasks as possible and make all information available in a single intuitive interface, so that attention can be as focused as much as possible on cooperative story-telling with the other players.

2. Remove the distraction of Visual Spacial elements and restrictions so that the players play in a more Acoustic Spacial zone. This will create a unique spacial experience for each player as opposed to the uniform experience provided by a pre-programmed game with pre-defined visuals.

3. By doing the above, you leverage the key aspects of both mediums into a unique functional hybrid that has all the advantages of the older medium, but is updated to take advantage of the new. Basically a complete game with infinite possibilities like the boxed RPGs of old, with the automation and UI improvements of digital technology.

That's the plan, at any rate. The question is this: can it attract enough new blood from the CRPG industry to renew the dying TTRPG industry and allow it to thrive as a form of entertainment and creative expression?

The Practicalities of The New Science: The Practical Application...

THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION

Right, I've talked about politics enough, so let's get on to something I really find interesting: the practical application of what I've learned.

One of my thesis projects is to bring old pre-digital (pre-internet) forms of media, like radio and tabletop role-playing games, into the post-digital area. Some of you might immediately think 'Wait a mo, we have Sirius Digital Radio and MMOs. What are you on about?' but stay with me for a moment and you'll realize that these things are not equal.

Others might ask 'Why bother?' To that I can only give a simple answer at this point, and that is that I believe that these forms of media are interactive in ways that modern forms cannot be. As a matter of fact, I believe that in some ways they are superior and can actually help to keep us quintessentially human as exponential technological advance drags us further away from that humanity in a number of ways. As such, I believe that they should be modernized to bring them back into use and not vanish into the dustbin of media history.

With any old form, the first task is to ascertain (to quote Marcus Aurelius) 'This thing, what is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and material? And what its causal nature [or form]? And what is it doing in the world?' In other words,what is it that makes a particular medium unique? What are the basic qualities that can be distilled from it and moved into another form while still retaining its basic nature?

In the case of tabletop role-playing games, we have to look at them in comparison to their nearest competition (and offspring), the MMO. In my estimation TTRPGS offer a few things that the average video game cannot:

1. The ability to create truly personal stories in a truly Acoustic space with few Visual spacial restrictions.
2. The ability to change those stories and add new elements on the fly, as the story is being told.
3. The cooperative story-telling environment of an RPG is best as a truly face to face social interaction experience.

Our second task is to find the right modern technology to streamline and modernize said medium into a new form while still retaining the inherent nature and qualities of that medium. Laws and Media takes this task and gives it a useful systematic basis in the concept of the Tetrad, a set of four questions that can be asked by anyone about any media and then tested to provide a general verifiable statements about it. What does the medium:

1. Enhance or intensify?
2. Render obsolete or replace?
3. Retrieve that was previously obsolesced?
4. Produce or become when pressed to an extreme?

Let's take a look at applying the Tetrad to my modernized tabletop role-playing game concept: the Playbook.

1. Computerized interfaces enhance interactivity and automate functions which means the players spend less time 'out' of the game managing details and more time 'in' it, creating the story. It also enhances the need for high tech items like tablet devices, which makes it an experience limited to those who can afford such items.

2. By moving the TTRPG to a tablet or other form of digital medium, it replaces writing utensils, dice, miniatures, physical maps, counters and a mess of rulebooks with a slick interface. The downside, of course, is a hit to the print RPG industry, but that has been in decline for some time.

3. Modern computer games, though the technological offspring of the TTRPG, lack the three qualities given above. This format retrieves them.

 4. When used to its fullest, with many of the Visual space distractions eliminated or reduced, the TTRPG becomes more immersive than any Visual game can be, and more socially constructive as well.

Answering these questions can also bring to mind other points like the feasibility of using said media on a desktop instead of a tablet or smartphone, the point of overload in functionality (how many features is too many for a TTRPG), what programming language is the most appropraite (in my case Java as it is extremely cross-platform), etc.

I think the Tetrad was very useful here in validating the Playbook concept and it could be just as easily applied to other forms of media as well, new or old (is Twitter all that useful, for instance), and can help to define not what is the best form of media, but what is the right media for the given activity. I'll talk more about the design itself in later posts...