Just a quick mention of an episode of the Heroscape ScapeTalk podcast featuring a twenty-minute interview with Heroscape designers Chris Nelson and Craig Van Ness. If you enjoy the game and you’re interested in hearing some thoughts from two key designers, be sure to check it out. They mostly talk about the upcoming Heroscape Marvel Edition, but there are a few other useful details in there . . . and a funny quiz.
July 27th, 2007
Today, Tobold wrote about what may be the death of turn-based strategy games, pointing out that even though technical limitations don’t force game developers to opt for a turn-based model, in some cases a turn-based model can offer greater depth of play.
Attempts to move tabletop gaming online have mostly failed. For instance, I ran a campaign in Neverwinter Nights that didn’t work for two key reasons. First, it took an enormous amount of time for me to create the game world between sessions. Even if I’d had more and more time to practice developing the world with the provided toolset, I’m sure I would always be spending more time creating scenarios than running them.
Second, as soon as combat began, the players were hopelessly outgunned. I kept lowering and lowering the difficulty of the fights in the game, but the players couldn’t keep up. Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop roleplaying games are designed to simulate combat to some degree of accuracy, but the all depend on a turn-based model.
Sure, this means a few seconds of battle can take an hour to play out. Sure, in a real fight people don’t have time to make such decisions. But it allows people pretend they actually have combat skills. No one’s ever penalized for not remembering a keyboard shortcut and losing because her war-hardened combat veteran character forgot to raise her shield at the right moment.
(Neverwinter Nights actually was a turn-based game, though by default set to simulate real-time action. In a multi-playered, game-mastered game, though, allowing all players to pause was impractical. It simulated D&D reasonably well for the solo campaign, but failed for group play.)
Porting board games to computers has been more successful simply because no one’s trying to change the rules. No one wants to play speed-Monopoly, with button-mashing magnates making a Trump-like killing in the real-estate market simply because they can roll their dice the fastest. (Okay, maybe that’d be fun, but only in a weird way.)
But something breaks down with roleplaying games. Computer RPGs are an almost completely different genre than tabletop RPGs, even if they’re built around the same ruleset.
I asked before (in the context of voice chat) about non-MMO online roleplaying. But I’m thinking about it even more, now, ’cause I’ve got a friend from college who wants to start a campaign up again.
How can I get the tabletop roleplaying experience with remote players? Now that video conferencing is effectively free, we can at least talk to one another. And I’ve mentioned Gametable before, which provides a shared map and die rolling.
But are there any tools that really take advantage of web-connected computers to simulate the game itself while still giving the richness of turn-based play? Any tools that can handle the intricate interplay of a multi-character fight—with positioning, fancy moves, conditions that persist from turn to turn, all the number crunching—while still giving the players freedom to choose at (at least moderate) leisure their characters’ next actions? If so, I very much want to hear about them!
Has anyone successfully moved a tabletop campaign online? If so, what tools did you use? If it failed, what didn’t work?
July 26th, 2007
| I don’t just like games; I’m a foodie as well. On Fridays, I publish drink or cocktail recipe that I enjoy as an accompaniment to some sort of game. These aren’t necessarily drinks I’ve invented, but they are superior potations that gamers who tipple are liable to enjoy. |
| And, what with all this talk of addiction here on the blog, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that the drinking of alcohol should always be done in moderation. And if you’re going to operate any sort of heavy machinery or vehicle while drunk, make sure it’s a mecha or X-wing in an computer game! |
A classic drink, and possibly the first to be called a “cocktail,” the Old Fashioned is quite simply my favorite mixed drink. Heck, this drink has a whole category of glassware named after it, so it’s decidedly seminal. A touch of sweet, a touch of bitter, and a splash of water to ease everything down.
Whisky drinks seem, to me, to belong next to a finely polished wooden game board with alabaster and onyx chess pieces arrayed and ready for battle. But chess has never been geeky enough for me. Instead, I prefer to layer strategy games with fantastical—or at least narrative—elements. So I recommend an Old Fashioned (my favorite version is below) in a nice, heavy Old Fashioned glass, with a leisurely Game of Thrones.
As Cersei tells Ned, when you play the game of thrones, you either win . . . or you die. And either way, you’ll want a stiff drink.
Old Fashioned
Ingredients
- 50 ml bourbon
- Angostura bitters
- 1 cube of sugar (or a light teaspoonful if you don’t have cubes)
- water
- 1 maraschino cherry
I like this best with Maker’s Mark bourbon, although I think it’s probably quite good with other good-quality whiskies. If you opt for cheaper whisky, you’ll probably want to garnish it more heavily, perhaps with two thin slices of orange. For the water, I just use the filtered stuff that comes out of my refrigerator.
Instructions
Put the sugar cube in the bottom of an Old Fashioned glass and put one or two dashes of bitters on top. Muddle with a spoon, then add a splash of water to further dissolve the sugar. Add a few cubes of ice (I like to fill the glass), then pour the whisky over the ice. Garnish with the cherry and enjoy.
I note that some people top this off with soda water. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to take a perfectly nice drink and turn it into a bizarre, whisky-flavored soda.
July 13th, 2007