This interview just sort of "happened to me". I was actually enjoying a nice conversation with my spouse when the topic drifted to gaming; so why not throw the interview into the conversation while I was at it?
It's always fun talking to him about games. He's a smart guy and listens to OTHER PEOPLE pretty well. And he looks great in a tie.
 |
| The picture really doesn't convey how great this looks in person. |
TheDude: Yeah... I think a great example of aesthetics in game design could have been directed toward White Wolf..when they started, their games were the prettiest around, and created an atmosphere unlike any other...
L: Well, my "prime example" (at least mentally) for an exceptionally well designed game is MtG-but yes, I can see that.
TheDude: But their art style never progressed or evolved over the course of their life time, and companies like Fantasy Flight, WotC, and even Catalyst began putting out better looking product. White Wolf got left in the dust in the aesthetics race, and their whole setting RELIED on the look of their products to get people interested, 'cause mechanically, the system is wretched.
Lo: I like it.
TheDude: In the case of Style and Substance, Style gets you noticed, but Substance keeps you going, and the Wolfies lagged behind in both near the end...
Don't get me wrong, there are bits of Storyteller that are MAGNIFICENT, but the system does not work well as a whole...
Lo: Can you give an example?
TheDude: The skill/stat system... the die pool system is flawed and always has been... it took them three, maybe four editions to get it to work somewhat close to right... but the idea of not marrying stats to just one skill, but adapting it as needed is brilliant...
For example... I have a character with STRENGTH 2, INT 4, DEX 3, and a climbing skill of 3...If I want to figure out the best way up a mountain, then I could roll INT+Climb (7 dice), to determine it...
If I need to just climb, I add STR+Climb (5 Dice) and hope for the best...
If I hit an obstacle in the middle of a climb and need to work around it, then I could roll DEX+Climb (6 Dice) in order to overcome it wothout going splat...
One broad skill that's brought into finer focus as NEEDED during play... That's REALLY elegant...
The concept is VERY sound, but the math on their die pool system is wonky and almost sabotages the beauty of the whole idea...
Lo: Is that how you design for your own games? With a broad aspect that gets defined through play?
TheDude: Yes and no... It depends on what I feel the system/setting needs...
I love the detail of HERO, but will admit it gets bogged down at times...
I like the simplicity of Savage Worlds, but hate the qucik death spiral for characters.
Both Savage Worlds and D&D rely on a "one die" chance system... your fate hinges on one die, and no matter how skilled you are, screwing up is only a "1" away, and there are very few ways built into those games to mitigate that chance...
Designing my own stuff, I take what I feel works (like White Wolf's fluid skill/stat concept) and adapt it the situation at hand.
Lo: Do you think the type of randomizer you uuse makes a difference in feel/tone of a game?
TheDude: It can... There's no doubt that Malifaux would not the be the game that it is using the card deck...It could be done, but it would lose flavor...
Another example is Savage Worlds: Deadlands compared to Deadlands classic...
the SW version runs smoother, but the original just drips with flavor due to the use of the poker chips for fate enhancers and poker cards for casting spells/hexes...
Other games, it ruins...
The special dice used for the current iteration of Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay are a nice idea, but it really detracts from the experience of old Bretonnia...
The oddest and coolest randomizer i've heard of comes from an indie game called "Dread"...It uses a Jenga tower to resolve actions...To accomplish an action you make a number of pulls based on the difficulty of the action...
You make the pulls and keep the tower intact, you're fine...
The tower falls, and your character dies...
The tower is reset, thus resetting the luck for the remaining characters...
Lo: Wow. That seems to gear the game to saving really gutsy or hard actions for when it counts.
TheDude: Yep...
Lo: I like systems that REWARD guts, such as Feng Shui.
TheDude: Ehhh... Feng Shui rewards crazy more than it rewards guts...
but that's the trope it tries to emulate...action movies are all about action...
Inaction is boring and is penalized for being such...Being awesome is necessary for survival...So doing awesome things is how things get done in the game...
Lo: When you're designing new stuff, do you start with setting, mechanic, or do they have to coexist for you?
TheDude: Depends on what catches my imagination first, the chicken or the egg...There have been games where I've come up with an interesting mechanic, and designed around that...
There have been other games where I've come up with a setting, and the mechanics kind of sprung into being based on the necessities of said setting...
Either way, if the mechanics don't serve the story, or the setting is boring, the game is crap...
Parts of it may be good and worth salvaging, but the current reciepe makes for a nasty meal...
Lo: What makes a game bad? How do you determine the mechanics in a design are terrible?
TheDude: Mechanics that get in the way of a group's way to tell a story are inherently awful, but that is subjective to the tastes of the group. Many people love D&D/Pathfinder or even HERO due to the amount of detail that these games can convey in the middle of a conflict. But determining that detail can be time-consuming, and turns off other players...
They could care less if their diembowling strike ruptured a foe's spleen and left him bleeding out in 1d6 rounds...
They just want to know "did I hit him?" and "is he dead?"...
The exact how and why are irrelevent to those folks...
Personally, I enjoy some granularity and detail, as long as that detail doesn't slow things down too much...
If I'm waiting an hour to take my turn, things are wrong...
Lo: Yep- the "what are the players doing" question I brought up earlier. You were talking about the HERO downfall earlier. A though occurred to me that the collapse was something of a symptom of the system. Too much attention to 10 different explanations on blast; and not enough on getting things out the door.
While this is certainly an "industry" problem, I see it in other games, too. 40K, for example spends inordinate amounts of time on the vehicle chart but still has multiple codexes with troops with no models. What's your take on this kind of "blind spot" thinking?
TheDude: "but still has multiple codexes with troops with no models." -- not sure what you mean by this...
Lo: Several codexes have big gaps of - oh, I want to play X but there's not a model for it
TheDude: Ahhh... yes... like the Blood Angel Honour Guard...That's not really bad design, just bad product launch...
Lo: I see it as fairlure to see whole picture
TheDude: Yeah...Gamers are gamers... they're not really businessmen, or even designers. Unless they surround themselves with good people, they will miss something. HERO System got bogged down by it's overexplanation. Warhammer has gotten bogged down by not giving a game that needs a complete overhaul... a complete overhaul. 40K is just a series of patches that don't really fix any of its inherent issues. Ultimately, people want to play games, not get bogged down in minutia. The easier you can make that happen without sacrificing flavor, balance, and detail, the better off you are. It's a hard balancing act to pull off...
Bring out the D12s!!!
ReplyDeletetom
The thing, I think, with Warhammer is that it had its complete overhaul, it was about as good as it was going to get... and then it needed to be trashed again in order to push the pendulum and get the purchase cycle moving.
ReplyDeleteI've written at length elsewhere on the issue I have with the industry-company-livelihood model of game development. The people who are developing games 'right' are people like TheDude here who develop more than one, who build something and make it work and accept that it's finite and that they're going to have to come up with something else one day. The systems that have gone through so many editions were either busted in the first place, took a few goes to get right, or were deliberately pitching different flavours of 'wrong' at varying times to target varying audiences. I still maintain that the only thing Wizards have ever done 'wrong' vis-a-vis D&D was not keeping every version of the core rules 'live' in terms of being on sale - no edition of that game pleases everyone but almost everyone can find something to like about one of them. But that's the Model again - one current edition, invalidated by the next one, keep those units moving...