Back in Action
Hello again, dear reader. I have returned to the world of the gainfully employed, and today I sit in my office waiting to spiel about the Latest Developments. So let's see what we have here.
First I believe it's important to note that blogging, as an information medium has finally hit the mainstream. Merriam-Webster have caught on, and ABC News really loves those people who throw down consonants like it ain't no thang. I for one enjoy the process, and it makes me a better writer as well as improving my perspective, as I can go back and read things to see where they fit in my existence.
Yes, it's all very spiritual when I go bitching about politics and discuss the intimacies of potty training.
Anyway, today's subjects will detail both Writing as an art (I won't get too into this I promise), and Game Design regarding my new venture.
On Blogging
So Blogging is just Web Logging your life or the things you see. There are companies out there I've been recommended to contact to do this on a contract basis. No, really, someone told me to contact this company as a possible revenue outlet. And just the words Revenue Outlet make me very happy. It's like Wal*Mart personified in two words. Well, two different words. You know what I mean.
But I digress. There is plenty of pay-for-blogging starting to happen, and companies are beginning to see that the web community finally found its news anchors: Everyone. Everyone is a reporter, everyone is an esteemed journalist, from the most well known bloggers in the world to the kids on LiveJournal. Each has their place, and when greatness shows up, it's usually recognized quickly.
What really changes the scope to me is XML and RSS. If these look like alphabet soup, worry not. They basically provide an easy-to-find and reach outlet to make your blog reading easier and more centralized. Looking up websites, typing in URLs, using bookmarks, trying to find the content within the banner ads? Yesterday's news folks. It's time you and everyone you know who enjoys the web to get an RSS Reader.
RSS is a syndication resource and the readers will cull this information from your favorite sites and put it into a nice, easy to read format. You can find all kinds, but ever since finding Onfolio I haven't turned back. If you haven't heard me already: The newspaper format is to die for. It makes me weep with user-friendly joy. Sure any RSS/XML Reader can have a column of sites you read, but can they format it correctly? Do they send you to the website, do they just have the blurb?
There are web-based solutions and there are PC-based solutions. Onfolio plugs into your browser (you are using Firefox, right? Okay, just checking), whether it be The Great Evil of the World or Firefox (your choice, really), and runs a little app in the background as all do to keep your info Up To Date. Blogging Time is basically Real Time for most intents and purposes. As I throw these characters on the screen to see which stick, thousands of others, millions by next year, will be doing the same. It's like the high school note-passing. "Did you hear about so and so? He wrote this really cool thing about..." etc. Links, discussions, comments, forums.
What blogging has become is a force to be reckoned with. XML and RSS readers centralize this information, and keep you well informed. Visit your favorite places and see if Onfolio can pick them up. Then visit their favorite places. Before you know it you'll have plenty of new interesting content to filter in, and then filter out. This is my little filter on the world, and if you don't have your own, go create a free blog with Blogger or Typepad or something. Questions? Just fucking google it (love that site, I reference it constantly on forums). You'll save yourself time + trouble, and that's never a bad equation.
Game Design Is Tricky
Aside: I'm creating little bold headers for todays entries because they're easier to read and skip if you don't want to hear me harp on either subject. Just keeping you in the loop.
New ideas have come to light (to quote Mr. Lebowski), and things are looking promising. To create a CCG you have to know the environment by which you're delving in. Me, I'm not working in the realm of existing copyright, so to create my own and to create a believable world for the players to work in...that is a very tricky thing. Most games ride on the edge of a knife: One slip and they could be doomed.
The most obvious example of this is Magic, as it is the most well known CCG in the world, and I've had plenty of experience with it. Let's take a few classic mistakes and see what went wrong:
1. Homelands
2. Urza's Saga
3. Mercadian Masques
First up, Homelands. This expansion was designed by two customer service reps at the company (this is an interesting look back at its debut). Italicized for your convenience. Because what the fuck Wizards of the Coast were thinking is anyone's guess. But after that awful, horrible, stupid expansion they got back to their senses and stopped letting the phone answers make major design decisions. Go figure.
So now, what they learned with Homelands they certainly unlearned with the entire Urza's Saga expansion. This was a major "Block" as they call it, consisting of a 350 card main expansion, and 2 smaller expansions of 150+ cards each. Where Homelands was stupid and crappy, Urza's Saga had cards of such power that they had the most bannings of any set in Magic other than Alpha. Apparently the designers got a good yelling at from the WOTC execs (and for good reason), by which they reacted to the players leaving with...
Mercadian Masques. A terrible, awful set, the likes of which hasn't been seen since the debut of Homelands. The entire set was based around legions of characters, and with no new keyword mechanics (mechanics are small game systems tied around cards, such as new effects and abilities), it broke their own "Legend Rule", something that was finally fixed years later with the recent release of Champions of Kamigawa. Now this is all fine and good, but this expansion drove even more players away from the game.
So what went wrong? Power levels. One of the most important things to keep in mind in collectable card design is keeping power levels in check and not to worry about one or two cards throwing you off. What is a power level? A power level is a relationship to how challenging the game is to how easy cards provide a winning answer. When one or two cards are really, really high on the power curve, then all of the others pale in comparison. If the entire playerbase is using nothing but those cards (or decks built around them), then you have a problem.
By most standards, a CCG is healthy when the metagame (the perception of the game as a whole) consists of 3-4 very powerful decks with rogue decks still being viable. This happens with almost every CCG, from Magic to Lord of the Rings to VS. System. Each has their own power cards, each has their own power strategies. But in the end, the power level should be consistent enough that if a player uses his or her resources and creates an interesting deck, and can still win with it.
One of the main draws to Star Chamber is that the metagame is very hard to discern. Since it is, primarily, board-game like in its design, the metagame is based on what types of decks and strategies are viable on different maps. Sure one card owns a single map, but no decks completely control the game as the playerbase knows it.
So what I'm focusing on for my game is to take the power level of good games (VS. System has an excellent power level, for the most part. Magic has stablized pretty well) and look at all of their core mechanics. I'm focusing on those mechanics that got the games going, not those that were added later, and finding out what is the right mix for me. I believe I stumbled on something last night that takes my favorite part of the Legend of the 5 Rings CCG and moves it into my game design.
But I've rambled enough. More on this tomorrow.
First I believe it's important to note that blogging, as an information medium has finally hit the mainstream. Merriam-Webster have caught on, and ABC News really loves those people who throw down consonants like it ain't no thang. I for one enjoy the process, and it makes me a better writer as well as improving my perspective, as I can go back and read things to see where they fit in my existence.
Yes, it's all very spiritual when I go bitching about politics and discuss the intimacies of potty training.
Anyway, today's subjects will detail both Writing as an art (I won't get too into this I promise), and Game Design regarding my new venture.
On Blogging
So Blogging is just Web Logging your life or the things you see. There are companies out there I've been recommended to contact to do this on a contract basis. No, really, someone told me to contact this company as a possible revenue outlet. And just the words Revenue Outlet make me very happy. It's like Wal*Mart personified in two words. Well, two different words. You know what I mean.
But I digress. There is plenty of pay-for-blogging starting to happen, and companies are beginning to see that the web community finally found its news anchors: Everyone. Everyone is a reporter, everyone is an esteemed journalist, from the most well known bloggers in the world to the kids on LiveJournal. Each has their place, and when greatness shows up, it's usually recognized quickly.
What really changes the scope to me is XML and RSS. If these look like alphabet soup, worry not. They basically provide an easy-to-find and reach outlet to make your blog reading easier and more centralized. Looking up websites, typing in URLs, using bookmarks, trying to find the content within the banner ads? Yesterday's news folks. It's time you and everyone you know who enjoys the web to get an RSS Reader.
RSS is a syndication resource and the readers will cull this information from your favorite sites and put it into a nice, easy to read format. You can find all kinds, but ever since finding Onfolio I haven't turned back. If you haven't heard me already: The newspaper format is to die for. It makes me weep with user-friendly joy. Sure any RSS/XML Reader can have a column of sites you read, but can they format it correctly? Do they send you to the website, do they just have the blurb?
There are web-based solutions and there are PC-based solutions. Onfolio plugs into your browser (you are using Firefox, right? Okay, just checking), whether it be The Great Evil of the World or Firefox (your choice, really), and runs a little app in the background as all do to keep your info Up To Date. Blogging Time is basically Real Time for most intents and purposes. As I throw these characters on the screen to see which stick, thousands of others, millions by next year, will be doing the same. It's like the high school note-passing. "Did you hear about so and so? He wrote this really cool thing about..." etc. Links, discussions, comments, forums.
What blogging has become is a force to be reckoned with. XML and RSS readers centralize this information, and keep you well informed. Visit your favorite places and see if Onfolio can pick them up. Then visit their favorite places. Before you know it you'll have plenty of new interesting content to filter in, and then filter out. This is my little filter on the world, and if you don't have your own, go create a free blog with Blogger or Typepad or something. Questions? Just fucking google it (love that site, I reference it constantly on forums). You'll save yourself time + trouble, and that's never a bad equation.
Game Design Is Tricky
Aside: I'm creating little bold headers for todays entries because they're easier to read and skip if you don't want to hear me harp on either subject. Just keeping you in the loop.
New ideas have come to light (to quote Mr. Lebowski), and things are looking promising. To create a CCG you have to know the environment by which you're delving in. Me, I'm not working in the realm of existing copyright, so to create my own and to create a believable world for the players to work in...that is a very tricky thing. Most games ride on the edge of a knife: One slip and they could be doomed.
The most obvious example of this is Magic, as it is the most well known CCG in the world, and I've had plenty of experience with it. Let's take a few classic mistakes and see what went wrong:
1. Homelands
2. Urza's Saga
3. Mercadian Masques
First up, Homelands. This expansion was designed by two customer service reps at the company (this is an interesting look back at its debut). Italicized for your convenience. Because what the fuck Wizards of the Coast were thinking is anyone's guess. But after that awful, horrible, stupid expansion they got back to their senses and stopped letting the phone answers make major design decisions. Go figure.
So now, what they learned with Homelands they certainly unlearned with the entire Urza's Saga expansion. This was a major "Block" as they call it, consisting of a 350 card main expansion, and 2 smaller expansions of 150+ cards each. Where Homelands was stupid and crappy, Urza's Saga had cards of such power that they had the most bannings of any set in Magic other than Alpha. Apparently the designers got a good yelling at from the WOTC execs (and for good reason), by which they reacted to the players leaving with...
Mercadian Masques. A terrible, awful set, the likes of which hasn't been seen since the debut of Homelands. The entire set was based around legions of characters, and with no new keyword mechanics (mechanics are small game systems tied around cards, such as new effects and abilities), it broke their own "Legend Rule", something that was finally fixed years later with the recent release of Champions of Kamigawa. Now this is all fine and good, but this expansion drove even more players away from the game.
So what went wrong? Power levels. One of the most important things to keep in mind in collectable card design is keeping power levels in check and not to worry about one or two cards throwing you off. What is a power level? A power level is a relationship to how challenging the game is to how easy cards provide a winning answer. When one or two cards are really, really high on the power curve, then all of the others pale in comparison. If the entire playerbase is using nothing but those cards (or decks built around them), then you have a problem.
By most standards, a CCG is healthy when the metagame (the perception of the game as a whole) consists of 3-4 very powerful decks with rogue decks still being viable. This happens with almost every CCG, from Magic to Lord of the Rings to VS. System. Each has their own power cards, each has their own power strategies. But in the end, the power level should be consistent enough that if a player uses his or her resources and creates an interesting deck, and can still win with it.
One of the main draws to Star Chamber is that the metagame is very hard to discern. Since it is, primarily, board-game like in its design, the metagame is based on what types of decks and strategies are viable on different maps. Sure one card owns a single map, but no decks completely control the game as the playerbase knows it.
So what I'm focusing on for my game is to take the power level of good games (VS. System has an excellent power level, for the most part. Magic has stablized pretty well) and look at all of their core mechanics. I'm focusing on those mechanics that got the games going, not those that were added later, and finding out what is the right mix for me. I believe I stumbled on something last night that takes my favorite part of the Legend of the 5 Rings CCG and moves it into my game design.
But I've rambled enough. More on this tomorrow.
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