Save Vs Rant

Today’s episode is about Kingdom Death: Monster, a cooperative  boutique nightmare horror miniatures game. This is our mostly spoiler free episode. describing the game play, theme, and controversies surrounding this game.

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Hello everybody, Jeremy here! I figured that John has earned a much needed break and so for the month of April I’ll be taking over the accompanying blog posts here on the site. Now normally these blog posts are in depth and well thought out extensions of the episode proper but since I’m writing this one let’s take a bit of a detour into my life as a gamer and let’s talk about how I became to owner of this massive black box of awesome misery and bloody survival.

So how did Kingdom Death: Monster even cross our radar? Even though it had not one but two of the most successful board game Kickstaters of all time, I personally found out about this game while wandering around Gen Con. My friend Chris and I saw this dark, very heavy metal inspired, booth and decided to check it out. This was awe inspiring. Unfortunately in 2016 the Kingdom Death booth had sold out of the core game.

I was disappointed but not terribly upset because, I mean, I had never even heard of this game before so it might not even be that good. But throughout the following year I kept hearing murmurs and mumbles in the gaming community about this impressive boutique game. I own over 200 different board games and expansions and I like to consider myself a bastion of gaming knowledge and so when I learned that this game was one of a handful of “prestige” games I was even more intrigued. A prestige game is one that even simply owning it increases one’s “nerd cred” and that are extravagant in the most over the top sense of the word. I had to find out more.

The Kingdom Death website was a functional place to find information about the game but frankly not a great place to find out about the actual meat of the experience. Likewise many different online communities were great for fielding rules questions they didn’t show what was actually fun about this game. If I was going to spend $400 on a board game I certainly wanted to know if I was going to get my money’s worth. For that same price I could get six great games. Was this game worth six other games?

I started hunting for information everywhere. The old Kickstarter page was impressive and full of promises but it also was unpolished and felt frankly unprofessional. Game play videos on Youtube often seemed slow and ponderous. I felt like I was running in metaphorical circles. The last place I could go was the reviewer community. Here was my last chance to find if this game was worth the time and effort and hype that was surrounding this mysterious dark game.

I was floored! Many reviewers were split but seeing the soul of the game was truly spectacular. Specifically the wonderful Paul Dean at Shut Up And Sit Down did a review that explained this game as rock and roll excess but that if that type of thing appeals to you then it might be worth checking out Kingdom Death: Monster. I was convinced. I wanted to explore this world. I was going to get this game!

Like a dragon seeking only the choicest jewels for its hoard, I made a plan. At Gen Con 2017 I would find and buy this game. The doors opened and I stood in line for ninety minutes just to get into the booth. It was just as I remembered, black metal fever dreams and loving nightmares surrounded every corner. I stepped up to the counter and made my purchase. The box was massive and by the end of the first day all of the picking up and setting down of this behemoth had caused my back to rebel. But even worse than that I was starting to have buyers remorse. What game could possibly be worth $400? Would I even like this game? I hadn’t even play tested it! I was a fool!

Fortunately my fears were relieved when I cracked the box open. Thousands of cards, tons of minis, beautiful dice, and a massive but approachable rule book all combined together to bring me into this world. Every piece and part was designed and crafted with love and care. This was someone’s passion project that actually seemed to work. I started assembling the plastic bits. The anticipation was killing me. And then I finally played it and it was wonderful. The combat was intense and brutal. The settlement building was straightforward but deep. The world lived in every corner of this massive box.

Is Kingdom Death: Monster a great game? I don’t know. I know that there are parts that are confusing or rules that are a little unclear. It’s often brutal, uncaring, and unfair. But I also know that the game is challenging and over time even rewarding. Is this game for everybody? No. With its mature themes and dark game play I can only think of a handful of people who’d enjoy it. Is this game for most gamers? Not at all. It’s expensive and long and frequently frustrating. Is this game for me? Yes. It has brought me hours of entertainment and I’m happy that I own it.

And, I think, that’s the best recommendation I can give any game.

Today on Save Vs. Rant, we’re discussing RPG rules we really like – rules that can make good games great as well as rules that make unique game systems unforgettable.

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Part of what we discussed today was rules that can be ported to nearly any game. This is a very small category of rules, given that every rule you include in a game changes the flavor the game substantially. Even so, for most classic RPGs, you can include some variation on any or all of these:

Voluntary Dramatic Failure: A Dramatic Failure, in a system that does not already feature a mechanic for failing badly, should confer some significant drawback. While these should rarely be debilitating, they should deprive the character of a resource – especially one taken for granted. Examples include, being temporarily disarmed, having a bank error freeze your account, being caught in a lie that causes a substantial setback (or having a bluff work in an unexpectedly terrible way) or being injured in the process of failing some task.

In the Chronicles of Darkness, converting a regular Failure into a Dramatic Failure grants a beat, which is 1/5 of an Experience, which is, depending on what you do with it, progress toward improving your character. Frankly, under the pre-Chronicles World of Darkness rules, I had seen a grand total of 2 Dramatic Failures ever, but now, I see one every session or two (and, rarely, more than one in a single session).

In many games, giving an experience bonus for this breaks the balance of the game in unexpected ways. There are, however, other ways to reward this. As Jeremy mentioned, in D&D 5ed, he gives a point of Inspiration. Inspiration in 5ed gives Advantage on a roll, meaning that you’re banking failure for success later, which is a good trade for players, but not enormously unbalancing (especially since you can only have one point of Inspiration at a time).

Which brings us to another kind of rule.

Inspiration or Hero Points: If your game doesn’t already feature some sort of hero or inspiration point system, it is fairly simple to implement one. The absolute easiest system (and the one that is most applicable to the most games) is one wherein a player may have a single point of this “inspriation” or  “heroism” banked, typically as a reward for roleplaying. This point may be spent after making a roll (but before learning the results, if that matters in your system) to reroll, taking the new result even if worse. This is almost never game breaking, regardless of the game you are playing, and if it doesn’t already have a system in place to encourage roleplaying and creative play, this is a great way to promote it.

Session Zero: Maybe the player characters have already met. If that’s the case, it’s nice to have a structured way of doing this. Having a standardized way of doing this is great.

There are a few ways to do this. The first is the Dresden Files way of doing it, which involves answering the questions “What Is Your First Story?”, “Whose Story Has Crossed Your Path?” and “Who Else’s Path Have You Crossed?” to interweave your story with everyone else’s. First, the character tells their first story, then they integrate someone else into it, then they guest star in someone else’s. The simplest way to do this is to go around the circle – you were involved in the story of the person to your left – go!  Alternately, for a little more chaos, pass them out on index cards and, if anyone gets their own, they trade right until everyone has someone else’s story. This is best for a group that is comfortable with collaboration.

Another way to do Session Zero is a modified version of the way the Apocalypse Engine does. Give each character a couple of questions or statements to make about one of the other player characters and encourage your players to approach these statements with a “yes, and” attitude.  “Your character has stolen something from one of the other characters. Why can’t they give it back?” “One of the other characters has seen your character naked. Where and why?” “One of the other characters frightens you, but not for an obvious reason. Who and why?” These sort of questions, especially when somewhat unexpected, can lead to interesting player collaboration. It’s important when you create these questions to keep them within the player’s comfort zones, however, since a question that is too far out can clash with a player’s expectation for their character.

One Unique Thing: Seriously. Don’t NOT do this. Unless your game has a theme of being banal – or is almost pure hack and slash – there is no reason that the player characters should not be truly unique in some way. Even if they all start out as level 0 peasant nobodies, give them something cool to hold on to. An heirloom, a special talent, a weird quirk – anything to make a character truly unique! Consider using this for important NPCs as well – it’s amazing what one unique quirk can do to make an otherwise forgettable character stand out!

The Last Words or Blaze of Glory: Character death is rarely the goal of an RPG. However, it can be a dramatic moment that makes for an amazing story, and there are a number of ways to make this even better.  While the Blaze of Glory rule as stated in Savage Worlds Rifts might not be applicable to every game, some variation on it is appropriate. Unless it’s the theme of the game (or highly reversible), death should not normally happen arbitrarily in RPGs. Consider, though, the example of Galuf in Final Fantasy V: he stands alone against an overwhelming foe, and no amount of Phoenix Down or Elixirs can save him afterward. Giving a character one “last wind” to attempt a mighty feat (and, perhaps, even ensuring the victory of that mighty feat) can be the death concession that gives closure to the character.

Otherwise, even if you want death to be arbitrary and brutal, giving characters “the last word” when they die can be some consolation. Let them utter a warning, a statement or some last words. If the system allows for it, make these prophetic, valuable or, simple, profound by default. Consider even giving the player the luxury of dictating one change to the scene or events that, while not saving them from death, may avert the fate for their comrades. These sort of concessions can make the idea of losing a beloved character both more tolerable and more meaningful.

While rule changes can cause substantial upheaval in your game, adding the right rules or play guidelines to a game can make it pop and stand out to your players, and can make for unforgettable adventure and stories that you love to retell.

Today’s episode of Save Vs. Rant is about bad house rules – non-canonical rules introduced to a game by a well-meaning group that end up making the game worse.

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What makes a rule bad? What causes part of a game to fail despite the best laid plans of designers? While the idea of “bad” is at least partially subjective, there are design features that are generally considered to be objectively bad design. Some of the most common examples of bad design include:

Turning an Advantage Into a Disadvantage: If something is meant to be an advantage without an attached disadvantage, the rules should reflect this. In Dungeons and Dragons, a character having high strength, for example, is supposed to be a good thing. A DM would be subverting this principle if they added a house rule that a character with high strength “doesn’t know their own strength” and routinely breaks fragile objects just by holding them.

In the original World of Darkness game line, the rules for a regular dice pool were, “Assemble a dice pool based on how good your attributes are; have the Storyteller select a target number based on how hard the task is; each die that hits that target number is a success; if you have no successes and roll 1 on one of the dice, you suffer a dramatic failure.” This sounds like a decent rule, until you consider the fact that, with higher target numbers, the mathematical consequence is that more skillful characters have a higher chance of a dramatic failure*. This makes having a larger dice pool worse if the task is sufficiently difficult.

Turning a Disadvantage Into an Advantage: A counterpoint to the last one, disadvantages that are actually advantages can greatly damage the integrity of an RPG. One of the most common ways this is done is by allowing “flaws” to be taken by characters. If a character can take a “flaw” that they can work around – or, more insidiously, that does not effect their chose build at all – then they receive the benefits of that “flaw” without any of the drawbacks. D&D’s Unearthed Arcana introduced traits that gave a minor benefit in return for a less minor drawback; when it discusses players designing their own traits, it points out that traits that harm a character’s melee combat or magic are irrelevant to characters built around ignoring that part of the game, and are largely to be avoided.

In GURPS, characters are built using a point-based system. While, for the most part, an effort is made to make any character flaw relevant to any character that chooses to take it, some flaws are just things a character can be built to overlook. While having a flaw that makes you act last in combat sounds bad, for instance, if your character doesn’t capitalize on going first anyway, that may not matter. Being ugly is irrelevant if the party has a face. Being magically inept is harmless to a character that doesn’t use mage.

Note: Sometimes, an advantage is intended to have a drawback, or a disadvantage a sort of consolation prize. In the New World of Darkness, for example, nearly every Supernatural Advantage attribute (Blood Potency, Primal Urge, Wyrd, etc) also entails several drawbacks as a design decision. Likewise, some disadvantages – a Mage being addicted to drugs, for example – have consolations that go with them (that same Mage being able to summon the inner Demon of his addiction). This, as a narrative design choice, can be a good thing.

Rules That Add Complexity: Needlessly adding complexity to a game is one of the surest ways to take the fun out of the game. One way in which games tend to do this is by breaking down the concept of time in what are seen as logical or novel ways that, ultimately, damage the playability of the game. In some games, an effort is made to ensure that characters act “simultaneously,” tracking movement and action by the second or resolving actions based on byzantine rules for determining what happens first. This is almost always a bad thing.

In some editions of GURPS, the action is tracked for each second, and the GM needs to keep track of which second a given action takes place on, which can be a bookkeeping nightmare with lots of complex action. The Dr. Who RPG, as a good counterpoint, determines who goes first based on what they are doing. Talkers go first, then runners, then doers and finally attackers. This is a fairly simple (if slightly unintuitive) system that, above all, enforces the feel of a Dr. Who story, where physical confrontations are a last resort.

Other common sources of unnecessary complexity include bookkeeping for encumbrance (a necessary evil mostly in survival based games or games where a theme is limited resources, otherwise typically beneath notice), and rules for wear and tear on equipment. Abilities that last variable amounts of time and / or have wildly different numbers of uses or timing on recharging can be a serious problem. In D&D, effects frequently last a number of rounds, a number of minutes (10 rounds each) or even a number of hours (600 rounds). This can get complicated. The World of Darkness tried to alleviate this by causing most persistent effects that last longer than a few seconds to last for one abstract “scene.”

Rules That Give a False Choice: There was an extremely contentious thread on White Wolf’s New World of Darkness message board about the interactions between armor and called shots. Armor, in NWoD, reduces an attack’s dice pool. Called shots, likewise, reduce the dice pool. Per the rules, a called shot ignores armor that isn’t on the location and a called shot to the head is a -3 penalty. Therefore, if someone is wearing armor that doesn’t cover their head with an equipment modifier of +3 or greater, the attacker is better off attacking the head, since that presumably entails other benefits beyond just injuring the target. The contention was, however, that this created a false choice where the player could do the wrong thing, but why would they?

More often, false choices are things such as combat maneuvers or equipment that are strictly inferior to other choices for accomplishing the same thing.  In Pathfinder, the chain shirt is strictly inferior to the breast plate in every way but cost (50gp cheaper). At very low levels, this is a significant difference, but at higher levels, 50gp is a nearly irrelevant amount of gold that no one is typically wanting for, making it obsolete for all but the most penny-pinching characters.

Rules That Have Unbalancing Effects: Every game has a balance factor in it. While games like Ars Magica might have, as a factor in that balance, the clear understanding that one thing is intended to be more powerful than another (magic users in Ars Magica are always more powerful than even the best warriors) or, as in D&D, might excel at something to a far greater degree (Fighter are better, well, fighters than Rangers, for example). Ultimately, every class that is intended to be played as a PC should be balanced.

A major problem for 3rd Edition D&D was that polymorphing Wizards (or even crafty Druids) could do, basically, anything the martial and adventurer classes could do – and better than they could! Likewise, the Pathfinder Summoner, as originally presented before the Unchained variation was released, was so versatile and, in some builds, insanely powerful that there were stories online of players soloing entire Adventure Paths (usually expecting 3-5 player characters) with it.

It Makes the Game Make Less Sense: In order to enjoy an RPG, you must be able to suspend your disbelief. Every game gets an automatic pass for having a premise – no one should think that the existence of magic makes an RPG “unrealistic” just because magic isn’t real, because we play games to escape reality. When you create fiction, you’re not beholden to the real world. You are, however, beholden to your fiction. If you say, “Magic cannot do X” then you should make sure that it cannot do X or, if it suddenly can, that this is a major plot point.

In D&D and Pathfinder, arcane magic cannot heal. Why? Because this is a limitation of arcane magic. There are a few very specific tricks to get around this (as an example, you can polymorph into something that regenerates or summon a creature with inherent healing powers), but the rule is hard and fast… except when it isn’t. The 3.5 SRD says, regarding spells the sorcerer learns: “These new spells can be common spells chosen from the sorcerer/wizard spell list, or they can be unusual spells that the sorcerer has gained some understanding of by study. ” and a few enterprising players have argued that this implies they could gain cleric spells and, hence, healing spells. Likewise, in Pathfinder Bards can cast an arcane form of Cure Light Wounds that isn’t available to the Wizard or Sorcerer at all. This doesn’t jive with a standing interpretation, but at least in the latter case, it’s explicitly a canon balance decision rather than just using the weasel words in some flavor text to argue for a fundamental rewriting of the rules.

* My personal fix for this was to designate one die from each dice pool as the “danger die” that would trigger a dramatic failure if it rolled a 1 and the roll was a failure, giving everyone a flat chance of Dramatic Failure on a failure. Still not perfect, but did avert this particular rules quirk.

The focus of today’s episode is how to ease newcomers to the tabletop board gaming hobby. When the average person thinks of “board games” and “card games,” they tend to think of the family game night games that everyone remembers with varying degrees of fondness (often completely unrelated to how enjoyable the games themselves were). Relating games back to these familiar touchstones makes it substantially easier to introduce newcomers to the hobby.

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Games are built on a foundation of meta-ideas, and these can help us categorize games and identify individual elements in them that we tend to enjoy. While categorizing games exclusively on this criteria doesn’t typically allow you to

Resources

Nearly every modern board game has some sort of resource that has to be collected. In some games, this is an end in itself: games like Solarquest, Monopoly and Life all use play money to track your victory. This has to be spent to get certain in-game benefits, but, for the most part, getting money is an end in itself – you win by having the most or making your opponent have none.

In Lords of Vegas, Dominion and Illuminati, meanwhile, money isn’t the key to victory: just a resource to be spent in pursuit of ultimate victory. Hoarding money can further your goals and open strategic options, but, ultimately, you won’t win the game just by being the wealthiest players (the Gnomes of Zurich’s win condition in Illuminati notwithstanding).

In Ticket to Ride and Catan, resources are spent to make the moves of the game. Each turn, you have to have the resources to take any action, and, if you are doing poorly, you may simply find yourself working to get the resources you are missing.

Finally, in games like Dead of Winter and Forbidden Desert, resources are used to continue the game.  In Forbidden desert, the players running out of sand, running out of time or anyone running out of water ends the game, while in Dead of Winter, not having the right resources can result in zombies overtaking you or your people starving. In both cases, the presence or absence of resources drives the game.

Turns

Games are all about taking turns right? Well, be that as it may, there are several ways to do this. In most traditional board games, the players take turns in a circuit, with each player taking a move and then passing to the next player when it is complete. Nearly all the classic family game night games, such as Monopoly, Life and Candyland, as well as some of the classic games such as Chess and Go use this rule.

In some games, however, each player commits to an action, then these are revealed simultaneously. Diplomacy, 7 Wonders (and nearly all drafting games such as Sushi Go and Go Nuts for Donuts, in fact) and Gloomhaven all feature rules where the players commit to their turns before revealing what they do. Sometimes, there’s a specific order in which things must be resolved, but, ultimately, it’s about the choice happening at the same time.

A few board games are even played in real time. Pit, Dutch Blitz, Space Cadets, Captain Sonar and Wartime are all real-time games with rules for resolving the action at a sometimes frantic, extremely personal pace.

Unit Management

A great many games have a unit management aspect to them. Most obviously, there are games wherein you control only one generic pawn with no special properties – Life, Monopoly and games to numerous to mention fall into this category. Here, the only important thing about your pawn is that it is differentiated from the others so you know who you are.

Then, there are games where non-unique pawns are allotted to you in groups with you deciding which to move and when. Sorry, Parcheesi, Trouble and many other such games exist, and I’m certain that a reader with some familiarity with games can easily think of many others. In a sense, one could even think of Risk or Checkers as being this sort of game.

Then, there are games wherein everyone controls a single pawn, but that pawn is a unique “character” with traits associated with it. Betrayal at House on the Hill, Arkham Horror, Forbidden Island/Desert, Super Dungeon Explore, Gloomhaven and many other such games exist, and while these can be thought of, in some cases, as a sort of proto role-playing-game, many of them don’t really go beyond being board games with an interesting quirk.

Controlling multiple unique pieces can be very interesting, and can be achieved to several degrees. In Onitama, there’s one special piece and several generic ones. In The Duke, Chess, Navia Dratp (who even remembers that nonsense?) and Shogi, each player has an assortment of pieces with different abilities. In Dead of Winter, you control a minimum of 2 unique characters with the opportunity to gain more. Notably, many of the games in the “you get one unique pawn” can be played optionally to have more than one per player.

Conclusion

What’s the point of meta-analyzing board games? If you’re interested in design, understanding what works when and why is an important first step to designing your own games. It can also help in understanding what kind of games appeal to your gaming group and your social circles. Finally, it can help when teaching the rules for a game to be able to relate it back to things the prospective player is familiar with. “It’s a real-time game like Pit” can be more useful than just saying that it’s a real time game so there are no turns. People relate better to past experience than abstract description.

Knowledge isn’t merely power in the broad sense, but also in the sense that it allows you to minimize the time spent floundering for understanding and maximize the time spend enjoying your past times. Happy gaming!

Today’s episode is about complexity creep, of which the making of this episode was an example. When we set out to do this episode, we planned to go over only a few specific examples, but the subject proved much richer than initially expected.

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Even beyond what we covered in the episode, there remains a lot to be said about complexity creep. Complexity is essential to games. Games like Candyland, War and Chutes and Ladders, lacking all elements of choice, are a sort of ur-game, each containing a few fundamental concepts, but being essentially entirely random. It can be imagined that each can be improved upon by adding choices to it – Life, for example, allows you to switch paths and tracks your score with money, but is otherwise largely like Chutes and Ladders or Candyland. Parcheesi, Sorry, Trouble and Aggravation all give elements of choice regarding which piece the player moves and how they divide their movement. This process continues with consecutively more complex games as the possibilities branch out.

More elements of choice make a game more interesting, provided the choices are not strictly bad choices. If all options are fairly well balanced, each new option unlocks new strategies and lines of thought. What differentiates well balanced options from those included for the arbitrary sake of giving the player things to mull over? Mostly, how difficult it is to definitively say which one is better.

Consider the choice between using a weapon that deals 1d12 damage and one that deals 2d6 damage. In the case of an enemy with 6 hit points, the decision to roll 2d6 is strictly better mathematically speaking. The 2d6 has a much better chance of rolling 6 or better than the 1d12. For enemies with more hit points, however, there might be circumstances where one or the other die is preferable.  Combined with certain feats and powers, weapons dealing 1d12 damage can deal absolutely astounding damage with poor frequency, vs 2d6’s more reliable (and slightly better overall) damage. A trade-off between reliability and power is a common way of making a choice significant. There are several other ways, of course, be it by allowing other players to potentially block the choice, concealing the outcome of choices or limiting options after a choice is made. Ultimately, the goal is the same: make choices significant.

Complexity creep is sometimes presented within a single game as part of a growing ruleset that starts simple and becomes progressively more complicated and advanced, or through expansions that add additional meaning to the game, a technique pioneered by the commercial casino industry, which introduced variations on common games. The big five casino games are  blackjack, roulette, baccarat, craps and poker. Each has a simple ruleset (press your luck to try to beat the dealer, or bet on the outcome of the draw of cards or throw of dice) and is then embellished with different wagers. Even on the game of craps, where there are 21 different configurations of the dice (all the easy rolls, which come in two configurations and the hard ways) there are dozens of different ways to bet, each with similar enough probabilities that they’re all played by craps enthusiasts. The games of blackjack and baccarat, meanwhile, see new side wagers and versions of the game every few years.

Another form of complexity creep can be seen in White Wolf’s original World of Darkness line. Games like Vampire: the Masquerade more frequently introduced new storyline elements than new rules mechanics (though these, too, were interspersed amid them). Even so, just following and retaining the game lines’ respective metaplots (not to mention the interactions between those game lines) required considerable reading and retention of materials. Add to this the fact that the storyteller was intended to integrate this material into his own Chronicle (with the general assumption that the canonical material was, more or less, correct to give the players a shared setting) and storytelling in a compelling way could potentially be a very daunting prospect indeed.

The New World of Darkness, having a much more barebones metaplot, likewise introduced lines of books that built on this material and, were a Storyteller to want to run a Chronicles that throws in the proverbial kitchen sink, a truly prodigious amount of material could be written into a single Chronicle. After Vampire, Werewolf and Mage presented ever-expanding game lines, White Wolf made the decision to make their upcoming game lines limited releases with a predetermined number of expansions planned. This, to some degree, makes those games easier to digest while still feeling like one is getting the full game experience.

There are certain schools of game enjoyment that consider analyzing the utility of every single move in a game, trying to determine the absolute optimal utility and making the most advantageous moves with exactitude, and this can be a legitimate way to enjoy a game. It can, however, significantly diminish the enjoyability of a game and reduce it to a mathematical exercise. Some would argue, though, that all games are, at their core, mathematical exercises. This is, of course, empirically true, but people who make a point of saying this are seldom invited to game nights. Even so, competitive gamers have been around for literally centuries, and, in some cases, continue to play the same games – Chess and Go being the most prominent examples. And that’s the just vanilla versions of these games! And Go and Chess both have numerous variants of different popularity levels.

Different games take different approaches to the challenges of presenting a compelling experience without overwhelming the player (some even eschewing the very idea of NOT overwhelming players), and while there are many approaches, all designers must be aware of the risks (and rewards) of introducing complexity to their games.

Today, we talk about Sentinels of the Multiverse by Greater Than Games, one of our favorite co-op card game experiences!

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Sentinels of the Multiverse is an homage to comic books, which I only discussed very briefly in this episode. The comic books of the 1930’s and 1940’s were very different from those of the 1950’s and beyond, and I’d like to take a moment to run through those.

The Golden Age was roughly the 1930’s to 1950’s.  During the perilous times of World War II, stories of amazing individuals saving the world were all the rage, and everyone loved the escapist fantasy of Captain America punching out ol’ Hitler and incredibly racist Japanese and Italian caricatures.  After the war ended, everyone was sick of that, so the stories turned to equally gritty but more domestic fare: tales of criminal exploits, smuggling, human trafficking and other dark and deeply violent material. Horror comics were all the rage.

A moral panic was due, of course, and in the 1950’s fake research was produced to tie comic books and juvenile delinquency (complete fabrications) and the Comics Code Authority was created in an attempt to prevent the U.S. government from directly restricting comic books, because that sort of thing is as American as apple pie, apparently.  Thus, the Silver Age of comic books was born, an era where, increasingly, authors had to get “creative” with their storytelling. Some were able to write traditional comic book stories that avoided all the taboo topics (such as police dying, untrustworthy authority figures, and sex outside of marriage), while others went full bizarro and just wrote stories where Superman adopted Jimmy Olsen or had Superman and Batman get inflated like blimps. It was a weird time, but also a time when it was more important than ever to emphasize the nature and personalities of the superheroes.

In the 1970’s the government wanted to get a comic book made about the angers of drugs and asked Stan Lee to do it. The comic was flatly rejected by the Comics Code and the government was like, “That can’t be right. It’s a story about how drugs are bad and we’re the government!” and the Comic Code Authority was like, “Yeah, I think we can loosen up.”  Thus, the Bronze Age was born, where writers were free to explore stories about how sometimes corrupt authority figures are defeated by the white hot justice of GOOD authority figures, sometimes drugs happen because they’re bad and sometimes superheroes make whoopie without a wedding proposal in tasteful settings.

And once they realized they could get away with it, because people had real issues to worry about like huge influxes of drugs from Central America and an economic recession and stagnating wages (hoo-boy, they didn’t know nothin’ yet!), comic book writers decided to make everything all edgy and started the Iron Age (sometimes called The Dark Age by people who hate themes). Along with that, they basically let Alan Moore get his stuff all over everything with Batgirl getting shot in the spine and a playful prankster war criminal falling off a building and everything Superman knows and loves being destroyed and Radioactive Man a heroin addicted Jazz critic who isn’t even radioactive. Every writer wanted to be like Alan Moore – except they wanted to make money doing it!

And those narratives are the ones that had the most impact, because that’s when everything freaking changed. Suddenly, superheroes were real dudes with real dude problems. They didn’t always come on top. Things didn’t always go back to the status quo ante bellum. The bad things weren’t just “imaginary stories” (because the other stories were TOTALLY REAL, you know). That’s what we mostly remember superheroes for, and that’s what endures in the legacy of superhero comics.

Now we’re in the Modern Age (or Platinum Age if you think it’s good, in which case “you’re wrong, go home, you’re drunk!”) where comic books don’t know how to be original, so they just keep reinventing the same five or six superheroes over and over and hope that we still care, because we totally do. Seriously, they can reboot Batman and Spiderman every two or three weeks and we’ll eat that up because that’s just how we roll! Also, now everyone knows who Deadpool is, so he’s not a neat inside joke anymore, so what do we have left?

A number of tools and fan expansions were mentioned during the course of this podcast:

One that many players may find useful, is the difficulty calculator, which lets you figure out just what you’re in for if you don’t want to be surprised. I, for one, enjoy discovering that my team up against insurmountable odds the hard way, but this is great for the rest of you.

The Cauldron is a fan expansion, and it’s currently undergoing ongoing playtesting. It’s free (minus printing, of course), and it’s fun. There’s a pretty active fan community, which is great.

Of course, it helps to know where you can get Sentinels of the Multiverse. Because I’m sure none of you reading this know how to perform an internet search or anything. You need a blog to tell you that. Amazon is hard. I’m helping.

There is also a companion app for Sentinels of the Multiverse available on Android. It costs money, though, which is kind of a turn off. You can also get the game as an app. That costs money too, but it’s a whole game, not just a companion app.

Design philosophy changes with time. You can see this in advertising, in clothing style, in food (consider the truly incredible inedible Jell-O nightmares of the 1950’s) and, most pertinent to this podcast and its blog, in gaming. In today’s Save Vs. Rant, we’re going to break down the differences between the Old School and New School approach to RPG gameplay and design.

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In today’s blog, I’d like to get philosophical about the purpose of games. In today’s podcast, I touched on the idea of games as being an expression of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and in this blog post I hope to expand upon this. The hierarchy of needs is a psychological (and, to a lesser degree, sociological) concept wherein in order to properly satisfy needs that are “higher” on the hierarchy, needs “lower” on the hierarchy must be satisfied.

One thing I want to stress is that being “lower” on the hierarchy doesn’t mean that a game is somehow worse or more banal than another, only that individuals playing those games are scratching a different metaphorical itch by playing them. In the same way that we recognize various flavors of fun (and we could spend days cross referencing them all with the needs on the hierarchy) without labeling one as “better” or “worse” than another, all needs exist to be satisfied, and games that help us to do so are beneficial, regardless of how comparatively simple or advanced those needs are.

Our most basic needs are physiological – we need to eat, drink, breathe, sleep, regulate our temperature and not be poisoned, on fire, or otherwise compromised. Because of this, the first games we play as small children are about this. Tickling, which can be seen as a form of game, is a sort of training in how to defend your most vulnerable parts (the armpits, stomach and sides below the ribs being the most common locations for individuals to be ticklish). We also play with our food, which sounds like a joke, but is genuinely a way of becoming more comfortable and familiar with what we eat. Children arrange their food in pleasing ways and eat things in an order that maximizes their enjoyment. Children experiment with holding their breath and keeping themselves awake. We explore the limits of our physiology as a sort of game – one we tend to outgrow fairly early in life.

Once we have our basic physiological needs satisfied, we have our safety needs, which tend to be more abstract. The most basic idea of what safety needs entails is that we need to know that not only are our physiological needs met now, but that they will be met in the foreseeable future. To this end, we live in shelters, work jobs, get mortgages and stock our refrigerators with food. We heat our homes and buy big fuzzy comforters for our beds. We learn what things not to eat and what kind of behaviors make us sick. The desire for our safety needs to be satisfied is manifested in games that require gathering, organizing and pattern recognition. In a sense, games like Mancala, Hi-Ho Cherry-O, Memory and even Monopoly appeal to this aspect of our psychology, giving us the opportunity to stimulate and hone our survival skills by simulating conditions of scarcity or occlusion. Gamification of survival activities has also been a common source of rhyming phrases throughout history. Many people know the rhymes “leaves of three, leave it be” and “red on yellow, kill a fellow, red on black, throw it back” and similar phrases meant to be handy mnemonics for information that could, conceivably, be vital to survival.

A lot of hack and slash RPGs are, in a sense, elaborate survival plays wherein we have to manage resources such as hit points and magic items, and assess risk in the form of random chance vs. comparative difficulty and risk/reward ration of various adventuring activities.

Above our safety needs lies our need for social belonging.  This is where we get into games as social activities. While even playing a friendly game of tic-tac-toe can satisfy this by dint of social interaction, social games like Cards Against Humanity, Apples to Apples and storytelling style roleplaying games are great examples of games that satisfy these needs.

The next tier on the hierarchy of needs is self actualization, which encompasses a great many things. Among them are ideals of creativity and deep introspection. The need for self-expression and exploration. Needs that have nothing to do with satisfying physiological or social needs per se, but with exploring everything we can be and experience.

Prior to the mid 2000’s, few games even attempted to dabble in a sort of organized creative expression beyond such completely optional steps as, for example, writing a backstory or history, or illustrating a scene or character from a game. Some games dabbled in this, suggesting that such background elements were an important part of the game experience and tying mechanical benefits to them. However, the revolution in new-school RPGs is, in some ways, reflective of the desire to achieve more varied satisfaction from games.

Previously, the only individual who took part in actually creating the world, settings and scenarios of the game was the stoyteller / DM figure, who might take occasional input from the players, but ultimately was the sole arbiter of the world. Games in the early 2000’s such as Wilderness of Mirrors and the FATE System Dresden Files RPG game turn all in-game activities into storytelling opportunities, allowing players other than the storyteller / DM to have a say in what occurs. Some games, such as Microscope and Fiasco (both of which I am personally hesitant to call an RPG in the traditional sense) don’t HAVE traditional storytellers, instead being collaborative activities. While much of these games can reasonably be said to be socially satisfying, the creative outlet provided goes beyond a mere social exercise in storytelling to an opportunity for expression that satisfies a more abstract desire.

I have every confidence that games will continue to develop that test the limits of expression and even challenge the way we understand “games” entirely. While I’m not a sucker for truly avante garde dadist material, I do love seeing the limits of how we interact stretched and twisted in new and exciting ways, and games that make us reconsider the roles we take and the needs that gaming satisfies in our lives.

Today on Save Vs. Rant, we want to discuss something that will hopefully be valuable information with all the upcoming (and ongoing) gift-giving holidays: casual games. Casual games are not only a huge part of the story of tabletop gaming, but an awesome way to introduce people to the hobby!

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Games and companies mentioned in this podcast:

James Earnest’s company Cheapass Games makes Kill Doctor Lucky, Save Doctor Lucky, Starship Copernicus and Get Lucky. They also make Pairs. Also, a large number of their original games which are out of print are available for free!

Looney Labs makes Fluxx of which there are a truly astounding array of variants. Their other product, Pyramid Arcade is far above our limit for cost of casual games, but is actually a collection of casual games.

Alderic Entertainment Group created Love Letter, which also has a number of variant versions for all occasions.  They have a number of other casual games available as well that are worth a look.

IDW Games makes Cat Tower. Cat Tower is a cute dexterity game. Stack them up! Stack up the cute cardboard cats! IDW also makes a number of other games that could be considered casual, such as Machi Koro, a delightful dice-based city building game.

Campy Creatures and Control are by Keymaster Games. They have several other upcoming games as well, and should be regarded as a rising star in tabletop gaming. We hope to see many more good things from them!

Zombie Dice is by Steve Jackson Games, one of the biggest and most resilient names in gaming. They have a large number of games that would also fall squarely into our definition of a casual game.

Go Nuts for Donuts! , Sushi Go! and Sushi Go Party! are all by Gamewright Games. They also make an array of other small casual games .

One more company worth noting for stocking-stuffer style games is Perplext with their series of products called “Pack O’ Game.” All casual games, all with three letter titles and all the size of a pack of chewing gum, Orc, Hue, Gem and Shh being a few of my favorites.

Casual games were instrumental in shaping not only the landscape of gaming, but our personal tabletop gaming journeys here at Save Vs. Rant, and we hope that you’ll make space in your collection for the simple diversions. Merry Xmas, Happy Hanukkah, Blessed Yule, Happy Kwanzaa and Joy to you in whatever other holiday traditions you take part in! Happy Gaming!

On today’s episode of Save Vs. Rant, we delve into the theory of fun itself. What makes things fun? How can we understand fun on a deeper level? Why are two completely different things both enjoyable even though they may share virtually nothing in common? Find out, when we discuss Eight Flavors of Fun!

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Game designer Marc LeBlanc previously had a website at www.8kindsoffun.com, which seems to be down at the time of this writing. This is a shame because it had a lot of good information. You can still find a snapshot of it on the Internet Archive.

8 flavors of fun! 8 ways of enjoying something! Let’s use a single example to go through all 8 in detail. As people who work in the Casino and Gambling Industry, Jeremy and I are intimately familiar with a game that can potentially have all of them (although not necessarily all at once): poker.

When we talk about poker, we’re talking about a single game that can be played many different ways in many different contexts. Even if we limit ourselves exclusively to one poker variant (Texas Hold ‘Em, for example) there are still numerous settings wherein a poker game may be played, and these all have a bearing on why the game of poker is “fun.”

Sensation is achieved through the aesthetics and atmosphere of the game. If the game is played in a Casino or Poker Club, the atmosphere will typically be inviting and bright, yet neutral. Something that doesn’t overstimulate the players, but at the same time matches their expectation for a poker game. Other settings, however, may turn this on their head. The classic image of card sharks in the back of a seedy bar cloistered under a single bright light in a smoky dingy room also come to mind. Players in home games not meant to be played for serious money could use pennies, nickels quarters and dollars, but many amateur poker players buy realistic casino chips and casino-quality cards for their poker meets. Aesthetics provide the sensory pleasure of the game.

Fantasy – the make-believe aspect of the game – may not be as readily apparent with poker, but many at-home games are played for the thrill of pretending to be the next Johnny Moss or Joe McKeehen, even though you know, deep down, that the most you’ll probably ever be is the guy who walks out of the casino up a couple hundred bucks for a night of intense play.

Narrative, likewise, isn’t quite so obvious a thing, but whether you’re watching poker tournaments on television or simply have friends who are poker players, I’ve never in my life met a serious poker player who didn’t come with a load of incredible stories and tall tales. Even watching a poker game from afar, one cannot help but be mesmerized by the characters one sees at the tables and speculate regarding their backgrounds and personalities (and, possibly, learn them if you spend enough time watching and listening).

Challenge comes in the form of both learning to read the tells of other players as well as gaining mastery over the odds. Being in a position to watch literally thousands of hands of poker unfold lets you see some amazing moments where players overcame seemingly impossible odds or suffered a truly humiliating bad beat. Poker is a game that, to a complete outsider, looks almost entirely random, but mastery comes, and seeing it play out is both subtle and alarming in its intensity.

Fellowship is uncommon in the casino industry – most players are there to win – but pretending that even among strangers who play poker there isn’t the camaraderie of a shared hobby would be ignorant at best. Beyond that, many people play poker with their friends as a way of bonding. You can learn a lot about someone by playing any game with them, and a game like poker – with a deceptively simple framework over a complex social and mathematical game – is especially telling.

Discovery is, again, largely based on who you play with, how you play and what you’re willing to put into the game. Poker is a heavily analyzed game, and while for new players there’s a potentially fascinating world of possibility out there, discovering something truly new about the math or strategy would be the work of a prodigy. Having said that, new people, new venues and new variations on how the game is and can be played all exist, and for the dedicated player, there are ample opportunities to expand their horizons within the game.

Expression comes in bringing your particular style to the poker table. Again, a visit to a poker room will turn up all sorts of characters,  choosing to display themselves in their own style. Some of them peacock and show off their flair while others dress conservatively. Still others wear the dark glasses, hoods and visor hats of the pokerface ensemble while others dress to the nines. Players present themselves as they please, flaunting vast disorganized piles of chips or carefully stacking and cataloging their bankroll.

Finally, Submission is arguably the single biggest part of being a poker player (or playing nearly any casino game for that matter). Playing dozens upon dozens – or even hundreds! – of consecutive hands of poker for hours at a time is a huge part of playing poker seriously. For many players, playing hand after hand of poker all through the night is a great night out even if they don’t win.

Even though poker is not an ideal example for every category of fun, each of these elements of fun can be present in the game. It provides an excellent example of how a game, played different ways and in different contexts, can be enjoyable for different reasons.

Knowing what it is that makes games fun can help you build a better understanding of what you and your gaming group or groups enjoy about games, which will in turn deepen your appreciation for them and give you a framework for determining what games are the best fit for your styles.

Today’s episode is about two examples of poor characterization: the Mary Sue and Pants. Mary Sue being a reference to a very old Star Trek parody fanfiction, and Pants being a reference to the Oatmeal’s less than flattering review of the Twilight series.

Spoilers start at 09:05 and continue to 10:59 for Curse of Strahd, and 10:59 to 12:45 for (minor) Wrath of the Righteous spoilers!

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I’m going to devote this blog entry to clearing the air a bit: the accusation that a character is a Mary Sue or Pants can come across as elitist and exclusionary because it’s frequently used to belittle things that can’t reasonably be called “Mary Sue” fiction or that take inspiration from other more famous things. For those of you who pound the table, demanding originality, let me be the one to say: there is nothing wrong with taking inspiration from someone else’s work, *especially* in the context of roleplaying games. A truly unique character – one that doesn’t draw on any of the common tropes or ideas – is ludicrous, and would be ridiculous. Tropes exist for a reason, and familiar themes are vital to culture and society.

When we talk about people player Pants characters, we’re not just talking about playing characters with interests and experiences that align with your own. While playing a character completely outside your norm or with a totally different personality from yours can be a great experience, it doesn’t take a lot, if played sincerely and with full consideration, to keep a character from just being you-in-funny-clothes-with-superpowers. There’s an old saying, “Write what you know,” and for many, it helps to write your characters in ways with which you are able to relate. That doesn’t mean narrowly limiting yourself to only your own experiences, attitudes or ideas though.  Being a loyal, devoted person doesn’t mean you couldn’t play a flippant character.

King Solomon famously said, “There is nothing new under the sun,” and he probably cribbed that from the Epic of Gilgamesh or something. The notion that because something is “unoriginal” it has no merit is devoid of merit itself. There’s nothing wrong with playing a chaotic good Drow, or a gruff dwarf, or a cunning but reluctant adventuring halfling, or an unscrupulous wizard, or a trenchcoat wearing modern sorcerer, or just about any other spin on a famous character from fiction. In fact, that can be a great starting point for a character!

What we want to encourage is for you to make it your own and make it interesting. Don’t settle for playing someone else’s character – give it your twist! Maybe your Lloth-worshiping drow is the genki girl of the group. Maybe your gruff dwarf is secretly riddled with doubts about traditional dwarven faith. Maybe your halfling has a hidden altruistic motivation for his reluctance to take on adventures. Maybe your unscrupulous wizard is like most adults – just faking it, despite having no clue what he’s doing. Maybe your trenchcoat wearing sorcerer is actually disappointed her doesn’t have a keen scientific mind and resents his magic powers. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe – there’s a million different spins that can be put on familiar characters!

Avoiding the Mary Sue trap isn’t about making a character that is completely original, or that is ridiculously flawed, or that isn’t powerful – it’s about making a character you and your fellow players can relate to. Importantly, it’s about making one that doesn’t utterly overshadow everyone else, or appear so bizarrely out of place that they break that suspense of disbelief necessary to enjoy fiction.

But I do draw a line – your Sonic the Hedgehog recolor fursona is bad: it isn’t original, it’s not interesting and it doesn’t match the tone of the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Sometimes, people make fun of something not because they’re jealous haters, but because it’s genuinely ridiculous.