Aliens in the Desert

Is it June already? My my how time flies.  I haven’t been completely cut off from the gaming world, however.  Read on about my recent gaming con adventures!

I attended KublaCon this year, as usual. It is a very different experience attending a gaming con 6 months pregnant than, oh say, not. For one thing, no drinking allowed. I also couldn’t really LARP because of the energy it requires. This was a bummer because there were some sweet looking LARPs this year. In all my favorite flavors too. Alot of time was spent resting and keeping me and baby fed, which wasn’t too much of a surprise. I did squeeze in a couple of board games and even a table top RPG called Goblin City.

Goblin City is interesting because it is a homebrew system that came out of a game design challenge among the person who ran it and his friends. The challenge was to create a full role playing game — including mechanics, background story and even artwork — all on one sheet of paper. The result is super basic mechanics (which totally work by the way), an interesting little background story, and yes, even some little illustrations. And very small print. But its readable, and it fits on a page (even if you have to squint a little to read it). The designer discusses it a bit here. Unfortunately the link to the actual page RPGness seems to not work. In a cute little irony, the designer’s name is Will Wright. It was good for a quick snicker anyway.

I like this idea, about containing an RPG to a page. Goblin City sort of assumes that you have decent, mature players. Not “mature” in the rated M sense, but rather you can trust them to have fun with a very flexible rules set and not see it as an excuse for utter abuse. Basically, you only have two real stats: your forte (what your character is best at) and your foible (what your character is worst at). These can be whatever you want, from picking your nose to magic powers. So obviously one of the hardest parts of the game is just deciding what you want these things to be. Its wide open. My mom had a hard time with this freedom, until she finally picked “Finding things” as her forte and “Knowing what those things are good for” as her foible. Finding things came in really handy as it turns out. Whenever you are trying to do something that requires a die roll, you get an extra die if your forte could be helpful in whatever it is you’re doing, and one less die if your foible could be getting in the way. It’s simple and it works, but like I said it seems like it relies on having a solid GM and good players.

It did put me in the mind to think about RPG mechanics, though. Specifically, mechanics are things that people who like to role play prefer to avoid as much as possible. How would you make a system where the mechanics THEMSELVES are just as much fun as everything else? Interesting thought…

The other con I have been involved in recently (though completely in a minor peripheral sense) is Ziggurat Con. This is a gaming con coming up this week which is being held in Iraq by US troops. Yeah, its a gaming con in a warzone. This to me is phenomenal that these guys and gals are out there in the desert with what I at least would consider one of the crappiest jobs in the world and they came together to organize a gaming convention. They wanted donations for games and things to give as prizes and what-not, so I got some people together from the office (plus my mom) to send them two boxes full of games. Most of this is thanks to my co-worker Brendan Ferguson, who brought in a huge pile of really good boardgames for the troops. My mom sent some good stuff too — D&D 3.0 DM’s guide, Player’s Guide, and Monster Manual plus several sets of dice. Best of all, the company covered the shipping. So we sent all our loot priority mail and I am keeping my fingers crossed that it gets there in time.

It may seem like a small thing, but I feel like I have done good for the world by getting these games shipped out to the soldiers. I think the best thing we can do for the world is to simply spread as much happiness as possible, and I think those people out there could sure use some happiness right about now. I sometimes wonder if making games is the best way I could help the human race. Thing is, games have the power to do lots of good. They have the power to bring people together, get their brains working, give them space to relax and escape from their current circumstances. And sometimes, just getting a little space now and then is all we need to get back to our own worlds refreshed and better able to handle whatever is thrown at us.

Games = Joy

It’s not too late to send some donations, by the way. Click the link above for the address. (In case you didn’t already know, there’s a nice military shipping rate which is way cheaper than actually sending stuff to Iraq).