Random blog post, just because I can.
Nov. 4th, 2011 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinDuring the time when my laptop's functionality was touch and go (with more touch and less go), I really got out of the habit of writing blog posts, so I'm going to write one now just to write one, basically.
So here's a couple of random things that have been on my brain.
DC Comics
Still reading them, somewhat. I read less in the second month than in the first month, and will read less this month. There were no real upsets in the second round... nothing I loved in the debut that lost me the second time around, and I didn't give anything I hated a second chance. At least one book that was on the bubble with me popped in its second issue (Green Arrow... I'll write a whole post about how disappointed I am with post-reboot Ollie Queen and why at some point.
Justice League, on the other hand, was so much better in the second issue. The Hal-Batman dialogue was the highlight of the first one, and now with more heroes (they didn't end up going with "one new hero every issue" as I'd feared) it's even better. It's really kind of cute (for lack of a better word) how well they managed to nail the feeling that nobody knows what a superhero is, nobody knows what being a superhero means... they're making all this up as they go. It's Justice League Amateur Hour.
Action Comics and Demon Knights are my favorites coming out of the second month. I like some of what's happening in the bat-books, but they aren't really holding me. I also find myself increasingly wondering about the timeline. If superheroes have only been around since Superman's debut six years in the relative past, when the heck did Batman have time to have four Robins, including one he fathered? A potential explanation that I would love to see enshrined in canon is that Batman had been operating for a good decade before Superman burst onto the scene and gave people a context to deal with him in. I think it's probably more likely that this is just the biggest sign that this reboot's timeline wasn't really thought through.
A Wilder World
My brain has been spinning so much on AWW stuff that I've started using "finish writing and we can start hashing out all these AWW ideas" as a personal incentive on some days. I have a strong sense that the game is coming together, and now I'm mainly thinking about how to present my ideas.
I want this to be a game that is approachable, a game that a group of rank neophytes can teach themselves. I'm aided in this ambition by the fact that my latest D&D group has been all beginners in various ways: new to roleplaying games entirely, new to D&D, and new to 4th Edition.
What I'm thinking as far as an approach is to publish the game as three documents. Each will contain the same rules, but at a differing level of detail and with a different focus and style.
The Gamemaster Reference will cover all the rules on a technical level and provide tables of modifiers for dealing with special circumstances and corner cases. It will assume that the reader is an experienced player of roleplaying games and doesn't need any conventions explained. If you're looking for the Compleat Rules, the GMR would be the go-to source. With it in your hand (or on your electronic device) there would be no need to reach for the Player Guidebook.
The Player Manual would contain all the rules needed to play the game, but fewer tables of modifiers except for the most common ones and the things that may be within a player's control (taking extra time on something, trying to work quietly, etc.) It will employ a slightly more conversational style and a little more hand-holding than the GMR.
The Beginner Guide would be something like the "quickstart" or "lite" rules that so many systems employ these days, but instead of just being the rules pared down to the bare minimum, it would be the basic rules leavened with a healthy dose of explanation, examples, and initiation into the game. It would be the book that you'd want to start with if you were the new person at the table who's not fully comfortable with the "just pay attention, you'll pick it up as you go along" or to use as an entry point if you're trying to set up your own gaming group and nobody really has much experience.
An integral part of this idea is that each document on the above list would basically encompass the one below it... there would be no rule in the Guide or Manual that's not in the Reference. You wouldn't need to have three different books to play the game. You'd just need the one that's at your level. A gaming maven who's never played AWW but who has a good feel for systems could probably jump straight to the Reference and absorb it all that way, but hopefully a rank newbie who wants to start a group could start with the Guide and work up. The average player of roleplaying games would probably do just fine with the Manual.
A big part of the genesis behind this idea comes from discussions I had online during Wizards of the Coast's roll-out of the "Essentials" line last year. One of my concerns with the line was that it didn't actually do as much as it could have to make the game more accessible to first time players and newbies, but in the forums where I raised this the number one response I got was "So? No one learns D&D from a book. You have to be taught it." I'm not a big fan of that mindset, both because my siblings and I did teach ourselves D&D, and because it makes a better business plan for a dead-end cult than it does for a living hobby.
So here's a couple of random things that have been on my brain.
DC Comics
Still reading them, somewhat. I read less in the second month than in the first month, and will read less this month. There were no real upsets in the second round... nothing I loved in the debut that lost me the second time around, and I didn't give anything I hated a second chance. At least one book that was on the bubble with me popped in its second issue (Green Arrow... I'll write a whole post about how disappointed I am with post-reboot Ollie Queen and why at some point.
Justice League, on the other hand, was so much better in the second issue. The Hal-Batman dialogue was the highlight of the first one, and now with more heroes (they didn't end up going with "one new hero every issue" as I'd feared) it's even better. It's really kind of cute (for lack of a better word) how well they managed to nail the feeling that nobody knows what a superhero is, nobody knows what being a superhero means... they're making all this up as they go. It's Justice League Amateur Hour.
Action Comics and Demon Knights are my favorites coming out of the second month. I like some of what's happening in the bat-books, but they aren't really holding me. I also find myself increasingly wondering about the timeline. If superheroes have only been around since Superman's debut six years in the relative past, when the heck did Batman have time to have four Robins, including one he fathered? A potential explanation that I would love to see enshrined in canon is that Batman had been operating for a good decade before Superman burst onto the scene and gave people a context to deal with him in. I think it's probably more likely that this is just the biggest sign that this reboot's timeline wasn't really thought through.
A Wilder World
My brain has been spinning so much on AWW stuff that I've started using "finish writing and we can start hashing out all these AWW ideas" as a personal incentive on some days. I have a strong sense that the game is coming together, and now I'm mainly thinking about how to present my ideas.
I want this to be a game that is approachable, a game that a group of rank neophytes can teach themselves. I'm aided in this ambition by the fact that my latest D&D group has been all beginners in various ways: new to roleplaying games entirely, new to D&D, and new to 4th Edition.
What I'm thinking as far as an approach is to publish the game as three documents. Each will contain the same rules, but at a differing level of detail and with a different focus and style.
The Gamemaster Reference will cover all the rules on a technical level and provide tables of modifiers for dealing with special circumstances and corner cases. It will assume that the reader is an experienced player of roleplaying games and doesn't need any conventions explained. If you're looking for the Compleat Rules, the GMR would be the go-to source. With it in your hand (or on your electronic device) there would be no need to reach for the Player Guidebook.
The Player Manual would contain all the rules needed to play the game, but fewer tables of modifiers except for the most common ones and the things that may be within a player's control (taking extra time on something, trying to work quietly, etc.) It will employ a slightly more conversational style and a little more hand-holding than the GMR.
The Beginner Guide would be something like the "quickstart" or "lite" rules that so many systems employ these days, but instead of just being the rules pared down to the bare minimum, it would be the basic rules leavened with a healthy dose of explanation, examples, and initiation into the game. It would be the book that you'd want to start with if you were the new person at the table who's not fully comfortable with the "just pay attention, you'll pick it up as you go along" or to use as an entry point if you're trying to set up your own gaming group and nobody really has much experience.
An integral part of this idea is that each document on the above list would basically encompass the one below it... there would be no rule in the Guide or Manual that's not in the Reference. You wouldn't need to have three different books to play the game. You'd just need the one that's at your level. A gaming maven who's never played AWW but who has a good feel for systems could probably jump straight to the Reference and absorb it all that way, but hopefully a rank newbie who wants to start a group could start with the Guide and work up. The average player of roleplaying games would probably do just fine with the Manual.
A big part of the genesis behind this idea comes from discussions I had online during Wizards of the Coast's roll-out of the "Essentials" line last year. One of my concerns with the line was that it didn't actually do as much as it could have to make the game more accessible to first time players and newbies, but in the forums where I raised this the number one response I got was "So? No one learns D&D from a book. You have to be taught it." I'm not a big fan of that mindset, both because my siblings and I did teach ourselves D&D, and because it makes a better business plan for a dead-end cult than it does for a living hobby.