Question for My Internetowebosphere Friends and Readers

I am considering updating the Twin Suns Entertainment logo this year. We are currently working on a number of offerings and I think a new logo might fit with our product line and vision, but I am very supportive of the wisdom of crowds and want to get some feedback from those who think spending 2 to 15 minutes reading my blog from time to time think.

Here is the old logo -- which I do like:

Now here are some examples of what I am considering:

Would You Like to Play a Game? -- Hasbro's Original D&D Collector Box is a Part of a Corporate Vision

The new Original Edition D&D Premium Reprint from Wizards of the Coast is truly a wonder to behold, and it gives the buyer a good glimpse at Hasbro's D&D corporate strategy moving forward.  I'll discuss this a bit more in a minute, but first let's just have a look at the box.

The original three D&D booklets were sold as a part of a collector's edition which featured either a woodgrain box (super rare) or a white box (the version I have at home), and this new edition comes in an engraved wooden box that I found to be pretty spectacular.

One of the nice little features that stood out as a real highlight for me was the reflective image on the inside of the box top. Wizards/Hasbro could have let the wood alone speak for the product, and that would have been great, but this Wizardly image really sets a nice tone.

Here you get a glimpse of what the box looks like when the booklets are stored within. Notice the red ribbon? That ribbon will allow you to remove the 7 paper saddle stitched books without damaging the edges, this is a nice bit of design that like LORDS OF WATERDEEP demonstrates a significant amount of thought has been put into both presentation and utility.

The box itself contains the original 3 booklets as well as all four of the eventual supplements that were published for the original D&D game. This new edition provides new cover art for all of the booklets. The Eldritch Wizardry cover that freaked my neighbor out so much when I was a kid is no longer present, instead there is a picture of a Wizard summoning tentacles. This would probably still upset said neighbor, but it is a less controversial image. And the old cover is one that would stir up some serious discussions on my Facebook feed where the battle lines of some Lamentations of the Flame Princess fans would do virtual battle with some of the Athena Anthology supporters would debate its appropriateness. I won't enter that fray as I am a fan of LotFP and of many of the Progressive game design that has been created over the past few years. Regardless of anyone's thoughts on the Eldritch Wizardry cover, the Greyhawk cover is a beauty.

Covers aside, there is plenty to discuss regarding the interiors of the booklets which are unchanged from the original -- or largely unchanged. Part of me thinks this is endearing as it lets gamers see the art that inspired a 40 year old hobby. The other part of me thinks that if they were going to redo any of the art, they might as well have replaced the interior art. There are talented artists who could have done chiaroscuro work that was an homage to the old art, but didn't look like doodles that ...well...I drew. Then again, that might just be the point. Anyone is a good enough artist to draw visual monsters for their home campaign. All you need is suspension of disbelief.

There is no inclusion of the Chainmail rules set here, so you will have to play D&D using the "optional" combat system presented in the first booklet. Thankfully, that system was the basis for the modern d20 engine and can be easily learned by the modern gamer. Or, rather it can be created rather easily by the modern gamer as this game is nigh unplayable by itself without some interpretation and house rules. This is why there were articles written and an explosion of alternate RPGs. The modern gamer has 40 years of interpretation, precedent, and house rules to work with so we can actually use these rules, but I do warn you that they are a bit different from what you might be used to.

Which brings me to the point I hinted at during the opening paragraph. This product points to Hasbro's new corporate strategy -- or rather a better tactical application of their long time strategy -- they want to have "a D&D experience for every gamer at your table." They make this abundantly clear with an advertising flier containing that very quote. In the past, the tactic used by Hasbro to advance the strategy of "a D&D for everyone" was an attempt to create a "perfect D&D" that was balanced, appealed to old gamers, and was hip for new gamers. This was what 4th edition was trying to be, a D&D for everyone. That tactic failed. It insulted some gamers and further fractured the customer base.

The new tactic is very different and is what Hasbro should have been doing all along. That tactic is to provide products with D&D Intellectual Property and Brand that match the needs of various gamers.

Want old school games?

Cool. Hasbro will release old rule books in collectors editions and pdfs. You can play D&D as it was originally played.

Want to play 2nd through 4th edition? 

Those are being supported too in different ways.

Interested in D&D Next our new rules set that is a combination of old and new school design and fairly easily converted between editions?

That will be coming out this year.

Are you a Eurogamer?

Have you seen LORDS OF WATERDEEP?

Wargamer?

Have you seen CONQUEST OF NERATH?

Casual RPG/Board Gamer?

Our Ravenloft, Ashardalon, and Drizzt game is just right for you.

New to gaming?

Try DUNGEON out.

The same is true for video games etc. and I think that this is a wonderful approach by Hasbro. The games they have been designing to support their IP have been excellent. RAVENLOFT and LORDS OF WATERDEEP have been played several times by my group over the past two years and the digital app version of WATERDEEP is looking pretty compelling to me.

So how about it? Would you like to play a game?

Game Mastering Advice from AT&T...Yes, AT&T

I am a big fan of the "interviewing the kids" ad campaign being run by AT&T. Actor Beck Bennett does a great job of interacting with the kids in these largely unscripted videos. Bennett gives the young actors prompts and then responds in humorous fashion. Watching the Wildcard NFL games today, I have seen a great deal of the "Pool" episode and it hit me how perfect this is as an instructional tool for Game Masters everywhere. GMs are often afraid of the indie "just say yes" mantra, but this is the kind of magic you get when you follow it.

That's right, Dinosaurs who can transform into robots who Karate chop the water. If your games aren't featuring moments that awesome, then you might take a cue from Beck and just let your player's imaginations flow.

I also think that Beck would be an ideal GM for introducing gaming to younger kids.

Feng Shui -- The Day the Reindeer Died!

Every year I like to run a Christmas themed adventure for my gaming group. A couple of years ago, it was a Necessary Evil game where the "heroes" had to fight off murderous V'sori gingerbread men. Had Stan! published Gingerbread Kaiju that year, the minis for those V'sori would have been edible. To be honest, when I say "Christmas themed" I almost always mean "based on the opening sequence of Scrooged." What can I say? I love the movie and it makes perfect fodder for role playing action.

This year my gaming group was introduced to the joy that is Feng Shui during the alpha playtest. I played quite a bit of Feng Shui in the late 90s and early 00s, but most of my group are young whippersnappers who blink unknowingly when I mention films like KILLER, HARDBOILED, THE BRIDE WITH WHILE HAIR, or FIST OF LEGEND...this will be corrected. The group really enjoys the cinematic/narrative style of the Feng Shui system and really want me to put together a campaign for the game. I'm happy to oblige, but being a Ph.D. student and a Program Director at a non-profit doesn't leave too much prep time. So while I didn't have time to outline some branches for the overall campaign yet, I decided that I would take the time to adapt my old stand by THE NIGHT THE REINDEER DIED to Feng Shui. I ran the game this past weekend and it was pretty fun. We didn't get as far as I'd have liked -- I wanted to send the group into 2056 where they facilitate a JINGLE ALL THE WAY-esque riot that begins to undermine the Buro's control due to people actually caring about a hot Christmas item -- but we didn't get that far. Instead, they stopped at "shutting down the Star Gate."

For those of you interested in playing a session, here is the outline and a couple of special characters as well.  We've got Skipper from MADAGASCAR, Lee Majors, and Krampus available for groups who don't have existing characters. Now...onto the show...dim the lights...pull back the curtain...and...

In a world...

Introduction

The player characters are resting at their hideout/attuned Feng Shui site in between forays into the Netherworld, shadow runs against the Ascended, and secret battles against the Hand. All seems calm. Let the players role play some of their background subplots and ask them where they'd like the narrative direction of their character's lives to go. Take notes. Just as the conversation gets going really well and some strong roleplaying is going on, have there be a "knock on the door." It will be an insistent knock that will not go away. It even sounds excited...if it is possible for a knock to sound excited.

When the PCs open the door Buddy the Elf - Will Farrell from the movie ELF - will be standing at the door in a near panic. He will explain to the PCs that an army of mechanical monkeys (Jammers) from the future are at the North Pole attempting to blow up Santa's Workshop. It turns out that Santa's Workshop is a major Feng Shui site, which explains a great deal about how he accomplishes his deliveries. Santa is currently losing the battle and needs the player's help. If the Jammers succeed in blowing up the North Pole at the exact right moment (midnight Christmas Eve), it will have a ripple effect that might allow the Jammers to destroy all Feng Shui sites simultaneously. This will cause the world to turn into a combination of the future from the TERMINATOR and PLANET OF THE APES films.

Flight to the North Pole

Try to make the trip to the North Pole quick, but feel free to add moments where they come under aerial attack. As they approach the Pole, give them the full description of how there are Searchlights scanning the sky and flak exploding at almost random. Have the PCs land at the Pole, meet Santa, and be sent on a mission to get behind enemy lines, find the computer that has opened a gateway between now and 2056, and shut it down. This should include 3 basic battles in the blood covered snow scape of the Pole. 

Make sure to insert lots of references to your favorite Christmas movies. Is Bruce Willis there? Is he fighting Satan Claws? Abominable? Heatmiser? You get the picture.

The final fight will be the PCs against BattleChimp Yamato and a number of Macaque mooks equal to the PCs +4. There will be a clock counting down as the Jammers are bringing a nuclear warhead through the portal. The PCs must disconnect the portal from the heart of the kid from Polar Express (the only child with enough belief in Santa to make the connection to 2056) without harming the child, defeat BattleChimp Yamato and crew.  If you wish, you can have the PCs continue on into 2056 to take the fight to the Jammers and the Buro.

Resources

Map of the North Pole

KRAMPUS

LEE MAJORS

SKIPPER

BATTLE CHIMP YAMATO AND SNOW MONKEYS

Every Fighting Game Ever Mirrors My Own PVP Experiences

Freddie Wong's video Every Fighting Game Ever is an amusing 1 minute and 42 second short film that demonstrates why I'm not the biggest fan of PVP video games...well this and the fact that I'm genuinely terrible at them.

Things a Parent Thinks About Games #1

A couple of years ago, with Jeff Tidball's blessing, I wrote a few responses to his and Will Hindmarch's excellent book Things We Think About Games. More than responses, these were posts that reacted to statements in the book using a Tidball/Hindmarch aphorism as the starting point for discussion. Amateur blogging being what it is, these posts tapered off and I never continued the series. It's always kind of bothered me as the book itself is fantastic and because I keep picking it up to read as a catalyst for discussion with my friends or even to examine my own thoughts on games and game play. Since I rebranded this site "Advanced Dungeons and Parenting" a while back, I've seen an uptick in readership...even when there is a gap between posts due to graduate school. The posts that tend to do best are those about Savage Worlds and those about gaming generally, as opposed to those posts that are more of the "hey have you seen this new game" variety. Looking at the data, and combining it with my desire to write more about the Tidball/Hindmarch book, I've decided to add a semi-regular series of posts discussing Things from a parent's perspective. These will be reactions to the book as it applies to playing games with kids, in particular my own 6 year old twin daughters.

The player of any game has, at most, two hands.

Things begins with a very simple statement about a utilitarian design consideration, "are the components of your game conducive to actual play?" It's a vital question, especially when it comes to gaming with children. There has been a trend in Role Playing Games lately to design games that can be played with children. There are some very good games on the market Hero Kids, Little Wizards, and RpgKids to name but a few, but I keep thinking that they all have somehow missed out on the design lessons of existing children's' games and from the design lesson of Stan!'s Pokemon Jr. role playing game. Think about children's games for a second. 

What are the first two games that come to mind?

For me they are Candy Land (the link is to the Princess Version I might just order the twins for Christmas) and Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Image from Collider.com

What do all of these games - and Pokemon Jr. - have in common?

Toy factor and/or simplicity. You don't need to read rules to understand the intricacies of HHH or Candy Land. The game pretty much teaches you how to play. As a story telling game, Pokemon Jr. has the parents take the role of storyteller who prompts children into action. Little Wizards - and excellent game - does the same, but Pokemon has these really cool looking Poke-cards (Got 'em All) and the rules are only a couple of pages. Most of Stan!'s design in Jr. is the scripting of adventures to play with the kids. Candy Land uses colors and color matching as its signifier of movement. These games are easy to pick up and play and have "toy factor."

Our games need to do this as well. RpgKids has some pretty cool Crayon maps that add a nice Print-and-Play toy factor to the game, but the rule book has an odd cover. The drawings also eventually lose their appeal when compared to something like the Print-and-Use figures for Order of the Stick.

This or Pikachu?

Hero Kids has a more cartoony feel - and good graphic design with some "toy factor" - but its resolution mechanic is similar to that of Risk and the rule book is longer than that of Heroquest. In fact, in some ways the game is as complex as Heroquest...though Heroquest's dice are more intuitive when giving results. I think my twins might prefer to see swords and shields over seeing who has the highest number. They can calculate the highest number - and tell it to me in Japanese - but does it have the "toy factor" needed to keep play "playful?" I think it does to a certain degree, but I also think it would need more toy factor in a published product. It also needs more character types - though it has some good ones - and the standees need to be in color. They need to be in COLOR!

When designing RPGs for children, we need to think less about "how can we get them interested in playing rpgs when they are older?" and more about "what will they think is fun now?" We need RPGs that tell the same kinds of stories we are showing our children. Can I play "Avatar" type games? With Hero Kids yes, with the others?... Can I play Tinkerbell-esque adventures? Pokemon based? My Little Ponybased? And don't get me going on the Pathfinder Pony game. If you think I am introducing Pathfinder to 6 year olds, you are crazy.

The fact that I ranted a bit on making sure that the design is such that it appeals to kids and has graphic fun factor and toy factor may seem like I am criticizing the games I listed above. I am not. They are all good games and I am grateful to their designers. I am just saying they are the equivalent of Avalon Hill's Afrika Korps or Gettysburg. They are early designs in what I hope will become a growing genre.

 

Make Mine Savage -- What Statistics Can Tell You About Baseline Super Strength and Converting the Hulk

Sorry that it has been so long since my last post -- pretty much exactly one month -- you can blame that on my busy work and school schedule. I'm a full time Ph.D. student in Political Science at UC Riverside and work full-time as well. Add to that the fact that I actually spend time with family and game twice a month, and it leaves little time for blogging.

I'm a huge fan of Savage Worlds and the more that I play it, the more I find that the system falls into the sweet spot of where I am in my gaming life right now. I need a game that is relatively intuitive, that is flexible, that has some good tactical rules, has some good "abstract" rules, and can be played in a hurry. Savage Worlds is one of those rules sets. Recently, my group has been playtesting FENG SHUI for Atlas Games and playing around with the Accursed setting for Savage Worlds. In the near future, I hope that my group will be interested in playing a Savage Worlds based supers game. Before I ask my players to make that leap, I do want them to be more comfortable with Savage Worlds as a system. Super hero campaigns push any rules set to the limit and demand a lot of players with regard to knowledge of the rules set, so I won't likely be asking the players until early next year.

When I do run the campaign, I will likely be running a Marvel game or a Marvel/DC mashup game and so I'll be converting a number of characters as well as using some conversions I find online. As I've mentioned a couple of times in the Make Mine Savage series, one of the challenges in character conversion is avoiding "power exaggeration." This occurs when a player/GM substitutes their own power fantasy about a given character to set the assumed baseline instead of starting with the game's mechanical baseline and moving from there. The prime example of a power fantasy setting a baseline in relative power discussions often occurs when chatting about whether The Hulk or the Juggernaut is stronger. For gamers/comic fans of a certain age, one only has to wait until the second or third round of discussion before the scene from Secret Wars where The Hulk holds up a mountain range comes into play.

Let's just say that if you are setting your baseline for what The Hulk needs to be capable of at "Fifty Billion Tons" as a mechanical necessity, this is beyond even the Cosmic Level of Savage Worlds which would set d12+12 at 10,000 tons. Were I adjudicating the mountain scene above, I'd use the Dramatic Tasks rules and apply appropriate penalties with each failure on The Hulk's behalf equating to a level of fatigue.

So where would we set The Hulk within a Savage Worlds framework? What is the appropriate level for The Hulk? The old Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, as well as the old FASERIP system, place The Hulk at the 100 Tons range which is d12+9. This is useful as far as it goes, but doesn't really tell us a lot. This is especially true if the GM is using my alternate "dials" with regard to lifting or is using the following Edge:

Super-Brawny 
Requirements: Novice, Strength and Vigor d12+
     Your super-bruiser is significantly stronger than other characters in the setting. This is either because the character is large for his or her size category, or because she or he is very fit. The character is more resistant to damage than other characters (+2 to Toughness). Additionally, the character can lift or carry more that most characters with the same strength. This character can carry 10 times the amount listed on the Superhuman Strength chart. This edge may be taken multiple times where the multiplier stacks logarithmically (2xSuper-Brawny = x 1000 lift, but the character only receives the Toughness bonus once. If you wish, you can require the expenditure of a bennie and a STR roll at -6 to activate this ability. A failure on the roll equals 1 level of fatigue. Characters who become incapacitated from this fatigue must rest until they recover.

 I'm a fan of the above Edge because it allows for increased carry/lift capacity without altering the underlying damage mechanics of the game. One of the seeming truisms of comic books is that really strong characters, characters capable of lifting battleships, often punch street level heroes without turning them into paste. This emulates that aspect of the game.

A feat like the above, gives a tool that allows Savage Worlds to accommodate what The Hulk can lift, but it does little to tell us what The Hulk's combination of Strength and Damage should be. To establish this baseline, we need to ask how easy it is for the average "Brick" to destroy some very big and very impressive vehicle or piece of hardware. I think that the M1A1 Abrams serves this purpose nicely. The Abrams weighs approximately 68 tons and for all intents and purposes serves as a nice baseline for "Super Tank." According to the Savage Worlds Rulebook, the Abrams has a Toughness of 77/58/29 (60/41/12), or in "real" terms a toughness of 17. What I mean by "real" terms, is Toughness - Armor. This is because in the Savage Worlds baseline campaign it is possible for super heroes to add the "Focus" modifier to their "Attack, Melee" combat power. The Focus modifier allows attackers to ignore armor if they make a to hit roll at a penalty. One can imagine two kinds of Supers games. In the first, all "Bricks" worth their salt have the Focus modifier. In the second, none have the modifier. For the purposes of the statistical analysis here, I will assume that they do have the Focus Modifier.

This makes our question -- assuming that the "Mean" super hero can "destroy" an Abrams with one punch -- what is the right combination of Strength and Damage to achieve this task? Destroying a vehicle requires causing 4 wounds (+16 above the Toughness) and thus requires a roll of 33. We can set our bar lower to require only that the character be able to "Damage" an Abrams, but that is a setting dial. For our current dial, let's assume 33.

Using the calculator at Anydice - set to default settings -- this provides us with the following answer:

 

=31.81 σ = 7.99 min=13 max=116

If you prefer, you can make it d12+9 which makes x-bar 32.81 and increases the min and the max by 1 while having no effect on the standard deviation. In fact, at Attack, Melee 4d6 the amount of Strength above 12 provides a great dial for use with regard to punching holes in Abrams tanks and crippling them.  If you wanted to increase the spread of pluses, you could set the baseline as:

STR d12+5 with a 5d6 Attack, Melee Power with focus. 

=32.99 σ = 8.59 min=11 max=131

 Doing so would allow for some more control over where the supers fall in the distribution as influenced by the plus component rather than the d6 component. We can use the statistical information to decide where The Hulk falls within our super hero world.  First we have to decide in what percentile we want the Hulk to fall and then we can use a procedure called "Standardizing a Normal Distribution" to give us our number. We use the following formula in this case:

Z is a value that corresponds with a certain percentage of outcomes. For example, 90% of outcomes will be equal or less than z =1.645, 95% will be less than or equal to z =1.96, and 99% will be less than z =2.57. If The Hulk is stronger than 90% of really strong people in your game, you should set z to 1.645. If stronger than 95% of crazy strong people, at 1.96 etc. We would have an equation that looks something like:

1.96 = (x - 32.99)/8.59

Hmmm....the first thing that jumps out is that this tool isn't necessarily useful for our purposes. Another way to translate this is STR = d12 + z(Bonus - 5) + 4d6 attack.  What this means is that if we wanted The Hulk to be stronger than 95% of other Bricks we'd have to increase the "flat" number by 17.18 and that takes if off the chart. This tells me that the Abrams may not be the best baseline to use even if it's cool. This is largely due to the "swingy" nature of the open ended die rolls. Setting the baseline at such a high number means that we cannot use an actual distribution based on the likelihood of actual occurrence based on rolls and have it be very useful. In fact, even if we set the "average" Brick Strength at:

d12 + 2 with a 1d6 Attack, Melee

We get the following:

=13.27 σ = 5.83 min=4 max=56

Even at this level we see that The Hulk would have to be (1.96*5.83) points higher than average (11ish points) to be stronger than 95% of all other Bricks.

Does this mean that we cannot use a normal distribution to help us in our converting of characters? I don't think so. I do think it means that we cannot base our conversions on a distribution of damage, rather we have to create an arbitrary distribution and mean. Let's say we keep the mean around d12 + 6 (we can set the number of d6s of Attack based on how likely we want the character to be to damage, hurt, destroy an Abrams with each of those being an added die above 2d6). Given that a "normal" can have a strength of up to d12 without Edges (we can assume that the Edges allow for characters beyond human and in the low end of Brick like Captain America), this gives us a working range of +1 to +12. If we choose 2 (arbitrarily) as our standard deviation this gives us a distribution that looks like:

=6 σ = 2 min=1 max=12

If we use this in all of our calculations, we will get The Hulk as having a d12 + 6 + (1.96*2) Strength. In other words, a d12 + 10 Strength if we want him to have a Strength higher than 95% of other Supers. He'd have a d12 +9 at 90% and the percentage of people at d12 +8, +7, and +6 become larger until you hit 50% of your target population. Then the pattern repeats the other way with 95% of your Bricks having more than d12 +6 - (1.96*2) or d12 +2 Strength. That leaves only 5% of your Bricks with d12+2 or less. You can use this as a guideline to shape your campaign and should try to follow it as much as possible. This way if players as "How Strong is d12 +9?" You can answer that it is stronger than 90% of all other "Brick" caliber characters and be correct in saying so.

While some of this conversation may seem obscure, I think it is important to have some structured guidelines that help GMs and players when they are creating/simulating characters especially when it comes to abstract things like emulating the comics. The same player who might balk at The Hulk having "only" at d12 + 10 Strength when told it is 200 Tons might smile with joy when they find out that this is the level better than 95% of all super strong characters in the campaign universe...a campaign universe that includes Galactus and many others of the ultra-cosmic scale.

Additionally, we can see how Savage Worlds dice have a pretty big standard deviation due to the open ended nature of the rolling and the combination of several dice. The analysis was also useful for looking at what it really takes to create a character who can destroy an Abrams Tank in a single blow. It is easily possible through a number of combinations that are affordable at character creation.

For me, I wouldn't set that as the baseline for my "Bricks." I'd probably set it at around 21 which is the amount of damage it takes to do 1 wound to an Abrams, but YMMV.