Primitive-D&D

Continuing on my post about Adventure Gaming, here’s a real-life account of some. Sami Koponen is this Finnish rpg hobbyist I’ve befriended during the last couple of years, who visits me now and then in my northern exile here in Upper Savo. Usually we spend a weekend or so either playing roleplaying games or complaining about how difficult it is to get to play. This time we had quite an excellent run, though, with three separate game sessions during two days. My zombie game and Sami’s game-in-development about losers got a work-out; they’re both dirty narrativist narrative story games (yeah, those three qualifications each mean a different thing, properly speaking), unlike the real star of the Saturday evening, “primitive-D&D”.

Adventure Gaming

In case somebody cares: haven’t blogged during the last week due to being too busy playing. Lots of games and plenty to write about.

The actual topic, adventure gaming: sometimes multiple currents converge at once, insisting on a topic. After the last post, in which I touched upon traditionalism in roleplaying, I’ve been thinking a little bit about what such traditionalism means. I also played Descent to an unhealthy degree last week. Ended up discussing the topic in some length with Sami Koponen, and ultimately we also played a session of “primitive-D&D” in demonstration. So lots of traditionalism during last week.

Roleplaying styles and Ville Vuorela

Ville Vuorela here suggests that I should analyze his play style as regards roleplaying games. Sure, why not? Of course my material is rather limited, as I haven’t played with Ville once – I’m limited to what he’s told about his play and postulating (read: guessing) based on historical context (read: how other folks in his age bracket and background seem to play). But before I go to that, a clarifying statement: I do not condone, and never have, the idea that auteur gamemasters should conveniently disappear from the roleplaying hobby. I might not like that gaming style and I might even consider it harmful in some manner or other on my worse days, but I’d like that to be read in the spirit of passionate commitment to improving the roleplaying hobby, not personal ill-will – it’s no skin off my nose how other people choose to have fun, and it’s great if they do, even if I sometimes grow exasperated by the effect I perceive them having on our common hobby. It’s that public common ground where our basement gaming groups interact and the common nature of our hobby is established where it’s often easy to wish that the other people would just go away and leave you alone to determine how roleplaying looks and feels to the world.

A Game Development Meeting

I closed the book on the Studio Arete project yesterday for my part. We had a development team meeting for Karta Machiton at Tampere with Jarkko and a dozen programming students from the Tampere University of Technology, where I got an opportunity to unload the game will all its yet unsolved design issues on unsuspecting minds.

Short Guide: cultural grants – Finland – gaming

I was looking for blogging topics, and got a constructive suggestion: why do therapeutic writing when you could be writing something somebody might have an use for? To that end, I’ll write about a topic I probably know better than most other game designers. Namely, how to get cultural grants for your game projects here in Finland. I’ve written some successful applications for cultural grants during the last couple of years, most lately for a little game club here in Northern Savo. It’s a good way to get some loose money for culturally significant projects otherwise on the edge of profitability.

IP wants to be owned

So, we’ve finished our negotiations with Jarkko Vuori about my continuing role in his game development project. To sidestep any suspense, the short of the story is that I’m signing over any remaining rights to what I’ve worked on thus far for the project, and go on to other projects. The price is nominal compared to what I make doing layouts or normal writing jobs, but this particular 350 € is also the first money I make in computer games, so of course it is a bit of a thrill. I hope Jarkko will succeed on the groundwork I lay, or at least get a ride worth his money.

Act Your Evil #2

We’ve played two more sessions of Acts of Evil since I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago. I’m putting my playtest notes here in the blog in the interest of having the whole story in one place, and to give interested readers an idea of how one might go about writing hopefully useful playtest reports for a roleplaying game. I’m a bit behind on my playtest reporting due to all seven kinds of busyness, but luckily playtest reports get shorter when the campaign progresses and issues get addressed; otherwise I’d probably burst a blood vessel one of these days.

Intellectual Rights in Game Design

I’ve had a fascinating couple of days now, discussing the financial precepts of creating games with Jarkko Vuori. Our expectations and assumptions about the topic are rather different, so we’re having some trouble agreeing on how a reasonable and efficient game studio should distribute matters of responsibility, profit and ownership of intellectual property rights. Our differences are so marked that they’re really forcing me to question my own assumptions, worked out in long years of involvement in indie roleplaying game design. As Jarkko comes from a background of commercial software engineering, it’s no wonder that our ideas differ quite a bit in this regard.