Apathy Games

Dear Apathy: Laptop Problems

Each week, we answer a question from our loyal audience.  This answer can by anything do do about gaming, and we’ll try to provide advice.  You may leave your question in the comments, or email us at devteam@apathygames.com.  Our question for this week is:

Dear Apathy,

We often use laptops at the gaming table for tracking information and secret communications. For a while it was working well, but now some of my players keep letting the laptops distract them. How do I remove the distraction without getting rid of the computers?

Thanks,

Ready to Drop Rocks, Bismarck, ND

Well, RDR, you’ve posed a tough question. As a rule, having laptops at the table seems like a terrible idea, but I have seen it used to good effect, so let’s try to solve the problem.

Obviously, the first thing to do is to ask your players to make a concerted effort not to get distracted. Have them turn off any programs with notifications like TweetDeck or Skype. These have a tendency to grab attention and distract you from —writing a post— the game. You could disconnect the Internet entirely, but that could seriously limit the effectiveness of having a computer at the table.

As a Game Master, do your best to keep each player engaged. Make sure the spotlight moves around. Have players consider and pre-roll their actions when it isn’t there turn, and don’t let them use electronic dice rollers so that they have to pull away from the laptop when rolling.

You could also try a punishment and reward system, such as giving bennies to players to don’t get distracted and reducing XP gained for those who do. Careful, though, as this can create sour feelings among your problem players, and exacerbate the problem.

Lastly, consider the placement of the laptops. Try to get the players to move them off to the side, with the screen tilted to where you can see it. Not only are you able to watch over people’s shoulders a bit, but it means that players have to turn their backs to you to use the laptop, making themselves more obvious.

If all else fails, require that the laptops be closed at the table, and only use them when sending messages.

Hopefully these tips help you. Thank you for asking Apathy, and don’t drop rocks on your players.

–Jeff Carlsen

Your Comments: Do you have any advice?  Please let our readers know.  If you have a question for Apathy, we’ll gladly answer them.  Leave your question in the comments, or email us at devteam@apathygames.com

What is your favorite game system?

Once per week we go behind the bar at Apathy Games and discuss gaming in more personal terms and ask you to respond. The best response will be featured the following week.

By the time you’ve started reading a blog about Savage Worlds, you’ve probably been around the roleplaying block and played your share of systems. I know I have. The truth is, there is no one ultimate system. We all know that. In the end, there is only the best system to suit your current needs.

But, even so, there are times when you see a core mechanic and something inside you screams, “Yes! That’s how it works!”. For me, that was Shadowrun Fourth Edition.

It’s a rather simple dice pool system. Attributes, Skills, Augmentations, and modifiers are all measured by the number of dice they add to your pool. You then roll them all, and every die that rolls five or higher is a hit. The difficulty of tasks is measured in the number of hits you need.

The reason I love it, other than the satisfaction of rolling a fistful of dice, is how every little edge your character has provides an additional opportunity for success. Like every skill you learn is a little soldier and the task is an enemy. The more soldiers you have, the more likely it is that one of them will kill the filthy bastard.

It’s a simple mechanic, but a complex system. Everything has a mechanical effect, however small. I love this, but it’s also why the system isn’t right for every game. Also, it’s very deadly. Shadowrun characters are often described as eggshells with hammers. It’s style of play I like, but not always.

Now Your Turn:  What is your favorite game system?

Leave your story in the comments, and next week we’ll post the best story. If you have any questions you’d like us to answer in a future Behind the Bar, let us know.

Last Weeks Winner is: Theron

The Questions was, “If you could game with any historical figure, who would it be?”, to which he wrote:

Gary Gygax and HG Welles, the father and grandfather of our noble hobby.

Theron makes a great point.  I would love to have had a chance to game with Gygax.  It’s still possible I suppose, and necromancy is fitting with the game.  Something to think on.

Dear Apathy, How Many Dice is Enough?

As a new feature on Apathy games, each week, we answer a question from our loyal audience.  This answer can by anything do do about gaming, and we’ll try to provide advice.  You may leave your question in the comments, or email us at devteam@apathygames.com.  Our question for this week is:

Dear Apathy,

How many dice is enough?

Al in Podunk, WA

Al,

The simple answer is, when your dice bag bursts, you may have too many. Or need to buy a new dice bag.

I try to keep three full sets of polyhedrals, one of one color and two of another. The first set is my primary set, used for all skill rolls, attacks, saves, or whatever. The other two sets are for damage. This works very well for Savage Worlds in particular, but you should find use for it in many a d20 game.

For savage worlds, I also have a special set of d6s to use as my wild die, and another, off color, for extra damage, so that I can roll everything at once. If I get a raise, I add in the extra d6. Otherwise, I just ignore it.

If you play a variety of games, you’ll want a brick of d6′s. Dice pool games, such as Shadowrun, use them, so you’ll want at least twenty. In addition, you’ll want a pack of ten d10′s for World of Darkness or Legend of the Five Rings.

This should cover everything you need, but it can be nice to have extra sets for new players to use.

Don’t buy all your dice all at once, unless you don’t like money. Picking out a set should be a special event, savored each time you get the opportunity. Start with a single set of what you need for the game you’re playing, and build upon that whenever you go to the game store. Soon enough, you’ll be asking us how to organize your massive collection. Until then, good gaming, and thank you for the question.

Your Comments: Do you have any advice?  Please let our readers know.  If you have a question for Apathy, we’ll gladly answer them.  Leave your question in the comments, or email us at devteam@apathygames.com

If you could game with any historical figure, who would it be?

Once per week we go behind the bar at Apathy Games and discuss gaming in more personal terms and ask you to respond. The best response will be featured the following week.

I pondered this question for several days before writing this post, and came up with a lot of examples of historical figures I’d never want to game with. Ganges Khan, for one. In the end, though, I’m forced to say that I would like to share my gaming table with The Bard. Yes, Shakespeare, though I don’t believe he gets any bardic music abilities, which is a real shame.

I choose him for his variety of characters and ability to understand them. Also, for his sense of drama and ability to tell stories using nothing but dialog. I wonder if he is as good at witty retorts as some of his characters? At least I know that he’ll speak proper Old English, or at least miss-speak it appropriately.

I’d only want to game with him if he’s a player, though. Never as a DM. Otherwise, every campaign would end with a TPK. Or a wedding.

Now Your Turn: If you could game with any historical figure, who would it be?

We’ll also consider answers to, “Who would be the worst historical figure to game with?”, since is sounds like fun.

Leave your story in the comments, and next week we’ll post the best story. If you have any questions you’d like us to answer in a future Behind the Bar, let us know.

Last Weeks Winner is: 77IM

The Questions was, “What RPG Would You Turn into a TV Show?”, to which he wrote:

Mutant City Blues: Police procedural in a world where 1% of the populace has spontaneously developed mutant super-powers. It would be like CSI meets Heroes. It seems like such a no-brainer I’d be surprised if an idea like this hadn’t already been pitched to some studio execs.

Crowdsourcing: How it is Working

While I tapped out a merry tune of how crowdsourcing an entire RPG would never work, smug in my well thought out points, Jeff had to go and ruin it. Before posting the article he quickly made some points on how crowdsourcing was working, in smaller ways, the jerk. He quietly pointed out that the community at large made some great material that he’d used himself and dismissing it all as not working wasn’t quite the best route. I’m unfortunately, and with great sadness, forced to agree with him.

Rules Tweaks

I believe I did briefly mention this in my previous article that the community at large is fantastic for rule tweaks; anyone who has spent time reading our Savage Mondays knows this. It can be easily said that the crowd will create a better rule system then Pinnacle or Wizards ever could. Fans will spend countless hours tinkering with rules to get them to feel and play a certain way. All to make their lives easier, and sharing it just makes it easier for the rest of us. Even we here at Apathy Games, are guilty of the occasional suggestion, like modifying combat, and changing skills, all of these developed to make our lives easier that you.

Tips, Tricks, and Tools

We love good tools, but so does every gamer. The community has given us a tool for generating names, they’ve given us their time and feedback by showing up to the savage chat. We’ve in turn given back tips for keeping track of potential players, generating characters, and tips on using hindrances for writing prompts. Crowdsourcing is a two way street, without someone else giving feedback we’re creating in a void. You, our readers, inspire us to continue creating and writing. We’re like fairies, except we survive off of comments instead of claps (though we’ll take either when we’re within ear shot).

Grab and Go Material

The Savage community is really at its best when it’s producing grab and go material. I’ve seen blogs generate countless hooks, generate many characters, and more gaming aids then when could ever need. Without the community at large Savage Worlds would still be a part of the Great Rail Wars miniature game (that’s right I just busted some history up in here) and would never have attracted people like me to start developing for it.

So when it comes down to it, I can’t dismiss crowdsourcing all together. Without the crowd, no the community, we wouldn’t have the games that we do today.

Why RPGs Can’t Be Crowd Sourced, Yet

Recently my brain has been mulling over Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe. In which the author, with the breathless excitement of Wired writers, explains how “the power of the crowd” is going to eventually produce everything and change the shape of business. While I do agree with the points made thus far (I’m about half way through) I can’t help but apply it to my business of choice. While there have been some attempts to crowd/open source some RPGs it seems that the projects never quite get off the ground in any significant way; no one can seem to develop the Firefox of RPGs.

The Need for Change

Let’s face it, Dungeons and Dragons is not going to go anywhere any time soon, but why is that? Beyond the brand recognition we have a game that has gone through multiple incarnations, various parent companies and just keeps on going strong. What we don’t want to admit to ourselves, there just isn’t anything that wrong with the game. Sure it has its quirks and needs constant rule tweaking to make work the way we want it to, but there isn’t a driving need for something better. While I am a huge Savage World fan, I still play D&D; it’s like a comfortable pair of shoes. It’s easy to slip on and off when I want it. Without the driving need for change, it’s hard to get projects off the ground. We need a clear definable problem and the people to drive the change.

Lack of Brown Socks

In his book, Crowdsourcing, Jeff Howe cites a study that shows that given two groups the more diverse group will end up creating a better product. The study basically mathematically used a hyper smart, hyper focused group that they called Mensa. They then put it against a group that could have been picked from a collage facility lounge comprising of everyone, who in that room, happened to be wearing brown socks. The Brown Socks proved to be better decision makers then the Mensa group. Howe uses this study to prove his case that crowdsourcing yields better products. The problem with using this in our industry is that we really lack Brown Socks. Everyone who would be interested in a crowdsourced RPG would be put firmly in the Mensa category. In fact I would go as far to say that every one of our loyal readers would be put in this category. I mean, you are reading an RPG blog. It’s not to say that we can’t put out a good product, I know a number of savage licensees read this blog and make wonderful products. It’s just the community at large is to hyper focused to put out as good of a product if we were to get more casual interest in the project.

Good Writing is Hard to Source

Many years ago there was an article in Wired that discussed the idea of crowdsourcing news articles. The writer put out an idea for an article, and watched as the community tweaked it and expanded upon it until it became a full article. He then used it as a base for his article on examining the process. His biggest gripe was the fact that the writing was dry and informative but lacked voice. It got the point across without being compelling enough to print in the average news publication. Writing is tough job, getting across feeling, voice, and information in an interesting manner is something few can do. When too many hands are in the pot it makes the job nigh impossible. Too many different ideas can lead to boring and uninteresting work. Crowdsourcing works great for software development and problem solving when the objective and solutions can be clearly defined. As such I think it would be a great source for developing rules for a game. I’ve seen countless pages devoted to the art of tweaking a rule set to do what the GM wants and some are really great. Developing game content though, needs to be done on a much smaller scale.

With repositories of knowledge, advances in the field of science, and new daring ideas being take on every day it’s hard not to see the points Jeff Howe makes. Even his breathless excitement gets my mind racing from time to time, but it just can’t be used for everything.

I’d like you to prove me wrong. Tell me how crowdsourcing can be used for RPG development, and how it’ll eventually become the biggest game on the market. If there is a project heading that direction I would personally devote some of my spare cycles into its development.

What RPG Would You Turn into a TV Show?

Once a week we go behind the bar at Apathy Games and discuss gaming in more personal terms and ask you to respond. The best response will be featured the following week.

Bold and daring adventures every week are the heart of Roleplaying. They’re also the heart of Television. As such, it would seem a natural fit that an interesting roleplaying game would make a great show.

If I had the excess pocket change to realize my favorite setting, it would be Shadowrun. Truth be told, we really haven’t had a good Cyberpunk show as it is, let alone one with Trolls and Mages. But the plots are there. The characters are there. And there is a rich twenty-year history for them to draw off of.

I want to see street magic. I want to see the Halloweeners biker gang and the election of the Great Dragon Dunklezahn to president. And I want to see all the cool toys.

It would have to be an HBO show, though. It’s not exactly family friendly.  It’s full of dark themes, violence, racism, and criminal behavior.  Like the Sopranos with roto-drones.

Now Your Turn: What RPG Would You Turn into a TV Show?

Leave your story in the comments, and next week we’ll post the best story. If you have any questions you’d like us to answer in a future Behind the Bar, let us know.

What is the Worst Gaming Environment You’ve Every Played In?

Part of me feels like a jerk for even thinking about writing this post, for the story I’m about to tell involves a man who was really trying to make a gaming group work, despite shortcomings.  I don’t fault him, but the play area he was responsible for came out of a nerd horror show.

First, there was no table.  This is fine when everything is done in the theater of the mind, but for this session I needed a battlemap.  So, we had to roll it out on the floor and sit around it.  Now, I like roughing it as much as the next guy, but something about rug-burn doesn’t help me GM a game.

That was, of course, assuming we ever got started.

The second problem?  He had his sons over, one of which is a toddler.  Again, don’t get me wrong.  I love children  (especially with barbeque sauce).  But, a two-year-old isn’t known for being civil, and a Father has his duties, which kept him away from the gaming table and prevented us from starting.

Once he arrived, though, we had another problem.  Toddler on the battlemap.  This isn’t a problem so much if the PCs are fighting a Titan.  Well, except that miniatures are small and made of pewter, and toddlers are big and made of…  baby stuff.  Also, did you know that dice are a choking hazard?  Brings new meaning to 2d6 damage.

Now Your Turn:  What is the Worst Gaming Environment You’ve Every Played In?

Leave your story in the comments, and next week we’ll post the best story.  If you have any questions you’d like us to answer in a future Behind the Bar, let us know.

Last Weeks Winner is:  Andrew Linstrom

The Questions was, “What Was the Best House Rule You’ve Used?”, to which he wrote:

My favorite house rule is one that I devised for my own d20 games: No class skills. along with boosting any class that got 2 skill points per level to 4 skill points per level. Players of all classes can purchase ranks one-for-one in any skill, instead of paying twice the cost for half the maximum potential. Is your clever fighter really into clockwork gadgetry? Does your wizard secretly like doing cartwheels? Let them! Don’t worry too much about player roles and expectations. Let them do what the want to do.

What Was the Best House Rule You’ve Used?

Back in the days of our third edition D&D games, Paul ran a campaign in which he introduced karma. Karma, as he ran it, functioned similarly to bennies in Savage Worlds. They regenerated every session and allowed for useful things such as re-rolling and such. The manner in which we earned karma was slightly more complicated.

Basically, karma came in two flavors: karma points and karma pool. Karma points were given out at various points in the game for achieving plot objectives and generally being a bad-ass. These were good for purchasing permanent skill points, base attack, save bonuses, and, best of all, ability increases. These were, of course, appropriately expensive, but I had trouble justifying spending them on anything else, being the little dex-whore that I am. Paul finally had to put a cap on the number of times this was allowed, as my un-enhanced dexterity was creeping up on thirty.

So that part was really cool, but in addition to being able to buy character abilities, for every ten karma points we earned, we received one karma pool. Even if we spent all of our points, we still kept the pool. As I mentioned, karma pool worked a lot like bennies, though typically we had much more than three. These were good for re-rolling bad rolls, adding +10 to any one roll, adding a +5 to all defenses for a round, or making called shots. If the dice really hated you that day, or you were feeling particularly dramatic, you could always burn a point permanently to invoke an automatic natural twenty with max damage or to avoid certain death. I was always in the habit of saving a point for just such an occasion, as such dire circumstances were not exactly uncommon.

My favorite use of the avoid-certain-death feature wasn’t by me, but by a fellow player.  His illusionist mage had perished in particularly nasty fight in which the church we were in was destroyed down to the bedrock. He burned his karma point and was allowed to live. Eventually. Now, just because you survived didn’t mean you would come back unscathed. As far as we knew, he had been in the building when it was destroyed, but about a week later he shows back up at the home-base, looking none the worst for wear. Ok, he had a tendency to fade back into the shadows, but he had always been kind of quiet. So what if he sometimes passed through a door instead of opening it.  He was a wizard; that’s what they do. It was understandable that he couldn’t tell us where he’d been.  It had been a traumatic experience. We learned much later how true that was; he had in fact willed himself back into existence from the shadow plane and was now ten-percent shadow. If he wasn’t paying attention, he ran the risk of becoming incorporeal. Eventually he was able to control and enhance this power, which led to some serious shenanigans. Best karma ever spent.

Now Your Turn:  What was the Best House Rule You’ve Used?

Leave your story in the comments, and next week we’ll post the best story.  If you have any questions you’d like us to answer in a future Behind the Bar, let us know.

Last Weeks Winner is:  UTSquishy

The Question was “What was Your Most Anti-Climatic Fight?”, to which he wrote:

The End of Zombie Run. I had Minifigs all over my Kitchen Table (Both Leaves In). I had a Wall constructed, and some towers, and 100 Zombies, a little scenery, my paper Buses.

This was my first attempt to use the Savage Worlds Mass Combat Rules. I attempted to modify the rules a bit, since they seemed to point toward an anti-climatic ending. I had a way of placing some PC action between rounds.

First the Buses full of zombies attempted to Ram the gates, and were taken out by the PCs’ clever use of tactical nuke mines—only a hand full of the zombies survived, and they were on the outside of the gate where the “villainous” NPCs were located. Then the first mass combat roll, after 15 minutes of discussion about how the rule worked, I forgot to let each of the PCs take an action as I had planned and rolled the second round of Mass Combat.

Multiple Aces from the PCs decimated the opposing force and triggered the one action that would cause them to turn tail.

I chose to ignore the turning of tail and moved from mass combat rules to standard combat rules and it was still over in the next round.

So Much for an explosive action packed evening as planned—wanna play some Guitar Hero or Rock Band?

What Was Your Most Anti-Climatic Fight?

To some extent, this post could be categorized under Savage Worlds, because they system is a little notorious for anti-climatic boss fights. In fact, the very story I’m about to tell is an illustration of this problem.

I’ll also preface this story by saying that climatic boss fights are a staple of many, but not all games. Sometimes, the expectation really is that even the big bad can’t take a bullet to the brain-pan. But, this story is from Slipstream, so a climatic battle is part of the genre.

There my players were. They’d fought bird men and solved challenges. They’d made it all the way to the prince who they must defeat. The prince had minions. The prince had weapons. The prince had a mobile arena with spike traps. This last bit was pretty awesome, as the whole arena did different things based on the prince’s initiative card.

All in all, this was shaping up to be a dramatic fight. The players entered the arena. The prince gave his lengthy monolog about how he was going to destroy them. He stepped out into the arena, raised his weapons and…

…the party leader pulled out a laser gun, aced on his damage a few times, and dropped the prince before he could even act.

Sure, I ran the rest of the fight, and it was alright, but the drama of the scene had already been shot. Literally.

These days I know a bit more about the game, so I could probably come up with a boss with more staying power that didn’t frustrate the players, but there is always that chance. Many threads have discussed this challenge, but I think that’s a topic for another day.

Now Your Turn:  What Was Your Most Anti-Climatic Fight?

Leave your story in the comments, and next week we’ll post the best story.  If you have any questions you’d like us to answer in a future Behind the Bar, let us know.

Last Week’s Winner Is:  Cripple X

The best “loot” I’ve ever received was from a Fantasy Campaign I played using the Hero system, and it was The Holy Sword of Saint Anslem. To understand its significance requires a little background, despite the length below its the digest version:

In most fantasy games people play epic heroes powerful mages, devout priests, tough warriors, and cunning rogues. Our group had it all, and I wanted to break the mold, so I decided to make a down to earth, run of the mill stable boy who happened to be lucky from time to time. His name was Berilo. Berilo was from a country, Mesal, that had been conquered by a second country which was slowly dismantling its culture and replacing it with their own. He got inadvertently mixed up with the adventuring group that comes to his town and for most of the campaign he’s content with running around with those guys playing “Adventurer” while trying to keep up with his job at the stables. At one point in the campaign though he does something pretty heroic to save the adventurer’s lives and barely scrapes by, nearly getting killed in the process. Apparently the GM was impressed, because he threw me a screwball at that point. Poor Berilo who was up until this point a happy-go-lucky stable boy keeps having dreams of this sword and a strange booming voice. Eventually the stable boy discovers the sword is one that is supposed to have belonged to the founder of Mesal, Saint Anslem. Berilo visits his tomb, which the public is banned from thanks to the oppressive regime of the conquering country. Berilo finds his way into the tomb and eventually comes upon the sarcophagus of Saint Anslem, which opens on its own and a skeletal warrior with glowing eyes rises from it wielding a plain looking sword. At this point Berilo is sure he’s done for, but instead of attacking him the skeletal warrior forces him to his knees, knights him, and hands him the sword before collapsing back into is sarcophagus.

The sword, despite its plain appearance, was a fairly powerful item which burst into holy flame in the presence of demons. Much of the rest of the campaign for Berilo was spent coming to terms with the fact he had been picked to use the sword to protect Mesal (against demons no less), make them aware of their culture which was being lost and that despite all his doubts about himself, he could, in fact, do it. It was just so interesting to try and roleplay that change from happy-go-lucky-kid to someone who was confident enough to believe he could do something so monumental and then do it. The sword of Saint Anslem was a catalyst for that change in Berilo, and that’s why it was my best loot ever. The Holy flames smiting deal, wasn’t half bad either though.