Hey Man, well this is Babylon

I remember years ago, at a previous service-related job in a previous city of residence, being handed a copy of the book Raving Fans and told to read it. The boss-man actually made said reading mandatory, and assigned a book report-like follow-up for all of us to turn in. The book wasn’t bad, in all honesty, and at the time my job performance benefited from having read it.

Years later, there’s very little that I recall from its pages, but one bit of it still sticks with me today: customers are more likely to spread the word about an absolutely terrible experience than an absolutely amazing one. Sadly, this is the case today. I’ve recently posted my very first review on Amazon, and it’s pretty negative. It’s about a subject that I love: Dead Space. Particularly, it’s about the atrocious work of animation that is Dead Space: Aftermath.

I’ll spare the details here, and instead just link you to the actual review.

Two nights ago, I got around to watching the pilot episode of the brand new hero drama The Cape, and I was wowed. That first episode was pulp vigilante heroism at its present day greatest. For me, it combined all of the good from Dark Angel‘s first season with raw “Vengeful Father ” fury.

And yes, some spoilers of the first episode follow, so read at your own risk. Read more

A common situation:

I’m working on a game design project, and I’m thinking that maybe I want to consider making this one a GM-less game. Sure, it’s primarily a “group of characters working together to achieve a central themed goal” kind of game, but that can be GM-less, right? I start to explore that idea, and I eventually get to musing on the mechanics behind the actual introduction of conflicts and challenges. For a GM-less game, I think I’ll need to make it so that any player can throw in a challenge at any time. I’m thinking each player has both a character in the game/story, as well as an additional role of conflict-instigator for the other characters. I eventually take some of these ideas and bounce them off a fellow game designer, and get a response along the lines of “Okay, but what incentive do the players have to actually throw conflicts at each other? Wouldn’t it be in their best mechanical interests to work together, beat the game, and not challenge each other? What’s your currency, what boon do the instigators get out of this?”

This has happened to me more than once, and each time it happens I don’t have an immediate answer. I think “yeah, she’s right, the instigator needs some mechanical incentive to actually do said instigating.” Then I fret over it and try to come up with a non-character-centric system of conflict-introduction currency… and then I sit back and ask myself: Why?

Looking at the other side of the coin, most GM-run games out there have no such conflict currency. The GM has the right to throw challenges and encounters at the players left and right, and gains no specific mechanical reward for doing so. There is no limited pool of bad guys to use, or set currency of “challenge points” with which the GM must purchase new conflicts. No one is keeping a point tally of who does what, or why, and there is no winner. Obstacles appear when they must, players overcome them, and the GMs get no mechanically-tangible rewards for continuing this process.

And why should they? The (usual) point of the whole setup and gaming experience is for the GM to focus on story and opposition, and the players to focus on reaping the tangible rewards. The GM is rewarded based on their own style, be it by telling a good story, or by mystifying the players, or maybe just by murdering their characters in a sick gauntlet of aggression transfer. None of these reaps the GM any “gamer points” or “conflict enhancements” or “monster totems” or the like. The GM is usually free to throw in what she wants, when she wants, without need for mechanical explanation.¹

Now if the established Big Names of the mainstream GM-run games don’t feature such a reward, why should it be necessary to mechanically entice a player in a GM-less game to actually introduce conflict, when both the Social Contract and the innate Situation of the game already establish cross-table challenges as a core game theme? When players sit down to play a game of D&D, they know what they’re getting into. They are aware that the GM will throw challenges out and the players will try and overcome them, for no other reason than because that is just the way the game is played. If the GM-less game establishes this fact up front, then there really shouldn’t need be a reward mechanic in its play, either.²

So I ask you: do you believe that a GM-less game of mostly-cooperative character-driven storytelling should require such a conflict incentive? Why or Why Not?

Footnotes

¹ I am aware that D&D and some other games have Challenge Ratings and Encounter Levels and the like that serve to limit the power of most in-game adversity, but those fit more as pacing mechanics than conflict incentives.
² I haven’t played all that many GM-less games, but the less-than-a-handful that I have played have all tangibly rewarded players for introducing conflict. I’m not sure which others are out there, and which ones do and do not. Please, educate me!

After a conversation with Jake yesterday at the studio, on the subject of a new design project, I’ve decided to take some time an analyze a bunch of “disaster movies.” My specific focus here is to lay out the core threats and dangers present in each one. I’m looking for basic defined components, the dangers that work together to compose the central threats of each story.

Sunshine

Since it’s fresh on my mind, I’ll go ahead and start with Sunshine. The most obvious here is the Sun. While it of course provides the object of the entire movie’s conflict, it is also an ever-present danger for the crew. On numerous occasions it fries, melts, and explodes things, including parts of the ship and even people. Next would be the second most obvious: the Cold Dead of Space. This danger presents itself quite frequently, and is pretty much unavoidable. The third one might not be so obvious, because the director did such a good job of blending it in seamlessly with everything: the knowledge that these guys are all that’s left, and if they fail, it’s all over. There are no second chances, there is no one else to help you. That knowledge is understood by every crew member, and it is there in every decision they make. Finally there is the “twist.” Yeah, sure, that’s a danger too (grumble grumble).

In summation:

• The Dying (yet still mega-hot) Sun
• The Cold Dead of Space
• This is our only shot
• The “Twist”
• Here’s a possible fifth: “Nowhere to Hide”

Other dangers present themselves, but only as short-term obstacles, and not really “core” dangers and threats. Even the “Twist” is more of a temporary thing, I guess.

What about some others? Read past the cut for my takes on them. I’ll try to keep them as spoiler-light as possible. Read more

When I was in second grade, I started having these really bizarre (to me at the age) dreams about a fellow classmate named Meg. In those dreams, she would exist as some sort of wonderful beneficial thing, and her rare touch was addictive, the ambrosia of life. I remember waking up after each of these dreams with this intense, skin-crawling disappointment that she wasn’t there, and each of the places she had touched me (arms, cheeks, etc) would then feel even worse. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was experiencing my first actual crush, along with the longing and let-down that often accompanies such a trial.

Around the 1:15 time mark of the movie Sunshine, I experienced a feeling eerily similar to that post-dream sadness, and it still sits with me well into the day after. This feeling was born in my realization that the director had destroyed a beautiful work of art that was in its final stages of achieving perfection.

I was primarily recommended to this movie through friends and Netflix, due to my love of the movies Moon and Pandorum. Watching its first hour, I can definitely get the connection to the former, as that sense of isolated claustrophobia really drives down deep in each moment of the film. Moon did a near-perfect job of connecting me on a personal and emotional level with its cast of one (of which there were two). I felt like i was right there, with him the entire time, and when he cried, I cried. In the early part of Sunshine, the effect was the same; when the guy kept repeating “I fucked up! I fucked up!” I wanted so badly to reach over and grab his shoulder in a firm but understanding grip, letting him know that he needs to calm down, but also that I know exactly how much it sucks to make such a human error. And later, when that same guy sees the consequences of his fuck-up, I’m still right there with him. As a member of the audience, that effect, that expression on his face just tore me apart.

But the connection to Pandorum is one with which I can’t agree. Pandorum was a horrific sci-fi thriller, and I knew that going into it. It’s gruesome scenes fit perfectly within the context of its established subject frame. The “something here is killing us and I don’t know what it is” theme was introduced early in the movie’s story development, and everything that branched off of that resulting narrative was exactly as it should have been. In Pandorum, murders and chases and distrust and “run for your life they’re coming!” was all part of the premise, and exactly what I was looking for.

With Sunshine, the introduction of that new theme was so unexpected and heavy-handed as to be anathema to the intense-yet-enjoyable tension that the movie had fostered up until that very moment. Mere seconds after perhaps the most powerful scene of the entire movie, once the computer utters that one line involving the number five, everything the movie had built up was obliterated. The turn towards the slasher chase was unnecessary and unwanted, and I struggled to pay anymore focus to the screen as the movie finished its course – not because I was disturbed by the new delve into gore and terror, but because I was absolutely bored with it. Because my feelings were hurt. By a movie.

Were this any other movie, I would likely dismiss it, and tell my friends to stay away from it. But the buildup and execution of the first full hour of this movie is so wondrous, so compelling that I won’t be doing my heart any justice by telling everyone to avoid the film. So, instead, you should watch it up until the “hall scuffle” scene around 1:10 or so, and then turn it off. Just walk away, think about it, buy the soundtrack (which is simply stunning), press play and then sit down and write out your own ending. Take this story and make it your own.

Then send me the scripts you write, so we can enjoy them together.