HinterBlog

Over on Clash’s new blog, he discusses the ideas of System Structure and buried within his post is a bit about innovation. This is an important point to me as I have much the same view on it.

Innovation in systems is, in my opinion, more about the designer’s ego than anything to do with “doing it better” or any sort of “system progress”. I would go as far as to say 9 out of 10 times it is an illusion, a more complicated way to do something because the author wanted to do some thing “new” or different. Being different for its own sake is not a good way to serve your customers. The problem most folks face is that they will see some mechanic and bring their own subjective prejudices to it. You like that mechanic and it is “cool and innovative” because you either have never seen it before (even though you probably have) or you like the author or you like d10s and it uses d10s.

I am guilty of the exact same thing. I believe it combines a few factors. The first is how much we, as gamers, want to recapture that feeling we had when we played our first game. We want it to be new and cool and a different way of doing our favorite thing. Another issue could well be the belief that “It must get better”. Look at technology. Over time one person builds on another person’s work. We like the idea that things progress, innovation happens and the things we are excited about and love get better.

Let’s take a moment on that “get better” part. Innovation is not necessarily better but that is an argument for another day as I am not convinced that innovation is as common as perceived in RPGs. However, the more fundamental issue is that for progress to be made, the next game must be better than the last. This just cannot be true IMO. Games are a function of preferences. Some people will like Monopoly while others prefer chess. Both are board games but both have different Elements. Elements, as I discussed before, are those small pieces of play that we enjoy/hate so very much. When a “new” game comes out, you have a different arrangement of elements that might appeal to a different group of customers but to say it is empirically “better” is a fallacy. It may be different. I may be popular. However, i would not characterize it as better.

So, where does innovation come in? Unfortunately, many designers look to trying to innovate the elements. These are things like task resolution methods and how you do something. I feel that true innovation comes from the form of the game. That is to say, how you combine the elements, what you leave out, what you include and how they interact. Even here, innovation may not be as prevelent as is promoted. Remember, it pays to say your game is innovative. It pays (either in money or you ego) to have people say your game is innovative.

Innovation is seldom something that is easy, predictable or common.

I played in a d20 3.5 game run by Mark from Creative Mountain Games at Chicago Gameday. A fun time to be sure but it made me realize a few things. Chief amongst these is the difference that a lot of folks do not see between using powers and tactical gaming. See, we came to a bridge and the first response of all the other players were to lay down spells or powers to cross the bridge (which was unsafe and all but falling down). Mark, the GM, seemed to think my ideas to utilize the rope and cross using conventional tactics was met with the traditional “If you do that I will make the group make skill checks that they do not have. Find another way”. This steered every one back to spells. Eventually, a combination of spells and conventional tactics helped us cross the bridge. The point that hit me though was that it seemed they thought my mundane methods were unnecessary. I am not sure if this was because we were playing 9th level or more alarming, that this is a shift in play style that, to be frank, i am poorly equipped to deal with.

Now, I do not want to make too much of one game with one group. Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I had fun. Still, part of me keeps going back to that bridge and wondering if this is what “tactical” play is currently and where it will be in the next 5 years.

I love making covers. It is a weird thing but it is one of those things I like doing. Here are a few for games in the hopper or even farther out….

So many and so little time….Maybe Clash can help me with Neb SE. 😉

Map creation for me is like the life blood of any supplement or setting. Sure, I have seen better maps than my, more pretty that is, but I believe mine rank up there with the most useful. Maps to me should inspire and should actually impart ideas. You should not need to look up my descriptions, you should be able to look at one of my maps ans say “Man! I know what I would put there!”. That was my first reaction when I was first getting modules. I would rip out the maps and make my own adventures. Some may not have been as good as the written module but they were 100% mine. And it rocked. And my group liked that I was jazzed up. That is what a good supplement should do. It should jazz the GM up, get him excited about running the game.

So, when I sit down to draw a map I muse. I kind of glaze over and think about what adventure hooks should be in the supplement/game. Then I start building the map in my head. Cave of the White Tears here. The Grey Woods there. The Andessis Sea here with the Bay of the Boar there. It snowballs and the map fills itself in. When I am finished, I have not written or drawn a thing. It all sits in my head like a buffer waiting to be printed. Then, usually in a rush, it all comes out and I begin drawing and documenting. I tend to draw maps very quickly and like the ability that digital processing has to let me go back and edit.

In the end, I end up with something like this.

I go through a strange process from what I have read of how other designers get inspiration. Most of them talk of how they have this movie or that book or this media or that one but it always sounds very external. They read games, then go and make something based on that. That sounds a bit nasty as though I am saying they do not have an original point in their work but for me, it is much more an internal method.

First, I have and actual effort I go through in creating or inspiring myself. It is much like a headache but less sharp. More of state of intense concentration. During this period, many ideas will come flying in. This leads to the second part, and it is a series of rejections as I recognize and idea or realize it is not viable. Third, I organize the ideas in a free form cool down phase. During this period is when I suspect I am at my most creative, in that I have a number of elements that modify the ideas I have.

So, for example, I will decide I need a new adventure for the group. I will site down at the computer, or on the patio or at the coffee shop and go through a “brainstorming” phase. Then once generated and organized, I will allow them to float. When I came up with SA! I had a number of factors that most likely influenced me from various chatter on the RPG forums to my re-reading the NIMH story some months before. The result was rather strange but somewhat appealing and very non-offensive.

I should point out at this point that his is how I internally inspire or think of new ideas. Certainly, I am influenced by the external as well but it has always come to the above process. A very internal and difficult thing to explain. Not because it is personal or private, but because it is so ethereal to me, it has such an unreal sort of element to it in that I am not sure I understand it. This makes it very difficult to describe.