It's helpful to study the 'formulas' behind games in order to understand them better. I was reading this very insightful post about monsters over on Jeff's Gameblog, and also reading the intro to the D&D4 Essentials DM Guide on 'what D&D is.' In essence, D&D is a traditional fantasy agglomeration, with a couple D&D 'staples' added to it to create the D&D 'feel'. Let's consider what these staples are, and try to break things down a little.
It is probably easy to see most of D&D's 'staples' are mostly items not covered under the OGL (trademarked and product-identity), and a couple that are loosely, but strongly identified with D&D. The drow, beholders, carrion crawlers, color-wheel dragons, Lovecraft-borrowed mind-flayers, Grayhawk gods, Faerun, fireball/sleep/wish spells, vanician magic, and a bunch of other staples come to mind. Toss in D&D4, and you get world-specific creations such as the Shadowfell, Faewild, along with a bunch of other races, places, and things.
This is similar to Microsoft's software strategy of 'embrace and extend' although applied to a fantasy-fiction setting. D&D likes to be the everygame, "Yeah, we've got that too." The next thing that usually happens is, "Oh, and have you seen this new D&D specific baddie? It sure is cool!" The same happens with Paizo's Pathfinder, it has all the traditional fantasy staples, then teases with world-specific bad guys, modules, organizations, or other content not under the OGL. With Microsoft software, they will take an open standard, and then enhance it to the point where the Microsoft solution is the de-facto standard.
It is not a bad strategy, and it presents players with a lot of value-added content in terms of product support and player familiarity. Where it falls short is in longevity and openness. When the D&D4 books are resigned to the shelf of history, and D&D8 is out and the hot new thing, all that content is versioned away, unsupported, and locked into books that will most likely never be printed or used much again. The supported proprietary content that made the game 'cool' is no longer supported, old, and locked up behind a license that makes it unsupportable by third parties, even under fair-use in many cases.
The OGL helps, and is a good thing for the most part (but falls woefully short in terms of electronic fair-use, etc). At least items under the OGL can be resurrected and used in new forms, bet then again, the OGL is a printed text-only license, and this limitation restricts games and other interactive entertainment. It is a good solution, but only goes halfway. We simply don't know how RPGs will evolve, how they will be played, and how creators will share content in the future; and supporting a license that restricts distribution holds the evolution of RPGs back in a way. The current OGL games are fun, cool, well-done, and craetive - but they don't advance the evolution of how RPGs are played, so they are holding back innovation.
In SBRPG, we banned using copyrighted content for a reason - we wanted you to create your own IP, and license it any way you wanted. If you wanted everything to be free and open, so be it, hop on over to Creative Commons and grab a license for your stuff, and create away. The SBRPG game itself was closed-source, it's the best we could do at the time when we wrote it. The ideas you create with it are yours however, and you could share them in any way you wish.
Showing posts with label expansions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label expansions. Show all posts
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Expansions: The Car Wars Story
I am always wary of expansions, especially for role playing games. Too often than not, at least in my group's experience, an expansion for a role playing game has completely changed what made the original game special and cool. New rules will be introduced, new equipment, new magic items, monsters, starships, worlds - all of this stuff changes the game world when introduced after you get going. Let me cite a one example, the legendary game Car Wars:
Car Wars: We started playing this game a long time ago when it was just a pocket box. All that existed in this world were poorly armored cars, with nothing larger than a van being able to navigate the roads of a distopic USA, a Mad Max like future of no gas, limited energy, and brutal gangs that ruled the roads. Couriers had to make due wit hshoving cargo in station wagons, and you had to keep some room and weight in your vehicle for salvaged tires, ammo, and the car parts you looted from your 'kills.' There was really no weapon more powerful than a high-tech laser, and even the one-shot heavy rocket was a deal breaker. Cool stuff, and it made you think.
Along comes the expansions, and all of a sudden, 18-wheelers took the road, capable of carrying 20 tons of cargo, a house, and several of the cars in the garage all at ones. These behemoths had armor as thick as tanks, and could mount an arsenal of high-tech weaponry. Helicopters took to the air, and even giant cargo choppers could haul cargo to the far-flung fortress towns without navigating the hostile highways. Autoduel arenas made the sport of dueling popular, and what was once necessary road survival became commercialized and commonplace - even celebrated.
The original idea was lost, and the game became less fun - for us, at least. there were plenty of hobby-shop groups running commercial duels for prizes and fame, and granted, that is an easier setup for a hobby shop to run and sell games with. For us, our original idea was survival in a hostile world, where fast cars ruled the roads, and motorcycle gangs stalked the dangerous zones. If a VIP needed to get to the next fortress town, they needed to hire a fast car - with an expert driver. No helicopter could fly them there, and they couldn't hop in a land behemoth armored bus to take them there either. Later on, blimps, boats, and even tanks took to the battlefield, the shark had been jumped, and the game just became a wreck. The focus of the original game was on the cars, and that's where we liked it.
Later expansions almost entirely were devoted to autodueling sports, or new vehicle types. We can't complain, since George and I did one of the original submissions for aircraft rules back in the day, and still have the original rejection letter from Steve Jackson himself. But for us, there was a feeling that something was lost, that the game was moving away from what we liked about it, and we grew apart from the world and the game. The game was changed by the direction of the expansions, and the world was changed.
It is an important thing to think about when you introduce an expansion to the game, and I can relate some of this with out current Arkham Horror play through (see an earlier post). More on the effect of expansions on that game in a later post, but for now, think about the above experience we had, and how your game design could better prepare players for what you may have in mind in the future. How would you handle an expansion to your game? How would you design it to not shock players with new material? Would you design your original world any differently? Think, prepare, and then expand - but try to keep what players love about your creation intact.
Car Wars: We started playing this game a long time ago when it was just a pocket box. All that existed in this world were poorly armored cars, with nothing larger than a van being able to navigate the roads of a distopic USA, a Mad Max like future of no gas, limited energy, and brutal gangs that ruled the roads. Couriers had to make due wit hshoving cargo in station wagons, and you had to keep some room and weight in your vehicle for salvaged tires, ammo, and the car parts you looted from your 'kills.' There was really no weapon more powerful than a high-tech laser, and even the one-shot heavy rocket was a deal breaker. Cool stuff, and it made you think.
Along comes the expansions, and all of a sudden, 18-wheelers took the road, capable of carrying 20 tons of cargo, a house, and several of the cars in the garage all at ones. These behemoths had armor as thick as tanks, and could mount an arsenal of high-tech weaponry. Helicopters took to the air, and even giant cargo choppers could haul cargo to the far-flung fortress towns without navigating the hostile highways. Autoduel arenas made the sport of dueling popular, and what was once necessary road survival became commercialized and commonplace - even celebrated.
The original idea was lost, and the game became less fun - for us, at least. there were plenty of hobby-shop groups running commercial duels for prizes and fame, and granted, that is an easier setup for a hobby shop to run and sell games with. For us, our original idea was survival in a hostile world, where fast cars ruled the roads, and motorcycle gangs stalked the dangerous zones. If a VIP needed to get to the next fortress town, they needed to hire a fast car - with an expert driver. No helicopter could fly them there, and they couldn't hop in a land behemoth armored bus to take them there either. Later on, blimps, boats, and even tanks took to the battlefield, the shark had been jumped, and the game just became a wreck. The focus of the original game was on the cars, and that's where we liked it.
Later expansions almost entirely were devoted to autodueling sports, or new vehicle types. We can't complain, since George and I did one of the original submissions for aircraft rules back in the day, and still have the original rejection letter from Steve Jackson himself. But for us, there was a feeling that something was lost, that the game was moving away from what we liked about it, and we grew apart from the world and the game. The game was changed by the direction of the expansions, and the world was changed.
It is an important thing to think about when you introduce an expansion to the game, and I can relate some of this with out current Arkham Horror play through (see an earlier post). More on the effect of expansions on that game in a later post, but for now, think about the above experience we had, and how your game design could better prepare players for what you may have in mind in the future. How would you handle an expansion to your game? How would you design it to not shock players with new material? Would you design your original world any differently? Think, prepare, and then expand - but try to keep what players love about your creation intact.
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