When Snakes on a Plane came out, Samuel L. Jackson told a story on the talk show circuit about how Snakes on a Plane was just the working title of the movie and it was supposed to be renamed something like “Terror at 10,000 Feet.” In Jackson’s version, he’s the one that convinced the producers…
I first read about the concept of “idea debt” in a blog post by Jessica Abel that Leighton sent me some indeterminate amount of time ago. Basically, an idea debt is that project you want to do but you’re not working on. Abel’s advice is to throw away that idea debt because all the time…
I was hoping to use my 4-day weekend to finish and post the (hopefully) long-awaited next draft of the Cinemechanix rules to the playtest group, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. Partly it was because I ended up having to work Saturday, but since I knew that ahead of time I probably should have gotten right…
In case you’re wondering why the blog is late this week, I’ve re-joined the ranks of wage slavery, so new posts will probably be Monday instead of Friday from now on. In Cinemechanix, every character has a set of character concept traits that allows him to roll a d20 instead of a d12 as his…
As those of you who are following the Cinemechnix design know, I’m currently working on an entirely new section about adapting the game rules to specific game settings. Tweaking game rules is nothing new to me. I’ve been doing it for nearly as long as I’ve been gaming, and almost every QAGS supplement I’ve worked…
A few weeks ago, I talked about some of the things that game-specific rules adaptations can accomplish, like clarifying how story concepts fit into the game rules or allowing for customization. The next section covers actually deciding whether or not to implement special rules for a specific story element. If you think of the first…
Different kinds of games reward different abilities. Pictionary rewards players’ ability to draw recognizable clues and to guess the right answer from the clues other people draw. Poker rewards understanding the likelihood of winning with a particular hand, strategic betting, and bluffing. Candyland rewards the player with the best luck. I’ve talked before about the…
So, if you’ve been following along, you know that I’ve come to the realization that the “how to adapt the rules to the game you want to run section,” which was originally a single chapter with some general advice, has turned into a whole section because it’s kind of the central idea that makes the…
Last time around, I talked about a problem I was running into with a disconnect between intent and interpretation when it comes to rules. Basically, since we usually think of games as “systems” where all different rules concepts are interconnected, some players assume that anything not clearly marked “optional” is essential. The truth is that…
The first step in solving a problem is identifying the problem. For some problems, like being on fire, that’s not very hard to do. For other problems, like being addicted to meth, (or having an irrational dedication to a particular die type) the big step is recognizing and admitting to the problem. For more complex…
