Running a Matrix Game

Disclaimer

This is my first time. 

After last week's post I've continued to run my Sunrise Expansion game, which has largely been a success, but has already flagged up some early mistakes and lessons to take on board for next time.

So with that out of the way, how am I actually running this Matrix Game?

If you want proper expert advice then go here, but I can talk about my own early, scattered thoughts.

For a bit of context, here's the player-facing rules minus the secret briefs given to each player.

This is all happening on Discord, with a private channel for each of the Actors, and public channels for open discussion, out of character questions, and end of turn reports posted by the Referee. 

Answering Questions

With the world being painted in broad strokes, it's natural to get questions.

How does money work in this setting?

I don't have a fleet, can I still get to Mars?

Are there space pirates?

If subjects like this were left out of the brief then the answer is generally something that isn't going to cause a lot of friction or create huge opportunities to be exploited. So money works like it does today, flying to Mars is like hiring a private jet, and no there aren't space pirates. 

But I'm walking a fine line here. If you ask me something about another Actor, then that's probably going to require some actual investigation. I have a special Consultant role for players to carry out this research, but in general you're going to need to use an action to find out your rivals' secrets. 

A lot of crossover with RPGs here. If you declare an action and I think you've misunderstood the fictional grounding, I'll talk it over with you rather than taking it as your final word. 

The Single Action

Now this is an interesting one. All of the guidance I've read for Matrix games hammers home the rule that each Actor's turn consists of a single specific action. So if you want to increase the garrisons on your walls and build a new superweapon, you've got to decide which one is more important. This game has its roots in military training, and the rule exists to force players to prioritise and decide what they absolutely need to do right now.

I'm sure my players won't mind me sharing that I've had to be strict on this! The temptation is always to try and squeeze as much as you can into a single turn, but here it's all about focus. 

Besides, resolving six players all doing different actions is messy enough without adding in secondary actions for each of them. 

Arguments in Asynchronous Play 

Matrix Games are built around a foundation of players declaring actions, then the rest of the table discussing how likely it is to happen. Often it's pitched as arguing, and the action is given a modifier from -3 to +3 relating to the pros and cons drawn up next to it.

I can see why this works for a tabletop environment, but it's not a great fit for playing on Discord with fifteen people in different timezones. 

So I'm embracing a Benevolent Dictatorship for this. Straight-up "one GM, many players" that we're all so familiar with. I look at the Action and adjudicate it all by myself. 

And I actually don't feel like I'm missing out on much by having the players not have to constantly argue about chances of success. Instead it's down to me, and hopefully the players trust me enough that they don't feel cheated out of a fair process. It helps that this is all taking place in a fictional setting, so there isn't much call for Subject Matter Experts. 

I'd definitely like to try a Matrix game with this more traditional argument system, but I don't feel a great sense of loss. 

Leverage

Some Matrix games require an action to have "three reasons why" it's likely to succeed. So I can send a spy into your parliament because:

1. I have a well established spy network.
2. We have open borders.
3. I have sympathisers in your country.

Again, this is a gut feeling thing, but it feels like box-ticking to me. Again, in an educational environment it makes sense for players to be pushing themselves to think of factors that would benefit the action, but I'm just running this for fun.

So I shortened it to just "Leverage". Tell me why this action is likely to succeed. You might still reel off three reasons, but you could just as well give a single compelling reason. 

Then I look at any opposition to the action, which could come from another player's action or from an external factor in the established fiction. 

If there's no opposition then the action is Unopposed and you get your desired outcome. Otherwise I weigh your leverage against the opposition and grade it as Strong or Weak in comparison. Strong leverage needn't be overwhelming, it just means you've established enough to reasonably overcome the opposition. 

We'll get onto what this means for the Outcome below.

Outcomes

There's a concept of "Narrative Bias" in Matrix games, where most dice mechanics are weighted towards the player carrying out the action, so it's easier to impact the world than a 50/50 shot would allow.

This is fine, but I wanted every Action to have some sort of impact. Fail Forward, and so on. 

So my Narrative Bias is "Action is certain, Outcomes are unpredictable"

When an Action faces opposition, I roll 2d6. If the leverage is Strong I keep the high die, if it's Weak I keep the low die.

4+ means the player got their desired outcome, 3 or less means they get something worse. If you want to get fancy you can treat 1 and 6 as Criticals. 

So if you want to kidnap a journalist to silence them, then the kidnap operation is definitely going to happen, but a failure would mean that the action backfires on you somehow. Maybe the location you're holding them is leaked, you get the wrong journalist, or... wait, did I roll doubles on those dice?

When the dice show doubles, I use this as a prompt to insert a "Force of Nature" event if something fits. This represents those chaotic events that occur outside of the influence of any player and make things extra messy. In this case, maybe the driver is hit by a truck, killing the journalist. I'd be careful with these, as you don't want your world to be utter chaos, but it can add a little bit of spice to things.

A good rule of thumb for creating Outcomes is "RAT". 

Reasonable: It feels fair and isn't disproportionately punishing. Killing the journalist might help you in some ways, but it's also threatens to create a lot of heat for you. 
Actionable: It isn't a narrative dead-end. It creates hooks for further actions and attracts the attention of other players. 
Traceable: You can look back at the steps leading to this. Maybe the Journalist was already being targeted by another agency, or the previous turn there was talk of flooding on the roads. This is why sowing a little flavour into your reports can be really useful. 

Early on I was probably letting actions go by a little too smoothly. Just because there's no opposition to an Action doesn't mean that it should be Free. My mantra of the moment is "No Action without Friction". Every decision should leave some sort of mark on the world, and it should never be wholly positive. 

I much prefer Friction to Hurdles. So for the most part I'll give players a way to achieve their action, but give them messy consequences. Feels more fun than saying "No you can't do that" or "You can do X but only after you've done Y and Z to prepare."

Reports

I try to keep these brief, written in the style of a news roundup, and it's simple enough.

If there's a secret action that I need to report privately ("okay, you got your spy into the opposing parliament") then I always give a clue in the public report. No perfect secrets here.

"Newly appointed Senator Grey commented on the attack as an affront to Democracy"

It can be small, like that, but remember that when Senator Grey reveals himself as a traitor in three turns' time we at least want to be able to point back at his existence. Remember: Reasonable, Actionable, Traceable.

Actionable is the one that I still need to work on. Think of this Report like you're writing the initial brief again, trying to draw the players in. Fill it with hooks. The downside of having a game where the players can try anything is that they can become overwhelmed and feel directionless, even with their objectives in mind. Put something right in front of them, and even if they don't bite it'll at least give them a starting point for their strategy. 

Is this still a Matrix Game?

When I've tried to talk to friends about this, the term Matrix Game is really unhelpful. "No it's not The Matrix. No, it's not the Matrix Wargame publisher that make computer wargames."

Of course it's just one step removed, but I'm at least trying to think of a different name to use to pitch this to potential players. Open Strategy Game? This sort of thing is weird enough that it will always require some explanation, but I'll see how it feels in conversation.

Later this week I'm trying something else that's adjacent to this style of play, and hopefully I'll be able to talk about it next time.

Matrix Games from an RPG Perspective

I spoke very briefly about Matrix Games in this post, and since then my fascination has grown enough that I'm actually running one right now. There's a public-facing document but I can't share all my secrets just yet, as the game is ongoing.  

Whether you're interested in RPGs, wargames, both, or even neither, I think Matrix Games could still be a fun experience to try out. There's still a focus on using strategy to achieve objectives, but there's an underlying purpose of the game to put yourself into the shoes of an actor within a specific conflict, and begin to understand not just what you would do, but why. 

Of course I have to put my own spin on this thing, which I'll go into a bit more next time. Luckily the rules are minimal and there seems to be an assumption that every person running it will vary things to suit their group.

Wargame or RPG?

So this all exists in a nice grey area between RPG and Wargame, but perhaps not the one that you see most often. Lots of RPGs use elements of tabletop wargames, including miniatures and big campaign maps, but this comes from the other direction. 

This game looks like a wargame at first glance, with each player (or group) controlling a faction with its own objectives, strengths, and weaknesses, but then the gameplay goes in fully on the Tactical Infinity element of RPGs. You can attempt anything, and then the resolution is divided between human adjudication and dice rolls when necessary. 

So aside from this similarity, what do these games offer to RPG players?

Laser Focus

It should be obvious that I enjoy random character creation and procedural generation in my RPGs. I love going into an Electric Bastionland game with little to no idea of how things will go, but it's always fun to peek at the other end of the spectrum.

Matrix Games are laser-focused by comparison. 

Essentially all Matrix games begin with a problem. So for my ongoing game we have:

Sunrise Materials has started expanding its operations into the asteroid belt, breaching Council protocol that forbids corporations from operating beyond Mars. 

The scope of the specific game is concentrated on this particular problem and the actors involved with it, with a set turn limit after which we will stop and look at how this problem has been resolved. No multi-session campaigns here. 

Sounds like a good one-shot session, right? It really helped me think about the way that I'll handle one-shots in RPGs, and I think I could stand to give them a dash of this focus. Not to necessarily rule out a campaign growing from the session, but starting  with an ultra-clear singular problem that must be addressed, and timing things so that, one way or another, it will be resolved by the the end of the game. 

The Joy of Specificity

This is really just another element of the focus mentioned above, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed creating these factions for the players to control. Every one of them was tangled up with at least half of the others in some way, and had specific and impactful strengths and weaknesses. Some of them have a lot of money at their disposal, others are cash-poor. Some have outright domination of specific parts of the map, others rely entirely on allies for infrastructure. 

Pre-gen characters are nothing new, but I genuinely can't remember the last session where I used them. 

Silent Titans' twist on Into the Odd character creation, with specific characters rather than starter packages, always appealed to me, but could we go further? Lady Blackbird is an obvious example of a game where its established cast of characters are built to interact with each other in interesting ways. 

Weirdly, I think those Murder Mystery dinner-party games could be a useful resource here. I've tried out two or three in my lifetime and I can still remember some of the interactions between characters. 

Maybe the next Electric Bastionland adventure I write will use this approach.

Broad Strokes

This really varies depending on how the Matrix Game is being run. At the start of the game all players receive a generic brief covering public knowledge of the situation, then a private brief detailing their own objectives and starting position in terms of politics, military, economy etc. 

Most guidance I've seen suggests keeping this briefing... well, brief. But of course I had to go further. 

Obviously I tried to do it with three bullet points. 

Partially for the benefit of the players, but to be honest I suspect they would have been just as happy to read a briefing that was a couple of paragraphs long. Mainly, this forced-brevity motivates me to really think about what makes this faction unique. Get their essence distilled down to just the three most important things that the player needs to know.

It relies a lot on reasonable assumptions, which admittedly feels like a potential pitfall. I tempered this slightly by indulging in an entire six bullet points for the general brief that all players had access to, but we'll see how this game pans out. 

So let's say we're running a game in the Warhammer Old World, and our problem is a succession crisis within the Empire. Actors in this situation might represent the Electors vying for the throne, but also the General Populace, the Imperial Colleges of Magic, maybe even one of the Chaos Gods is working their influence in this situation. 

If one such actor is Boris Todbringer then they would already know about the Elector system of the Empire from the general brief, as well as the Emperor's death and the basic identities of the other actors involved.

With those things out of the way we might distil their brief down to:

Boris Todbringer, Elector of Middenland
Starting Position

• You have a strong military, but they are tied up in a gruelling war against the Beastmen in your woodlands.
• Among the other Electors you are respected as a general, but they are wary of the relative independence that Middenland has enjoyed under the late Emperor.
• The Cult of the White Wolf stirs your people into a fervour, currently directed toward fears that a new Emperor would encroach on Middenland's religious traditions. 

It's easy to see how you could follow a similar approach for an RPG character, scaled down to an individual. FKR games in particular seem to do this sort of thing already. 

So that's your starting position, and Turn 1 starts with those fateful words. What do you do?

We all know that such freedom can feel overwhelming, so what are you actually trying to do here?

Self-Assessed Objectives

This is one element that really intrigued me. At the end of the game, all players reveal their objectives and discuss whether they think they achieved them. Ultimately the decision comes down to you, and why lie to yourself? There's no trophy here, and even if you failed then the point of this game is to create an interesting unfolding narrative. 

This sort of freedom lets you really drill down with your objectives. Let's stick with our Boris Todbringer example above.

You could have a really obvious objective like "Be crowned as Emperor".

But let's drill deeper. Ask WHY the Actor would want that. In this case, that leads us to something like "Ensure Middenland maintains its special independence".

So you could do this by winning the throne and favouring Middenland directly, but you could just as much achieve this by reaching a deal with the newly crowned Emperor, or even secede from the Empire entirely. Maybe you just disrupt the whole process so that no Emperor is crowned, stifling any chance of Imperial interference.

It's down to you to judge whether or not you succeeded, so creative problem solving is firmly encouraged. It's possible that every player could achieve both of their objectives, but chances are that some will rub up against each other. 

Some Matrix Games give a giant list of objectives, some just one. For my game I started with the typical three but ended up trimming them down to two. Even more focus, and it lets you create some fun combinations of objectives that seem impossible to achieve simultaneously. Do you go for the double-victory or accept a compromise?

Perhaps Todbringer's second objective relates to a personal matter, or a domestic affair within his domain. He has a sub-plot involving his own succession crisis, with an unfit son as his heir, so he could have "Ensure you have a Strong Heir". 

But let's stick with the domestic, linking back to the White Wolf Cult. These are a powerful organisation within his domain that can be a great asset but a threat if left to run wild.

So we'll settle on the following two objectives:

Boris Todbringer
Objectives

• Ensure Middenland maintains its special independence
• Keep the White Wolf Cult under control

I think you could lift this entire objectives system whole-cloth into a one-shot RPG session. Remember, the key to this is that these objectives would not be tied to character advancement. I think that connection would miss the point of this self-assessment system. 

If you need mechanical motivation to try and achieve your objectives? Well, there's a reason I start my rules document with this:

Expectations

• The goal of the game is to achieve your objectives.
• The point of the game is to create a credible narrative.

It's a bit of a silly semantic thing, but basically I'm asking you to simultaneously Play to Win and also Play to Find Out. I don't think that's too much to ask. 

What's it like to Run?

My Sunrise Expansion game is just about to head into its third turn of eight, so next week I'll be able to talk a little more about that, but I've already found it an incredibly useful and enjoyable experience. In particular I'll talk about the parallels and differences between running a Matrix Game and an RPG, as well as the specific ways I've handled adjudication behind the curtain.

If you're interested in these games in the mean time, there's a pretty thorough video here talking about running them in a training context. 

Paranoia's Iceberg of Secrecy

I've always been aware of Paranoia, but I only played it for the first time at Grogmeet in December.

Its reputation as a silly game of backstabbing and betrayal sounded perfect for a convention one-shot.

This was true! I had a lot of fun playing it, but it stuck with me more than I expected. I've been hoovering up what I can from the new Mongoose edition, the older XP-edition, and any other scraps I can find around, with one eye on running a one-shot when my Traveller campaign wraps up. I'll probably use the core system of the latest edition with bits and pieces pulled from XP. For those in the know, I'm leaning somewhere between straight and classic styles.

Players-conflict is all good fun, but I think it works best when the objectives are carefully designed. It reminds me of Matrix Games, and the importance of setting clear objectives that drive conflict with the rest of the group, but still allow opportunities for cooperation... or at least conspiring.

This is al turned up to eleven with Paranoia because you're likely to start the game with... well, up to six objectives each depending on how you look at it!

Let's see them one-by-one, working our way down the Iceberg of Secrecy. They differ by edition, but here's the configuration I'm working with.

Troubleshooter Job
The only objective that's shared by the whole group. It could be as simple as "deliver a sandwich to this address" or something bigger like "scout out this lost sector and deliver a full report". At first you might think this is the most important objective, but I really see it as a way to shove the group together and kick off the game. There's so much going on beneath the surface that I think this one can be anything that pushes the group into interesting locations.

Mandatory Bonus Duty
Everybody in the team gets a special role, from equipment officer to hygiene officer. The member least qualified for any of them is declared Team Leader instead. The group know each other's MBDs, so it gives some immediate surface-level tension. They're all-responsibility, zero-power, but the Computer will assess your performance during the debrief.

Experimental Gear
R&D are always looking for opportunities to test their creations, so everybody gets one experimental device that they should put through a proper field-test when the opportunity arises. Potentially useful, likely disappointing, often devastating.

Service Group Mandate
The other players know which Service Group (essentially government department) you belong to, but not necessarily the special Mandate you've been handed as their representative. A member of the Power Service might need to recall all batteries from unused devices to recycle their energy, while an Internal Security member might be tipped off to Communist activity in the area you're headed to. These are generally legal, so can be shared with the group, but you never know if one of them is working against you. Maybe it's best to keep it to yourself.

Secret Society Mission
Every character also belongs to a secret society. These are completely illegal, so you definitely don't want the other players to know! In addition to offering the chance to call in favours, you'll be given a secret mission. If you're a member of Haxxors you might need to copy a virus from a rampaging bot you've been advised to avoid, or if you're a Free Enterprise spiv you might have a case of stolen pharmaceuticals to sell-on. Yeah, selling stuff is illegal, so be careful. These missions are especially fun when designed to conflict with each other.

Mutant Power
As if that wasn't enough, you each get a mutant power. Being an unregistered mutant is treasonous in Alpha Complex, but registered mutants often have it even worse, so keep it to yourself. You can just ignore this power and never use it, but I like the powers that tempt you into using them just this once.

Winning the Game
Most RPGs say there's no such thing as "winning the game" but I absolutely plan to count up how many of these objectives each player has achieved and declare a winner.

No reward beyond the victory, but what a victory it could be!

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This post was originally sent as a reward to all Patreon supporters, and is released freely on this site the week after its original publication.

If you want to support my blog, podcasts, and video content then head over to my Patreon.

Matrices

This Bastionland Editorial was originally sent as a reward to all Patreon supporters, and is released freely on this site a week after its original publication.

If you want to support my blog, podcasts, and video content then head over to my Patreon.

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Since last week's first dip into Classic Traveller I've gone through the rest of the book pretty much cover to cover.

The Blog Tales to Astound has written the definite series of posts exploring these books in isolation from the rest of the Traveller series. In particular there's a lot of content supporting the fact that the designer, Marc Miller, mostly played a stripped back and improvisational version of the game. 

I think the fact that I'd heard about that before going into the book set me up with a false sense of security. 

I wasn't ready for the Matrices.

Precise travel times, often down to the second, for 6 measures of acceleration across 22 distances. I can live with that. It's over the top detail but it's useful to know how long these things take.

Jump potential, mass, and build time for 24 classes of jump drive. I mean, the whole ship building system is pretty crunchy, so I feel like this isn't a massive intrusion here.

But the personal combat section is the one that turned me off. At first I see that promising  mechanic that always seems to be lurking in the background here. Roll 2d6, add your modifiers, and aim for 8+.

Add your skill points in your weapon, obviously.

And make sure you apply the right modifiers for having a high enough STR/DEX to make the most of this weapon. The score required and modifier granted depending on weapon, of course. 

Then check the modifier for your weapon at the current range

Then go to a separate table to get a modifier for your weapon against the specific type of armour the target is wearing. 

Oh and subtract 4 if the target is in cover, or 1 if they're in concealment, but only if they've already attacked and revealed themselves. And 3 if you drew your weapon this turn.

Also subtract the target's Blade skill if they're parrying, or a different number for different ranges if they declare they're evading.

It reaches such levels of stacking that I totally understand why so many people run Traveller with "roll 2d6 plus some modifiers based on what the Referee decides". But there's no escaping that this book, rules as written, is one that's going to send you deep into some table to find a precise answer time after time. 

I'm sure it's not that difficult once you've acclimatised to it, and gone through a few combats to get used to things, but it definitely doesn't appeal to me. 

It reminds me of one of my regular design goals of distillation, one of the mantras of which is "Replace rules requiring referencing with principles to internalise". 

I would have much preferred a page of guidance for how to apply referee-adjudicated modifiers in combat. Maybe a checklist of elements to consider when making that ruling?

In spite of all this Matrix-bashing, I can't bring myself to hate on Traveller. Something still draws me in. Maybe next week I'll know what I'm planning to do about that. 

Objective Differentiation

I like each player's character to feel different to the others. It doesn't need to be full-on mechanical niche protection, but you should feel like you've got your own thing going on. 

In Electric Bastionland or Into the Odd this is likely to be through your equipment, arcana/oddities, or just strange abilities.

In this Primordial Thing I'm messing with there are still special abilities and gear, but also more of a focus on having specific knowledge and hooks to the world around you.

But an area I've been wanting to explore for a while is that of character differentiation through Objectives.

I touched on it with the Agendas in Collaborative Bastionland, and more so with my dip into Matrix Games/Open Strategy Games.

There are lots of tabletop games that focus in on differentiating players through objectives rather than focusing on abilities. One Night Ultimate Werewolf has variable powers and player knowledge, but some characters like the Tanner exist purely to disrupt the game through their unusual agenda. In this case, they're the only player that wants to get eliminated, but otherwise behave exactly as a regular villager. 

Naturally, things that work in a board game don't always work in an RPG, but I'm always interested in seeing if the fun-essence can be extracted. The obvious hurdle is that the examples I've given have all been competitive, rather than cooperative, but we can get over that. 

Let me try and put it into something a bit more useable. 

Objectives

Each character has three Objectives, the first of which is always a common objective shared by the group. The remaining two are personal to each character. 

Each character's personal objectives should be unique. They might clash with other characters' objectives, but should not be in outright opposition. 

At the end of each session, the group as a whole decide whether or not they achieved their objective. Each player then self-assesses their own success at achieving each of their own objectives. 

The goal of the game is to achieve at least two of your three Objectives. 

What, No Reward?

Yeah, I mean you wanted to play a game, right? I'm telling you that you win the game by achieving the majority of your objectives. We might all win, all lose, or more likely have a bit of a mix. When you win at Carcassonne you don't ask me if you get an extra meeple next time we play.

So strawman arguments aside, I think the self-assessment of objectives only works if they aren't tied to your future success. It's meant to just be a frank, impartial look at how well you achieved your character's goals this game, and if you lose ten weeks running then I'm not going to kick you out of the game or anything. 

The Tricky Part

It's easy for me to pontificate about this system without actually providing any examples of what these Objectives might look like, and that's because their design is really the difficult part of this system. 

You want them broad enough to be relevant across a wide range of scenarios, but specific enough to give character and drive. Difficult enough to be challenging, but not impossible. Providing some conflict between characters without grinding the group's progress down to constant philosophical debate. 

As much as I'd love them to just be a big random table, I feel like they call for a more bespoke design process for each character. 

So I'm going to write an entire post about that next week. Consider yourself teased. 

Anything to get them through the door.

The Great Game-Book Dig

I love scouring old game books, or even books only loosely related to RPGs, and finding nuggets of thought that are useful in running and designing games.

Sometimes a passage just makes me laugh, which I'm holding in equal value for this post.

Let's pick out some assorted thoughts from recent reads.

Pan Book of Party Games (1958) and The Second Pan Book of Party Games (1963) - Joseph Edmundson

The name and dates of publication give you a pretty good idea what to expect here. There's not much I've found that can be mined for current tastes, except for some truly brutal rules for a series of beach-based wrestling games that would be a great fit for Electric Bastionland.

This was my favourite, especially when I thought the "clasping hands around the neck" was a choking motion, rather than something more like slow-dancing. 

Also I'll present this without further comment.

Maelstrom (1984) - Alexander Scott 

I find this whole book fascinating. It predates Advanced Fighting Fantasy but shares some of its presentation, even including a FF-style solo adventure in the book. It's almost a straight-up historical game, but has a punishing magic system. It's relatively light on rules but has that classic minutiae of the era with distinctions between musician, minstrel, and actor training times, and descriptions of five different types of fraudulent beggars. And, of course, critical wound tables. 

But there's one bit of weird-detail that got me thinking. There aren't stats for a sword, there are stats for seven different swords.

BUT it's not the usual D&D thing of having falchions and sabres and rapiers all function slightly differently. Instead, you can just buy better quality swords that are significantly better (and more expensive) than the inferior options.

D&D has its Masterwork swords, but I like the solid, grounding feel of being able to kit yourself out with just a really good sword, and knowing that an opponent with an even more finely crafted weapon is a real threat.  

Playing Politics (1997) - Michael Laver

This book contains a number of games, I guess varying from "party games" to "strategy games", that aim to reveal something about the political process. 

I stumbled onto this while I was reading about Nomic games, which is a rabbit-hole I'd be interested to spend proper time diving into. 

The part I find interesting here is that each game is presented in three sections.

Section 1: The Rules. Just the hard essentials.
Section 2: Playing the Game. Tips for how to play the game, some of the tough decisions that come up, peeking into some of the depths.
Section 3: Real Games. Insight from the designer based on the actual games that they've played and parallels to real political scenarios (from national government to selling a car).

I feel like there's merit in the idea of an RPG with an extensive "play report" section that breaks down some of the designers own experiences playing the game. We're so used to stilted examples of play, but why not draw on the reality of your game as it hits the table?

One Hour Wargames (2014) - Neil Thomas 

This book is a solid example of a phrase I keep parroting: Put the Core to Work. Basically, I like the approach of giving a game a solid core that needs little explanation, then exploring that core both in breadth of possibilities and ensuring that the player gets the best use out of that compact nucleus. N++ is a great example that I've spoken about at length.

The rules are simple and fast, as the name suggests, fitting on three A5 pages with spacious layout. I reckon you could easily get them down to a single reference sheet.

Then the game repeats these same rules across 9 different eras from Classical to WW2, each like a small, self-contained hack of the original. Each era has just four types of unit. Most eras tweak a rule here or there, so pivoting a unit is more difficult in the tight formations of the Medieval Era than the looser squads of the Machine Age. Some luxuriate in adding in a special rule, like Indirect Fire for Mortars in WW2, but every decision is outlined in a small article prefacing the rules, explaining why the changes were made in order to reflect the warfare of that period. It feels like additions were only made when the designer felt it justified even the smallest increase in rules complexity. 

Then it gives you 30 Scenarios that can be used for each eras, describing some historical battles that influenced it. 

I haven't even tried the game out, and I'm not entirely sold on the specific mechanics and scenarios, but there's something about the approach here that inspires me.

Top Ten Games You Can Play In Your Head By Yourself (2019) - Sam Gorski and D.F. Lovett

So this game is pitched in a sort of "found footage" way that might be the most exciting thing about it. 

The story goes that this book contains 6 volumes from an out-of-print series of games from the 80s/90s. Like Choose your own Adventure but replace all rules with IMAGINE IT and most content with IMAGININE HARDER.

There's a bit of structure to get you started but... I'm not actually going to try and explain how these games are meant to work. There are better write-ups elsewhere and I'm actually more interested in the presentation than the content.

Reading it for the first time is one of those "is this real?" moments that creates quite a unique experience. It's like those lucky few that saw the Blair Witch Project believing it to be genuine footage.

If this was presented as a new book written by the actual authors it would feel awkward and incomplete. If it was presented as an open pastiche it would feel toothless and trivial. But instead, if you allow yourself to embrace the fiction of this being a lost treasure from the past... it has a life of its own.

Some RPGs touch on this idea, but I've never seen it taken to this depth. I'm not even sure it could be done to this extent in an area that has been so rigorously documented over the years, but there's some power here. I just don't know how you'd tap into it yet.

The Complete Book of Card Games (2001) - Peter Arnold

I wanted to read about some card games to see a set of mechanics that are all based on the same limited set of components. It's that old Put the Core to Work thing again, right?

Well, I enjoy a card game, but I think I've learned more about what I dislike in games from reading their rules. 

I'm calling this section "Arbitrary Bullshit" and card games love this sort of thing.

There are dozens of examples, but just one:

"A short pack of 32 cards is used. Removed form the standard pack are the 8s, 5s, 4s, 3s, and 2s. The cards rank in the order 7, 6, A, K, Q, J, 10, 9"

Now I'm sure these little fiddly rules exist for a reason, and removing them makes the game worse, or maybe just not work at all. There must be a reason why 6 outranks 9, but not 7. Well maybe that's a sign something else could be changed in this game? 

Stay tuned for my Kickstarter campaign for a book of ultra-streamlined card games coming 2029.

The Matrix Games Handbook (2018) - John Curry

Matrix Games are big, multiplayer, somewhat free-form wargames that rely a lot on adjudication over hard rules. I find this whole area of games fascinating. I'd like to write in more detail at a later date, but for now there's one thing I like from here.

Their approach to objectives got me thinking. One of the example games is based on Iraq in 2014 and has players taking on roles of the US, ISIS, The Iraqi Government, The Iraqi Opposition, Kurdish Regional Government, Iran. Obviously they've all got vastly different resources they can deploy.

(sidenote: I have no idea how accurately or appropriately any of these are represented, but just using it for an example here)

Each faction also has one or two situational advantages/disadvantages intended to abstract another aspect of the larger political situation. Some factions are just outright better or worse than others if you judge them on these alone.

But at the end of the game, the only thing that matters is your set of three or four unique Objectives.  These are often down to self-assessment at the end of the game. You have to just look at them and discuss with the other player "Have I discouraged Kurdish separatism?" or "Have I avoided US Ground Troops being deployed?".

Asymmetry is nothing new, but I like the looseness of their objectives. I've seen similar systems in place for XP systems in RPGs, but again I feel like there's more that can be taken from this idea.

Zach-Like: A Game Design History (2019) - Zach Barth

The Zachtronics games are a series of problem-solving games that often draw on principles of programming and optimisation.

Note that I say problem-solving, not puzzle games. They present you with a task and the games are usually about solving it in various ways that might optimise speed, simplicity, or efficiency. 

This four-hundred page book is snippets from the design documents of various Zachtronics games going all the way back to the designer's school days. There are hex-based wargames scrawled in pencil and half-baked RPG systems, all the way up to prototype level sketches for their most recent games.

I've hidden from some of my old game designs in shame, telling myself that they're just relics from before I knew better. But Zach appears to revel in his old ideas, often revisiting them as inspiration for the next big, polished release. It's inspired me to rethink how I treat my poor, abandoned old creations. 

Distraction

This Bastionland Editorial was originally sent as a reward to all Patreon supporters, and is released freely on this site a week after its original publication.

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I'm writing this as I watch the final hour of the Into the Odd Remastered Kickstarter tick down, so forgive me if I'm slightly distracted.

The truth is that I've spent most of this campaign distracted by other things. Nothing like the requirement to focus on one project to get your brain sparking to life on ever other project you have on your back burner. 

So what's been distracting me during this time?

Buying more old game books. Not a new distraction for me, but this time I'm focusing in on wargame rules. Not the big glossy type, but strange little print on demand books that read like they were written by one person in their attic, or notebooks dug up from a 70s time capsule. I'm not sure how useful any of these will be to my work, but there's something that draws me in. 

I've been tinkering with Matrix Games some more, too, picking up a book of Modern Crisis Scenarios. As you might guess, they're often a bit verbose for my tastes, so perhaps I'll take on the challenge of converting the complex flashpoint of the South China Sea into three-bullet briefings for each of the main players. More likely I'll adapt the real world scenarios into something fictional so that I don't cause a geopolitical incident with my gross oversimplification.

And a fucking free auto-battler game that I should never have downloaded refuse to link to. It's hijacked my brain and you needn't suffer the same fate. There's powerful psychology at work with this game, and perhaps I'll write about it properly when I'm less under dominated by its dark coercions.

Now maybe one quick game on my lunch break.