My current such project is Karthador, the pulp science-fantasy roleplaying game I’m developing for Reality Blurs. While mashing story and game together, I came up with a fun, exciting element I wanted to include in the world. The problem was, as soon as I dug into the game mechanics of this thing, I started opening cans of worms like a coked-up cyborg with can-openers for hands, and found myself drowning in worms. Oh, they were mechanical worms — composed of skills, dice, and tiered arcane edges — but still. Drowning. In worms.

One rule I try to follow in both stories and game is “keep it clean.”

In a short story, every word counts. No waste. No extra sentences. Every element must work together and have a purpose. If it’s not pulling its weight, it gets cut. Do we really need a paragraph describing the old stone tower? If it’s not an important landmark, no. Just note that it’s “crumbling” and move on.

Likewise, a solid game design should use no more mechanics than necessary to achieve the desired effect, whether mechanical or aesthetic. Do we really need to bid our secondary resources in a blind auction to determine who goes first? If it’s not important who goes first, no. Just roll a die for it and move on.

Once I realized the mechanics just weren’t working, I took a step back and asked myself some questions:

What is the purpose of this element? “The purpose,” I answered myself, ignoring the odd looks from my wife, “is to provide story hooks for the players and plot devices for the GM.”

Can it achieve this purpose without game mechanics attached to it? “Well… Yeah, I guess so. It can still be a cool story thing without having its own system.”

Then cut the mechanic, but leave the element. “Hey, that’s not a question.”

Umm… Shut up. “No. You shut up.”

…and that’s why I don’t often participate in these external Socratic dialogs.

We’ve all heard of “killing our darlings” in fiction. Well, it’s true in game design too. Sometimes, the game sub-system you love the most is actually a worm, and you got to squash that thing before it drowns you.

Keep it clean. Your players may thank you for it.

My daughters were dubious.

“What is this?” asked Thing Two, in the same tone of voice she uses when she finds something on her supper plate outside the regulation nuggets and noodles.

“It’s cool,” I said. “It’s got adventure, and magic. And puppets.”

“This looks seriously creepy,” said Thing One. At ten, she recognizes creepy when she sees it.

Menacing Muppets

Thing One is right. The Dark Crystal is a seriously creepy-looking movie:

• The vulturous, skeletal Skeksies are pure nightmare fuel, and could only be more horrifying if you gave them clown noses and a key to your house.
• The giant beetle-like Garthim are, well, giant freaking beetles that can apparently smash through any wall like hideous multi-legged Kool-Aid men.
• Even our alleged hero Jen (who is, by his own admission, not very good at his job), is an early settler of the uncanny valley: his movements say he’s human, but his weird muppet-goat face says he’s definitely not.

Thing Two dealt with this tidal wave of creepiness by wandering into another corner of the room, turning her back to the TV, and firing up some game apps on her mother’s Kindle Fire.

Her older sister stuck with it. “This is really creeping me out,” she said. “But I can’t stop watching.”

Lessons of the Dark Crystal

After thinking about it, I realized the movie’s real problem is not that it’s creepy, but that it’s inaccessible.

Consider:

• It starts with two minutes of voice-over explaining the background, while we’re shown images of a weird, alien landscape.
• The first scene with actual characters in it features the Skeksis getting crystal-powered energy beams blasted into their eyes. This is apparently a good thing.
• We don’t even meet our hero (the closest thing the movie has to a relatable human character) until ten minutes into the movie, after having our minds blown and eyes seared by Jim Henson’s circus of animatronic horrors.

It’s okay if your story and world are creepy or weird. But you need to transition to that space from the mundane world. Don’t throw the audience into the deep end. Lead them gently down the stairs at the shallow end of the pool, giving them time to adjust and become immersed.

Or, to abuse a different metaphor, don’t smash them through the wall like a Kool-Aid man, but usher them through a door in the form of a relatable character or situation. Your audience will thank you for it. And your story’s wall will remain more structurally-sound.

Okay, Aristotle never wrote about game design. But he did write about spectacle. He called it out as a part of drama–but the least-important part. He said the audience could get just as much out of a play by merely reading it, regardless of the costumes, sets, and special effects (which consisted of a proto-Michael Bay standing off-stage shouting “Boom!” when the giant Greek robot exploded).

Games have spectacle too. Video games are full of the stuff, with their cut-scenes, eye-melting graphics, surround sound, and dramatic voice-overs. For games on the tabletop, the spectacle comes from the flashiness of the components: playing pieces, artwork on the box, or battery-stuffed doodads that light up or talk to you.

As in drama, it could be argued that this is the least-important part of a game. As long as you have your game mechanics and victory conditions, you don’t need gorgeous graphics (in a video game) or enormous boards covered in detailed plastic miniatures (in a board game).

Spectacle may not be essential to game play, but I’d say it definitely has a place in game design.

Spectacle as Reward

The most common role of spectacle in video games has traditionally been as a reward. Congrats on finishing that level! Here’s a sweet cut-scene with spaceships. Hey, you leveled up — here’s an explosion of numbers and a rumbling bass line to help you celebrate! You nailed the last peg in Peggle? Here’s some Ode to Joy and slow-motion rainbows for you!

We can use these rewards to encourage specific behaviors. If we want the player to explore the world in a video game, we can make sure that doing so rewards him with dramatic views of the environment. If we want to encourage pulling off that unlikely, but fun special move, the move should result in such a cavalcade of wonders, the player can’t wait to pull it off again.

Spectacle as Exposition

Story is also another element that’s not essential to a game, but can elevate a merely good game to something with deeper engagement and immersion. It’s no surprise that they often go hand-in-hand.

The best most recent example is the opening to SKYRIM. While you’re still playing the game (it’s not a cut-scene), your actions are limited to simply looking around, so there’s no actual game play going on. Instead, you’re treated to some dialog from other characters explaining where you are, who they are, and how you’re all about to be executed–and then the dragon attacks! It’s exciting, dramatic stuff, but it serves a purpose; it gives you all the background information you need to understand the context in which you’re playing the game.

Spectacle as Game Play

“Liar!” you may be shouting at your screen. “You said that spectacle had nothing to do with game play!” But that’s not technically true.

Technically, I said that spectacle is not essential to game play. That doesn’t mean you can’t integrate it into the game play. This is usually found in the form of a scripted event: You turn the corner and see a giant alien tripod stomp into view for the first time, a building explodes, or the game unleashes some other spectacular set-piece. No, you can’t control when the tripod appears, or stop the building from exploding, but you’re still in control. You’re still playing the game. The spectacle is simply part of that game play experience.

The Purpose of Spectacle

These are the main roles that spectacle can fill in video games. The purpose of these roles is to entertain the player in ways that he can’t be entertained by the game play alone. Game play appeals to the thoughtful, puzzle-solving, pattern-memorizing parts of our brains that like to be challenged. Spectacle speaks straight to the adolescent pyromaniac parts of our brains that love to watching things sparkle, dance, and blow up.

And as Abraham Lincoln once said, “Spectacle may not be essential, but it’s still awesome.”

What other spectacle roles did I miss? What did I miss out on regarding spectacle in tabletop games? Let me know in the comments, and let’s discuss!

Some might say that too much randomness in a game is a bad thing. To those people I say: You’re right. But that’s not the point of this post.

Without randomness, gameplay becomes a pattern to be repeated until mastered. I loved Super Mario Brothers, but I would have loved it more if I wasn’t able to simply memorize every level. Throw in some random goombas where they weren’t before, and I’d be surprised and delighted. Instead, I’m running, jumping and tossing fireballs with my brain switched off.

Randomness helps level the playing field between players of different skill levels. Yes, you’ve been playing Magic: the Gathering for so long, your first deck is old enough to drink in most states. And yes, I’ve just cracked my first starter deck this morning. But if you don’t draw the right cards out of your randomized deck, this noob still has a chance to beat you.

On a related note, randomness lets players take chances. No, you probably shouldn’t charge that machine gun nest with your sword-wielding Hobbit. (Who brings a Hobbit to a gunfight anyway?) But you can still try, and if the dice roll your way–if you get lucky–you might end up with a Hobbit behind enemy lines holding a captured M-60.

But the best thing that randomness does for games is help create stories.

Rolling a natural 20 when your Dwarven fighter needed it most? Drawing the King you needed to finish that winning hand? Stumbling onto a dragon while running from giants in Skyrim? These are the incidents we remember–the stories that we tell–and they are all blessings of randomness.

This, more that anything else, is why I love a healthy level of randomness in any game I play or design. There’s a place for chess and the like, with their pure, beard-stroking strategy. It’s a good place. A fine place. It’s just a place without many memorable moments.

If you have any tales of randomness to share, please leave 3d20 words on the topic in the comments.

So yes, if the American government’s commitment to Hollywood hadn’t hijacked the blog for a week, I surely would have mentioned that the new expansion for The Big Bang Theory: Mystic Warlords of Ka’a has just come out.

For the uninitiated, Mystic Warlords is a Facebook card game. It’s based on the card game played by the characters in the Big Bang Theory television show. It’s a fantasy game, with elves and dragons and magic swords and such, but it’s got a wide vein of humor running through it, in the Big Bang Theory style.

The game is developed by those stalwart champions of online card games, Dire Wolf Digital, who I’ve been helping out with game design duties. The expansion features a ton of new cards, the deliciously eeevil Twilight Elf faction, and some cool new mechanics. If you’re (a) on Facebook, (b) like card games, or (c) like The Big Bang Theory, you should take the game for a spin and see what it takes to be mystic warlord.

You might not think these laws would affect you. After all, you’re not pirating movies or running websites with user-generated content. But let’s look again at that bullet point from the Entertainment Consumers Association:

It strips current laws by now making internet companies, which used to be immune, liable for their users’ communications.  This means that Facebook, Youtube, WordPress, Google and more are now on the hook for what you post.

Now put yourself in the shoes of one of these companies. If any one of your millions of users posts a copyrighted photo, a music video, a scene from a movie or TV show, or even links to another site that hosts one of these things… You could be shut down and liable for astronomical sums in damages. What’s the most logical thing to do? Prevent users from posting things, of course.

Well, that kills Facebook, Youtube, WordPress, Google (via WordPress and Google+), LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, and virtually every other social media site or service online. Message boards? Gone. DropBox? Gone. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if it killed online e-mail services; after all, e-mail can be used to send links to pirated materials.

Now put yourself in the shoes of an important person who doesn’t like what people are saying on a given website. Under these laws, all it takes is an official copyright infringement complaint, and that website is gone. Don’t like the site broadcasting news of the Occupy movement? Point out that they don’t have the official written permission to show the news footage of the protest. Want to keep your people ignorant of your human rights violations? Claim the site pirated your copyrighted images. (It doesn’t matter if they did or not; all it take is an accusation to get them shut down, and the probably don’t have the lawyers or money to prove the accusation false.)

Censorship is a slippery slope.

Google’s got a petition up today. I’m skeptical of petitions–especially online petitions–doing any good. But it’s Google, so I’m sure they’ll get thousands and thousands of “signatures,” most of which are not “Mickey Mouse,” which will at least make it awkward for politicians  to continue to ignore their constituents.

I’m talking about the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261, “SOPA”) and its Senate counterpart, PROTECT IP Act (S. 968, “PIPA”). The alleged purpose of these bills is to shut down websites that provide unauthorized access to copyrighted materials: books, music, movies, and other media.

I can get behind that idea. As a guy who makes his living with words and games, I’m not too keen on folks pirating those things and not paying for me them. I like getting paid. But still I don’t like SOPA / PIPA. Why not?

Here, I’ll post this handy list from the Entertainment Consumers Association hit the high points:

• It strips current laws by now making internet companies, which used to be immune, liable for their users’ communications. This means that Facebook, Youtube, WordPress, Google and more are now on the hook for what you post.
• It gives the US Attorney General, with court order, the power to seize websites that possibly infringe or partially infringe copyright. There would be no due process and no chance to defend yourself before the seizure. The mere accusation can get a website taken away.
• It violates Net Neutrality by ordering internet providers, advertising companies and payment systems to block accused websites with technology that just doesn’t exist.
• It threatens users by imposing fines or jail time for posting even derivatives of copywrited work(s). A video of your karaoke, playing the piano, video game speed trial would now all be punishable if a copyright holder decides to enforce it.

Furthermore (as if that wasn’t enough), even though these laws would make American Internet look like China’s or Iran’s, it still won’t stop piracy. The core effect of the bills is to target specific websites–and that sort of whack-a-mole legislation isn’t going to do anything. If we’ve learned anything from over a decade of trying to police content on the Internet, it’s that as soon as you shut down one “rogue site,” another one appears with the same content. Putting more laws on the books won’t change anything.

So what can we do?

I know it’s a cliche, but please, contact your Congressional representatives and Senators and tell them this is a terrible idea.

The ECA has a handy form for finding your congressional people, complete with a well-worded letter to copy, paste, and make your own.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also has guidelines for contacting politicians.

Stop American Censorship has a full program of actions you can take to fight these bills and raise awareness of the problem.

Blackoutsopa.org has a handy tool for tweaking your avatars to support the cause. It’s a little thing, akin to wearing a pink ribbon. No, it doesn’t stop the cancer, but it does remind people there’s something out there trying to kill them (or in this case, the Internet).

My wife has long stated her heart-felt intention to read the comics. “Oh, a new one,” she’s said every month for the past eight years. “I love zombies. I should read that.” (Every month. For eight years.)

But it wasn’t until the second season of the Walking Dead TV series on AMC that she asked me to pull the comics out for her. I gave the woop of joy unique to the geek who gets to share the media he loves with the woman he loves, sprang to the comics closet where I keep my longboxes, and realized:

Every month. For eight years. That’s a lot of comics.

I’ve always claimed that when it came to comics, I’m a reader, not a collector. But if you’re reading 5-10 comics a month since 1990 or so, you’re still going to build up quite a collection. And if you’re me (I know you’re not, but since I started this paragraph in second person, I’m feeling committed to it), you haven’t kept them quite as organized as you’d hoped, so finding all 90+ issues of a single series means digging through a lot of comics. I mean a lot a lot. I mean if one of those bookshelves of longboxes tipped over, it would have crushed me.

I found all but one or two of issues of The Walking Dead. It took hours of digging over the course of several days, but I was pleased with the results:

1. My wife is caught up.
2. I’m eyeballing comiXology.

For the uninitiated, comiXology is a service providing electronic versions of comics, especially on your handheld device. You could consider it an iTunes of comics.

If I’m really a reader, not a collector, this should be perfect for me — especially since I (a) now have a handheld device device and (b) am worried those “Hoarders” TV folks are going to start poking around my closets, clucking and tutting like disapproving Geiger counters.

And yet… Every month. For eight years. That’s more than a habit. That’s a tradition. Even if I do follow the future down the e-published rabbit hole, I don’t think I can give up the local comic shop.

I’m too much of a collector.

Last year, I saw that my my eldest daughter, Thing One, was poking around at Pokemon. Her friends were playing. She had watched a few episodes of the TV show. She knew the names of a handful of critters beyond Pikachu and… um… that one fiery guy. You know. The lizard.

“Excellent,” I said myself in my best Mr. Burns voice. “First Pokemon. Then Magic: the Gathering. And from there, it’s a short slide down the slippery slope to Pathfinder, Axis and Allies, or Call of Cthulhu.”

I stifled an evil laugh as I sprang to the Internet to order a bulk pack of random, but playable, Pokemon cards.

That was a mistake.

I’ve since learned that, like most kids, Thing One liked the idea of Pokemon, but had no idea how to play the game. Even the kids who were “playing the game” didn’t know how to actually play the game: they just picked some number on the cards to compare, and turned it into “war” with cute Japanese critters. (“My Turtleduck has 80 hp, which is more than your Squisheedog’s 50 hp, so I win!”)

A year later, most of those cards have wandered off into the elementary school plaything ecosystem, traded away for Silly Bands, erasers, heroin, or whatever the fad is this week.

This Christmas, I decided, things would be different. This Christmas, Thing Two is old enough to be interested in Pokemon too. And this Christmas, rather a hundred random cards, I picked up and wrapped a two-player starter set.

With rules. And instructions on how to actually play the game.

Several days and several games later, it’s going rather well. I taught Thing One to play while her sister was visiting some friends, so it was just the two of us. We used the walk-through that came with the starter set (“Don’t shuffle the decks! Draw the cards when the instructions tell you to!”) which, while slow and dry, did a good job of introducing each concept and card-type in small, bite-sized chunks. By the time we finished, we were quite bored, but definitely knew how to play the game.

When Thing Two got home, her sister taught her how to play, with me standing by to help just in case. Since then, I’ve played two more games with Thing Two, and she’s suggested we do a round-robin tournament between the three of us, scoring points for each win. “I can use my whiteboard to track the points,” she said. She’s very big on tracking points.

So far, so good. But I don’t think they’re at the top of that slippery slope leading to the Magic: the Gathering pro tour just yet. To get there, they’ll need to be able to play by themselves. Christmas vacation won’t last forever; I won’t always be here to play the game with them.

But we’ve got until Monday to cross that hurdle. I think after this week’s tournament (with a booster-pack prize!) we can make it happen.

Over the weekend, I set up a creative mode server on the local network for them to play on together.

They love it.

The only thing better than unleashing your inner LEGO maniac is doing so with someone else. Creating in a vacuum can be fun, but it’s exponentially better when you can tell someone, “Hey, come check out this thing I made!”

It’s interesting to observe my girls playing on the server world. They play much as they do in real life: each stakes out a section of territory, sets it up according to her tastes, then visits the other’s turf to see what’s going on. Only now, instead of using dolls or toy animals as visitors and characters, they use themselves… and their imaginations.

“Let’s say we’re pilgrims,” says the oldest, who was recently learning about the Plymouth Rock gang as part of the traditional Thanksgiving-tide history unit.

“Okay,” says the younger. “And I’m pretending that my character is a girl.”

(Mental Note: Download some skins for them, so they don’t both look like Minecraft Steve.)

(Second Mental Note: Don’t show them how to download skins themselves, or they’ll fill my hard drive with them.)

What I find most fascinating is that, while they’re playing in this new, imaginary universe of blocks and infinite chickens, they’re still playing in their usual world: the one of shared imagination. They aren’t worried about victory conditions, or even making up their own ways to “win.” They’re just playing.

They’re treating it as a toy, not a game.

And that’s all good. They’re kids, playing. They don’t need no steeenking victory conditions. All they need is fun.

I wonder if other, more ostensibly “social” games could take a cue from this. Could you have a purely fun, “creative” mode in, say, Farmville? Or maybe a mode in Starcraft in which the players take ten minutes to make the coolest-looking bases they design, then invite each other over to admire them. Yes, yes, at this point we’re giving up all pretense of these things being games, but by embracing a toy-like sandbox approach, could they reach a wider audience?

Play… without competition. I can see the appeal. But how would you monetize such a thing? If you have any ideas on the subject, please pass ‘em along in the comments.