Almost every day there's a Spam comment posted somewhere in the articles section; since when I log in over there it tells me where all the new comments are posted, I get to find them and delete them--but I also get reminded of articles I or someone else wrote years ago, and sometimes I re-read these articles.
I remember maybe a couple years back that I was going to attempt to re-introduce all the Game Ideas Unlimited articles in sequential order, week by week. That project fell by the wayside somewhere along the way, mostly because I didn't have time every week to look up the next article, find the correct link, and post it. But since the Spam posts give me links to the old articles, it becomes easy to get the links and post them here. So here are a couple of old articles from which you might benefit, either because you weren't around when they first appeared or because you (like I) have forgotten them.
The first is one of the quarter summary articles--in the series, every thirteenth article represented the end of three months and thus provided a quick index of the old ones. The links have been repaired, so you can trace back to the other (many interesting) articles it indexes possibly all the way to the beginning of the series (this is the eighteen month mark, article number 78 if I did my math right--yes, got the same answer doing it a different way). It's called Game Ideas Unlimited: Reports, and covers the ideas of having your players submit in-character reports to some in-game superior about their in-game activities. This has a lot of interesting benefits, covered briefly there and in the article cited there (whose link has also been repaired).
The second, Game Ideas Unlimited: Cumulative, is an examination of one of the quirks of dice probabilities often overlooked by players, referees, and designers alike. It's worth reading, just so that next time you pick up the dice you'll realize the hidden dangers in making that roll.
You're welcome to post comments there, or here, or in new threads on the forum. I look forward to new thoughts on old ideas, but even to old thoughts repeated by way of reminder. New threads here are probably the best option, because more people will participate.
--M. J. Young
See that? It happened again. It has been quite a while since I read Game Ideas Unlimited: Romanian, which is a discussion of skills player characters probably don't have and how to bring them into play.
--M. J. Young
I still remember that one. I always thought it was cool.
I haven't gotten a chance to read the article yet, although I intend to at some point tomorrow, but when you mentioned in character reports to superiors it reminded me of a conversation I was having after a RP session the other weekend.
Journals are a great way of really getting into your character. Writing and publishing the journal to a spoof blog both allows you to really get into what drives your character as well as allowing those you just gamed with to see why your character may have done something.
I did get a chance to read the cumulative dice thread. (I prioritized it as I like math related topics)
I feel a caveat is necessary after reading that, as cumulative rolls are absolutely necessary when an active search is going on. This was alluded to on the topic that the reason they don't all get a roll is because they aren't actively searching, but I felt the flip side was important enough to point out.
A team of 5 adventurers reach a dead end room. They know they just chased a guy here. He couldn't have slipped passed them. They now all actively search the room, so they all should get their roll, as they are independently searching, as opposed to simply noticing. Likewise if an enemy has such reason to actively search for the adventurer.
D&D 4.0 has a decent way of dealing with this, not the best, but a very easy method for the GM. Players have a passive perception, which is their average roll. Unless actively looking, they get their passive. This simulates the idea of walking by without reason to specifically be looking for something out of the ordinary.
Not sure it's necessary to go quite that far, as a good GM is perfectly capable of telling when a party is actively searching or just noticing, but it does take out a place to go wrong.
Oh, I certainly agree that sometimes everyone gets a check because everyone is doing something. If you've got ten people searching the odds of one of them finding are very much better than if you have one. On the other hand, if you have ten people walking through the room where someone or something is hidden, the odds on one of them stumbling over it are not significantly better (and might be worse) than if it were one.
And the referee has to realize this and figure his rolls accordingly.
--M. J. Young
Another one got hit: Game Ideas Unlimited: Advances. On this board, we often talk about what the world would be like if specific things were different, but this article suggests making that part of the game--that is, starting with the world as it is, and introducing the new advances that change it, and letting the players figure out how those devices change their lives.
--M. J. Young
Oh, right, I remember that one. I forgot all about it. I like it, as long as there are versers who would actually stay on a world for longer then a year. Like Harry, but then voluntary. The game I'm in has, as far as I know, only tech that fits in the middle ages, so advancement would be slow I guess. I'd have to stay alive enough to evangelize the entire world with all the races. That would be awesome. The changing ways of thinking might challenge the faith as well, like the 'enlightenment' in the Renaissance and the industrial age did. I would probably also see the church split into factions. At least an Elven, Dwarven, Orc and Human denomination I suspect, as culture often defines methods of worship.
So yeah, I like the idea.
Harry introduced the firewatch as an advance as well. Which also is great! He saw things change. He had his own hand in it as well.
Thanks for the comments, Nikolaj. I'd not really been thinking in Multiverser terms on that article--you could do that, but most versers already have notions of how to use technology that hasn't yet been invented, and that was really more about putting player characters into the world and letting them figure out how the new technologies impact them in their worlds.
Hit another one: Game Ideas Unlimited: Sparkles. It was about noticing something different without understanding quite what it was. It reminds me also of Intuition and Surprise, which I wrote for some other RPG site.
--M. J. Young
And there were two more brought to the fore by Spammers today, both worth mentioning.
Game Ideas Unlimited: Hordes talks about ways to create those vast armies needed for desperate battles against incredible odds, and offers several ways to make it happen.
Game Ideas Unlimited: Invisible Coins might be one of my favorites. It's about perceiving dice as a tool to help you understand what you want in play.
--M. J. Young
hahahaha I love the invisible coins article.
And another arises, thanks to our Spammers: Game Ideas Unlimited: Token talks about scenario design and small rewards.
--M. J. Young
Oh, and I, too, am fond of the Invisible Coins article.
--M. J. Young
Today's Spam poster focused on Game Ideas Unlimited: Food, which focuses on the questions of what members of demihuman and alien races or cultures eat. For worldbuilders out there, it might spark some ideas.
I also encountered an article I enjoyed over at another website. Sandy Antunes has put together a fantasy adventuring party comprised of (wait for it) Disney Princesses. To find out what class he assigns to Ariel, Aurora, Belle, Cinderella, Jasmine, Mulan, Pocahontas, Snow White, and Tiana, check out Sandy's Soapbox #161: 9 Disney Combat Princesses. I'll be interested to see the Multiverser game in which they make an appearance.
--M. J. Young
Hahah, long live Disney. now I know who to choose for the Iron Plane of Karighen. Lol.
Interestingly, the article that was pulled from the archives today is also largely about food: Game Ideas Unlimited: Preservatives is about the problems inherent in providing food and drink for journeys, along with some history of some of the solutions.
--M. J. Young
I think I posted this one sometime over the summer, when someone else posted Spam to it (I think Brock commented on it at that time, but I might be misremembering). However, it is an article dear to my heart, because it was the first article I had published on someone else's web site. I had been invited to join an E-Group (E-Groups were subsumed by Yahoo!Groups sometime later) for people in the role playing game industry, and Gary Gygax posted to the group to say that there was a new role playing site looking for articles from industry people, so I pulled this together, sent it to them asking whether something like that might be useful, and got my answer when it appeared on the site.
And then it got absolutely no reaction on the forums. I poked a bit to get a response, and everyone here thought it was obvious stuff.
Anyway, it is Morality and Consequences: Overlooked Roleplay Essentials, arguing that whatever characters do, good or evil, ought to have repercussions reverberating back upon them from the game world.
If you missed it in July, here's your chance to catch it now.
--M. J. Young
I think I already mentioned Game Ideas Unlimited: Advances earlier in this thread. It just got hit by the roll of the Spammer die again (Die, Spammer! O.K., so I'm a sucker for a pun).
Also hit is one of Eric's old articles, Romance and Difficulty--More Planning, which I wish I had time to reread tonight but maybe I'll be reminded about it because it's linked here.
--M. J. Young
Hey MJ, The link to Game Ideas Unlimited: Advances is broken.
Sure was. Sorry about that--I've fixed it.
--M. J. Young
Got another one: Game Ideas Unlimited: Encounters. It's a distinct take on random encounters (a.k.a. wandering monsters) in which you meet someone you should have expected but didn't.
--M. J. Young
I had forgotten this one: Game Ideas Unlimited: Amazed gives away some of my secrets for creating and breaking mazes, which are interesting parts of some adventure types. I don't use them much in the forum game, because it's difficult for me to keep track of the character's location on the maze and difficult for the player to check whether we're communicating correctly about what his character sees, but they're good for a lot of live play, if you've the patience to create one.
--M. J. Young
This is really funny, because in the world I'm in in the game Eli is running I'm in a maze and just put my hand on the left wall and started walking.
"Obi-Wan has taught you well."
That is funny. I hope you find your way through before Eli reads about how to make it harder. Oh, and I'm proud that you knew the trick. Mama was just saying on her way to work today that you are very smart and had impressed her by knowing where she was yesterday when she answered her cell phone.
Game Ideas Unlimited: Sparkles reappeared this weekend. That's the one in which I intuitively realized something was wrong without quite knowing what it was until I examined it in more detail.
There was also a post reviving Game Ideas Unlimited: Disabilities, which is very much about how people compensate for their weaknesses and play to their strengths, with some good examples along the way.
--M. J. Young
I think both of these are already up there somewhere, but it won't hurt to mention them again. Game Ideas Unlimited: Invisible Coins is the one about using pros to help you identify what you want to have happen in play. Game Ideas Unlimited: Hordes gives tips for running those huge battles in a role playing game situation.
--M. J. Young
Here's another that I had forgotten: Game Ideas Unlimited: Haunting. I would wager that some here have at least observed if not experienced the Haunted House scenario that was developed from that and used at conventions. The questions, and the points, still stand, if anyone is interested in contributing suggestions on worlds that are easy to run in demo settings. I've got Ubercon looming soon.
--M. J. Young
One of my fantasy book reviews got hit this time, In re: Third Eye Shut, a science fantasy graphic novel by Christian Gamers Guild founder Reverend James Aubuchon, which I found quite good once I wrapped my head around the point.
There was also a post on one of the quarterly indexing articles I did for Game Ideas Unlimited, this one entitled Game Ideas Unlimited: Dreams. It took me a while, because not only did I read the article, I fixed most of the links in it, save one that seems not to be responding either on the old server or the new (I hope it's not lost), I also read all or most of several of the articles linked from it. In addition to giving brief summaries of twelve previous articles, this one also speaks of the relationship between dreams and memories, giving an account of my own memory of a childhood dream and relating that to a popular time travel movie.
As they say, 'nuf said about that. You can read it.
--M. J. Young
After a dry spell (well, Game Ideas Unlimited: Advances was hit again, and some articles by others), today there are two of my previous articles recalled by Spammers.
I am particularly fond of Game Ideas Unlimited: Wizardry, because the story and the lessons from it were both written long before there was an article series, and I always found them valuable in play.
Game Ideas Unlimited: Stitches is about settings, focused primarily on how one particular location changed over a period of years, and generally how that applies to creating the appropriate settings. Having watched Back to the Future last night and noticed all their attention to the details of 1955, it was a good choice for today. (It was the little things, like the team of grease monkeys rushing out to check the car that pulled in for gas, and the effort of 1985's Marty to twist the cap off a soda bottle which George easily opened with the opener built into the machine.)
I trust I will return for the rest of the posts later today; meanwhile, enjoy the old articles and the threads in which I am not a participant.
--M. J. Young
I was going to check for article comments and dump the Spam, but in the process I found a (Spam) comment on Game Ideas Unlimited: Reports, which is a quarterly summary article, looking back at the twelve previous articles, and also linking the previous quarterly and another off-site article. That means that in addition to an interesting idea about having players write in-character reports to some non-player superior, you also are linked with brief summaries to several other good ideas.
--M. J. Young
Game Ideas Unlimited: Map is somewhat nostalgic for me, because it recalls events at the beginning of the first high school year (the last four years of standard free public education in the U.S.) of a son who just began his first year on his masters degree (which means he finished those four years plus four years of college to get a bachelors degree and is starting his "graduate" degree work). That, though, is not why it would interest you. It looks at the difference between finding your way on a map and finding your way in the world represented by the map, and offers some suggestions for how to give players the latter experience when what they usually have is the former.
--M. J. Young
I hadn't seen this one in long enough that I had to read it to remind myself what I wrote. Game Ideas Unlimited: Architecture notices that modern buildings seem to be very much the same but older ones were always very varied, and looks at why that is and how it ought to impact our world designs.
--M. J. Young
Game Ideas Unlimited: Sparkles must have come up in some search somewhere, because it was hit again. But also, there's one called Game Ideas Unlimited: Survival, a basic instructional on how to survive in the wilderness with some game application included.
I'm too tired to think more about it than that.
--M. J. Young
I am fighting a nasty cold and spent the better part of this evening asleep one place or another. (One of those places was atop my bed wrapped in a blanket, but another was the chilled car.) I extend my apologies to all who are awaiting my re-emergence into the threads; I intend to write a Blogless Lepolt entry tonight with more details.
I post here because Spammers managed to hit several of my old articles, bringing them back to my attention to bring to your attention.
I'm pretty sure we already mentioned Game Ideas Unlimited: Invisible Coins in this thread, an exploration of illusionist technique and the value of using it to tell yourself what you want. Also previously cited in this thread I think was Game Ideas Unlimited: Hordes, giving some practical suggestions on creating those desperate battles against incredible odds.
Game Ideas Unlimited: Rewards is something of a game design issue, about building rewards systems for your games. It presents a critical concept in connection with game rewards systems that I think is too often overlooked (and is one of my contributions to understand such systems).
I have a feeling that I recently read Game Ideas Unlimited: Snubbed. It's about when the little people become the important people, and vice versa, and how that impacts our interactions with them--particularly since if we are one we may yet become the other.
--M. J. Young
I have opened all the active threads I hope to read tonight, but am so off-schedule on things that I am answering only this one right now and hoping to return later.
Today's recalled old article is Game Ideas Unlimited: Rivalry, about relationships characters might have either with a respected enemy or with a competitive friend.
--M. J. Young
Game Ideas Unlimited: Stitches was mentioned earlier in the thread, but we've got some new people so I'll mention it again (since it was Spammed again). It discusses the way settings have to be right for their time, particularly if they are familiar to the players.
--M. J. Young
Yes, what with one thing and another it is too late for anything; but I wanted to delete the Spam on the articles, and hit one I had not seen recently which might have value for you. Game Ideas Unlimited: Expanding offers one approach to scenario design which I have used more than once.
It's not going to help me much in figuring out where to put Harry next--oh, wait, Adam was going to take him, wasn't he? I forgot.
--M. J. Young
This was not exactly an old article, but rather an old Blogless Lepolt post. However, I had forgotten it, and it is entirely focused on an aspect of Multiverser play that's always challenging (and the more so in forum play, as in live play you get much better player/referee interaction): stage two arrivals. It's appropriately entitled Stage Two, and gives an example of--well, that would be a spoiler.
--M. J. Young
Well, Game Ideas Unlimited: Reports was recalled in the first post in this thread, but there's no reason not to recall it again, particularly as it's one of those quarterly summary articles which makes its own point and links to a dozen previous articles worth reading--and I fixed most of those links last time.
--M. J. Young
There was another hit yesterday on Game Ideas Unlimited: Stitches, but I figured I'd remember to say so today and save myself some of the time I didn't have yesterday. That's the article that looks at the local hospital emergency room and tracks the changes that occurred over the decade or so. As an aside, I have been in that hospital's emergency room since--but it is now on the opposite side of the hospital and completely redesigned, and it happens that I did not get past the waiting room because I was only there to retrieve a houseguest. Even that's been over a year.
--M. J. Young
I'm putting this down in the Kind of Weird category. Among the voluminous Spam that mostly hit recent blog posts, there was one to an article I had forgotten in a series I am embarrassed to admit I had forgotten, when Brett Bloczynski decided to do a series entitled Expanding an Idea by taking whatever I published in the Game Ideas Unlimited series and writing more on the subject. His Expanding an Idea: Saying Thanks is worth reading as a reminder of good gaming courtesy, and it also contains links to several other articles. I repaired those links, although I did not get to read all the linked articles.
I did follow the link to Game Ideas Unlimited: Variations, and repaired the links in that article as well.
I also followed links to glance at one of Eric's old articles, Singularity's Heroes: A Multiverser SF World.
So there's some weekend reading material for you, not all of it mine.
--M. J. Young
I missed yesterday--long story not worth telling--and today I've been otherwise occupied so I didn't pencil in a makeup day. However, I poked my head in to delete Spam, and found that someone had posted to Game Ideas Unlimited: Architecture, discussing what controls the kinds of buildings that will be in different parts of your world. It incidentally linked to Game Ideas Unlimited: Civil Planning, which is about why roads are as they are and how you can make realistic road designs for your cities and countryside. So I took some time to clean up the link from the one to the other, and popped in here to post them before crashing for the night.
--M. J. Young