Possible Future Projects

Well it seems like my energy levels are starting to rise again.  Might as well harness the energy while it lasts.


I was rereading some old blog posts and found the Abstract project I was working on.  I think I may want to look into it again and begin some work on it.


I've also been thinking about building a "universe" builder for my space game.  Essentially it would generate a universe, populate the areas of interest and then highlight the interactions.


I think both will need some administrative work before they could begin, but for the second I actually have a volunteer who would help me work on it.


Work to be Done


Abstract Project

• Gather existing data
• Assess direction and compare with recent learning
• Establish goals of system
• Attack project

Universe Generator

• Build Design Doc
• Establish landmarks of project
• Assess actual manpower
• Pre-Establish formulae plans

As a general update...

• I was forced to end my space game due to players dropping out or being absent.  (Employees being let go and such)
• In a pathfinder game playing a third party class (potential writing material here)
• Still working with the guys from Rust Devils games on Zed or Alive (A wargame with a campaign system focused on zombie apocalypse and small squads)

A Practiced Voice

I've been stressed lately.  Lots going on at work, called into and serving Jury Duty, girlfriend doing grad school, and... well a lot of artificial stress.  Resulting in migraines and illness and whatnot.  Just a personal update before the meat of things.  Since it's been a while.

The space game has been cancelled due to one of the players in our skeleton crew getting fired in unfortunate circumstances.  My live group played for the first time in forever, but as usual new game new characters new premise...  It gets a bit repetitive.  Maybe I should insist on continuing something next time.  My Google Hangouts group IS doing a long arc game.  I say long arc as I know it will end and we'll end up starting over again.  I haven't done nearly enough work on any personal projects, what with the new employees at work and everything combined with my reaching another low point in my ever roller coastering mood, I haven't had the energy.

I still have ideas, ideas I could execute and some which I think would actually make it easier and quicker to prototype.  But that's neither here nor there right now.  Right now this post is about something else.

Lately I have been thinking about when I sought professional help for depression.  I've done it twice in my life and both times left me feeling... Well not better, that's for sure.  Right now I feel like I'm functional, I know my mood rises and falls like the tides (on longer cycles I think), but in some exceptional cases, I just felt so down I never thought I'd rise out again.  That nothing was going to get better, there was nothing *I* could do.  Not how I am.  So I went out into the world for help.  For real solid help on what I was missing what I needed to know and understand to control and improve myself, to keep myself from being in this place in the future and drag myself out of the deep hopeless...  I would say pit, but imagine it more like being at the center of a great hollowed out planet.  A pit you could walk around the bottom, or grab onto the sides and climb.  In the hollowed out hole, there is nothing... nothing you can do.  Nothing to grab, no down or up or even if you could wrap your head around the center BEING down and everything else being up, it would be admitting that THIS was it, the lowest you would ever be and there was NO escape, no easy direction.

So with this feeling I went to a professional.  I went to a location where they said, "Come here for help."  Help is an interesting word.  I wonder if those people knew what it meant.  Or if perhaps my impression of help is too high a bar for a professional to meet.  The first time I did this, was after breaking up with my first girlfriend.  I have a hard time with transitions, between jobs, between schools, between homes.  They always set me into a bad mood.  It's not something active, I just get angry.  When I graduated from High School, the person who walked next to me was very upset I ruined her graduation pictures with my foul frown.  But such is me.

Anyhow, so I went to the college health center, following up on all the recommendations that freshmen are given (I was a sophomore, but it's irrelevant really) They plopped me in front of some faceless person who listened to me say two sentences then passed me a trial bottle of anti-depressants and told me to see if they help before shooing me out.

What do you do with that?  Isn't the first step to helping listening?  Isn't it asking questions and honestly wanting answers?  Isn't it finding the root of the problem and helping to solve that?

This wasn't really what got a rock in my craw recently and made me want to write though.  It was a doctor I spoke to recently about my migraines that got me itching to post.  To post about another occurrence over a year ago when I visited a doctor about depression.

After another event that drove me to pretty extreme emotions, I visited my Kaiser medical facility following up on a specific section covering depression.  This time I came a bit more prepared (I'd since learned that just shutting up and listening is apparently a terrible idea if you really want to get anywhere in life), and went in being more specific and talking clearly and elaborating with the doctor.  He nodded, and looked right through me.  Not at me, but in the direction of my face with vacant eyes.  He reached into a drawer grabbed a pamphlet from the top and handed it to me.  And then began to talk to me in a slow, methodical and altered tone.  At the time I thought it was a patronizing tone, but after my recent encounter I can only conclude, it was supposed to be a sympathetic (or empathetic, there is a difference) voice.  But all his physicality, the falseness of the whole thing was like a slap in the face.

Since then, I don't know if I could go back to that kind of professional for help with depression again.  I think I'd rather pay someone to chain me up in a dark room and feed me through a straw for a few months until I missed my old life desperately enough that the depression had all but left me.

No, it's experiences like this that taught me that structured society has no place for people with issues like me.  People with issues that don't just disappear with a pill.  Or at least people who refuse to use that as the perpetual treatment of symptom.  Me, I can cope.  I have friends and family who will help me when I'm down.  I don't even need to say depressed, I can just go to them and talk or whatever.  But what about the people who can't even do that?  After the doctors spit in their face a few times and they realize they are truly and hopelessly alone, where does that leave them?

I'm not surprised there's so many people out there who can't take it and fold.  I'd rather talk to someone who doesn't know what to do but listens than listen to that damn practiced voice.

Anyhoo, sorry to be a downer, I just had to get that out.

Morale

No update for this week, but I do have a thought I'd like to try and expand on.

I got an email from a video game website called Gamasutra.  It was an advertisement on behalf of a book claiming to be able to improve the reader's writing skill in things such as quests, missions and puzzles.  This line alone sent me thinking.  So I'll set it up with an example of a very noteworthy experience in MMO gaming I had.  Specifically a Quest/Mission/Puzzle.  A Quest/Mission/Puzzle that ruined me forever in the world of Quests, Missions and Puzzles.

The setup for the mission was rather simple.  The player didn't have to seek out a quest giver, they all had it already and decided to do it on their own.  However, the quest didn't have a defined destination and furthermore the ACTUAL destination was one of those ones that moves around.  In this game there was a HUGE world to explore and the destination could pretty much be ANYWHERE.  Finally, there wasn't any mission text associated with the quest.  It was just kind of a known thing that had to do something to get the reward.  Strangely enough most people just knew the basic idea of what they needed to do.

The execution for the mission was a bit more tough.  Depending on the amount of tools you had you could use expensive expendable items to narrow down the search to about one of 20 giant zones.  If you didn't, you had to play a game of hot and cold on each of the zones and compare the best 'hot' result between all of them to find out which spot was the actual reward.  Anywhere else would be a lesser reward which might be acceptable for lower tier players, but at the upper echelon would simply not do.  Each of these giant zones could take a day to explore in any reasonable manner as well and were populated by extremely dangerous enemies at times.

The difficulty was compounded by the fact that the reward could be claimed by another player preventing you from claiming it yourself if you were too slow.

This reward was not something a few people were seeking every once and a while.  I guarantee you were in competition with at least 30 or more people at any one time.  The task was cutthroat.

And even if you spent the time and found the reward, it wasn't something useful to start with.  Firstly you had to have expensive and specialized equipment to claim the reward.  It wasn't instantly gained, it could take hours before you saw ANY of the reward.  Once you claimed the reward it wasn't worth anything but what other players would pay for it.  It, in and of itself was worthless.  It wasn't a weapon, armor or consumable.  It had to be converted to something useful.  This usually required searching for THE SAME KIND OF REWARD AGAIN.  Possibly several more times.  If you didn't, it might have well been some shittier version of the reward.

After that, you had to have developed super high quality skills, purchased amazingly high quality tools and work with other people who have done the mission as many times as you, and have similarly high quality tools and skills to turn the reward into something useful.  Did I mention to get these skills you had to develop your character to have them from the beginning?  Furthermore odds are, this useful item was worthless to you and you would have to SELL IT TO SOMEONE ELSE or give it to another very high skill character of yours to use.

And it was amazing.  It was beautiful.  It was the best Quest/Mission/Puzzle I had ever done and would ever do.  It ruined me for every Quest/Mission/Puzzle I had ever done.  And do you know why?  Because there was no written story.  Nobody had taken the time to come up with the plot for this.  This was the highest tier of crafting for a game called Star Wars Galaxies.  The people who were able to complete these quests played as a class called the TRADER.  They literally had a class for crafting.  A class that had no quests past the first starter quests.  The most elite would complete this 'Mission' and be widely known as the one with the best blasters, armor or lightsabers or whatever it was their specialty was.  Because you couldn't even do everything!

This sounds like a horrible mission, but it wasn't, because the people who surveyed whole planets looking for the best metal did it willingly.  They did it to be the best and succeed at far greater skill than anyone else.  They had to level up BY CRAFTING to get to that point.  Monsters gave no XP to Traders.  They enjoyed it because it was the path they had chosen.  Not because it was shoved down their throats by someone who thought we would want to save the Jawas by fetching them 3 idols of Jabba the Hutt after killing twenty Gammorians.

So why the hell would I buy a book about writing great missions, when the greatest mission I ever pursued had no writing?  I just can't keep my morale up while grinding through the 30th Gungan.

Positive Introspection

I'm procrastinating again.  The moment I have a deadline for my setting project I just collapse.  I can guarantee I'll have something passable by Monday (my deadline), I can work on Thursday and take notes Friday evening during game, and even maybe do some brainstorming over the weekend, my Sunday group is a bunch of lightweights, so I'm sure I'll have hours in the evening and morning.

But the procrastination isn't really what this post is about.  Perhaps it is the initial spark, but as I was perusing the blog, checking my old comments, I read the last one.  It was a long time back talking about things I carry with me always, and very personal.  Reading the end, I think now is a great time for a follow up.  Probably one of the last paragraphs.  Right now it's 8PM so I'm well before the damn 2AM depression/insomnia window.

I put down many things I might talk about at the end of the post.  But I think I would like to talk about my successes.  As usual, a stream of consciousness, but it's going to get personal, and specific.

I think if I look backwards, far far down the line, some of my favorite memories are of games.  Playing computer games with my father, I was proud to do so.  Of doing the jumping part on Super Mario Brothers that the baby sitter's daughter couldn't do when we hung out (she probably could, but also probably was boosting my young ego as some do.  Keep me involved and whatnot.)  I can remember when I first beat Oregon Trail, just as they called me in to collect my birthday pencil in elementary school.  I can also almost remember the proud moment when I pieced together a 386 that was my first computer.  Although that was well past elementary school.  And then there was when I made my own cyberpunk system for playing with my neighbor in a tent in his back yard, and he enjoyed it.

I knew it was crap, as I had played a full fledged D20 system who's name I cant recall at the moment and the neighbor would follow me into a den of hungry bears, but it is one of those strong memories.  It was games that stuck with me.  I played sports, but I never had much pride in it.  Sure there was stealing home and winning the game when the coach told me not to run, and there was playing a goalie in soccer and scoring goals every once and a while, but they didn't stick.  For me, the big victories were in games, in sharing them, beating them and building them.

One of the oldest games I 'made' that I can remember never saw multiplayer.  I would take Jenga blocks, RISK and monopoly and make them into soldiers that fought each other, and you had to buy the blocks and soldiers based on your performance.  Simple, but it still had structure, form and customization.

Another great success in my life was my being nominated for a big event in Texas called the Youth Technology Leaders Summit.  In retrospect I know the reason I went was because the prior kids couldn't afford it, and somehow my parents could, I still will never know how.  They supported my education throughout my life and I owe a LOT to them.  It was an even where many different 'kids' got together and shared their skills and attended seminars.  The culmination of the event is to solve some world problem.  It was pretty amazing, and after 9/11.  The towers were downed and we were bundled inside and hidden from the terrorists, even then I knew it was bullshit, but fear is fear.

There were other small successes, a smart trick in Boy Scouts during a one sided camp game, a pinewood derby car simple but efficient, a science project of a spinning atom, a catapult that bent 1/4 steel rods that had to be replaced after multiple shots, going from the worst unreal player in my class to dominating everyone...  Lots of small things, nothing stands out much in that period.

College however opened up a lot of opportunity for successes with meaning to myself.  For one thing, graduation.  High school graduation made me angry, college, knowing I had to fight for it  made me relieved, and lost.  But it was a hard fought victory.  Incompetent and self absorbed teachers were rampant, and good ones were always there to help.  My poor memory skills brutalized me in GE and Art History, but I still prevailed.

It may not have gotten any GE requirement, and most people wouldn't understand, but my D in human anatomy is the grade I am most proud of.  That class was the epitome of everything I am weak at, but I put in the hours and beat out 50% of the 50% of the class that DIDN'T drop the class.  Had they all stayed that probably would have been a pretty damn good grade.

I am proud of standing up against two of my incompetent professors, one publicly in front of the whole class.  By building a polished sculpture of a hand flipping off the viewer.  Specifically facing the professor who ruined two of my projects.

I am proud of the time I came to the office hours of the shitty programming professor and told her that I had come to her office hours every week for the last 2/3 of the class and not gotten a straight answer on why the program I made that the entire class was based off was not working for her and did for me.  I am also proud of the final project I made despite the issue, the project I put in my portfolio for getting a job.

I am proud of knowing when to swallow my pride with the logic and critical thinking teacher who remembered me 4 years later when I came to talk about that one assignment he had refused to grade as I had apparently insulted him in it.

I am proud of taking the reins on my final game design project and making it happen despite 1 of my two partners was completely incompetent.

I am proud of how well I eventually drew still lifes and figures in hand drawing, and how well I actually painted in painting.

I am proud of doing black and white photography in a dark room by hand.  I am proud of the art that came from it.

I am proud of having attended regular events at the local comic shop and befriending the owner.

I am not proud of what may be one of my greatest successes, accepting my partner of 9 years' proposition of getting together.  I am proud of the results, but honestly I was betraying a friend who was interested in her.

College was good for me.  But there was more yet to life.  I still had to find a job, and that came with new opportunities.  I spoke of my previous job when I was still at it.  When it had rotted and become fetid with neglect pending a buyout by a larger company.  These were dark times and did not make the last post any brighter, but they had many bright times too.

I was chosen to be hired for one.  That was a great success as at the time jobs were hard to find, and competition for the spot was actually existent.  I was station 13, I was proud of my work and I worked hard.  There were times I even slept on site because the train stopped running when we got off, then I started work again the next day.

I managed to be picked for a particular project.  Getting chosen for this project actually was going to change my life forever.  One of the leads advised all the testers to learn a skill called Compliance Testing.  I was the only one to do it.  I am proud of this, it opened a gateway to save the day on another project when the normal Compliance Testers were out.  This I am very proud of as it got me a permanent job as a Compliance Tester.

During my job I got sent to Microsoft in Seattle, decreased the submission rate to 1:1 (submission to passes) and was the gatekeeper to ensure that a multi-million dollar company did not miss deadlines or pay fees on a 2-3 year project that all hinged on a short one week process.  I did this many times before I got my last position on an unreleased project for the company.

I became an assistant lead.  Technically it was a demotion, but as there were few projects and even fewer positions available, I watched as many other testers, some I was good friends with, were let go.  I even had a bit of survivor's guilt, but was kept on.  I am not as proud as I should be perhaps, but I still haven't seen most of those people since.

I took up a position where I learned new skills, made new processes, forged new ground and established new guidelines.  I built a level for the game, I consulted on the design and had meaningful talks with VERY important people on the project.  I am still in communication with the creative director on it (hopefully he'll be in my Sunday game).  AND I still did compliance work.  It was the most important I've ever been at work.  I touched everything and without my hands, everything would have been off schedule and everyone would have been hindered, from the designers to the producers to the programmers.  I even eventually got my own employee (minion) to manage.

I type slowly now, fondly remembering the time with nostalgia.  It did fade and rot as it became more and more clear the game would never be released.  I am proud I stood my ground and did everything in my power to ensure it still did and was ready should it be given it's chance.  Still sadness remains at what never was.  Years of many people's lives lost.

But enough of that.  I am proud I sought work with a strong morale and purpose.  I am proud of how many people wanted me to work for them.  Especially of one friend who's opinion I greatly value, and of how his co-workers greatly desired me to work there and even asked about me (I had turned it down previously as I was still employed at my job and felt it would be wrong to leave when they needed me.)

I'm proud that I have friends who at least tolerate my presence.  I am proud they still wish to stay in touch with me and value my opinion.  I care about them.  In all honesty that is in my mind now.  I don't know if they feel the same way, but I honestly care about them.  I fear that I may seem to distant and cold.

I am proud of some parts of my new job.  I still have doubts that it is what I want to do for the rest of my life, but I am proud they value my opinion there.  That they value me enough to pay more significantly more than minimum wage.  That I have taken charge on a development tool and improved it greatly.  That I am learning new things and managing outsource testers and taking on new roles and skills I never have before.

And now I am here.  I am proud I have a group of players who want to play my game.  So much so that on their Monday off, they want to spend it with me.  Playing in my world.  I'm actually tearing up a bit right now.  But that might just be from the emotion thing in that other post.

Oh and I'm very happy tonight as my partner is coming home with In-N-Out.  Maybe she'll even play Magic with me if I'm lucky.  Sometimes it's hard not to feel how wonderful my life is.  Sometimes it's the opposite.

Progress 2/8/2014

Made more progress.
Roughed out some general ideas for interesting new character weapons.
Expanded on ship equipment and damage effects (hull breach, fire, malfunctions)
Expanded on some of the Chase vs Dogfight rules.
Started gathering resources for ship character sheet.
Started sketching out thoughts for the ship combat map.

I'm beginning to think I should actually start mocking up combat rounds.  Possibly starting with fighters (super simple and easy to draw up) then moving to mid range craft which will likely be piloted by a full party as a crew.

From there I need to start investigating the effects of subordinate extras on wildcards manning stations.

I think I should also start considering the idea of 'extra' space ships and what that means in this combat system.  As it stands I think there might just be a base guideline of size ratio difference being an automatic extra or wildcard as far as damage is concerned and a guideline for true wildcards as getting the bennies while effective wildcards don't.

The problem arises that wildcards in fighters will be VERY vulnerable to a single or even two steps difference in ship size.  This hazard drops some when going up a size or two, but is still pretty harsh.  Perhaps I will suggest only extras pilot fighters.  That said, if you need to do a trench run, I want a decent fighter as an option.

If you haven't caught on yet, the majority of the work on this system is effectively replacing the vehicle system Savage Worlds uses (which I hate) and replacing it with my own 'fast, furious, fun' system.

Furthermore the fact that I use two Google accounts for this blog is really a pain.  Maybe I can hook this one up with Google drive and share it so I can work on the doc with either.

It doesn't sound like much work to me.  I feel like I could do more, but I console myself with the thought that I am doing any work at all.  Given I'm in 2 'live' games, 3 online games, a project on a team of cool people and trying to spend time with my significant other, I think I'm doing alright.  Though maybe after she get's through grad school I can take a LOT of time off just to work on this project...  Assuming it isn't done in 3-4 years.  Which I hope is NOT the case.

No Upper Limit

An interesting component of a game I’ve been playing in a system called Savage Worlds is exploding dice. The only DnD equivalent being the critical hit system. The basics of exploding dice is this, If I roll the maximum number on a die, then I get to roll it again and add the result together with the original roll, indefinitely.

This system brings an interesting mechanic into play, the idea of no upper limit. Strictly speaking we may be playing the game somewhat inappropriately as some of the veterans are rusty, but as we’re playing it a huge amount of diversity is added to the game. Potentially an unskilled person could seemingly succeed on an extremely difficult task, and not only that, do it very well.

Thus the title, No Upper Limit. Theoretically the player could roll an infinite number, and while the system does not necessarily have no upper limit to the degrees of success (defeating the target number by 4 in most cases being the limit) it allows a crippled, inexperienced person in extremely unkind environment manage to do something amazingly well.

Most systems place a limit, sometimes a high one, but still a limit to the reach of the player’s success. For instance 3^rd edition and 4^th edition DnD offer a d20 + X to a roll. 1-20 doesn’t matter for a skill check, so your upper limit is 20+X, some DMs offering explosions, but officially none. In combat, a critical officially has a single explosion limit. GURPS 3^rd and 4^th editions also offer only rolling 3d6 and comparing to a stat offering only success or failure. Apparently the World of Darkness d10 system recently officially added exploding dice as well allowing a “10 again” system.

An interesting note on both systems that use this explosion method and the systems that don’t. Relatively speaking from my mediocre experience with different systems, and with exception to the recent 4^th edition DnD, the more complicated systems with less generalized abilities have upper limits. The systems that generalize things such as shooting skills and athletics don’t. Does this lead to more powerful generally able players? I think definitely, is this desirable? Perhaps not for my system, but I do think it allows for a great deal of tension, allowing everything to hinge on one player’s unskilled attempt at something VERY difficult. Our party was saved last night from imprisonment and torture due to unskilled attempts.

The blind warrior used an unskilled lockpicking attempt on his cell door while I distracted the guard with an unskilled taunt. This followed with an unskilled stealth check as the warrior approached the guard followed by my barely skilled attempt to help subdue the guard with my strangling them with shackles… And so on… Without weapons, companions, and my case even my spells, the night was a long series of unskilled checks we could all have a chance to succeed at, and in many cases did so. Of coarse, when our true power was unleashed, we finally became competent and powerful, the encounters cleverly scaling up. Maybe the GM was just realizing our characters were perhaps too powerful and throwing everything he could at us.

No upper limit, or perhaps, always a chance to succeed. Something to think about.

Teamwork

In a recent bit of commenting the definition of teamwork came up. I'd like to explore the topic. This is one of the moments, where having a blog becomes useful. I would like to propose teamwork as an action or behavior that benefits the team and by extension the self rather than the self and by extension the team. Now lets see what the internet dictionary has to say...

1.

cooperative or coordinated effort on the part of a group of persons acting together as a team or in the interests of a common cause.

2.

work done with a team.

The second one isn't very useful, it's like looking up painter and finding "one who paints" but for the interests of completeness there it is. So lets break down the definition given for giggles and understanding.

cooperative effort as a group of persons acting as a team.
coordinated effort as a group of persons acting as a team.
cooperative effort in the interests of a common cause.
coordinated effort in the interests of a common cause.

So here we are, we now have an interesting set of four definitions. So lets find out what the difference between coordination and cooperation is...

coordination:

harmonious combination or interaction, as of functions or parts.

cooperation:

an act or instance of working or acting together for a common purpose or benefit; joint action.

also interesting

Ecology . mutually beneficial interaction among organisms living in a limited area.

So now breaking it down....

working or acting together for a common purpose or benefit as a group of persons acting as a team.
working or acting together for a common purpose or benefit in the interests of a common cause.
harmonious combination or interaction as a group of persons acting as a team.
harmonious combination or interaction in the interests of a common cause.

Now that my fun is over, lets break it down into what that means for me and us as designers and creators.

There is a goal, in 3 of four cases. (5 of 6 if you break down the purpose or benefit in cooperation)
There is a group, sometimes identified as a team. (2 of 4)
There is always joint action.
Every referenced group unit is working or interacting.

Why is this important? Ideally when we make our game, assuming you are not pitting the players against one another, we want all our characters working and interacting towards a goal.

Why is this interesting? Only half the time it is necessary that they identify themselves as a team. Rarely, this doesn't have to really incorporate a goal.

What am I predicting? That many GMs are screaming "Look! Railroading is good! It's a goal!" and others are screaming, "No! Our games where we set no goals should not be marginalized!" And now I quietly reply in my quiet blog, "Nobody said it had to be the GM's goal."

Arguably a good deal of Pen and Paper role playing games are about teamwork. About people sitting down and working together to achieve something greater than their individual players. It makes me wonder if this is why broken characters are disliked. Because a team makes them no better.

When creating my game, running through my mind is a simple question, "How can this character not only effect the party members, but their army, their cooperative units in such a way it becomes easier to reach a goal or cause."

Just some musings of mine I thought I'd share.