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Five Questions With… Michael Wenman

This is a new feature for The Stockade, called Five Questions With… Our first guest is Michael Wenman. As you’ll see from this interview, Michael is a game designer based in the Sydney area and has been designing in one way or another for a few years. So without further ado, here’s the interview.

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Tell us about the first game you made, published or not.

There’s a gradual decline into game design. When I was in high school, I played a few games with my friends, AD&D, Ars Magica, Cyberpunk 2020, TMNT, Shadowrun, Rifts, the early releases of White Wolf’s World of Darkness. I was the group’s fall back GM, because I wasn’t afraid to jury rig the elements I iked from different games to produce a specific play experience. If I wanted a game with a certain combat style, and another style for magic, I’d flat out tell people that we’d be mixing and matching system X with system Y. So I guess the first games I designed were those frankenstein beasts.

The first full game I designed rom scratch was called “Platinum Storm” in the mid 1990s (1994 I think). I guess it was a bit of a heartbreaker, with elements I liked from a few systems, cobbled together and attached to a basic percentile system, then refined to make the odd bits integrate a bit more smoothly. It was a pseudo-japanese setting, basically L5R before L5R became popular; a lot of people at the time told me that no one would be interested in a Japanese styled game. It was 32 pages, black and white in a simply printed red outer sheet, with thirty copies run off at the local Officeworks, these days they’d probably call it an “Ashcan”. I ran a few sessions of it at SAGA (Sydney Adventure Gaming Awards, a now defunct convention), and at $10 a copy I sold out most of my stock over the course of the weekend. I’ve looked back at one of my last copies recently and I can see what a hideous monstrosity it was, but I thought it was good at the time and I still know a few people who’ve kept their copies after all these years.

What do you consider when writing setting material?

There’s an old writing adage that every page should have a hook. In my setting material, I try to produce evocative paragraphs; each containing an element that could form the basis for a story (or at east a scene). Every paragraph may not entice every reader to plunge deeper into the world, but hidden within the words there should be a subtle siren’s call. Within a few paragraphs, most readers should find something interesting to latch onto.

Good setting materials don’t provide static locations that have already been explored, nor do they retell specific events. They offer starting points with directions for players to explore on their own. They prompt exploration and ask more questions than they answer.

I think this is one of the reasons why I’ve never really liked prewritten modules. One of the only times I used a prewritten module for a game, I let all of my players read through it. With that knowledge in place we ran a loose game based on the concept that the module had been completed as written a few weeks earlier, and now the player characters had to sort out the mess left behind by the earlier adventuring party.

What’s important to you when you design the connections between the rules of your game and the story it produces?

I’ve aways thought that three factors contribute to the production of story within a roleplaying game: Players, GM and Rules. These three pull at one another in an eternal tug-of-war, and different styles of play emerge depending on which if these elements has the power. If you really want to tailor the story experience from a game, you need to consider all three of these elements. Designing a bunch of mechanisms that infuence story will only go so far toward the whole experience; the same mechanisms will produce very different results under the control of very different GMs and players…some combinations will take on a life of their own, others will die horribly. As a point of fact, I’ve run exacty the same scenario, with the same GM (me) and different player groups at conventions, the change of one element can make or break a game. The same applies to a change of GMs, I’ve played the same game system with the same players and different GMs, ony to see dramatic changes in the way things resolve themselves. Using the same GM, the same players, but different rules sets can also produce differences in the final story type.

In my mind, a good set of rules should address all of these concerns. It should give the GM a guideline on how to run the game (like an automotive mechanic’s manual describing the various mechanisms, their inputs and how to keep them running smoothly), it should give the players some ideas on what to expect and how best to achieve those results (a drivers manual on how to use it best advantage, and the expected outputs from the mechanisms), then it should provide those mechanisms in language as clear as possible, showing plenty of play examples.

In the old days, games just provided you with the mechanisms; they expected you to work out how best to apply them to generate a story. Instead of providing play advice and GM notes, they just give you a bunch of extra rules and mechanisms, or a few pre-written scenarios. These are the tools of story generation in the context roleplaying, but they need a proper user guide before a consistent story outcome is possible. A lot of newer games are better in this regard, describing meta-mechansisms such as scene framing options, division of narrative control and general explanation of how things should resolve in play.

Which games impress you, and why?

I love B-Grade movies, and films where the main producer is the director, and this one person has the creative drive to produce what they want rather than kowtowing to a faceless corporate committee (Quentin Tarantino, Zac Snyder, Darren Aronofsky). In the same way I love the games turned out by contests like “The Ronnies” or “Game Chef”. Contests like these don’t make pretty games tha are flavouress clones of every other product on the shelf…instead they are always pushing the envelope of design. Some games produced are beautiful trainwrecks, absoutesy savage beasts that you wouldn’t want to play in their competition state. But in every contest I’ll find an idea or two that makes me reassess what gaming is about,or consider new approaches to my existing projects. I’ve often found that in polished game products, these innovative ideas are usually the ones that get filed away when the production committee decides that the edges need to be smoothed out. Every time I see a contest I fall in love with another new idea.

One of the few ideas that has consistenty impressed me know for amost two years is more of a quirky mechanism than a game in it’s own right, and that’s Vincent Baker’s “Otherkind Dice”. I first saw them and thought about how eleganty awesome the concept was. So simple, yet capable of such complexity and story drive. I love the concept of Otherkind Dice so much that I’ve tweaked and twisted them for my game FUBAR.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m building a steampunk/art-nouveau foosball table.

But I’m guessing you’re actually referring to game design here.

In that regard, I have a few projects on the go. Firstly, I’ve actually started to see some decent turnover of my game FUBAR, with over 1000 downloads from various websites, and a slow but constant rate of sale for the first supplement “High Plains FUBAR” (switching the genre from cyberpunk to cowboy western), I’m working on updating the core rules and producing a series of monthly supplements for that game range…”All for One and One FUBAR” (pre-revolution French swashbuckling), “Faeries and FUBAR” (fantasy and dungeonbashing), “Close Encounters of the FUBAR Kind” (Conspiracy Theories and Aliens), “Feathers, Fur and FUBAR” (Lycanthropes), etc.

Secondly, my Quincunx project. This is one of those projects where I want to make sure it’s done right, and the first release in 2009 just wasn’t right. This project is linked in with a parallel graphic novel while has taken precedence for a while, as I think about better ways to sort out the game mechanisms.

Thirdly, the goblin labyrinth braunstein. This is project harkens back to the origins of roleplaying. It’s a miniatures game for ten or more players, where each player has a number of their own agendas for the session (some of which involve combat, others trade, negotiation, investigation, or something else). Players interact by moving figures around a cast resin city designed in the style of the movie Labyrinth, they may only interact with one another when their figures are in close proximity (whether that interaction is talking, fighting, healing, or anything else). Since everything in this game plays out in real-time, the thing that slowing down this project at the moment is trying to develop a real-time combat system capable of handling players who control a core character with an entourage of a dozen or more barely competent goblin lackeys (while maintaining a feeling of freewheeling goblin anarchy). Hand sculpting the city is taking a while as well.

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Thanks to Michael for his time. If you’d like to see more of his work, go to Vulpinoid Studios or his RPGNow webstore

Save Vs Storm

We’re Australian! Yay!

We design games! Yay!

Some of us were flooded out! Not so yay.

A new website has sprung up to help out your fellow gamers who are in trouble. If they, like me, live in Queensland then they’re contenders for some help. But unlike me, Save Vs Storm is trying to help gamers who lost their gaming books. Mongoose and White Wolf are already offering support to this project, so I encourage you to go there as well and find out how you can help a flooded or stormed gamer.

Brisbane a huge board game…she says she has funding, too!

Stolen from Facebook:

Amy Saunders: Does anyone have any ideas for a Giant Urban Game, basically using Brisbane as the game board (essentially ubiquitous gaming)? The more simple, the better. I’ve got the contacts to fund it and make it happen! … Send your ideas to gamesnightkgs@live.com or add them here. Deadline: 21 December

The end is nigh

Yes indeed, the end of the first Stockade challenge is upon us. We started this site about a year ago with the challenge to create a game and have it ready for GenCon Oz 2010. Now, the rules lawyers out there (and I know you’re there – you’re game designers) might like to point out that this is now an open-ended challenge. Technically you’re right, but we choose to exercise GM Fiat here and overrule you.
And that’s because at Uprising, the Stockade Games Launch will take place. Look for it in the Saturday schedule and you’ll see it there. Find out which games made it and which didn’t. Hear some of the participants recount their stories of the process and find out how to get the completed games.

Events submitted for Gen Con Oz 2010

The events for Gen Con Oz (go check it out at the links near the top of this page) have been submitted. w00t! Make sure you’ve registered for the con and add these to your list quick as you can.

Indie games on demand @ Gen Con Oz 2010

I was at the Brisbane Supanova last weekend and stopped by the Gen Con Oz stand for a chat. It seems that they’re having some technical problems with the servers so they’ve not called for events yet. However, that’s no real excuse for us to plan some indie games on demand. You can probably see the link at the top of this page to Gen Con Oz 2010. That’s the primary information point for several indie games events that I’ll register for this year’s convention.

The last two years have seen plenty of interest from players. Some of them book whole days just to play indie games. We’ve also had esteemed guests float around our gaming tables (can you say Robin D. Laws?). And there is some increased interest from Australian game retailers in coordinating the games they sell with the games that we’ll run at Gen Con.

And now is the time for you to get involved. Do you have a few independently-published RPGs that you know and love? Then step up and run them at Gen Con. Share your enthusiasm with people who’ve never played them before. And from what I hear, the game of the year will probably be the Dresden Files RPG. You can bet that people will line up to get into those games. Make it memorable for someone, and run it at Gen Con.

All you need to do is leave a message in the comments here, or send an email to me at andrew.mg.smith –at– gmail.com and I’ll get in touch with you for details.

Looking back on Go Play Brisbane

If you were well-planned enough to be at Go Play Brisbane last month you would have known by now that everyone had a good time. Most importantly for the Australian indie games scene, some homegrown games were played there. As expected, both Quincunx and Siege got a run, and both in the afternoon. You can find out a little more about it by clicking through to the websites for these games (see the links on the right of this page).

But that’s what the designers say about it. What about you? Were you there? Did you get to play one of these games? If you did, what did you think of them?

Goals & Deadlines

It is a sad irony that deadlines are given to us so freely at work (where we want them least), and are in such short supply in the extracurricular activities where we need them most.

- Chris Baty, founder of National Novel Writing Month

So, I have been thinking about deadlines and goals lately. I said way back in my first “proper” post that one of the values of The Stockade was that it offered a deadline for your project. The ultimate deadline is GenCon Oz 2010, but we have so far left everything else up to you, like what you are going to have at GenCon Oz next year, and how you get there. It was my original intention to write a long-winded and possibly boring set of instructions about how to set short and long-term goals and work towards reaching them. Reason has since gripped me and instead I will say a few words about setting your goal and then point you to an interesting blog about setting and reaching game design goals.

Goals

What do you want to have ready for GenCon Oz 2010? A complete, professionally published game; an “ashcan” product; some playtest documents; a PDF product; or something else? The assumption is that everyone is working toward a complete, finished game but some of you may have a grand project that will require much longer to reach fruition, while others are doing projects that just aren’t compatible with this agenda (and will need to consider how you will share your computer game, music CD, freeform, etc).

Participating in NaNoWriMo this month, and helping friends and students attempt the task has opened my eyes to two really important needs when setting yourself goals.

1) The first is to ensure you have set suitably ambitious goals. Ambitious goals are important because you feel a sense of accomplishment when you complete them. There is no point setting yourself the goal of having a working prototype to playtest at GenCon 2010 if you know that your prototype will be ready before Christmas this year. Don’t aim for a photocopied booklet that you hand stapled when you can get a professionally printed, perfect bound book (unless you are going for the hand-constructed aesthetic). If you reach a point in your creation process where you realise that you have (or are about to) achieved your goal, consider what you can do to make your game even better – whether that is in terms of design, writing, production values, promotion or something else – then set yourself some new goals.

2) The second thing I realised this month is that it is okay to change your goals – they do not have to be set in stone. Sometimes you will realise that you will complete your work well in advance and so it might be appropriate to re-evaluate your goals and possibly change them. At other times it may become evident that you will never reach a specific goal, no matter what you do (game production involves many steps where things are totally out of your hands, afterall). That’s totally cool – adjust your course in light of this new knowledge, work out what you can achieve, and set a new goal.

Set yourself some goals now – a “big” one for GenCon Oz 2010, and several smaller “steps” that you will need to complete in order to reach that big goal.

Blowback

Now you should go check out Elizabeth Shoemaker’s design blog for the game Blowback. It is a really good description of the things many of us will soon likely be experiencing. 

Leave a comment telling us what YOUR goals are.