The Bus Stop Effect

Most people have heard of the butterfly effect, the idea that an event can depend on something quite small and not obviously related. The name comes from the idea that a hurricane could be caused by the simple act of a distant butterfly flapping its wings. Another example of a small change having a significant result can be seen at bus stops, although in this case the connection is much more obvious.

Often I find myself waiting at a bus stop, where the schedule states that a bus will come every 7-10 minutes, and after 15 minutes of waiting two buses will arrive. The reason for this is that we can treat the buses as being in an unstable steady state, that is there are enough buses so that on average a bus will arrive every 7-10 minutes but the exact travel time is variable. In a perfect world each bus would take exactly the same amount of time to get from one stop to another and each would collect and drop off the same number of passengers which again would take exactly the same amount of time. We don't need to move very far from this ideal model for significant disruption in the timetable to occur.

For example bus A collects its first load of passengers, however, one of them is out of credit on their travel card and has to pay by cash, and to further delay things doesn't have exact change; A then moves on towards the next stop. 7 minutes later bus B starts its route and collects it's passengers at the first stop without incident. Because A was delayed leaving the first stop the number of passengers waiting at the second stop has been increased, so it will take slightly longer to collect them. B was not delayed and so will now arrive less than 7 minutes after A left, so there will be fewer passengers than average and B will get away quicker than usual. At the next stop the time between A and B arriving will again be decreased and this will continue until eventually B catches up to A giving us the two buses phenomenon.

The reason I'm writing about buses in a gaming blog is because I would very much like to make a game which uses a simple mechanic such as this to introduce a high level of complexity into a game. In this game seemingly minor actions could eventually result in a major effect in the late game. One of the problems I have often found with board games is that they often sacrifice gameplay for complexity. I believe that a simple mechanic that involves a basic upkeep action can be used to introduce complexity while still keeping the game simple to play.

For example, let's say we have a four player share market game. To indicate the effect that the players are having buying and selling shares we could use a large complicated formula or more simply have five decks of cards, and for each share draw from the 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 deck depending on how many players own that type of share. To make things more interesting we could have special event cards seeding around the middle of each deck so that the mean number of invested players will trigger an event first. Obviously this is just a rough example and the full game would need other factors such as a headlines deck and the risk reward options of insider trading.

Remember, next time you run after a bus and the driver take pity on you just remember, as you are busy thanking them, that you could be causing the buses to run in pairs.

Rage Against the Machine

Playing video games in the late 80's and early 90's generally involved you, and maybe another person who was in the same room as you, trying to defeat the computer. Nowadays however, there tends to be a much larger focus on online multiplayer, with some games such as Call of Duty and Battlefield only having a short single player campaign, because it's not the reason people want to buy these games.

Personally I never found online multiplayer with unknown people all that appealing. The first reason for this stems from game balance. When playing against the computer the game follows a set difficulty curve which slowly ups the ante as the story progresses, however, when going online the random nature of your human opponents removes this curve. I am aware that many games do now include ranking features to try and prevent new players being paired up against more experienced ones but such features only work well with a large player base, and even still there is a significant amount of randomness associated with having a human opponent. When playing with another person in the same room I don't mind this issue of randomness because in these cases I'm playing the game for social rather than story reasons.

The other issue, and what really is the deal breaker for me is the lack of control over the kind of people you end up playing with. The first time I played Counter Strike I was greeted with a string of profanities and as a result turned off voice chat, meaning that I could no longer communicate effectively with my team mates. This problem seems to be linked to certain games, because when playing Monster Hunter Tri online I have never had any problem with people being vulgar and anyone seen to be even slightly rude quickly finds them self without a hunting party.

While I tend to find that I am happier playing cooperative than competitive games online, I have never really warmed to the MMO market. In general I would rather play an equivalent single player game than the online one, which is slightly odd as I'm a big fan of table top roleplaying. I suspect that this again stems from a preference for face to face social interaction, coupled with a desire to take the story at my own pace. Monster Hunter Tri is one of the few exceptions to this rule as I do spend quite a large amount of time playing it online. However, the online game doesn't really have it's own story so I guess that removes the concerns about pacing. Regardless of my personal feelings towards online multiplayer the market for it is huge, and will only continue to grow in the future.

Good Morning, That's a Nice Tnetennba

In series four episode two of The IT Crowd Moss goes on the game show Countdown. During one of the anagram sections of the show the randomly selected letters come out as T, N, E, T, E, N, N, B, and A. Moss informs the host that that already is a word and when asked to use it in a sentence replies "Good morning, that's a nice tnetennba". After the show aired a large number of people went on Google to find out what the word meant. The word was made up but several websites predicting that people would want to learn more about the word included it in their updates, and as a result a casual definition of the word emerged.

Tnetennba
n. (tuh.net.un.bar)
A word whose function is to attract attention to a website; a gratuitously used keyword whose presence is aimed at attracting the search engines attention and improving the website's placement in search results.

So what does this have to do with gaming? Well, with digital distribution now being common place the ease with which an independent developer can sell their game has greatly improved. The PC version of Minecraft has sold 4,732,580 copies without even using digital distribution clients such as Steam or Desura, reigniting the dreams of many small scale game developers. However, these developers still need to get attention. I have previously talked about Indie Royale and the Humble Bundle, which are both great ways for developers to get noticed and for gamers who are short on cash to grab a bargain. I find the Humble Bundle's pay what you want and DRM free model to be extremely interesting as you would think it prone to exploitation, however, the average price paid for bundle number 4 was $5.45, although a $1 minimum did have to be imposed after people started using the bundle to get extra steam keys and exploit Steam's Christmas promotion.

When I look at promotions such as these it reassures me that most people are not interested in pirating games, so why did the industry feel the need to initially support the SOPA bill, at least until such a position became a PR nightmare? I firmly believe that what we have here is large companies who don't want to have to change their business model. They claim that piracy is crippling the industry, despite companies such as activision managing to triple their profit during a recession. When a fan asked Notch, the creator of Minecraft, for a free account as they currently didn't have the spare cash to buy it he replied "Just pirate it. If you still like it when you can afford it in the future, buy it then.. Also don't forget to feel bad. ;)"

Just as the music industry had to change and adapt to the internet, in the form of iTunes, so too will the movie and game industries. To be perfectly honest I believe that the gaming companies who put money and support into the SOPA bill would have been better served putting those resources into developing new distribution models. People who can be innovative with their games and sales models, will be the success stories of the future (this is why so many MMO's are changing to free to play models), and of cause it never hurts to bring a tnetennba.

The Joy of Christmas

One of the best things about Christmas is getting to visit family, and then using them to play copious numbers of board games! Listed below are the games I played over the Christmas period and a short recount/review of each.

Arkham Horror: I find myself playing Arkham Horror quite a lot, which is fine as it has good thematic elements and the cooperative nature of the game makes it feel inclusive for players of all skill levels. Despite having played many times I had only ever been in a loosing game once (this is probably due to almost always playing with four players which seems to be the optimal number), so when the Ancient One was revealed to be Yig (generally considered to be quite easy) I felt confident. However, some bad luck with the Mythos deck saw our characters stuck in their current locations for a while, which caused us to get behind on gates. In all honesty I think I would get the award for most useless as the only gate I entered saw me bumping into Shub-Niggurath and being devoured.

Blood Bowl Team Manager: This I got as a present and is a lot of fun. The game captures the absurdist feel of Blood Bowl with good flavour text and the rule 'cheating is mandatory'. The game has a good amount of strategy  as the winner is the player whose team has the most fans, not the team that wins the Blood Bowl tournament. It's also worth mentioning that the teams have different skills and abilities so they all play and feel differently.

Call of Cthulhu LCG: We didn't play this for very long, as the decks hadn't been remade in six months so it all felt a bit same old, same old. It's still a fun game it was just that we had other more exciting options available to us.

Fortune and Glory: The Cliffhanger Game: The only non-Fantasy Flight game in this list. Flying Frog's Fortune and Glory is a fun take on the pulp genre and the images used on the game cards give it a cute 'I was made by a group of friends' indie feel. We only had time to play using the abbreviated rules, but these provided us with an enjoyable gaming session. The game captures the pulp feel of riding motorbikes on Zeppelins, fighting Nazi tanks armed only with a pistol, and getting malaria to save the day perfectly and I'm looking forward to playing the full version in the future.

Lord of the Rings LCG: This is the game we played the most, the way the game progresses the story and the cooperative nature of the game makes for a wonderful narrative. Being able to customise your deck means that you can choose how you want to try and progress the plot, if your heroes are only good at fighting then you will have no trouble from the creature that attack you but you won't cover much ground. Often it felt like the best course of action was to simply run as fast as you can, which considering the source material shouldn't be that surprising.

Runewars: When open the Runewars box the first thought you have is 'this is going to be complicated!' There are many different plastic figures, as each race has it's own unique creatures, as well as board sections and several decks of cards. However, the game does a fantastic job of reminding you what you are supposed to be doing and how to go about it. The cards instructions not only inform you what they do but also what you should do next, serving double duty as mini crib sheets. This in no way causes the game be overly simple, as you still have to think ahead and plan your actions, as poor planning will result in winter destroying most of your forces. The game also strikes as nice balance between heroes and armies as both need to be managed to ensure victory.

Yes, But is it Art?

In April 2010 Roger Ebert restated his position that video games are not and never will be art, or at the very least "that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art from." He made these comments in response to a TED video by Kellee Santiago, in which she stated that video games already were art, but were more like crude cave paintings than the Sistine Chapel's ceiling. As the resulting slew of backlash pointed out, Ebert doesn't understand games, something he acknowledged in his apology three months later. But his rationale is not incomprehensible, in his view the given objectives and the ability to win a game prevent it from being art, to draw a parallel is a board game art?

A board game contains artistic elements such as artwork, text, and some even come with videos, but most people would struggle to think of the overall package as anything besides a frivolity. Without a deeper story line board games struggle to make us feel more than competitive. Some cooperative games, such as Arkham Horror or Pandemic do manage to better portray a narrative but with table talk along the lines of 'I'll go and remove the red cubes from Hong Kong' it's clear that it is still being treated as a game to win rather than a story to explore. The Lord of the Rings LCG does a very good job of portraying the story, with the game rules changing as the plot progresses and character's abilities being thematic, but even here my thoughts would turn to winning rather than being engrossed by the story.

From this it would appear, at least to me, that the board games I have played so far fail as art, purely because I never feel invested in the characters and I choose to resolve events in the manner that I believe will gain me the most points. This is the same thinking that Ebert has towards video games. Whenever I hear someone say 'mindless killing game' it makes me wonder if they have actually played modern video games. Video games have moved beyond simple arcade, get as many points as possible, affairs and now we see branching story lines with no one correct answer. When playing through Skyward Sword the amount of empathy and emotion the game made me feel clearly demonstrated that I was playing this not to just get to the end and win, but because I cared about the characters and the story being told. I was experiencing the game as art.

While not all video games are art, which is absolutely fine, I do believe that there is a sizeable number that are and that as a percentage this number is increasing. I also look forward to the day when I get to experience a board game that makes me think and feel and ultimately say 'I have just played a work of art'.

DIY RPG

When I am looking to run a roleplaying campaign, the first thing I do is decide on a story. I write the beginning (usually the first 3-4 sessions) and the end (or at least how I would like it to end). I leave the details of the middle sections vague so that the players are free to move from A to B as they see fit. And only once the story outline is done do I start to think about what system I want to use.

Generally I like systems that provide the players with lots of freedom and choice, but at the same time I like those choices to be resolved quickly. One of the problems I have always had with D&D is that although it provides the players with lots of actions that they can perform during combat, the combat sessions would generally drag on. In 2009 I decided to run a Cthulhuesq horror game set just after the death of Queen Victoria (I didn't want to run Call of Cthulhu because that mythos is already well known which can lead to metagaming and take part of the fun away). I considered several systems for use, for example BESM (because it can be used with any game), Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, and World of Darkness. But, in the end I decided that what this game needed was its own custom system.

I wanted the system to be quick and simple, with very little time spent reading dice rolls. I also wanted combat to be treated in the same way as any other conflict and not need its own rules section. Towards this end I decided that every conflict should be decided by a single dice role and that only PC's should role dice, with the target number they needed to beat being the average result that would be rolled by the NPC. Each player only had four stats (physical power, physical finesse, mental power, and mental finesse), they also had two advantages, one disadvantage (although depending on the situation an advantage could act as a disadvantage and vice versa), and some items/equipment that it would make sense for them to own.

The stats were a dice type, with an average person having a d6 in all stats; but because a PC is better than average they were given two upgrades, so they could either increase one stat to a d10 or have two stats at d8, if they desired they could also decrease one stat to a d4 giving them a third stat increase. Each character also had ten hit points and ten sanity points, but these were kept hidden for reasons I will explain later. When a conflict occurred the players would need to state what they were doing and what they hoped to achieve by doing so. For example, not wanting to be interrogated by the players a NPC pulls a knife and begins to back away towards the door, now rather than the player just saying 'I attack the thug with the knife' they would need to specify what they were attempting to gain, for example 'seeing as the thug has a knife rather than wrestle with him I will attempt to quickly knock him unconscious and stop him getting away'. This also provides the implication of what would happen if the roll failed, player is stabbed and thug escapes. The actual role would involve taking the player rolling physical power and adding any appropriate bonuses from items and/or advantages, in this case the target number would be 4.5 ( 3.5 being the average result from rolling a d6 and +1 for the knife). In situations where a conflict might involve multiple NPC's the target number is determined by adding the two NPC averages together, for example if there were two men with knives in the above situation then the target number would be 9. If the target number was outside the range of numbers a player could achieve then no roll was needed.

The game also included a magic system which involved the players gaining runes, with rather poor translations of what they meant, from which they had to form sentences. Depending on the runes used different magic effects would occur. The use of poor/ambiguous translations was so that player wouldn't be 100% certain the first time the cast a spell what it would do, for example would 'give, fire, other' cause the target to catch fire or become enchanted?

The final aspect of the system were the hit points and sanity points. Players start with 10 of each and these were represented by stones, black for hit points and white for sanity. The stones were kept out of sight in plastic dishes but because of the nature of the material players could hear when one or more was lost or gained. Keeping the details of the exact number of hit/sanity points secret added to the feeling of the unknown, and also provided me with a way to 'confuse' the players. When a player became low on sanity the way I as GM interacted with them changed, simple things such as calling them by the wrong name, passing notes with ambiguous meaning, and picking up and dropping some stones back in the dish are simple examples of ways I tried to let the players feel the mental strain their character was under.

This should give you a general overview of how the system works. I encourage everyone to at some point try and either design their own or modify their favourite gaming system, you learn a lot about what does and doesn't work, and don't worry if things don't go all that well as you can always change or tweak the system. When I first presented this system to my players there was some concern over their not being enough to differentiate the characters stat-wise, but I asked them to try it with the promise of changing to a different system if it didn't work out, and due to some good roleplaying and back-stories on their part all the characters did act and feel very different.

Schrodinger's Card

In 1935 Erwin Schrodinger devised a thought experiment whereby a cat was placed in a box with a vial of poison, a hammer, a radioactive source, and a Geiger counter. If the Geiger counter detects radioactive decay it lowers the hammer, breaking the vial and killing the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics treats the cat as being in both an alive and dead state, until such time as the box is opened and the fate of the cat is discovered. But what does this have to do with games?

Quite often when playing a game there will be some hidden information, a face down or as yet undelt card, some undefined counters, or even the result of the next dice roll. When we make our decisions we need to consider what these still to be determined events could be and the risk/reward in each case. For example, playing The Settlers of Catan I have nine cards in hand on my turn and have to make the choice between using some of these cards or keeping them to use later, the risk being that if I choose the latter a seven will be rolled and I'll lose half of them. How should I make my decision? Well I need to consider the probability of a seven being rolled and also the probability that if it isn't I will be able to make better use of my cards next turn.

Let us now switch games to cribbage. At the start of each hand a player must decide which two cards to place in the crib before the starter card is revealed. Because the starter is used at the end of the hand for scoring consideration to how our kept cards can combine with the starter is important. Since sixteen of the cards have a value of ten and only four a value of nine, keeping a five is more beneficial than keeping a six (having cards that add to fifteen scores two points). It is also worthwhile, as explained in my How to get Lucky post, to consider the chance of keeping a hand that is not currently high scoring but with the right starter card becomes high scoring. Some people find this kind of thinking difficult, as the obviously the top card is already determined, and also your opponent has six cards in their hand so none of these six card can be on top! However, probability doesn't understand that and we must treat the cards like Schrodinger's cat, being all cards at once until such time as they are observed, except for one small problem.

Our opponent is not random, but rather is making decisions all the time and based on these decisions we can get a hint about what cards are where. In 2008 a Nature article detailed scientists 'peeking' at the cat without causing it to become either alive or dead. When our opponent plays their first card we immediately gain some information and get a 'peek' at the cards in their hand, for example if our opponent leads a ten I would assume that they have a five, I don't know for certain so the card is still undefined but I get a hint. The reason is that, as I explained earlier, the starter card is most likely worth ten, also the most common card value in your hand is a ten which means that keeping fives is very common, meaning the chance of someone having a five as one of their four kept cards is closer to 2/5 than 2/7, so by leading a ten I assume that they have a five to play (scoring two points for doubles) in the event that I play my five.

This type of thinking also applies to poker, when a player folds rather than bids we gain information about what they don't have in their hand, and the probability that those cards will appear in the community cards increases, of cause poker also gives us the option of lying which is where knowing your opponents play styles and 'tells' comes in handy. I once used knowledge of my opponents play styles and 'peeking' to great effect in a game of 500. Due to time constraints it was the final hand, I had dealt and the player to my left opened the bidding at the eight level which my partner then matched, the player to my right then made a bid at the nine level. I still hadn't looked at my cards but I had played with these people a lot and knew they were not the types to overvalue a hand even if it was the final had of the day, so still without looking at my cars I bid open Misere, after some complaining about bidding blind and me wasting their time the bid was accepted and made, winning my partner and I the game. Afterwards I pointed out that because of the way they had bid I knew my hand had nothing in it and that was why I was comfortable making such a large bid without having seen it. Despite this explanation I still got a reputation for being a maverick, crazy player who despite making stupid bids would end up winning.

Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony

Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony is a vertically scrolling arcade style schmup (shoot 'em up) by indie developer Final Form Games. The game is set on 17th century British Colonial Mars, and tells the tale of the Roanoke Colony and the battle against the Spanish and Martians. As crazy as the story may sound there is actually an even more farcical version which is unlocked after completing the game and sees characters such a Sir Walter Raleigh renamed Wally.

The gameplay is similar to old arcade schmups, except unlike the old coin gobblers when you die in this game it is always your fault. This is achieved in two ways, first your hit box is very small, although the ship might look large only the pilot being hit will result in you loosing a life and second is the Vaunt ability. The Vaunt meter is filled by collecting golden nuts and gears from defeated enemies, and once full activating Vaunt Mode creates a temporary shield around you and triggers double damage/points until the meter is depleted. A second smaller shield can be activated by pressing the Vaunt button a second time but doing so immediately empties the Vaunt meter and it won't start to fill again for a while. The game can be played with either the keyboard, mouse, or gamepad and has multiplayer support for up to four players, with four different ships to choose from each with their own primary and secondary fire (although I don't find the fourth ship very useful).

The graphics in Jamestown fit the classic arcade fell with a '16-bit' look and are clear enough that you should always know what killed you and why. While the main game can be finished in a single sitting, and there is a Gauntlet mode that lets you try to do so with only two continues, there is a lot of replay value to be had; the multiple difficulties, challenge levels (the first four of which are shown in the video above) and crazy hard achievements like 'Complete the Gauntlet on Judgement difficulty without being hit or continuing' will keep you playing for many, many hours.

Playing Jamestown reminds me of the arcade style games released by Treasure, where despite what initially seems to be crazy bullet hell, once you get a hang of the controls the game is actually very fair, hard but fair. Jamestown is available on Steam, Direct to Drive, and Gamersgate for US$9.95.