Talath

Appearantly, these blog entries write themselves at the speed of laziness.

So you've chosen your Identity, and now you're feeling like you only have half a character. Well, if you didn't have the rules in front of you and you felt this way, then you would be correct in feeling that way. The next major choice for your character is your Class.

While the mechanics of the character Class may have changed between revisions (and even removed in two iterations of the rules), the concept has remained the same: a profession of sorts, with thematic groupings of skills and abilities.

Class

Your Class determines what you are good at. Whereas Identity answers the question of "Who am I?", your Class answers the question of "What do I do?" When you choose a Class, you're entering into a role of sorts, an adknowledged and understood position within the mall and teenage society. When you are, say, a Mall Samurai, it is understood and known that you are good with melee weapons, and may or may not possess a code of honor or sorts.

In Malls & Morons, there are six classes to choose from: the Football Player, the Kung Fu Kid, the Mall Ninja, the Mall Ranger, the Mall Rat, and the Mall Samurai. You might be asking yourself, "Bitch, where be all the classes at so I can be all up ins, mang?"

Word, mang. I hear you. I have a two part answer to your colorful question. First off, because of the limit on the initial page count, there were limitations on what classes could be added due to additional subsystems. For example, to do the Computer Geek justice, a sub system for computers would have to be developed. Which requires pages. And time. And work.

The second part is good news: the majority of the missing classes will be released, for FREE, with accompanying subsystems. The plans for such are proceeded below:

• Technology, with the Anarchist and the Computer Geek
• Reputation, with the Blackmailer and Ultimate Mall Citizen
• Perks, with the Trekkie

So, after all that sleazy salesmanship, you must be wondering "Well, what do classes do?" What do they do?

Well, hmmm.

In the initial rule set, Classes give you a bonus to two selected skills, as well as an Achievement Goal. The skills are self-explanitory; however, the Achievement Goal is what drives the fundamental behaviour of the Classes. When you act according to your Achievement Goal, you are awarded Achievement Points, which you can use to improve your character, as well as redeem at any local Chuck E Cheeses*.

Your skills and Achievement Goals differentiate you from other classes. If that isn't enough for you, then don't worry, because soon after the corebook release, there will be a free supplement which will allow you to spend your hard earned Achievement Points on Perks, which are neat little special abilities.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave comments. Until then, tune in next time when we will look at Skills (snooze) and some of the basic task resolution mechanics (yay!).

* Contract negotiations are still pending.

So, you need a character to play this snazzy new (or old, more or less) game called Malls & Morons. Lucky for you, character creation in the game is surprisingly easy, in such that you will have a character up and running in about 10 minutes or less*. Don't believe me? There are a few reasons it is so easy, and you don't even have to take your character to a tax accountant. I'm not naming names, but the game designers know who they are.

Over the following entries, I will be examining parts of the character, as well as how they relate to character creation and what role they play. You will get to see how old concepts reemerge into a new game, and how they fit into the new rules. This entry deals Identity, which was known as Type in the old d20 rules.

As I attempted to compile various revisions and new editions (numbering about maybe 7-8 incomplete games over the course of 7 years - 1 revision/new edition per year), the concept received new names, but didn't change much: Subtype, Clique, Subculture, and Identity. Identity was the term I liked most, and with a new name, it got a change in how it interacted the character, but the idea is the same. It's the Malls & Morons equivalant of race or species for other games.

This would be a good time to mention that game terms are capitalized to distinguish them from normal uses of the same word.

Identity

Your Identity is who you are, who you've grown to be, and what you will eventually grow away from when you become an adult. Identities are not just mechanical abstracts in Malls & Morons, but real world constructs which bind together groups of teenagers in common cause. Each Identity is presented with a short descrtion, a list of common characteristics (which can be use or neglected at the whim of the player), and modifications to two Attributes. Because an Identity determines in part, who you are, they tend to mold you.

So for example, because Jocks like sports and physical activity, they tend to be stronger. However, their love of physical sports comes at the expense of their studies, and thus their intellect is neglected. Although it isn't explained in such a way (though more or less), it is still appearant, and the archetypes that the Identities represent are common enough no one should have any problem identifying why they are in that way.

The Identities avaialble in the core rules are the Goth, the Jock, the Nerd, the Underteen, and the Valley Teen. You might ask, "Orion, why only five? Why not others such as gangsters and other stuff?" A good question and one worth answering (and you will see this as a re-occuring answer): these five represent my vision of Malls & Morons. My game has no need to use for more than five. However, you will find that creating your own Identities is very easy, and adding them to your game will help to make it your own vision.

But if you think Identity has no relevance outside of character creation and the impact it has on your Attributes, then you are wrong. Identities help you identity with non-player characters in the game. Sharing a common background, you will find your best friends and worst enemies may come from the player character's Identity, which helps to ground the player character in the world. The first time a player characters encounters an NPC who share his Identity, he should think "Oh, heavens! My kin!", and perhaps, followed by a feeling that teens sharing his Identity aren't necessarily unified - although perhaps they could be.

Identities, in this way, are a tool to be used by the Mall Master for his or her own nefarious and clever purposes. And although, like any sort of inspirational material, it can all be used equally as well, because I wrote it, I feel like it should work doubly so without any proof to the validity of my own self delusions.

Tune in next time when we will discuss Classes, and what they can do for you.

* This statement has not been tested or verified. Proceed belief with caution.

I was frustrated by my inability to commit to a project. I had mentally locked myself within a mental realm of concentric prisons, each one smaller within the latter, each one locked, with my inside the middle. The circles represented the various layers of desire and design that I wished to impose upon Malls & Morons.

My publisher saw that I had locked myself within a bad head space (bad for productiveness, anyway). Seeing this, he issued me the following challenge: write a more-or-less complete game in 10 pages.

10 pages? Immediately I was excited about the prospect and went to work on the outline. I knew in my mind that this was the sort of constraints I needed, the kind of constraint that produces creativity and design, not the kind that leaves one to stall and crash to the earth. It was the kind of constraint that inspired the back-to-basics bare bones design that I have come to appreciate over the years, and the kind of design I wanted to emphasize in Malls & Morons.

Already to go with my new project, I composed an outline for the topics I would cover. I put in what I felt was necessary for the game to function, using the rules, and the knowledge an judgement of the Mall Master, to fill in the blanks. After some adjustment to the outline, due to addition of topics during the writing of the first draft, the outline became the following:

1. Introduction
2. Task Resolution
3. Character Creation
4. Combat
5. Rewards
6. The Mall

Making a 10 page game was interesting, because it relied on the task resolution mechanics to carry almost the entirety of it. Everything that comes after the second section builds upon the principles described there. In that way, each chapter builds upon the information presented in previous chapters, making it important to read the book from beginning to end, as much as it is to reference it.

Of course, being only 10 pages, means that some stuff has been cut. This has taken the form of character options, but do not despair, because what has been cut, will be released to the consumer, fleshed out in the space that could not be afforded. There will be free supplements, and some non-free ones in the future, but that is neither here no there.

Tune in next time, when we will talk about character creation, and the options that are presented to the player, as well as the ease of making a character.

Oy. So, Malls & Morons made it's debut to the net scene in 2001 as a d20 variant. It's 7 years later with little or nothing to show, and I'm thinking to myself, "Orion, this has to get out there and this procrastination has to end. No more starting over, no more untouched documents, partially or fully complete sitting in your hard drive: finish this while you still can!"

Sadly, I seem to be in an endless cycle of concept re-evaluation and procrastination. I will not make any promises about the future of this game until the book is done and out of my hands. So, the next time you see a promise, you will know that it is finished and changing hands between people whose job is to release this game. I know the fans of the game, what few are left, want to see something. A revision has been promised to them, but really, is it necessary? Sure, the d20 version is unpolished and shares more similarities with D&D than a modern RPG, but it works. Is it necessary?

To me, it is. d20 is great and fine, but I want to make the game my own and ride on no one's coat tails. This is merely a matter of pride and a desire to really flex my muscles as a game designer and design something for myself, from the ground up. Making up rules, the contexts, the settings, and everything else, to me, is fun. Believe it or not (and among the D&D crowd, I imagine it's more common than not), but I like to determine statistical probability of dice ranges with certain numbers of dice. It's a great mental exercise, and one that I like to do when creating game mechanics.

There is also the matter of simplicity. I adknowledge that Malls & Morons is a niche game at best, and it will never find mainstream success like D&D, GURPS, and of the White Wolf games, and so on and so forth. The setting and the characters, because of their unusual nature and specificity, will not appeal to a wide market of gamers. It does to some, and those who like it and support it, are enough for me. Using d20 to play this game is, in my opinion, a bit overkill, because of the necessity of memorizing so many rules. That is not to say that d20 is too complex - however, more people will like, try, and play the game if it is easier to pick up and play without so much mental work involved.

The simplicity is also a reflection of my changing tastes and preferences of games. When I first began scribbling notes and designing rules for pre-d20 Malls & Morons during 1997-98, I was into AD&D 2nd Edition and GURPS, and therefore I wanted lots of rules to cover many situations, as well as lots of options for characters. These days, I prefer more DM Fiat/Rules light games, like a combination of Castles and Crusades and AD&D 1st Edition. When I'm running, I want to be able to run a game without referring to a book; just my notes. Sure, I could do that with 3rd edition (excluding spells and monsters), but I don't want to anymore. Rules mastery doesn't mean as much to me as it once did.

Another big factor is designing a game I would like to run as a GM, more so than making a game I would like to play. My preference of GM Fiat and rules-lightness will more than likely show up in the book itself. I derive my greatest enjoyment as a GM, more so than a player (where I find, admittedly, frustration at the lack of omnipotent knowledge), and thus make games from the perspective of a GM first, a player second. Somewhere in there, the reader also ranks in there.

So, my goals for Malls & Morons are: built from the ground up (by me), simple to pick up and read / play, and ultimately gives more power to the GM rather than the rules. Also, the game must contain the classic group setup (1 GM + 4-5 players, give or take a few), emphasize social situations as much as combat situations, with modern trappings, all while inside of an all-inclusive setting (the mall).

Well, when I decided to scrap my latest draft, I talked to TheLe, and he proposed writing a 10 page game, as a way to focus efforts and to help decide what to keep and what not to keep. It is a challenge, because one (being me), must decide what is critical, what is not critical, how to balance fluff with crunch, all the while creating a self-contained and (relatively) complete game. I welcomed this challenge, and now in the process of outlining this newest draft.

You will hear more in the future, as I describe the process in this blog as game design journals. I will reveal my thoughts, reasons, and conclusions as I wok on parts of the game, and tie them all together. It will provide you, gentle reader, with an unparralleled insight into the game and to my creative process (more importantly, the game), and you will hopefully get a sense of a timeline of the game.

Here's looking to Malls & Morons for final publication!