As we come down from GenCon, lets take a quick look at ideas for game-supporting gadgets that serve the non-combat pillars of our games -- exploration and roleplaying.
GenCon's over. I've written a couple versions of a post-GenCon column, and each time I've ended up trashing it. Too much of the same old stuff everyone has been posting all week.
It was awesome. You should go. I should get over it. 25 more weeks until the next GenCon.
But there are some insights and ideas from GenCon that do pertain to gadgets and technology. But to get there, I need to start with one of the insights pulled from my Post-GenCon trash heap.
Innovations are in Games, not Gadgets this year
This isn't a hard and fast rule, but a clear trend. A combination of factors like the D&D Fallow year, the rise of kickstarter, and a variety of other things have conspired to create a situation where it's not a great time to be trying to innovate in terms of gadgets to support combat encounters in games -- not the way it was a few years ago.
Alea tools, with their magnetic discs were still at the Con, and you're seeing their stuff everywhere. At D&D tables I saw more DMs and players using these disks than ever. And Paizo still has an excellent selection of their gamehackery aids. But Pathfinder, as a game, doesn't introduce new challenges for innovators to solve with gadgets -- the challenges in running Pathfinder are the challenges we've had for the past ten years, by and large. And there isn't another dominant game that is big enough to draw serious gadget innovation.
All of that innovation energy isn't gone, it just seems to have been poured into Kickstarter in terms of new RPGs, and other products.
Looking A Bit Deeper
If we take a closer look at a bunch of trends, there's another trend going. The D&D playtest is trying to make sure the game serves all three "pillars" of the game -- combat, of course, but also exploration and roleplaying. Meanwhile, games that are getting a lot of attention this year -- or have been coming out in the past few years -- seem to be focusing on those non-combat pillars.
Gumshoe-based games are all about investigation and mystery. FATE is a game that's a lot more about storytelling and roleplaying than it is about combat. And so on.
What Have We Been Missing?
In our headlong, 4e-fueled obsession with combat encounters, we've been paying very little attention to the sorts of game aids that support the other pillars. What sort of game aids are there out there that support Exploration? What do they look like? If they're not there, what would we like to see?
And then there's Roleplaying and story. D&D players are not universally comfortable speaking in character and roleplaying -- many of us reach for the dice as soon as some sort of social confict comes up. There are thorny problems there waiting to be solved by the same sort of innovation energy that created Alea Tools.
Good gadgets solve a problem, make something easier, or scratch an itch in our game experience. Alea Tools, my running example of a combat gadget, makes it easier to track conditions and other information about PCs and NPCs on the map. So, what gadgets are out there solving problems for the other two pillars?
Gadgets for Roleplaying
Roleplaying is, by and large, something that doesn't change much from one game to another. Some games rely more on it, some less, but not many games actually have robust, complex mechanics for roleplaying -- at least not the games that have large audiences.
There are exceptions, of course. The various Game of Thrones variations that have come out have all hard to come up with systems of intrigue and influence to try to gamify some of the more complex social activity in those books. The "Crafty" series of games, born of the old d20 Spycraft game, had elaborate social conflict rules. But those are exceptions, and in both cases I'd argue that their audiences are small enough to make them unlikely targets for entrepreneurship.
But giving players subtle help to remind them of their characters, and help them play in character -- that's an interesting challenge. There's also plenty of room for aids to help DMs with their own roleplaying -- how do you manage to give each important NPC his own voice, his own personality, in your roleplaying?
View attachment 58648
One obvious solution pops right out as you walk around the vendor hall at GenCon. Props. I'm not a LARPer, the only Cosplay I'm suited to is Tweedle Dee (not butch enough for Tweedle Dum), but the idea of a couple of iconic props for your game and PCs is an interesting one. Perhaps each player gets a iconic item -- a foam sword, a toy wand or shield, a holy symbol, anything at all that the player can fidget with while he plays. And as DM, you might want to think about things that you could pick up and hold while you're speaking for specific NPCs.
Gadgets for Exploration
Here's a place where I don't think we have a whole lot of existing gadgetry. One thing that we do have is VTT software, which makes it easy to expose maps based on what the players have explored, etc. Using a VTT in your face to face gaming could be a real boon when it comes to exploration tasks, but it's far from perfect.
Part of the problem we have is that the exporation systems are not clear and robust yet, by and large. At least not in the case of D&D and the playtest. For 4th edition, no one bothered to invent better gadgets for managing Skill Challenges -- probably because those challenges were so diverse, it was hard to come up with a tool that would be useful for all of them -- more useful than a stack of poker chips, anyway.
So, I think there's a lot of room for innovation here, but odds are that innovation doesn't have a clear set of problems to try to solve like tracking conditions.
What do YOU have in your bag of tricks?
What other ideas do you have -- either from GenCon or elsewhere -- for Gadgets that support Exploration or Role Playing in your games?
GenCon's over. I've written a couple versions of a post-GenCon column, and each time I've ended up trashing it. Too much of the same old stuff everyone has been posting all week.
It was awesome. You should go. I should get over it. 25 more weeks until the next GenCon.
But there are some insights and ideas from GenCon that do pertain to gadgets and technology. But to get there, I need to start with one of the insights pulled from my Post-GenCon trash heap.
Innovations are in Games, not Gadgets this year
This isn't a hard and fast rule, but a clear trend. A combination of factors like the D&D Fallow year, the rise of kickstarter, and a variety of other things have conspired to create a situation where it's not a great time to be trying to innovate in terms of gadgets to support combat encounters in games -- not the way it was a few years ago.
Alea tools, with their magnetic discs were still at the Con, and you're seeing their stuff everywhere. At D&D tables I saw more DMs and players using these disks than ever. And Paizo still has an excellent selection of their gamehackery aids. But Pathfinder, as a game, doesn't introduce new challenges for innovators to solve with gadgets -- the challenges in running Pathfinder are the challenges we've had for the past ten years, by and large. And there isn't another dominant game that is big enough to draw serious gadget innovation.
All of that innovation energy isn't gone, it just seems to have been poured into Kickstarter in terms of new RPGs, and other products.
Looking A Bit Deeper
If we take a closer look at a bunch of trends, there's another trend going. The D&D playtest is trying to make sure the game serves all three "pillars" of the game -- combat, of course, but also exploration and roleplaying. Meanwhile, games that are getting a lot of attention this year -- or have been coming out in the past few years -- seem to be focusing on those non-combat pillars.
Gumshoe-based games are all about investigation and mystery. FATE is a game that's a lot more about storytelling and roleplaying than it is about combat. And so on.
What Have We Been Missing?
In our headlong, 4e-fueled obsession with combat encounters, we've been paying very little attention to the sorts of game aids that support the other pillars. What sort of game aids are there out there that support Exploration? What do they look like? If they're not there, what would we like to see?
And then there's Roleplaying and story. D&D players are not universally comfortable speaking in character and roleplaying -- many of us reach for the dice as soon as some sort of social confict comes up. There are thorny problems there waiting to be solved by the same sort of innovation energy that created Alea Tools.
Good gadgets solve a problem, make something easier, or scratch an itch in our game experience. Alea Tools, my running example of a combat gadget, makes it easier to track conditions and other information about PCs and NPCs on the map. So, what gadgets are out there solving problems for the other two pillars?
Gadgets for Roleplaying
Roleplaying is, by and large, something that doesn't change much from one game to another. Some games rely more on it, some less, but not many games actually have robust, complex mechanics for roleplaying -- at least not the games that have large audiences.
There are exceptions, of course. The various Game of Thrones variations that have come out have all hard to come up with systems of intrigue and influence to try to gamify some of the more complex social activity in those books. The "Crafty" series of games, born of the old d20 Spycraft game, had elaborate social conflict rules. But those are exceptions, and in both cases I'd argue that their audiences are small enough to make them unlikely targets for entrepreneurship.
But giving players subtle help to remind them of their characters, and help them play in character -- that's an interesting challenge. There's also plenty of room for aids to help DMs with their own roleplaying -- how do you manage to give each important NPC his own voice, his own personality, in your roleplaying?
View attachment 58648
One obvious solution pops right out as you walk around the vendor hall at GenCon. Props. I'm not a LARPer, the only Cosplay I'm suited to is Tweedle Dee (not butch enough for Tweedle Dum), but the idea of a couple of iconic props for your game and PCs is an interesting one. Perhaps each player gets a iconic item -- a foam sword, a toy wand or shield, a holy symbol, anything at all that the player can fidget with while he plays. And as DM, you might want to think about things that you could pick up and hold while you're speaking for specific NPCs.
Gadgets for Exploration
Here's a place where I don't think we have a whole lot of existing gadgetry. One thing that we do have is VTT software, which makes it easy to expose maps based on what the players have explored, etc. Using a VTT in your face to face gaming could be a real boon when it comes to exploration tasks, but it's far from perfect.
Part of the problem we have is that the exporation systems are not clear and robust yet, by and large. At least not in the case of D&D and the playtest. For 4th edition, no one bothered to invent better gadgets for managing Skill Challenges -- probably because those challenges were so diverse, it was hard to come up with a tool that would be useful for all of them -- more useful than a stack of poker chips, anyway.
So, I think there's a lot of room for innovation here, but odds are that innovation doesn't have a clear set of problems to try to solve like tracking conditions.
What do YOU have in your bag of tricks?
What other ideas do you have -- either from GenCon or elsewhere -- for Gadgets that support Exploration or Role Playing in your games?
