Archive for April 2011

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Design Notes #1: Bad Things Happen, and That's Good!

Hello again, fans of Oz, I hope everybody reading enjoyed my little April 1 story yesterday. Was any of the real? I'll let you decide because I'm not saying. 🙂 In that story, as you saw, quite a few bad things happened during its telling. People were hurt. Oz was invaded. Any of us that could be there would hate to be involved in such a horrible things. We don't like it when bad things happen to us. The same thing holds true in role-playing games. We spend time rolling up characters (or building them, depending on the system) and we want them to the last as long as we can make them last. In most games, we try to avoid bad things. After all, when bad things happen, at best the character's taken out of the game. Maybe a little humiliation. At worst, your character is dead and you have to make a new one. In some types of games, that's a good thing. When you live by what the dice have to tell you, it puts you on edge. You don't know what can happen next. But the same time, we invest a lot in our characters. We don't want one fatal dice roll, a single stroke of bad luck, to put an end to all our hard work. On the other hand, when we read a book (or for that matter, a comic book, or watch a TV show, or enjoy any kind of fiction), we live for the moments that bad things happen to the characters. After all, a story that has no conflict is absolutely no fun to read at all. What's the point? We thrill to the heroes of the story overcoming adversity! Role-playing games are a completely different animal than stories – or are they? A better question: do they have to be? I spent years trying to figure this part out. My goal was to create a game that emulated being in an Oz book. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to do it. I looked into games that were supposed to emulate genres: being in a superhero comic book, being in an eighties cartoon series, etc. Good stuff, but I had a little bit of a difficult time with it. Maybe I just wasn't getting it. Evil Hat Games created a Fudge-based engine called FATE. The FATE System is currently used in games like Spirit of the Century and the Dresden Files, as well as other games by other publishers. Looking through FATE games (as well as a Fudge build called Marvelous Superheroes) I came to realize one thing: To emulate a story, players had to love bad things happening to their characters. Yes, a radical concept, to be sure. It flies in the face of RPG convention. You want to AVOID bad things, right? But, to play a story-based game, you have to desire the bad things. When looking at FATE and MS, I realized another thing: it's the characters that make things happen in a story. Think about it. You don't enjoy a story for the adventures; you enjoy it for what the characters do during an adventure. This means that a story-based game has to be purely centered on the characters. The result is a tradeoff: let bad things happen to your character and in return, the character will have greater control of the story later. Oz is no exception to this. In any given Oz book, characters get captured, lost, enchanted, and anything else the writer can think of. Therefore, Heroes of Oz had to follow these two concepts. The FATE System does this using Fate Points. If you let something bad happened to your character, you get a Fate Point. You then spend the Fate Point later to have a greater effect on the story. Heroes of Oz does this with the Story Point. Of course, bad things aren't the only way to get a Fate/Story Point, but they are the most exciting way to get them! I'll talk about Story Points more in the next post. Until then, be blessed and brush up on your Oz history. You're going to need it!

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Heroes of Oz: the Gift for my Wife, Ozma.

Good day to you, everybody. After all this time, I'm sure many of you are wondering why it is exactly that I haven't given up on getting this game out. The fact is, I made a promise. Not just to you, although you all are a large part of it. The fact is, I made a promise to my wife. My wife is a Ozma, ruling princess of the land of Oz. You see, in another lifetime, I was a part of a group of people called The Circle of the Crescent Moon that went to Oz. We were fighting the forces of evil, beings that were meant to destroy the dreams of mankind. Oz was a key part of their plans. Of course, we had to stop them. Back then, my name was Harper, King of Harpies. No, I'm not going to explain why I was the king of the harpies. It has to do with a certain Emerald city maid, a misunderstanding, and a fit of jealousy. Long story. Princess Ozma took a shine to our leader, whose name was Orryn. After many adventures, and for a variety of reasons, Orryn and Ozma got married. The marriage surprised everybody. A little disclaimer: I was also married at the time. Her name was Vorestia, the Princess of Unicorns. She was a true vision of beauty. Looking at her, you wouldn't know that this demure figure was a truly fierce warrior. She could become a unicorn herself, and she took every advantage of that form. At some point, I might go into more detail about the Circle. For now, it's unimportant. Orryn and the Circle received word of a major invasion of another land by our enemies. I was told to stay behind. I was to guard Ozma. To this point, Ozma and I didn't really get along. The first time we met, we'd gotten off on the wrong foot. But for now, with the Circle gone, we were both left alone. War is scary, and both Ozma and I knew that there was the possibility of losing our spouses. They weren't in Oz, so they could be killed. Neither of us liked that. After a month, Ozma showed signs, very clear signs, of missing her husband. She was worried. In spite of our animosity, I entered the empty throne room one day and asked if she wanted to talk. She seemed surprised, but then she asked me to close the doors to the chamber. I did so. She then descended from the throne and in her graceful way, walked up to me. Then she kissed me. I won't go into the details here, but during that time that our spouses were gone, there were many nights when we never parted. That's all you need to know. Eventually, the Circle came home. Long story short, Orryn and Vorestia did find out about the affair. Vorestia was much more forgiving than Orryn was. (although at first, Vorestia was upset, calling Ozma a "common trollop.") In time, the circle had to leave. I and a few others stayed behind in Oz. Perhaps understandably, Orryn didn't look back as he left. I think in time, though, he would forgive her and even think fondly of her. A year later, the Circle's enemies found Oz. The land was successfully invaded, and Ozma did what she normally felt would be unthinkable: from Ev, the citizens of Oz mounted a counterstrike and drove out the invaders. Taking back Oz, however, came at a terrible price. Many were killed (long story about that, too), and I was one of those killed. Before I died, I did get the opportunity to say goodbye to Ozma. No, Ozma and I were not right in we did. But it happened. In a new lifetime, I became the person that wrote this post that you're reading right now. But that's not the end. Vorestia came looking for me. She found me, and reported back to Ozma. Over time, and with the help of a friend of mine who is psychic, I learned how to see them and even how to travel to Oz in my sleep to be with them. A few years ago, I married Ozma. Yes, in a distant land, I'm the proud husband of two women. Isn't that big o' me? Anyway, since I had read the Oz books in my youth, I had wanted to do a role - playing game that spotlighted the land I loved. Ozma gave me her blessing. I promised it would be out no matter what. Heroes of Oz is my gift to her. I will not fail her.