Turbine recently posted an article on The Lord of the Rings Online that I edited: “Hero’s Guide to Lothlórien.” The inimitable Will Hindmarch did an excellent job with the heavy lifting of actually writing the piece and taking all the screenshots. If you like MMOs or The Lord of the Rings in any form, be sure to check it out.
Game Balance Is Overrated
I recently wrote this bit on a private mailing list. Jeff Tidball saw it and asked me to repost it over at Gameplaywright.net in the discussion about Things We Think About Games, the game-ruminations book he and Will Hindmarch put together. Which I did. And so I thought I’d post it here as well. I’m interested to hear what you think.
Game balance is completely overrated.
People conflate balance with fairness all the time. They are not the same thing. If you’re all playing by the same rules and with the same pieces, the game is just as fair to every player.
By that, I don’t mean that you shouldn’t have a game that’s roughly balanced, nor that you shouldn’t try to root out the bits that throw a game completely off the rails. However, if all choices are always optimal (i.e. equally good), than what’s the point of playing?
Games should have their rough spots, their peaks and valleys in the mathematical sheet of balance. They should be crunchy, not smooth, filled with secret caves of hidden knowledge for players to discover, ponder, and exploit.
Scrye Folds
ICv2.com reports that Scyre, the last remaining magazine devoted to collectible games, is ending its run in April. By my count, Scrye was also the last adventure game magazine of any stripe left in wide circulation, joining Dragon, Dungeon, InQuest, Games Quarterly, and several others in the periodicals graveyard.
I used to love reading gaming magazines, but with the rise of the internet, there’s clearly not much space for them any more. Any news articles they run are out of date before they even go to press much less by the time they hit stands. The same goes for their price guides. Chewy, well-written content still has a place of course, but it’s hard to appeal to a broad audience if you focus on just one game. If you spread your wings a bit wider, you find that most players only play a handful of games and don’t care for omnivorous coverage instead.
The only magazines I know of that are left are Polymancer and Kobold Quarterly. I’ve never seen an actual copy of Polymancer, so I can’t comment on its quality.
Kobold Quarterly, which is edited and published by my fellow Alliterate Wolfgang Baur, rocks, but it’s focused exclusively on D&D material. At that, it does a wonderful job. It leapfrogs backward over the wide-ranging magazines of the ’90s and lands squarely in the days when D&D was all that most gamers cared about.
If that suits you, go for it. I read KQ–in PDF form rather than print–but I still have to mourn the loss of a wider-ranged print magazine. Of course, I have the massive resources of the internet to console me, so I can’t feel all that bad.
ETA: I forgot to mention, of course, the various gaming comics books like Knights of the Dinner Table, which features a lot of game content too. With Nodwick cancelled and (I believe) Dork Tower and PvP on print hiatus, that seem to make KoDT the last book standing.
BIFF 2009
The Beloit International Film Festival announced its 2009 lineup this week. The festival runs February 19—22, and I’m hoping to make the most of it. I’ve not heard of many of the films on the docket. If any independent film buffs out there could offer some recommendations, I’d appreciate it.
I actually managed to see several films in a theater last year, which is my new record since the quads were born. They were The Spiderwick Chronicles, Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Wall-E, High School Musical 3, Slumdog Millionaire, and Mutant Chronicles. (I’m not sure the last one counts as in a theater, as the private screening room in which I saw it had no popcorn, but why not?) Toss in a couple more at the Omnimax theater at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and a 3D film at Great America, and that’s a good year for me.
Forbidden Mail
A couple weeks ago, I received my first e-mail from a concerned parent about More Forbidden Knowledge. Honestly, with a title like that, I’d have figured on more outrage in my inbox by now, but I’m happy to be wrong on that point.
The woman had some real, if misguided, concerns, and I did my best to answer them. You can read the entire exchange below. I’ve only removed the e-mail addresses and last names. The text of the letters is intact.
Congratulations x2
A quick shout out to two friends of mine who’ve had good news this week.
First, to Carl Kluzke, who made it through the first round of Paizo‘s 2009 edition of its RPG Superstar competition. (Think American Idol, but for RPG designers.) The boundary chalk magic item he concocted for this is good fun with a cool twist. Good luck to him in the next round(s)!
Second, to Paul Crilley, who can finally announce that he’s sold the first two books in his new middle-grade fantasy series. Personally, I can’t wait to read them and to share them with my kids.
Good on you, guys!
Superhero Wishes at Bookgasm
Fellow IAMTW member and comic-book legend Paul Kupperberg recently asked a bunch of us to tell him which superhero we’d like to write a novel about and what kind of story we would tell. Oh, and did we have any horror stories about such books to tell?
You can see my answer–along with those of Richard Lee Byers, Greg Cox, Russell Davis, Keith R.A. DeCandido, David Mack, Jeff Mariotte, Yvonne Navarro, David Seidman, James Swallow, Brandie Tarvin, and J. Steven York–in Paul’s latest “Capes, Cowls, and Costumes” column on Bookgasm.
Finding the Narrative at Storytellers Unplugged
My latest essay, “Finding the Narrative,” is up at Storytellers Unplugged. This time around, I examine the needs of narratives through the lens of the inauguration of President Obama. Please check it out.
Mutant Chronicles on the Big (and Little) Screen
Word is that the Mutant Chronicles movie (for which I wrote the novelization) will finally get a theatrical release this year. Magnet Releasing–a division of Magnolia Pictures–picked up the distribution rights, and it plans to have a limited release of the film on April 24.
In advance of that, though, the film will be released on HDNet‘s Ultra VOD service on March 27. That makes it available to anyone who has access to HDNet rather than the “select cities” which will host the film in theaters.
I saw a mostly finished cut of the film at a private screening last year, but I’m looking forward to seeing it in a theater with a crowd of people too. I’m thrilled that it’s finally going to happen.
Quick Game Reviews Site
If you’re looking for short and sweet reviews of tabletop games of many stripes, check out the new GameCryer.com. It’s the brainchild of Ed Healy, David Moore, and Chris Perrin, but they have a number of reviewers lined up to tear through the shelves of their local game stores and tell you what they think.
They summarize their style as such:
Each Game Cryer review begins the same way. The first paragraph is a summary of the game being reviewed. The second, a summary of the reviewer’s opinion about the game.
After those bits, the articles often go into further depth, but if you’re in a rush all you need to do is scan those first two paragraphs for a taste. It makes everything nice and web-friendly, and definitely worth a look.