Quirkworthy

Well, more of a thought inspired by a thought inspired by a thought. I apologise in advance if this is a little incoherent – I’m not feeling very clear this morning. Anyway, thought I’d put it out there 😉

My recent post on finding time to play for pleasure sparked an article on the Scent of a Gamer blog, and it seemed only fitting that the thoughts his article inspired in me should be another short comment here. It’s like internet tennis.

I’ll assume you’ve read both articles. In fact, while you’re at it, you’ll probably find a bunch of other interesting stuff to read on his blog. It’s definitely worth adding to your list of things to check. Anyway, when you’ve done, I’ll see you back here 😉

His points about Focus and Be Ruthless are fine as far as they go, though I think they are only relevant for a fraction of the gaming fraternity. I’d argue that they only work with a certain type of person, and not with me at all. I’ve tried to focus over the years, but it just isn’t fun for me. A major aspect of my enjoyment is understanding the game as a whole. The meta-game, perhaps, but perhaps not really that. I mean understanding how the different armies/factions/whatever go together to make the whole patchwork of the piece, and tell the story of the game from different angles. Naturally, some suit me more than others in terms of playing style. Even so, my playing style is not a static thing. It partly depends on my mood and partly on what else I’ve been playing lately. I like the change and the challenge of getting to grips with a different army. Sticking to one army might make me more experienced with them, but palls after a while. Also, understanding how to fight against an army makes you better at commanding it too, and if you only ever see the battle from one side of the trenches then I’d argue that you were likely to be a more limited general. So there are good aspects to diversity as wells focus.

To take it back to his comments on opportunity cost and first/second best options, I’d suggest that he’s mistaken in assuming that threes remain static for everyone all the time. If my most enjoyable experience right now would be to play game X with army Y then it does not follow that this will always be the case. Focus may, in fact, diminish my enjoyment.

Another factor (and one that admittedly may be peculiar to me) is related to my thinking on Loving Them Equally. It’s so ingrained in me now, and needs to be, that I find it very hard to decide between armies. I can see some good points in pretty much all of them. Am I really benefitting from restricting myself?

Having said all that, I do sometimes envy people who can focus on a single game and army for years on end. It must be nice to have that lack of distraction. But as I said, after years of trying various approaches, I think I know myself well enough to know that I simply can’t be happy doing that.

Another aspect is to do with foreknowledge. How do I know without trying different things which one suits me best? He touches on this with his final comment on Exploring (which does indeed sound contradictory). He’s absolutely right about there being a lot to choose from – I’ve written as much myself. So I don’t think it’s that we disagree entirely, just that I think there’s more than he suggests, and that while the focussed approach may be perfect for some it’s just not practical for all.

I was chatting to a mate of mine last weekend about various aspects of digital publishing that we’d both been exploring for games and novels. There’s quite a lot to get your head round, and it’s subtly different for games and books. Not so subtly in some areas.

Both of us have a series of projects that will use this route into the big wide world, though Mark’s a bit ahead of me in this regard having just uploaded his first novel: Sons of Mars.

This is an SF story set on Mars (you guessed?) and though I haven’t quite finished it yet, so far it reminds me of the sort of “young adult” fiction I read when I was younger. As that was his original target audience I think that’s a good thing.

Actually, I still read books that are classed as being for kids quite a lot as there are some real gems lurking in what is, after all, a convenient pigeonhole for the book trade rather than the authors. Unless you’re talking specifically “adult” themes or using obscure language and terminology, stories are stories and shouldn’t have an age restriction on being enjoyed.

If you’re interested it’s available as an ebook here.

And as a physical book here.

Just thought I’d say 😉

If you fancy a shot at winning a table’s worth of Mantic’s Battlezone terrain (the stuff that’s in Deadzone) then you should have a look at the Terrain Tutor’s YouTube channel.

He’s been running this for a while, and he’s down to the last 24 hours of a charity raffle. For every UK pound you pledge at www.justgiving.com/H4H-Battlezones you get a raffle ticket for the draw.

The money goes to a very worth cause called Help For Heroes that helps wounded servicemen and women.

The final roundup of where he’s got to with the terrain is here:

I came across him when I was thinking of writing some articles on building the terrain, but I don’t feel the need to do that any more. At least, not most of them. He’s got several really interesting ways to make it look quite different from the usual presentation and his various videos are well worth a look.

Either way, a table full of terrain for a small charity donation sounded like something you guys might want to consider. But hurry! It’s finishing tomorrow at noon (UK time).

Following on from my State of Play post the other day, I’d like to ramble for a bit about hobbies. Specifically, the gaming hobby I used to have and don’t quite any more. Essentially, I’d like it back.

I’ve been pondering this, and what I think I need to do is fairly simple in principle. It comes in two parts: Separation of time and separation of game.

Time

Whilst I am very lucky to be able to earn a living in the world of gaming, it does have a habit of taking over every waking moment. If I want to have a hobby where I can relax away from deadlines and other such worldly tribulations, I need to be stricter with myself about allocating time for a hobby and keeping it sacrosanct. All too often I pilfer time I’ve allocated to play a game for fun and make it a playtest session instead.

So, set time aside and make sure it stays set aside. Like I said, it’s easy in principle.

Game

Whilst I do enjoy playing games I design, after several months with my nose in the details I usually need a break from it to clear my head. Even after months or years, if I designed the game I’m playing it’s hard to step away from an analytical mindset. How is the balance, are these rules really as clear as they could be, what if I rewrote that bit, etc? That makes it all rather less relaxing. For the moment, let’s assume that I’ll be playing my own designs anyway, but they don’t qualify for being my hobby. At the end of the day, if I wrote it then it’s always at least partly work.

I also realise that I’ve not mentioned the type of game I’m thinking about. This is really just about finding a figure game. Board games tend to be much more self-contained, and though I play a lot of them they don’t really need planning in the same way as a figure game. Board games will happen as and when the gaming group feels like playing one. It’ll get opened, played and put away without any more fuss. Figure games, on the other hand, need planning, collecting, building, painting and so on as well as playing. As you all know, an army is seldom if ever truly finished. There’s nearly always something else you could add.

I don’t expect to be able to deal with a lot of different games and do any of them justice. I need more focus. This means I need to be very picky, and with the wide array of high quality games and figures these days it’s a real luxury to be able to pick and choose. I have, in fact, been doing this for a while now, searching for probably one main game and a few smaller ones. The main game needs to have enough grit to it to get my teeth into (well, my brain actually), and I’ve tried several over the years. Confrontation and Warmachine both fit into this category. I was hoping that Dropzone Commander would too, but that’s not worked out quite as I wanted. I’ll do a final piece on that soon to wrap up my thoughts on why not.

In the end it was a happy confluence of circumstances that helped me decide. While I was at the UK Game Expo I shared a stand with the Prodos guys and had a good look at their new version of Warzone. It seemed to have all the requisite elements I was looking for and they were kind enough to give me a copy to review. Since then I’ve read it in some depth and played a game or two, and it has become my game of choice for the moment. At least (to misquote Lieutenant Rasczak from Starship Troopers) till it dies or I find something better.

Exactly why, I will cover in more detail in a proper review, or series of reviews that I’m working on. For the moment, let’s just say it’s got my attention.

So now I have a game and a plan of attack, let’s I can see if I can make any headway on reclaiming this hobby

Stay tuned for updates cos you know I’ll be back 🙂

I don’t really like mixing lots of topics in one post, but a round up of where I’m at and what’s planned for the future seemed like a sensible thing to do at this point.

Firstly, let me say thank you for your patience and your good wishes. The support is very much appreciated 🙂

Secondly, as things seem to be settling down a bit here you can expect to see some more posts. Actually, I’ve quite a lot planned. This tsunami of content breaks down into several main themes:

• Dungeon Sagas. DKH4 with a new name. The Kickstarter goes live on the 4th of August, so from that point I can talk a lot more about the design and the game in general.
• Reviews. I’ve got loads of things I’d like to talk about, some donated and many more purchased. Some very cool stuff in the mix.
• Separating my hobby from my work. I’ve said many times that most of my gaming time gets hijacked for playtesting, and it’s still true. In fact, a session I’d arranged for later today is now going to be at least partly a DS test. However, I am having a bit more success overall in actually making some gaming time for myself, so I’m hoping to be able to post some more from that viewpoint.
• All the usual guff. I’ve got a few design theory articles in the works, plus the usual commentary on things that catch my eye, interesting KS campaigns and whatnot. I’m also thinking of broadening my self-imposed remit to include the wider world of making games, including IP generation, art, layout, etc. It’s all part of the whole, and ignoring bits of it just diminished the end result.

This has all sort of built up in my head while I’ve been dealing with everything else, without an outlet. It’s got to go somewhere, and Quirkworthy is the place 😉

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