Oh - booky thing

I should introduce you to Play this thing which well it's mainly about computer games does talk about board games and RPG's on a Tuesday.  It's a genuinely interesting site looking at indie and art games - with people who think about such things sufficiently that I feel like I'm not even trying.  Of particular interest it's provided a link to a e book called tabletop analog game design - which can be obtained free.  I've not had a chance to read it yet - but the first chapter is from the designer of Britannia about creating board games that work for 3 people.  It's well written, interesting, and basically outlines the problems I'm having with GSH as a classic mistake rookie game designers make.

If you have any interest in board game design - this certainly seems to be worth looking at.

This weekend I was away larping - Odyssey a larp set in the Mythical ancient world as Persia,Greek, Egypt, Persia and Carthage battle for dominion over the world through large scale Arena Battles.  Have a photo  of Rome fighting Carthage (who in an interesting design decision turn out to be every inch of the vile baby sacrificing monsters that historical Rome accused them of being).

To my mind the game design of Odyssey shows the difference between realism and correct feeling in game design.  Odyssey is a role based game - if your a priest you get to go to the gods - if you a war leader you make decisions and fight in the arena - if your a warrior you fight in the arena and go on quests.  And those things are fixed.  Which is massively unrealistic - why can't a war leader step through that gate and go on a quest? But it produces the correct feelings in the players - the war leader sitting at home waiting to hear what his men on there desperate mission have done - the mystery around priests: What does happen in the realm of the gods?  Where as something vastly more realistic can often utterly fail to provide that feeling - look at some of the 1970's style board games -I'm thinking of the realistic flight games for example.


Of course there are other times when theme and feeling fail to connect  - look at Ra - a game of bidding where an Egyptian theme has just been drooped into it.

Which leads us to one of my favorite ever two player games - Battle Lines - the theme is the wars between Alexander and Darius.  Cor - look at that - weaving together the elements of the post that's almost proper writing there.  Although the theme is very clearly dropped onto it - because it was original a german game called  Schotten Totten which appears to be themed around a Scotish Brawl.  No seriously - check out that box art!

But despite this lack of theme - and the fact that all I'm doing is drawing a card and a playing a card - it feels very much like I'm a general - staring at a range of options and trying to work out which one will screw up my plans the least......  I've got my plans for the battles - which flags I'm after and which flags I'm going to give away - and the winner is almost certainly the player who manage to mess up there plans the least....