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dmsden · 4 years

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Dungeon Those Dragons! - Dungeon delving as an intro to the game

Hullo, Gentle Readers. This week’s Question from a Denizen comes to us from frequent quesioner graham-chesir who asks, “ Hello again. I've been mulling over running some D&D games for my family who haven't done D&D before and was considering doing the typical dungeon-delving to make things smoother & simpler. What do you suggest would make good plot hooks or story goals as to why one would go dungeon-delving?”

Well, my friend, back in the day, dungeon delving was the only reason we needed to play D&D. It was good stuff, but it became somewhat passe, and I know a lot of people prefer their Dungeons & Dragons without the dungeons. In my mind, there’s really no wrong way to play, and you can absolutely play the game without dungeons. Speaking personally, I love dungeons, and I think they’re a wonderful way to bring new players into the game.

Dungeons are self-contained, so, short of the players leaving the dungeon, they can’t exactly head in a direction you don’t expect. They give opportunities for players to engage in all three pillars of the game: combat, exploration, and social encounters. Let’s look at how they support these elements.

Obviously, dungeons give great (perhaps the best) options for exploration. You can do just about any crazy thing in a dungeon, from puzzles and traps to mystical portals, fountains with random effects, chessboards with living pieces, and anything else. They can and should be a spotlight for your players’ ingenuity and problem solving. If you have someone playing a rogue, definitely give them chances to show off the skills they picked their expertise in. A bard can bring out bits of legend lore. A cleric can recognize ancient profane symbols. Druids and rangers can interact with the biosystem of the dungeon itself, using lichen and vermin to cast their spells in place of flora and fauna.

Many social interactions are possible in a dungeon, despite the “waste ‘em with a crossbow” attitude of many players. When I ran the Caves of Chaos during the D&D “Next” Playtest, I created divisions among the various sections of the dungeon based on alignment. Chaotic evil orcs feuded with lawful evil hobgoblins, while the kobolds just tried to stay under everyone’s radar, making them potential allies to the PCs if treated well enough. Prisoners could be found in the dungeon who might be allies or enemies. The ogre was a mercenary who might be able to be bribed into switching sides. I wanted everything to be fluid and changeable depending on how the PCs approached things.

I hardly feel like I need to mention that there can be combat in a dungeon, but dungeons give some unique terrain for combat. Kobolds and goblins can retreat into warren-like tunnels, forcing the PCs to crawl in after them or else unleashing traps on the PCs as they try to continue their explorations. Gargoyles could harry a group of PCs trying to cross a swinging rope bridge over a chasm with lava at the bottom. Piles of bones can continue to disgorge undead in a swarm unless the PCs can destroy a glowing red gem at the end of the chamber. Cave fishers or ropers can attack from above, forcing the party to split their attention...just as a choker strikes from the shadows or darkmantles descend! Combat in a dungeon never has to be an orc in a 10 foot by 10 foot room guarding a chest, and it probably never should be...unless you come up with a compelling reason for that encounter.

As far as motivations, they can be many. Almost any plot you can imagine can happen in a dungeon:

- Greedy adventurers may hear rumors of a dragon’s hoard that lies deep in the lower levels of the Mountain King’s Hall.

- The Dungeon of Dread has a door that has been closed for a thousand years. Now it has reopened, and the must plumb its secrets before a rival group finds out about it.

- Lareth the Beautiful, disciple of Lolth, has taken up residence under the ruined moathouse. His evil plans must be stopped...through his death!

- The Crypt of Catamir is the final resting place of a devious evil wizard, and his spellbook is said to hold a spell needed to end a curse on the kingdom.

- Neogi slavers may have kidnapped a PC’s sister, and the Castle of Thorns is where they hold slaves before transporting them into the Underdark. The party must enter the Castle of Thorns to rescue her and any other slaves being held there.

- It’s said that the statue of Bahamut at the end of the Dragon’s Delving blesses those who persevere to pray before it.

- Without the Sword of Lions, the new aspirant to the throne of Leondara cannot claim the crown. They hire the PCs to enter the Hall of Lions to claim it.

- The dwarven paladin inherited a broken magical hammer from their parents. It can only be reforged in the Forge of the Fundament, located in an ancient dwarven stronghold that was long ago taken over by undead.

I honestly don’t think there’s any shortage of reasons for adventurers to enter a dungeon. Come up with a compelling story behind the dungeon and let the PCs head in. They’ll make their own story as they explore.

Well, graham, I hope this inspired you with new desires to get your players dungeon delving.

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level99games · 5 years

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Player Archetypes - Deques, Shur, Cardine, and Morrey

Many of us are familiar with the classic Johnny/Timmy/Spike archetypes shared by Mark Rosewater in his now-famous article for Wizards of the Coast. While these archetypes work great for Magic, every company is a bit different. One of the exciting truths about being game designers is that we get to choose who we serve and who we build our games to attract.

Most of Level 99 Games’ fans fall into one of these archetypes, or are split across two of them. Aside from the three main archetypes, there is one additional meta-archetype, for a total of four. To describe them, I’ve used familiar characters from Millennium Blades, who were designed with these motivations in mind. Unlike the Rosewater archetypes, our archetypes are less about what players engage with in the games, and instead focus on why they engage with the games in the first place. And of course, we have a bit more ground to cover, since we’re designing entire game experiences and not just cards and expansions.

Our three major archetypes are based around our three-part philosophy of Design, Development, and Discovery. The fourth archetype is based on Community, which ties all the others together.

All of our archetypes have a few things in common. They’re all creative gamers who don’t want to just have a game, but to really own it and make it a part of their lifestyles. A game isn’t complete for them until they engage with it ‘off the table’. We’ve tailored our games specifically to be what they’re looking for–games with replayability, variety, and deep lore.

Take a look, and see where you fall on the spectrum!

Deques - Designer

Deques plays a game to make something. He plays to win, but winning isn’t the end goal. Instead, building a deck, piloting a character, or executing a combo that expresses his personality is his main goal.

Deques channels his creativity to extend a game. Being able to build a scenario or a fighter to show friends is Deques’s favorite aspect of a game. He’s most at home in games where he can control the entire experience, and invite his friends to play in his “custom setup” or “homebrew mode.” These situations, where he can play the host and guide his friends through a ‘design’ of his own making stimulate his creativity and invite him to play the designer with a custom toolset. He may even create custom expansions or extra content for his favorite games and share them on the web for others to download and try for themselves.

To appeal to Deques, a game needs to have a wide variety of viable, playable options or setups. There need to be multiple ways to win, or at least, the possibility to go in heavily on some strategies and neglect others. Asymmetric sides, and especially modular parts to a game’s setup and rules, appeal to Deques’s aesthetics.

Within our line, Deques’s favorite games would be Millennium Blades and Argent. He’s the kind of player who might design his own BattleCON fighter or Argent scenario. He loves the extra modes in BattleCON (though not as much the core gameplay), and enjoys setting up the timeline in Temporal Odyssey, or building a cube in Pixel Tactics.

Shur - Developer

As a competitive player, Shur plays games to win, but winning isn’t her ultimate goal. For Shur, winning is the proof that she’s achieved her actual goal: Mastery. The developer player wants to dig into the systems and understand them completely in order to experience high-level competition. This competition isn’t a struggle for supremacy–it’s a testing of theory, understanding, and tactical skills.

Shur considers the game’s balance as a code to unravel, and she leverages her creativity to crack that code. She is the kind of player who prints her own reference cards for game content, writes long strategy articles, or analyzes matchups and card relationships. She may even create a database or spreadsheet to analyze cards statistically and study optimal plays. She isn’t afraid of sharing these things with others who seek mastery–she welcomes the challenge and hopes that more people will embrace the search.

To appeal to Shur, a game needs strong balance and a variety of viable play strategies. If mastery is achieved too easily, the game will bore her. If it is gated by random elements or other factors beyond her control, the game will lose her interest. A game needs simple systems that are easy to see and latch on to in order to pique her initial interest. It needs to keep revealing more depth under extended scrutiny to hold it. A game needs to continuously present content or challenges to test and expand her skills. Luckily in competitive games, the supply of challenges comes in the form of new rivals, which are effectively endless as long as the game boasts a strong community. However, Shur doesn’t really care if a game is competitive or cooperative as long as it challenges her to master and exploit its systems.

Within our line, Shur’s favorite games would be Exceed, BattleCON, Pixel Tactics, and Temporal Odyssey. In these games, players start with ‘fair’ fixed resources, and it is the choices they make, their skills, which determine the course of the game. It is possible to ‘get good’ at all of these games, and it requires her to acquire and improve her skills, not acquire more cards.

Cardine - Discoverer

Cardine is fascinated to discover the worlds within games and unravel the secret stories that are contained in these worlds. Winning or losing is less important to Cardine than the other two types, because she plays a game to experience the world. When two fighters clash, she wants to know what circumstances must have brought them together.

Cardine channels her creativity to dig deeper into the world. She speculates on lore, draws fan art, writes fiction, and delves into the scenarios and situations hinted at in the game’s lore. She wants to know about the world and its little details because the story draws her in and she wants to become even more immersed in that fantasy. That’s not to say that she isn’t interested in the games themselves–the gameplay is the original window to explore the world, and she keeps returning to it for inspiration.

To appeal to Cardine, a game needs to have a deep lore, but one that is not revealed too explicitly, and which includes room for interpretation and speculation. The game needs to give her the tools to play out that lore. It has to then support that journey with flavor text, art, and flexibility of choice and strategy. Ideally, playing through the game in this way should create for her a unique experience, and should reveal to her something new about the game’s world.

Being able to get into the character of the game when playing is important to Cardine. When she plays an aggressive faction in a game, she feels a need to play them aggressively–even when it’s not the smartest move. Conversely, she’ll be upset if the ‘right’ way to play a particular fighter, card, or faction is out of step with its expressed lore.

Cardine doesn’t have favorite games, but instead, favorite worlds. In our lineup, the World of Indines and its persistent story excites her. The expanding, whimsical world of Millennium Blades engages her. The prospect of a new, deep world in Seventh Cross fills her with anticipation.

Morrey - Organizer

Morrey is a little different than the other archetypes in the way he interacts with games. As someone who is an experienced hand at games he has–in a sense–completed his own journey. Now, he is more concerned with bringing people together and enjoying their company and patronage. He enjoys watching other players improve their skills, explore their creativity, and delve into the lore of games. His passion is to bring a community together and enable others.

Morrey’s creativity is expressed in how he brings friends together. He may be the host of a game night, the owner of a store, the organizer of an event, or the judge of a tournament. In any case, he likes to see players come together and play. He experiences their triumphs, growth, and discovery vicariously. He’s excited to provide special rewards to those who participate, and endeavors to make each experience unique and rewarding. He may undertake it as his own task to create reference sheets for players, custom box inserts, player dashboards, or game organizers to enable easier play and better presentation.

To appeal to Morrey, a game needs to have qualities that inspire his players. When he organizes an event, players need to get interested in the game that they’re going to play. For this reason, the game needs to be exciting in its box, and inviting when set up on the table. It needs to be ergonomic–with clear, teachable rules and a simple setup and breakdown. A special promo or a new expansion are useful insofar as they excite his guests, but he would rather have organizer trays and a great unboxing experience than more content. And of course, anything that’s custom-made by the game’s creators for his event is a big win.

Morrey’s favorite games in our line are Millennium Blades and Argent, because he can turn these into a real event for his home game night. I suspect that he’s going to really enjoy Empyreal: Spells & Steam and Seventh Cross as well.

From a business side, he appreciates Exceed, BattleCON, Pixel Tactics, and Temporal Odyssey because he can bring the competitive players in his circles together in his shop and get extra content from the organized play program. Exceed is especially nice, since he can give out free demo decks to invite new players directly into the event.

Missing Archetypes

There are plenty of ‘whys’ that aren’t expressed here. There are players that really play just to win. There are players that play to learn new skills or trivia. Some play just to meet people and engage in social activity. Some buy games more like art collectors than players. These motivations certainly exist–but they aren’t our targets.

Our focus is on making games and creating a welcoming experience for the creative gamer, as expressed in these four archetypes. There are a lot of game publishers out there serving other archetypes, and it’s not necessary for us to be all things to all players.

Likewise, many players outside of our four target archetypes will appreciate our games–when you design good games and good products, people will gravitate to them for a variety of reasons. This list just serves to give us a sense of direction when we need to make choices between two features or two products.

In Conclusion

In creating and sharing these personas, I hope to give our team better guidance to understand who they’re making games for, how to speak to these fans, and how to anticipate reactions to the decisions we make in design, development, content creation, and marketing. Hopefully they’ve also resonated with you to some degree. Who do you see yourself as when you sit down to the table?

#archetype #Deques #Cardine #Shur #Morrey #Millennium Blades #Game Design #Product Design

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hsews · 6 years

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You don’t win a World Cup as much as you will a World Cup.

The last three finals ended in a draw at full-time. Eight of the last 12 have been decided either by a single goal or in extra-time or penalties. Once you get there, it’s as much about nerve and randomness, blades of grass that make a ball bounce just so or specks of dust that make you react that split-second later, as it is about who is objectively better.

Bear this in mind when looking at Russia 2018. Because while there are four teams (Brazil, Spain, Germany and France) who are clearly a notch above the rest — and who, were this a traditional home-and-away round-robin league, you’d expect to finish in the Champions League spots — little is guaranteed. The tiniest pebble can derail them as easily as the most unexpected loss of nerve.

Brazil are favorites and since Tite took over the helm two summers ago, have been all “Eye of the Tiger.” It’s more than understandable: for the Selecao, it’s not just about pursuing the sixth World Cup but about mitigating (because it can’t be erased) the pain of the “Mineirazo“, the 7-1 semifinal drubbing on home soil that will forever haunt the nation. Neymar, the world’s most expensive player is back from injury, the midfield has a blue collar tint and the goalkeeper, Allisson, is one of the best around. These are men on a mission.

World Cup 2018 must-reads

– Make your picks with ESPN FC Match Predictor 2018! – Welcome to the Alternative 2018 World Cup Fans’ Guide – ESPN FC’s experts make their picks – Marvel’s amazing World Cup spoilers – Revealed: World Cup 2018 Ultimate XI – Fixtures, results and full coverage – Team-by-team previews of all 32 nations

Germany, the villains (to Brazilians anyway) four years ago will try become the first nation in 56 years to win back-to-back World Cups… since Pele’s Brazil in 1958 and 1962. Teutonic efficiency lends itself to facile stereotypes but the facts back it up: they’ve reached the final four in each of the past four World Cups and the last three European Championships. They have the mentality, the experience and plenty of quality. Plus they have the unflappable Jogi Low, under whose jet-black, bowl-cut hair resides a brain capable of dispensing nurture, tactics and discipline in the right proportions.

Spain, world champions in 2010, have turned to a young hotshot named Julen Lopetegui to wipe the stain of two lackluster major tournaments in a row: he’s so hot, in fact, that he’ll be leaving in just over a month to take over at Real Madrid, a twist few expected. There’s a gifted mix of youngsters and veterans in the squad, with the incomparable Andres Iniesta readying himself for his World Cup swan song.

France are arguably the most gifted of them all, from Samuel Umtiti to Raphael Varane at the back, to N’Golo Kante and Paul Pogba in midfield, to Kylian Mbappe and Antoine Griezmann up front. In fact, they’re so talented and so deep that you wouldn’t bet against a team of French players who didn’t make it into Didier Deschamps’ squad advancing to the quarterfinal. The issue, possibly, is one of veteran leadership and perhaps Deschamps himself: after coming up short at Euro 2016 on home soil, he’s under pressure and the vast array of options can sometimes lead to confusion and second-guessing.

Brazil’s progress under Tite has been remarkable and now, Neymar and Co. are seemingly on a mission for redemption. Buda Mendes/Getty Images

The eternal rivals, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, once again lead Portugal and Argentina respectively to teams that are doing their best to manage expectations. The defending European champions are aging, especially at the back, and having defied expectations in winning the Euros, you wonder how many miracles they have left. Argentina are top-heavy (big stars up front, less so at the back) and it has been a bumpy ride to this point. For either of these sides to win it, you’d need the umpteenth Atlas performance from the two perpetual G.O.A.T. candidates.

Managing expectations is also what England are seemingly doing. Coach Gareth Southgate thinks long-term and while this may be the least gifted Three Lions group in many years, they are young and they are likeable. On the other hand, the clock is ticking for Belgium and their “Golden Generation” — plenty of talent throughout the side but plenty of disappointments on the big stage. Their window will begin to close soon, meaning Roberto Martinez needs to squeeze out his masterpiece now.

How far do you stretch the circle of potential winners? Uruguay may yet squeeze in thanks to arguably the best strike tandem around (Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani) to go with the fresh legs in midfield, the wily warriors at the back and the sage Oscar Tabarez on the bench. Luka Modric’s Croatia and James Rodriguez’s Colombia are long on talent and somewhat shorter on consistency. But hey, it’s the World Cup; you only need to be good for a few weeks.

And then you get into “also-ran” territory. Russia are the lowest-ranked top seeds in World Cup history and have suffered a rash of injuries to boot. Poland and Denmark have world class superstars (Robert Lewandowski and Christian Eriksen) whose coattails they can ride… but only to a point. Mexico have been very consistent in getting out of the group but coach Juan Carlos Osorio’s maniacal rotation has fans of El Tri puzzled.

Switzerland flew under the radar — and were clever about playing the FIFA rankings game that determines seeding — to get here, but you fear this is where they get exposed. Serbia have individuals (like the magnificently unorthodox Sergej Milinkovic-Savic) more than they have a team. Peru have their charismatic captain, Paolo Guerrero, back for the World Cup and it has given the talented Ricardo Gareca hope on their big stage return after 36 years, but World Cups rarely do fairy tales.

Egypt’s World Cup hopes hinge on Mo Salah, though his shoulder injury is a growing concern ahead of their Group A opener. KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images

Senegal are packed with talent (from Kalidou Koulibaly at the back to Sadio Mane up front) and may be Africa’s best bet along with Morocco, a group made up almost entirely of players born abroad who have returned to defend the colors of their ancestors. Look out for Nigeria, too: this time the Super Eagles are flying somewhat under the radar without the hype of past World Cups. Then there’s Mohamed Salah and Egypt: it’s hard to root against the Liverpool star if only for the bright smile, but you wonder how the miles on the clock of a long season and the shoulder injury suffered in the Champions League final will affect him. As for Tunisia, they feel over-matched in a group with two blue-blood European powers and it will take a lot for the Eagles of Carthage to fly into the knockout rounds.

The Asian contingent feels somewhat weaker than in years past. Iran, possibly the strongest side out of Asia, are saddled with a tough draw. Japan have been hit by a raft of injuries and South Korea are stuck between generations. Australia are also beginning a new cycle and they’re doing it after the coach who took them through qualifying, Ange Postecoglou, quit shortly after getting them to Russia. As for Saudi Arabia, unless they get a result in the opener on Thursday their tournament could be ending real soon.

Not much is expected of a Zlatan Ibrahimovic-less Sweden, though their Nordic brethren Iceland are evidence that you write off the men from the cold at your peril: their mighty mouse exploits at Euro 2016 means that once again, some crazy percentage of the island will decamp to Russia. Costa Rica went all the way to the quarterfinals in Brazil, only getting knocked out on penalties, but lightning rarely strikes twice and on paper they too look over-matched… though not as much as their CONCACAF neighbors, Panama, who look to be the weakest team in the tournament.

But that’s the thing. You can “look” the weakest before kickoff and it scarcely means a jot. You still get to write your own script and World Cups, more than most tournaments in any sport, live on in eternity.

In short, every country has the opportunity to seize their place in their country��s footballing lore.

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