Brent P. Newhall's Blog

One primary design goal for Gunwave is simplicity. I want players to be able to pick up the game and start playing very, very quickly — without needing hours to absorb the game’s rules.

When I first wrote the Gunwave rule set, its D&D roots showed clearly — each player chose a Race and a Specialty, just like D&D’s race and class. Each Race and Class came with a menu of powers, from which the players could select a certain number for their character.

Players enjoyed this process, but I discovered several problems:

• Players spent quite a bit of time reviewing their options. They wanted to pick just the “right” powers.
• Players quickly became critical of powers that didn’t seem useful, dismissing them out-of-hand.
• After one game session, players complained about having picked “useless” powers (sometimes simply because those powers hadn’t been used in that session), and wanted to swap out their powers.

So I built a number of archetypes, common character profiles with a simplified menu of powers. Players now had a smaller menu of powers to choose from, but each power was tailored specifically to that character’s role and purpose in the game.

Did I succeed? No; I just lessened the above effects. Players still worried over their power choices, criticized “useless” powers, and wanted to swap powers.

So I pre-built a dozen characters. Early in the main game document, the players are presented with stats and powers for these characters, and are encouraged to use them for their initial sessions. Straight. The archetypes now reside in an appendix to the document.

This works extremely well for playtesting — players just choose a character and go. I’ve no idea how it’ll work for regular players, though; will they appreciate this structure?

Either way, this solution satisfies my design goals, so I’m going to use it until it breaks. May seem counter-intuitive, but that’s sometimes what happens with specific goals.

Now to try it out.

I subscribe to a bunch of role-playing blogs: Musings of the Chatty DM, NewbieDM, Some Space to Think, At Will, The Core Mechanic, Gnome Stew, Trollsmyth, and others.

I first started reading them in late 2008, when they were full of fire about role-playing. D&D 4th Edition had just come out and debates raged about its advantages and disadvantages compared to 3rd Edition. Cool indie games were getting attention, like Dogs in the Vineyard and Dread. Bloggers wrote about interesting subjects: how to adapt D&D concepts to other genres, how to get more players, how to organize one’s materials, etc.

I’m still subscribed to all those blogs, but I realized today that I only glance at them every week or two. And I’ve been in that mode for several months now Partly, that’s caused by my growth as an RPG player, runner, and designer; I need less hand-holding. On the other hand, the content of those blogs has begun to pale.

Much of the recent blogging in the RPG community has been very inwardly focused. “Here’s what I want to accomplish in the RPG industry.” “Here’s the kind of game I like to run.” “Here are some things I’ve been thinking of buying.” “Here’s my quick review of source book X.” Nothing wrong with any of this, but it’s not particularly helpful, and it’s thin gruel, especially considering the RPG blogging I’m used to.

I’d like to see more practical advice culled from real experience. I’m not referring to campaign logs with a few comments; I mean building a blog post around a key concept illustrated during a play session.

I’d also like to see a lot more blogging by game designers about the game design process.

While I can’t change others, I can change myself. So I’m planning to write those sorts of blog posts myself in the upcoming weeks and months, centering on the design of Gunwave.

Watch this space.

What makes Google Wave work for role-playing games?

I’ve been playing around with Google Wave for a few weeks now, primarily with role-playing Waves. These are Waves in which people pretend to be characters in a story.

There are tons of ways to role-play; sitting around a table, over live text chat, or on a forum. Wave appears to be well-suited to role-playing.

I’ve noticed a few things:

• Players are less committed. That is, players leave for relatively long periods, then come back. This is partly due to Wave’s youth; checking Wave is not yet an ingrained habit for players.
• Parties are less cohesive. Same thing here; Wave’s not yet a habit. But I can see parties as being much more malleable; people will come and go.
• Systems must be simple. I’m observing a D&D 4E game on Wave, and one combat round took 2 days. I love D&D 4E, but I think it—and other relatively “heavy” systems—are less appropriate for Wave than their simpler cousins.
• Everything’s visible and malleable. Anyone can jump in and fix a mistake or restructure content.

My Response

I’ve created an RPG experiment on Google Wave. It’s a floating fantasy city that anyone can interact with. It’s a sandbox role-playing game of exploration and intrigue. It has elements of:

• Wikis
• Choose-your-own-adventure books
• Old school text adventures
• Tabletop RPGs

Even better, I’ve created a website where you can see all of this. I think it will be visible even if you don’t have a Google Wave account. Go here:

There are already 10 locations you can explore and interact with, and a fairly robust (and original) system for creating your character. Hop on in!

What do you think? Does this interest you?

Google Wave logo courtesy Google; fountain photo is courtesy antmoose on FLickr.