And away we go...!

It took me longer than I intended, but I have transferred over all my posts and comments here to their new home on Wordpress.

The new address for my blog is: http://zombie4hire.wordpress.com

Henceforth, new posts will appear there (and only there).

Excuse me while I get out the boxes

So, last week, Blogger had a whole mess of problems that resulted in them rolling back all blogspot blogs to an earlier state. Long story short, I lost a post I was happy with and haven't posted in the last week in the hopes that they would be able to restore it.

No dice.

I've commented in all the help forums, filled out all their forms and have gotten zero response. So, I'm done waiting.

While I've been waiting for this situation to settle out, I've been checking out Wordpress. Quite frankly, I like their system for creating, editing, and managing a blog much more than what is available through Blogger. I've decided this whole fiasco gives me the perfect impetus to jump ship.

There will be about another week or so of low/no posting on the blog while I transfer everything over to a new home on Wordpress. I'd post the address here, but I'm currently considering purchasing a domain name just to make finding the blog all the easier, so I can't say for sure right now whether the new blog will be at zombie4hire.wordpress.com or zombie-4-hire.com . Once I have everything set up and ready (next week sometime). I'll post the link in a new post.

See you then!

Well, that sucked... sucks.

As some of you are no doubt aware, Blogger had some problems after routine maintenance on Wednesday. This resulted in all Blogger users being locked out of all their tools for the better part of 24 hours. They started restoring everything early this morning. Obviously, I am once again able to post and edit my blog.

Unfortunately, they restored to the status of Blogger as of 7:37am PDT on Weds, 5/11. Which means I've lost an entire post that I was really happy with, not to mention some cosmetic edits on some other posts. They have said that they'll be restoring the posts that were removed, but I'm going to hold off on making any changes or new posts until I know whether I'm getting those lost changes back.

Honestly, I'm seriously thinking about switching over to a different host. This is ridiculous.

To Infinity...Or Maybe Not!

I've found that what I want to write about is predicated heavily by random confluences of events. I'll have some thought come at me or present itself in multiple ways during a short period of time. It'll get into my head and I'll be compelled to write a post about it. For instance, most of my posts about theatre can be traced back to an experience with a couple clueless theatre patrons and a conversation about a week later with a few other theatrical technicians.

Recently, I've come across space travel a few times. The Doctor Who season premiere featured the Moon Landing in a particularly awesome and inspiring (to me, at least) way. Xkcd had a comic graphing the declining population of otherworldly travelers. And as I was idly re-watching old videos on The Escapist, I came across an episode of The Big Picture where Movie Bob laments the death of the space shuttle and the apparent death of caring about going into space.

All this got me thinking, how do we go from this:

"Do you know how many people are watching this live on the telly? Half a billion. And that's nothing, because the human race will spread out among the stars—you just watch them fly. Billions and billions of them, for billions and billions of years. And every single one of them at some point in their lives will look back at this man taking that very first step and they will never ever forget it."
-The Doctor, about the Moon Landing, Day of the Moon

To this:

"The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."
-XKCD alt text, May 2, 2011

Player Agency & Pacing

Today I'll be returning to the well of Player Agency. This week, instead of tracing an issue across the Agency Scale, I'd like to spend some time dissecting one of the hardest parts of running a game where Player Agency is important: Pacing.

While pacing can be a problem even in the most railroaded games, the problem compounds itself when the shape of the plot is largely out of the GM's hands. Even if a GM has filled in enough detail and concepts into a world and is nimble enough on their storytelling feet to fill in anything that he hasn't thought of such that the players can move through it however they want, it's a simple fact that all elements of a campaign are not going to be equally interesting.

How Much is a Free Lunch?

I've been playing the game TowerMadness pretty much since I got an iPod touch, or around the beginning of 2010. The object of the game is to use various weapons towers to stop waves of invading aliens from stealing your sheep (they want their wool for scarves).

Originally, it was supported by ads, with the option of buying an ad-free version for a dollar or two. Before too long, alongside one of their periodic updates and releases of new levels, they began offering extra level packs for a buck apiece. Not something I personally felt like paying for, but I wasn't about to begrudge Limbic Software every chance to make a profit off of their (very fun) game.

Limbic still puts out periodic updates with new free maps as well as offering more level packs. They also offer special weapons for the same prices ($0.99 each). Two of them, flash bait and mines offer different strategies and options. Like the level packs, I find them interesting, but not worth paying for.

The other weapon is the flamethrower. I don't like the flamethrower.

The question I find myself asking now is whether I really have a right to not like the flamethrower.

Lighting Design Simplified: Reading the Script

So, last week, I started my epic depiction of a lighting designer's process with a basic introduction of the goals that a good lighting design should satisfy. Now we're going to start in with how I proceed from Point A - the script - and end up at Point B - the finished lighting design.

And I would like to stress that this is how *I* proceed...usually. Every production is different and every designer is different. Other designers may go about this process differently, sometimes very differently. I go about it differently on some shows. This is not intended as an ironclad list of steps that I believe must be followed, but as an introduction to the craft intended for those who have little or no idea of how it's done.

As I said in the introduction, I'll be using a production of An Enemy of the People (by Henrik Ibsen, as adapted by Arthur Miller) that I recently worked on as an example. Reading the play isn't necessary; I'll be filling in necessary details as I go. So let's go.

Allons-y!

The Night the PCs Stole Plotmas

I've written a fair bit on the subject of player agency. I suspect I find it more interesting than the topic probably warrants. There is a reason for this. It has to do with a situation in which I set out to respect player agency as much as possible, and the players took advantage of that fact. As I mentioned before, I once was one of the Storytellers for a vampire LARP. This experience resulted in the third and - thus far - final time I pledged to myself that I would never ST a LARP again.

That's not to say that it was a bad experience, or that it was a bad game. On the whole, I think it was successful. Some people seem to still hold the events of that year in high esteem. Others refuse to ever speak of it again. I suspect a lot of my fascination with player agency comes from all the times I've thought about how things went that year.

Cheated or Spoiled?

About a week ago, a friend linked to a New Yorker article about George RR Martin and all of the "fans" who vilify him for the delays of A Dance with Dragons, the fifth book in his "Song of Ice and Fire" saga. While I read all of the previous books in this series and was aware of the increasing discontent with how long the new book was taking, I had no idea things were this bad.

Like a picture of Bigfoot

For those who are unfamiliar, "A Song of Ice and Fire" is a series of fantasy novels set in a low-magic, medieval world. It had drawn a lot of attention for both the intricacies of its politics, and the fact that Martin is unafraid of killing off characters, even beloved main characters. A Feast for Crows, the fourth book in the series - which had also been long delayed - came out in 2005, but only contained story about half the characters and the world. Dragons was meant to be the companion to that, detailing the adventures of the other people and places concurrent to Crows. Over the last several years, fans have gone from eager, to impatient, to angry.

As I read the article, I kept looking for a reason why people feel this way. Why they feel entitled to this book to such a great degree that some angrily and publicly begrudge any time Martin spends on any other pursuit.

Lighting Design Simplified: An Introduction

Last week, I wrote about the difficulty of explaining theatrical lighting design to someone who has no background in theatre. Long story short, it's hard to the point of being almost pointless. But, even as I was writing that post, I wanted to try. Maybe it was just a perverse desire to prove myself wrong. Maybe it was the desire to have my work understood. Maybe I just wanted to see if anyone would be interested in listening to me blather on about my work.

Probably, though, it's because I can't help but blather on about lighting design. When I go to see plays, I always try to get there early, not just so I won't be holding up the show, but so that I can crane my head at the ceiling for 15 minutes and see what's hung there. My fiance should frankly be canonized for all the times ze's listened to me go on and on about this stuff.

As I said before, this is the type of thing that needs five words or five thousand, and seeing as I'm already a few hundred in, it looks like it's going to be five thousand. In the interest of making this as readable as possible, I'm going to try to break it up into multiple posts, each post depicting a step in the process that takes me from when I first read the script, to when the show opens and I get to sleep again. And, so that I'm not simply speaking in abstract terms, I'll be using a production of An Enemy of the People I recently worked on as an example.

A New Feature!

As I write more and more posts, I come across more and more terms that may need to be defined for some. So, to keep from having to define these terms every time I use them, I'm starting a dictionary of terms. This All-Purpose Dictionariopede can be found either at this link, or through the one in the nav-bar above.

If there are any terms I'm missing or have defined poorly, either comment on this post, or e-mail me at BobbyArcher (dot) Zombie4Hire (at) gmail (dot) com and let me know.

Player Agency & Death, Part 2

Death, not just for PCs!

So, last week, I started talking about player agency. Again. Specifically, how the scale between railroading and complete freedom was reflected in how PC deaths are handled by the GM. As I said at the end of that post, and as the title of this post would imply, I'm continuing on in that vein today with the other kinds of death that affect and reflect the agency scale. As before, all real life examples assume the disclaimer.

New Year's Resolution

Yes, I know it's April, but I didn't have a blog back when this was fresh news, so you'll have to hear about this now.

I've gone back and forth over the years with how seriously I take New Year's Resolutions. Most years, I come up with something around 10:30pm on December 31, and have forgotten about it entirely by January 7. It's not that I don't think making resolutions has merit. It's more that I've always had trouble coming up with concrete goals; I'd much rather keep my options open and grab onto opportunities as they come around. This has worked out for me at times, and not so much at others.

You Do *What* Now?

Since I got my bachelor's, I've been working fairly consistently as a theatrical lighting designer. Seeing as I've had a number of other day jobs and supplemental jobs in this time (some of which I wasn't too happy to have), "theatrical lighting designer" was what I usually described my profession as. With anyone who didn't have experience in the theatre, this inevitably led to the question, "So...what does that mean?"

I have come up with an answer to this over the years:

"Have you ever seen a play?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"You know how you can see the actors?"
"Yeah."
"That's what I do."

Bad jokes aside, it's hard to explain what a lighting designer does. Basically, if someone doesn't have enough theatre knowledge to know what an LD does, then they likely don't have the knowledge I need to touch on to explain it. Even worse is trying to explain how I do what I do. That's a hard question even coming from other theatre folks.

Player Agency & Death

Last week, I wrote about Player Agency and the social contract that it implied between the GM and the players. In case that post didn't make it clear, I find player agency, particularly the gradient between complete player freedom and strict railroading, to be immensely interesting. This one thing effects just about every aspect of this hobby, but generally gets relegated to a terse, binary debate. I'd love to see more open discussion and exploration of how this agency scale affects the different aspects of roleplaying.

Today's topic

I suppose that's all just my way of saying that I'm going to keep coming back to this idea until I run out of excuses. Hopefully, I don't bore my meager readership into non-existence before I run out of permutations.

Today, I'm gonna belabor the connection between player agency and death. Since I'll be talking about particular games I've been involved in, all allowances and disclaimers apply.

The Workshop Process

If you're familiar with the game Minecraft, feel free to jump below the cut right now. For everyone else, a quick background: Minecraft is an indie game that's pretty unique even among indie games. For one, its art and play styles have already gained a huge amount of notice and praise both among gamers and the gaming press despite the fact that it's still in beta. But that's not what I'm interested in talking about today. What's really got me interested is its development process.

Back in May of 2009, a guy named Markus Persson started developing Minecraft. Once he got the game to a rough, but playable state (known as an alpha), he made it available to the general public for €9.95, or about half of the cost of the finished product. This served two purposes. First, it generated revenue to help continue developing the game, and second, it gave him an army of alpha and beta testers. It's not the path that video games, even independently created games, usually take. Open alphas are rare to the point of non-existence, and charging players to take part in beta testing is also deeply rare. I can't think of a single title, either independent or out of a studio, that has tried this before.

So, how's it worked out for him?

Protips: Attending the Theatre

Before I start with my post, a story:

Last weekend a production of An Enemy of the People that I had worked on closed. As it happened, I had volunteered to be the House Manager for the final performance (for those who are unfamiliar with what a House Manager is, I was in charge of the ushers and generally responsible for handling audience needs). It's usually not a hard job; the box office and bar are run by the space's staff and the ushers come from the Saints, so everyone pretty much knows what they're doing and I'm just there to make sure nothing goes wrong.

This performance in particular was a little more work-intensive than usual because we had sold out and had people on a waiting list before we'd even opened the house. Fortunately, I had plenty of help and we got almost everyone in who wanted to see the show. Some of the people who'd reserved tickets didn't show and we got those seats to people on the waiting list. Then we let most of the rest of the waiting list take seats in the aisles and in places with low visibility. In the end, we'd packed in as many people as we could without endangering actors and only had to delay the start of the show by 5 or 10 minutes to do it.

Player Agency & the Social Contract

There's a column on the Escapist that I've been following pretty much since it started appearing there: Check for Traps. The guy behind it, Alexander Macris, has some really neat ideas about running a game. I'm currently (very slowly) designing a campaign using a lot of his advice. There is one of his ideas, though, that I think may be a little more complex than he's made it out to be.

This idea is his Agency Theory of Fun. Don't worry, I won't make you follow the link if you don't want to. This theory is Macris' answer to the prevailing opinion that the Gamemaster's job is to make sure everyone has fun. He argues that many GMs are afraid to give their players real choices because, if things go poorly, it could ruin their players' fun. But that has the unforeseen consequence of making none of the players' choices matter, which isn't fun.

In its place, he states the GM should prioritize their role as a judge, arbitrating the rules of the game fairly and consistently. By risking the various catastrophes a bad roll can cause, the players' choices have meaning, and making meaningful choices leads to fun.

Frankly, this is the type of game I love to play in, but it isn't for everyone. I've met some people who would absolutely hate this style of game. And there are reasons beyond fun maintenance why the other type of game gets run.

Disclaimer

I'm planning on posting about role-playing games that I've participated in in the past (both as a player and as the one herding the cats). Specifically, I'll be posting about things I enjoyed and didn't enjoy. As the people I game with are my friends and some of them may wind up reading these posts, I'd just like to make a disclaimer:

With the exception of one disastrous game that I ran myself when I was about 10, I cannot recall a single instance in which I did not enjoy the games I have played. I also cannot recall a game that was perfect (especially the ones I ran myself). Every game had its good points and its bad. In an individual post, I may only mention bad things about a session or campaign. If so, it is because I am writing about a specific quality of the game or of role-playing in general. Please take as written that there were good parts of the game that outweighed the bad. If there hadn't been, I would have stopped playing. I enjoy thinking and discussing ideas about role-playing, but I don't want to do it at the expense of the friends I've made in this hobby.

Also, while I've left character names intact, all player names have been changed in the interest of protecting the privacy of my friends.

Gaming Credentials

I have a couple of posts about RPGs that I'm working on, but before I got to those, I figured it'd be a good idea to at least touch on my experience with them. I don't claim to be any kind of expert or to have a wide or encyclopedic knowledge, but I've been gaming for more than a few years now, and I've come across some things that I think are universal or quirky enough to be interesting.

So, my gaming history:

Open Ended Ending

I recently re-read Stephen King's Dark Tower Saga because, clearly, I have too much time on my hands (see also: starting this blog). Also, Stephen King was one of my favorite authors through high school and college (although I haven't read his stuff as voraciously since he "retired"), and the Dark Tower was my first introduction to his work. So, it's always held a special place in my heart and, for the first time since finishing the last book back in 2004, I really wanted to revisit that world.

In any case, even as I was starting the series, I kept thinking about something King does near the ending. And I started musing about how it compared to other devices in other media.

I will be referencing the endings of a few different things below the break, but no actual plot spoilers.

Beneficial MPD (or Why I Hate Facebook)

No, this isn't going to be a post about the happy side affects of Dissociative Identity Disorder. It's going to be about why using a fake name on the internet is not a bad thing. In fact, I believe it is a good and healthy thing to do, and I recommend it to everyone.

Readme: Me

So, for those (as yet hypothetical) folks who have found this blog who don't know who I am, here's a little information:

First, my name isn't actually Bobby Archer. It's a pseudonym I've been using online for a while. The story behind it isn't terribly long, but it's kind of an inside joke and I don't think it'd be all that interesting to someone outside it. In any case, I like the state of near-anonymity that the internet allows and I prefer using a pen name (keyboard name? blogonym?) when going around the internet. I might go into more detail about the whys and wherefores of that, but for now I'll leave it at that.

Hello World (because that's how I roll: with originality)

Yes, this is a blog.

No, I have no idea what I'm doing with it.

Good, I'm glad I got that out of the way.

Basically, starting a blog is something that I've been saying I should do for a while now. I have various thoughts and ideas that I feel are best inflicted on a wider audience than I am typically able to reach on a day to day basis.

I haven't had a blog or a journal or anything in years, and I've found it's kind of hard to tell whether an idea is good when it's just rattling around in your head. It certainly doesn't help that my attention span is short enough that I'm not really thinking about these Great Ideas the next time I'm talking to someone who might be interested. Usually I've forgotten them by the time my fiancee's done asking what I'm thinking about. Hopefully, having something like this will encourage me to hold on to these ideas and develop them into something.