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August 04, 2005
Diana Jones Shortlist Announced
The Diana Jones Award Committee has announced its shortlist of nominees for this year's Diana Jones Award. The award goes to whatever they think has best demonstrated "excellence in gaming" in the previous year. This year's shortlist:
Code of Unaris
Dogs in the Vineyard
Ticket to Ride
I don't know anything about the board game. I adore Dogs. Code of Unaris -- well, I'll admit I haven't tried it. The examples of play drive me up the wall, because I don't abbreviate in online chat. So when I read "[12:02:17 PM:] Grode: you begin ur adventure in the Fourth Age" I have some trouble getting past the "ur." Possibly I'm too much of a snob. I also kind of boggled at Ron Edwards claiming this was a new frontier in RP, since I've been doing immersive text-based online RP for... over a decade now. But again, snobbishness. Would anyone who's played Code like to point out the errors of my ways?
Note that PDF copies of the game are now available free.
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Comments
I've also not played Code; I just don't roleplay online much so it never really got my interest. I love Dogs in the Vineyard, but Ticket to Ride is also excellent. At this point, it's the first game I introduce to new board gamers-- turns are quick, the rules are very simple, but there's a lot of strategy and challenge. Each is clearly tops in its own category... I wonder how they'll choose between them.
Posted by: ScottM at Aug 4, 2005 11:10:31 AM
Unfortunately, I can't find the link right now, but there's some play examples not in the book that get at what Ron was so excited about.
The system's really simple, and the setting's got some neat bits but isn't very grabby. The real meat of the game (which doesn't get nearly enough page time compared to the "standard RPG" stuff) is the hacking mechanic.
The GM is narrating what the scene's like, what you're up to, how things turn out like in a regular game, right? Except with hacking you can find/replace one word in whatever he's said, and the situation is changed accordingly. That's the grabby bit about the game.
One of the play examples on the author's blog has the GM set up the scenario as the PCs being "prisoners of (Name) the Mad Wizard." The players immediately hacked it to "friends of (Name) the Depressed Wizard", and apparently turned the scenario into "How do we cheer this guy up?"
Posted by: Andrew Norris at Aug 4, 2005 12:04:48 PM
Sorry, the above post is talking about Code of Unaris. Somehow I managed to leave that out when I was rephrasing things.
Posted by: Andrew Norris at Aug 4, 2005 12:06:03 PM
You're not too much of a snob.
Anyone who wants to be taken seriously in writing and uses "ur" pretty much forfeits the whole thing.
Posted by: Andrew Shultz at Aug 4, 2005 12:17:46 PM
I haven't had a chance to play Ticket to Ride yet, but it's on my short list of Games to Buy simply because of listening to people on my flist on LJ who are utterly addicted to it. It sounds like one to recommend just based on the player feedback.
Posted by: D. at Aug 4, 2005 12:19:43 PM
Ticket to Ride was a Spiele des Jahres finalist (I think winner) for last year. I've played it, and have one of its competitors for that year that I like better [Einfach Genial], but it works fairly well.
Haven't played either Dogs or Code, so I can't comment on those.
Posted by: Jeff Dougan at Aug 4, 2005 1:08:59 PM
With luck, next week's Have Games, Will Travel will review all three of these.
Posted by: Paul Tevis at Aug 4, 2005 1:20:40 PM
I'm a big fan of Dogs, too. My money is on Polaris as the early frontrunner for next year.
Re: "I also kind of boggled at Ron Edwards claiming this was a new frontier in RP, since I've been doing immersive text-based online RP for... over a decade now."
There's a whole lotta stuff that the Forge folk bogusly claim as new frontiers. In many other cases, what they really mean is a formalized approach to something that has had little formal backing in the past.
Posted by: Lee Short at Aug 4, 2005 2:30:36 PM
There's more to it than just the formalization, though. It's been a few years since I did any serious online RP, but I don't remember any mechanics more specific than a dice bot. There were lots of techniques that online communities evolved for cooperative play, but they were all social rules defining the acceptable fashions to introduce events. It was all fairly sophisticated, but probably would have been just as useful for moderating live freeform games. Unaris, on the other hand, is really the only thing I've seen that specifically and explicitly addresses the mechanical potential of the medium.
Posted by: Albert Andersen at Aug 5, 2005 3:26:04 AM
Ticket to Ride is the first game - ever - to have me pause, look it over and immediately feel a warm fuzzy feeling spread through my body just by grasping the game dynamics.
Posted by: Mikael Johansson at Aug 5, 2005 5:25:01 AM
You know you've been out of it for too long when the Diana Jones shortlist comes out and you haven't played any of them...
Posted by: Nir Shiffer at Aug 5, 2005 7:57:06 AM
Albert -- I take those social rules as being just as important and "real" as anything to do with dice. I'm thinking here of the extensive AmberMUSH play I've done and the rules that evolved for resolving and playing freeform conflicts. They wouldn't really be appropriate for face to face, because they hinge on the discrete nature of lines of text.
Posted by: Bryant at Aug 5, 2005 12:59:26 PM
Actually, the sort of social rules I found in my years on a Pern MOO remind me quite a bit of the structure of a game like Robin Laws' Pantheon. Everyone takes turns making statements describing in-game events. These statements are subject to limitations in what in-game events they present. The exact nature of Pantheon's limitations were different than on Harper's Tale MOO, but the idea was the same. I think that Soap presents a similar flow of play, but I've only skimmed it.
Pantheon actually has a mechanic that is very similar to Unaris' hacking, but its use broke the flow of the game because of the lack of time boundary and the lack of an objective written record. Every time someone disputed a statement, it had to be repeated several times to nail down the exact wording, and only then could hacking occur. The time-stamp and common logs of a chatroom, on the other hand, keep the relevant information right in front of all the players, allowing play to quickly process and adapt to the new situation.
Posted by: Albert Andersen at Aug 6, 2005 3:25:34 AM
Hiya,
Good comments. I'd personally vote for Dogs as I think it progresses things the furthest in terms of innovative roleplay. Unaris progresses in terms of format, while Ticket to Ride is a really wonderful board game with a strong German-style influence crafted by Alan R. Moon. Play Elfenland by the same author if you want to experience a clever, innovative push forward in the genre.
Some replies to the above posts.
'UR' occured in actual play. In the context of chat (in which this occured) I sometimes use shorthand. Text flows to quickly to type it all out.
Here are a few play links.
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=13504.0
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=12976.15
Mandango:: ask the barmaid what she's so afraid of
Grode:: she says, "my mother is upstairs, she's a bitter old woman"
Mandango:: hack woman to demon
Grode:: you like to make it tough on your friends, don't you
Mandango:: just doing my part.:)
Grode:: ok, her mother is a bitter old demon.
Grode:: The daughters of Falconis, twins of evil, march across the battlefield toward your group.
Mandango:: hack twins to triplets.
Tomthumb:: idiot.
Grode: okay::) Triplets of evil.
Mandango:: evil or not, i have a thing for triplets.
Grode:: the guard asks you for your papers.
Bightfellow:: hack papers to advice
Grode:: the guard asks you for your advice
Grode:: wait a moment.
Grode:: he says "what do you think? think I'd make sergeant someday?
Brightfellow:: oh sure. you're a model gate keeper! (charm 7)
Mauvais1:: is that a fair price for wiskey
Grode:: Expensive, and you have only a single imperial, you were
Grode:: robbed on the way here.
Hobbitroll:: hack: robbed is bequeathed
Grode:: you were bequeathed, you have plenty of money
Grode:: you see that you are at the backdoor of a gambling hall
Grode:: a burley guard waves to Inga, you're motioned in.
Grode:: Inside it's smokey, and dimly lit.
Grode:: There are whores everywhere, and rich merchants
Grode:: galore.
Mauvais1:: hack rich to generous
Grode:: Inga goes up some stairs, motioning you to follow
Hobbitroll:: follow her
Grode:: Generous merchants walk up to you. Here is a bit of money.
Grode:: The book is old, the writing faded.
Grode:: But you can still make out a piece of the text.
Grode:: "...and he shall one day rule the Northland."
Dimrot:: hack he to Dimrot.
Grode:: it says "...and Dimrot shall one day rule the Northland."
Grode:: now THAT changes things...
Dimrot:: cool.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/gamechat/2425.html
Gary
Posted by: Gary at Aug 6, 2005 8:35:33 AM
Thanks for commenting, Gary!
It's probably a stylistic difference. Even in chat I always type everything out, but I'm an 80 wpm guy and I bet my play sessions move more slowly than yours. Like I said, I'm partially just being snobbish.
Posted by: Bryant at Aug 11, 2005 4:15:33 PM
my funny story
A man walks into his local pub with a big grin on his face.
"What are you so happy about?" asks the barman.
"Well, I'll tell you," replies the man. "You know, I live by the railroad tracks. Well, on my way home last night, I noticed a young woman tied to the tracks, like in the films.
I, of course, went and cut her free and took her back to my place.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I scored big time! We made love all night, all over the house. We did everything, me on top, sometimes her on top, every position imaginable!"
"Fantastic!" exclaimed the barman. "You lucky bd. Was she pretty?"
"Dunno... never found the head!"
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