Best Friends (Who Hate Each Other) Every now and then, I trick my friends into busting out some old indie game, precisely because I think it has cool features that are lost to time. As a design community, we’re sometimes pretty bad about learning from our past, which I think is both counter-productive and a crying shame. Most recent case in point: Best Friends from 2006. Have you heard of it? I’m guessing you haven’t. Canonically it’s a game about girlfriends who on the surface are (ahem) best friends but are actually boiling with i and jealousy. It was designed by Gregor Hutton, the same Gregor Hutton who made Remember Tomorrow and 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars. I’m going to talk about just one aspect of the game which I think is genius: the character creation. What Do You Hate About Them? You start with naming your character. Just a name, and then you stop. You don’t say anything else about this person. No description, nothing. Then our character sheet has a list of five hatreds: I hate ____ because she is prettier than me I hate ____ because she is cooler than me I hate ____ because she is smarter than me I hate ____ because she is tougher than me I hate ____ because she is richer than me Each player secretly puts one other characters’ name in each of those slots (and yeah if you have fewer than 6 players there are rules for how you double up and fill out the remaining slots evenly so everyone receives the exactly 5 hatreds). Then you reveal and count up the number of people that hate you for each reason. That total is your score and how good you actually are at that thing. You’ll get 5 points total, regardless of the number of players. 1 is normal, 0 sucks, 2 is great, etc. So if two of your girlfriends hate you for being richer than them, your Rich score is 2. You’re rich! If no one hates you for being smarter than them, you are Smart 0 and not a bright bulb. Blair is Pretty 0, Cool 1, Smart 1, Touch 1, Rich 2 Then using that info, you come with the concept for your character. In effect the other players make your character for you, and when you get in conflicts, winning will be based directly on whether your stat is higher than the other person. And when you interact with other characters you immediately know what you think about them. “Quiet, Dana! Blair will figure this out!” That’s a pretty sweet way of quickly making characters and relationships all in one fell swoop. But there’s another angle to it that might not be immediately obvious, which is that our opinions of each of other may not be even slightly correct. Let’s say I hate Blair because she’s smarter than me (and effectively give her 1 point of Smart). But what if no one else thinks she’s smarter than them? What if two people hate me for being smarter? Because we’re all picking secretly, right? So now I have Smart 2 and Blair only has Smart 1. I am objectively smarter, but I still think Blair is smarter than me and hate her for it. Or maybe another character is smarter but I think Blair is the brains. So you get these tangled scenes where I’m like “Oh, Blair will know what to do! She’ll figure this out!” while I ignore the smarter character standing right next to her. “Quiet, Dana!” What’s In a Name? Another thing that is fascinating to me is that when we make these decisions we know only two things: we know the name of the character and we know who is playing them. I know Joe is playing a character named Lily. That’s all. Even though you aren’t describing your character, I would bet cash money that the name you pick influences other people’s decisions. If I name a character Judith does it subconsciously make you respond differently than if I named them Roxy? I think it does. And because I know the player, I’m also choosing a dynamic of play for them, whether I think about it not. I’m saying they should be playing the cooler character, or the smarter character, etc. Of course because everyone else is voting too, the results are nowhere near predictable. But when one character gets a 3 in one score that is really bucking the odds and I think tells you that everyone jumped to the same conclusion (looking at you, Lily). And then we organize a bake sale… If I’m being honest, the rest of the game doesn’t have great guidance for making scenes or a story arc (compare it to Remember Tomorrow where each character has story goal, or 3:16 where conquering each planet is a chapter). It’s a pretty common problem for a certain era of games, where a designer would just make a conflict resolution system and then leave figuring out what kind of game to run to the GM — some extremely popular games do this even now. Of course we are playing GMless (which the rules provide as an option), but even with a GM that part of the game is loose. It hasn’t slowed us down, because we recognized it was missing and made sure to create a current “issue” to focus on. But the character creation and conflict system? It’s clever, fast, feeds directly into role-play, and closely reflects the intended fiction. A+ https://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/5492/best-friends-who-hate-each-other/ #bestfriends #hate #smart #because #gregorhutton #blair #rich #pretty #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Grab some popcorn and watch us play Microscope Want to see how I actually play Microscope? Now’s your chance: I don’t record games for the public very often. I think there’s only one other video of me playing Microscope, ever, back on Strix’s Weekly Affirmations show… ten years ago? I know Eric from back at Story Games Seattle, but I’d never met Bob or Pierre before. Which I think is a great demonstration, because it also shows you what it can be like to sit down and play a big creative game with total strangers. If we had kept playing I definitely would have added space jesus, the figure that delivers the alien message that caused the birth of the secret societies. And teaches them the psychic techniques they use later on. Alien space jesus: just your standard Microscope move. The kickstarter for the new Microscope is wrapping up in, what, less then two days? Time flies! Only in Microscope can you keep going back and expanding the past… https://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/5485/grab-some-popcorn-and-watch-us-play-microscope/ #playmicroscope #weeklyaffirmations #gamesseattle #storygames #alien #strix #bob #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

“This stream is now all Beowulf, 24/7” Do we talk about Beowulf? Yes, we do. Did we set out to talk about Beowulf? No, we did not. I was a guest on a livestream for the Ludonarrative Dissidents podcast, along with fellow guest Gareth Hanrahan, talking about Lord of the Rings, Synnibarr(?!?), and Beowulf. But mostly Beowulf. Ludonarrative Dissidents Livestream I mean yeah, we talk about the new Microscope and the amazing role-playing in This Means War, and we were supposed to be talking about their kickstarter for their new season, but c’mon: Beowulf. https://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/5477/this-stream-is-now-all-beowulf-24-7/ #beowulf #ludonarrativedissidents #garethhanrahan #livestream #meanswar #synnibarr #rings #lord #microscope #yes #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

“I don’t think you’re going to murder-hobo in a world you made together in Microscope” Sometimes in these appearances I talk too fast, because frankly I have a million things I want to say. My mind is imagining the sand trickling down the hourglass and trying to pack in as much as humanly possible in the precious time we have together. But in this chat with Rob and Matt on their Dungeon Master of None podcast, I think I kept my pace a little more under control. I both start and finish sentences, which is nice. Dungeon Master of None (episode 425): Microscope 2e with Ben Robbins We get into a lot of good stuff. Expected topics include Microscope, why I made it in the first place, and people trying story games for the first time. Unexpected topics include whether West Marches works for horror, the Divine Right board game, the deep exploration of human nature in Lord of the Rings, and me bashing on initiative, the way I do. https://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/5480/i-dont-think-youre-going-to-murder-hobo-in-a-world-you-made-together-in-microscope/ #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

“Ninety percent of the time the right answer is taking something out” I haven’t talked to Dave Pruner in years, but you would never guess it listening to us chatting up a storm. We get into the new Microscope, West Marches, This Means War, New Century City, 70s D&D, and about a million other topics in between. Plus there’s video, so you get to watch me gesticulate like a wild muppet. Interview with Dave Pruner Be warned, some of the subtitling is way off. My personal favorite is when I say D&D but it thinks I said “daddy”. Ahem. https://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/5460/ninety-percent-of-the-time-the-right-answer-is-taking-something-out/

Ask Me (almost) Anything I’m doing an Ask Me Anything on r/rpg and it is filled to the brim with discussion of the new Microscope, West Marches, and a mess of other things too. I’m Ben Robbins, the creator of Microscope and West Marches. AMA! It’s wrapping up soon but it’s not too late to get in there. If you’ve got questions about the new Microscope (or really anything else), I am contractually obligated to provide answers https://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/5469/ask-me-almost-anything/