How A Game About Flowers Almost Made Me Soil Myself

I'd been waiting for some time for Flower to be released, and yesterday I finally got to download it. I will admit that my masculine side looked funny at me when it found out and possibly wrote nasty friends-only posts about me on its livejournal for doing so, but the rest of me was looking at the screenshots and going holy crap this game is gorgeous. It is, too. Every blade of grass is rendered individually, and since this game is about you being the wind, they all move accordingly when you blow on them.

For the first couple levels, I was happy as a clam -- a clam set free riding a warm breeze in the spring! I'd seen this sort of gameplay before. It wasn't rocket science. You activate things by running over them, they activate, and something happens (usually involving some sort of land-rejuvenation like dead grass turning green). It's not a real complex puzzle game at all. But you don't play Flower because you want challenging gameplay. You play Flower because you want to go WHEEEEEE I CAN FLY WHEEE GRASS ON A SUNNY DAY WHEEEEEEEE. I'm recall thinking that the first couple levels of this game are the cure for Seasonal Affective Disorder, and that I would play this game every time I get stressed out. It was like being four years old again, and running through a field full of rolling hills and dandelions. It felt great.

After that, things changed.

The nighttime level started off much as the daytime ones, except the grass that the wind touched glowed, and would power these little lightposts everywhere. It was quiet, and pretty, and tranquil. Kind of like a dream, which was not a big surprise since I'd heard the developer referred to each level as a "dream". What the bastards forgot to tell us is that they also included nightmares.

After clearing part of the level and lighting something up, all of a sudden the soothing music darkens noticeably and the camera pans over to a dark place on the horizon. Something cracks and pops, and small dark red lights hang menacingly from powerlines I can't see. Oh, and darkness started creeping over the ground, seemingly led by some malevolent force. And that's where I have to go next. No problem, I think, I'd find some flowers and light that shit right up. But as I go deeper into the darkness, there's no flowers. Matter of fact, I can barely see where I'm going aside from those red lights. And it's getting narrower. And those lights look like they're watching me. And I'm going so fast, I can't stop, everything's in the way. Is it reaching for me? I'm going to trip and something's going to get me! My pulse quickens and my breath is gone. I almost want to cry a little.

Then, as quickly as it started, it's over. I'd cleared the level somehow. The previous levels had some goal, like revitalizing a tree or activating a bunch of windmills, and you got a nice little set of cutscenes at the end where you could just watch and relax. This dumped me out to the stage selection menu, sitting on the couch trying to catch my breath, wondering what the hell had just happened.

Then it hit me. This was completely intentional, and brilliant. The reason I was so scared is they managed to activate my inner 4 year old, and keep me in that mindset for awhile, and then throw in exactly what scares the crap out of him. And when I'd have a nightmare as a kid, it almost always was me doing something fun, and then something changes subtly, and then I'm running for my life from something, and I don't know what it is but it's scary, and things are going way too fast for me to process and I'd want to cry and then suddenly I'm awake and everything is OK again but I don't know how I got here or if any of this is real and I'm still scared out of my mind. (I briefly considered phoning my parents to see if they'd let me sleep in their bed that night, but I think Efreak might have objected.)

Imagine if you could harness that kind of fear in your campaign. While I struggle to think of ways to do it as effectively in D&D as it's done in Flower, the idea of something dark, malevolent, and most importantly nameless seems like a very good place to start. If you plop an enemy down and the players sort of know its stats and you announce all its abilities (with stats) as they happen, it breaks the spell. Now, granted, you can't really get around that in D&D -- when they take damage, you have to tell the players what happened to them in a way that they can record on their character sheet. But that doesn't mean you have to say "the wight uses its Drain Level ability on the farmer". You could, instead, talk about the NPC farmer suddenly being grabbed by a clawed hand from the shadows, his face suddenly growing gaunter and paler. Make sure to mention his attempts to cry for aid instead producing a dry rattle. You don't have to tell the PC's everything all the time!

.......OK, I admit it. I wrote that last part about D&D because I wanted to distract everyone from the fact that a game about flowers scared the hell out of me. It's not the first time flowers have scared me so. There was also that time when I was 3 that my older brother told me there was a new kind of killer bee that looked just like floating dandelion seeds......

Surviving the Crazy Times: Exploring Gaming in Denver

This past weekend was a great weekend for Dante & I, as we finally got back into playing a game that doesn't involve computers and actually involved roleplaying.

Friday night saw us huddled around someone else's dinner table, rolling up new characters and getting our feet wet in a new campaign. Dante & I have had very minimal exposure to 4E, and our two new gamers (one of Dante's co-workers and his wife) had not played the new edition but both had lots of RPG experience. It took awhile to get through the character creation, and our combat took awhile as everyone got used to their new characters and their abilities. But we didn't let the delays hamper our good time. It was so much fun; there is nothing quite like sitting around, rolling some dice and discussing how best to get rid of those pesky kobolds.

On Saturday, still floating on our gaming high from Friday night, Dante & I made the 45 minute trip to Englewood to visit a gaming shop. I had heard good things about Bonnie Brae Hobby Shop through the Gamer Girls surveys, and needing a FLGS, I decided I would at least decide if it was worth the long-ish drive.

It's a great store. We came in the back door (there being no open parking spots out front, we opted for the spacious parking lot in the back) and were immediately welcomed by the sounds of a couple of guys playing a CCG (not sure which one, but that doesn't matter). I told Dante that at that moment, it felt like coming home.

They had a lot of new stuff and a lot of good, used stuff. I was very excited just to see one entire wall of bookshelves full of games, including many, many classics. In addition to all the other RPG-related items, they had hobby supplies (model kits, etc). It was a wonderful experience, and while I might not make the trip every week, it will definitely be on my list of places to revisit.

This weekend (Thurs through Sun) is GenghisCon XXX here in Denver. Given that it's also Valentine's Day this weekend, we're not planning on spending the weekend at the convention, but I'm going to drive down on Friday and see what's what.

If any of our readers out there have a FLGS on the northern/northwestern side of Denver, we are still looking for someplace closer that doesn't involve fighting our way through the traffic (ie. people) at the FlatIron mall.

World Of.... Savings...Craft?

Due in part to the fact that someone has cast Greater Recession on the economy, and also because debt is my wife's favored enemy, my lovely wife Efreak and I are attempting to watch our finances. Accordingly, she concocted for us a budget, and we discussed ways we can pay off the remainder of our debts. After some furious financial critical strikes, I am pleased to say that the only things we have left to pay off are our house, and half of my student loan. I've been paying on the damned thing for 9 years, let nobody tell you state schools are cheap!!!! (Of course, changing one's major twice will do that to you....)

One thing I was rather surprised about was how I was unintentionally saving money. If you'd looked at how I was spending money a year ago, you would see me mostly blowing money on 1> going to the movies, 2> videogames, and 3> electronics. It was not unusual for me to crack $100-150 a month on entertainment. Last month's numbers revealed something surprising: I'd only spent $15 total - solely on my WoW subscription.

I'd had friends tell me before I started playing that this might happen, but I didn't believe it. But it just goes to show: if you're grinding, you're not spending money!

Now I just have to make sure I remember to leave the house now and then.....

Just Another Brick In The Wall?

I happened upon John Miskimen's post at The Call Of The Dungeon this morning. In it, he lodges a complaint against setting your characters inside an epic story larger than themselves.

The idea of some epic story running in the background tends to diminish the PCs in a game somewhat. To me, player characters are competing with non player characters for the spotlight in settings like this. Even in a Hyborean Age setting, players will measure their character's deeds and worth against that well known Cimmerian. Playing a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away means living up to all of the iconic characters of that saga. And who can stand next to the deeds of a simple hobbit and his gardener in Middle-Earth?

I can see where he's coming from to a certain extent. You don't want to diminish the PCs' importance in the story. But I feel this points to something of a cultural need to up the ante and make things more exciting by means of putting things in a larger scale -- an entertainment arms race, if you will. Under this mindset, you could have an exciting adventure where the characters save the girl, defeat the bad guy, and narrowly avoid death countless times -- but since nobody saved the world from total destruction, it's now somehow boring.

I would submit that large, epic backdrops for your campaign give you a lot more options as to what your PCs do. The story of Star Wars isn't just about the dozen or so epic battles we see. For every one of those we see, there were a thousand more in the war that we didn't, and they didn't have anything to do with the Big Story. (That's why I love the Clone Wars cartoon. Mace Windu vs the robots FTW.) There are giant, untapped mines of action and intrigue everywhere if you pause to find them.

There's no need to try to shoehorn your PCs into someone else's story -- they have their own to tell. If you can get the players invested in their characters and what they're doing, it will be interesting. Your players are not unimportant in the grand scheme of things if you focus on their story instead of the grand scheme of things.

From The Mailbag: How Do I Play D&D With My 10 Year Old Daughter?

Occasionally, a reader will sneak in and drop an email in our poor, emaciated inbox. In accordance with state inbox cruelty regulations, I am required to elicit a response to this:


Peter Blood writes:

It has been 25 years since I played D&D in college and I still miss it. Now my 10 year old daughter loves fantasy, LOTR, and has read the whole Harry Potter series. I want to play D&D with her but do not know how to start. I am not at a level where I could set up my own dungeon and be a DM. I can't remember all that stuff about how to attack and saving throw stuff.

How can I play D&D with just the two of us?

Is there an online game where the computer is the DM? Is there a video game without much killing?

I am all ears.

First, Peter, let me inform you that I am totally jealous of your awesome name. For a moment I thought a pirate or sorcerer was emailing us and, with a name like Peter Blood, the person sending the email could not have been under level 18.

Now, getting down to business. I have personal experience playing D&D one-on-one with someone else. I did so all through high school with a friend of mine, and that was the only way I knew how to play the game for years until I found a regular group to play in. I was 13 years old, and the adventures were ridiculous and terrible, and occasionally I get all misty wishing I could have that much fun again.

If you intend to run adventures for your daughter, I'm afraid you're not going to be able to get around learning some game mechanics. However, I completely feel your pain on this one. When I run adventures, I feel as if I am going to choke to death on how many things there are to keep track of. Under normal circumstances, you have a couple of options.

Our group has relied on a two-DM system where one person primarily does story and the other handles the nuts and bolts of combat. This leaves the guy who doesn't want to deal with the numbers free to roleplay his fool head off. However, this isn't really a solution for you, because it's just you and your daughter.

This means you need plan B, which is what I do to cope as DM in any size group: rules light, roleplay heavy. By this, I mean you need to learn the barebones of combat and a few other actions -- but a lot of the time you will just make a judgement call or handwave a skill check. Make the game less about the rules, and more about the interactions between your NPCs and your daughter's PC. What do I mean by this? For example: have some orcs capture her PC and make it clear that she's going to get killed if she tries to fight her way out. Play an orc, and make her figure out how to get out of there (either by escaping somehow or talking her way out of the situation).

DMing is difficult, especially at first, but don't get discouraged (and don't forget nobody is expecting you to be perfect right out of the gate!) Everything gets a lot more comfortable after plenty of practice and mistakes. I know our group saw more than a few spectacular disasters when I was running last, but at the end of the night everybody was having fun so it was OK.

You don't have to come up with the dungeon and everything in it on your own, either. Expeditious Retreat Press has a whole bunch of modules designed for one DM and one player titled, oddly enough, 1 on 1 Adventures. I would add that I think these are D&D 3.5e and not the new 4e, but it is somewhere to start (and you'll probably want to avoid this one, for obvious reasons). If your daughter enjoys solving puzzles, you can sprinkle some into your adventures too. Cloud Kingdom games has some awesome books on this topic.

As far as videogames go, there are lots and lots of RPGs out there, but most are single-player. However, if you've got multiple computers, you could go with something from the Neverwinter Nights series or one of its predecessors. With videogame RPGs, though, you're pretty much going to wind up chopping up lots of people and monsters into tiny little pieces to get XP. I'm having a great deal of difficulty thinking of one where that is not the case (unless you're playing Myst or something). If you're looking for nonviolence, my recommendation would be to stick to tabletop adventures where you can be assured of everyone's peaceful demeanor via your omnipotence.

There is one other option that may terrify you, but it's so crazy that it just might work: give your daughter the books, and let her run a game for you. She's older than the age I was when I started getting into this stuff, and I guarantee you it's a great way to spark her creativity. I would keep it super extra rules light though -- perhaps eschewing the D&D rules for a much simpler set you two agree on (combat settled by rock-scissors-paper, for instance).

Hopefully, this was of some help to you, and you both will have a good experience like I did when I was starting out: ridiculous, terrible adventures -- and lots of fun.