Just created a new game experiment and played it over IM with four unsuspecting friends.

It needs context and I need to suss out the details re: the buttons and their functions but here’s how it works:

I pinged four friends who were online with the message: “You there?” and once they all replied, I sent them this message:

You are standing in a square chamber with three other people. They are strangers.

On each wall of the room there is a button.

If you press BUTTON 1, you will earn 5 points.

If you press BUTTON 2, you will earn 3 points.

If you press BUTTON 3, nobody earns any points.

If you press BUTTON 4, the game ends.

If you pass, you earn 1 point.

If two or more people press the same button, that button will not function.

What do you do?

When they chose, I repeated their choice (ie: “You picked button 3″) and made a note to myself what they chose. When all four had made a choice, I announced what happened. In the first round, nothing happened. Two people wanted to end the game, the other two opted to prevent anyone from scoring points. We played two more rounds, each time I altered the functions of the buttons.

Round 2

The buttons have changed.

If you press BUTTON 1, you will earn 3 points.

If you press BUTTON 2, you will earn 3 points.

If you press BUTTON 3, everyone gains 1 point.

If you press BUTTON 4, the game ends.

If you pass, you earn 1 point.

If two or more people press the same button, that button will not function.

What do you do?

Round 3

The buttons have changed.

If you press BUTTON 1, you will earn 10 points.

If you press BUTTON 2, the highest score will lose 2 points.

If you press BUTTON 3, everyone loses 1 point.

If you press BUTTON 4, the game ends.

If you pass, you earn 1 point.

If two or more people press the same button, that button will not function.

What do you do?

At the end (which was prompted by one player pressing button 4, which always ends the game), I announced the final scores. I noticed nobody ever passed their turn to score the 1 point and most often people chose to try and end the game or screw the other players.

You should try this out with your own four random friends and see what happens.

Had a dream last night.

I remember wearing a red leather jacket and a mask. I was called either Skunk or the The Skunk and I was some kind of low-tier street vigilante type. I was quick and strong and tough in that generic superhero way but my abilities didn’t really approach superhuman levels.

I was in a warehouse/scientific lab controlled by the Mob. After pilfering a plastic bag filled with white powder (NOT drugs, something to do with the ingredients for a stink spray gun I was working on?), I tried to escape but was intercepted by goons. One of the hilarious bits was when I avoided the goons and while running through the lab’s machine shop, rummaging through all the tools strewn about to get a serviceable weapon. I think I ended up with a big-ass screwdriver and a bolt-cutter but not before I cut myself grabbing a butcher knife that was on a workbench.

I don’t remember much after the subsequent fight scene, save for the ubiquitous hot female villain in the leather outfit who showed up at the end. And scene.

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Woke up pondering a character creation system where two players had to collab (Lee & Kirby style) on a superhero character. One does the backstory and the other designs the character’s look.

* * * * *

Which brings me to a current idea. You write your character’s personality traits down in secret and you get experience points at the end of the game if the other players can guess what those traits are. Was thinking about that long review of Phantom Menace and how interviewees could easily describe Han Solo and C-3P0 but were stumped when trying to sum up Qui-Gon Jinn as a character.

* * * * *

I have a cold.

The moment you start talking about power levels, you’ve already lost.

Work continues s-l-o-w-l-y on Samovar’s leveling. He’s a level 12 dwarf priest on WoW’s Sentinels server. Doing the whole pacifist holy priest thing where he only kills demons, elementals, undead and “stuff without a face.” Also doesn’t eat meat or fish.

Man, it’s tough relying on exploration XP as your primary source of experience. But it turns out it’s quite fun. Lots of delivery/messenger quests and anything where I have to run into an enemy camp with Power Word: Shield on, grab an item and run like hell. I actually feel a little sad/ill when I accidentally swipe a critter with my mace while it’s trying to eat me. I get into some ethical debates with myself. “If the monster is diseased and the quest is to end its suffering, is that okay? How about an alien beast (the ravagers on Azuremyst Isle)?” I decided it is okay. But I don’t kill spiders or crabs or catch fish.

Exploring Azeroth has been fun. I like the exploration achievements and feel a little rush when I’ve uncovered an entire zone. Kudos to Blizzard for ripping something off of LOTRO (rather than the usual other way around! Hah!).

Reminds me of Will Wright’s bit about playing a battlefield medic in TRIBES where he healed everyone, friend and foe, until the enemy started to realize he was just healing people and stopped attacking him. Another example of game design as mind control.

I’m looking forward to the day when more games allow player-created modes of play (player-created content is fine but modes of play is even more intriguing). Get to level 10 without killing anything? Get an achievement. Get to level 10 without dying? Get an achievement.

Now if I can just make it to level 15 so I can start doing dungeon instances with groups I might actually have a chance at leveling more than a level every few days.

I’ve had three good theoretical ideas in my life as a game designer, all of which I’ve put into practice.

Premise. I was swinging this hammer in the 90′s when I realized that Vampire was a terrible game that lied to its players (as Ken Hite said: “Don’t lie to your customers.”). The idea that good games had an “aboutness” that informed both design decisions and play decisions. Ron co-opted the term to cover Lajos Egri’s theories about narratives but the basic concept remains the same. Game and stories have premises. A premise in a story informs the narrative while a premise in a game informs the design. RPGs need both: a design premise (what is the GAME about) and a narrative premise (what is the STORY about). Games are not stories, but you can tell a story within the context of a game… this is what makes RPGs unique. The player tells the story, not the game designer.

The other were the Beeeg Horseshoe Theory and of course, the Three Questions. But I don’t want to talk about those right now.