The last few months have been interesting at Stock & Bull. We’re hard at work bringing you the Project Powerpunk demo. And the biggest challenge of this is turning all our rules, ideas, and thoughts into a product meant for human consumption. A large portion of this is editing and rewriting our rules. The rest of it is organization: How do I display all of this information to my reader in a form that is clear to read and easy to understand? If you have read a Tabletop RPG book, you may have some idea on how daunting a task this is. If the purpose of my rulebook is to teach you how to play my game, then what should I teach first? Or second? Do I start with how to create a character, or how to roll for a skill check? Which is more important? Most tabletop RPGs use similar conventions. Most of which I believe were established with Dungeons & Dragons: start with how to create characters (because without those you can’t play the game), then introduce the rules of the game. It explains what the numbers on your character sheet mean, then explains how they are used to play the game. I can largely copy what other games have done in the past and get by. Even still, Project Powerpunk is different. It’s not D&D, Fate, Gumshoe, GURPS, or Shadowrun. It’s different. The rules are different, the procedures are different. Within sections I still have a lot of choice as to how the steps are ordered. Take character creation for instance. Do I have you choose your powers first, or your traits? You can assume that I have complete freedom in what and how I accomplish this. However, each and every decision holds weight. It means the difference about you understanding or not understanding how to play Project Powerpunk. While researching how best to approach the layout of the Project Powerpunk demo I came to the realization that I made lots of mistakes. I was too focused on the words, their meaning, and the order in which I was delivering them. What I never paid attention to was how I was displaying those words. What you are reading is just as important as how it looks like. Time and time again the subject of typography had come up in my research. I would have to learn its dark arts and esoteric forms to make meaningful choices about how the Project Powerpunk demo would look. Typography deals with how text is visually displayed. Placing text on a screen, paper, or sign and showing it to someone is applying typography. It’s a crude example but true. You may think that I need no more than just picking a font and adding a cool background to my rulebook. Those are certainly a part of it. However, it’s a lot more involved. Typography goes beyond aesthetics, it’s utilitarian. The font I use, it’s size, the spacing of line and letters, how I point out key terms will do more than just make it pretty. It will have an effect on how readable the Project Powerpunk demo is. It’s the difference between you reading it from front to back, or putting it down after a page. Honestly, if I can’t hold your attention, does it matter how good Project Powerpunk is? Let’s try with an example. Here’s a snippet of the rulebook: Do you see any key terms in that paragraph? Maybe. Would you guess that the key term I would like you to know is “narrator?” Likely not. I’m more inclined to assume that your eyes jumped to NPCs since I have it capitalized. But that subtle difference is enough to throw off what is most important about that paragraph. The next two are the same as before but with “narrator” made to look different than the surrounding text. I stuck with two very simple and easy to do methods. One is bold the other is italic: Now choose which of the two makes the word narrator stand out more, bold or italic? I may split the vote on this one but I’m going to bet that more of you had picked bold for this. Why? Honestly, italics in this case does not really pop. The font used here is a sans serif font. In sans serif fonts, italics are simply made to be slanted versions of the original letterforms. There is not a large enough contrast to truly stand out against the rest of the text. Bold here does a better job. If you’re scratching your head about why italics is so bad in this case take a look at these next two pictures: I’ve got the same sentence in Times New Roman and Arial. Arial is another example of a sans serif font. Times New Roman is a serif font. Serifs refer to the small horizontal protrusions of every vertical line in each letter. Look at how the italicized version of a word in Times New Roman looks. It’s letter forms are actually changed, not merely slanted. In Arial, they really are just crudely tilted to one side. Italics make a real difference in serif fonts. Not so in sans serif ones. Let’s look at those examples from Project Powerpunk again: We already established that bold in this case was the better option, but ask yourself is it the best option? To all whom felt italics was the right answer before, you might have felt that way because bold in this case does not really pop either. I do agree with that assessment. Bold does contrast, but not a lot in this case. What if I combined the two? Is this just right, not enough, or too much? It’s a small example so it may be hard to tell. I probably will get a different answer to that question from each person who reads this, but try to look at it objectively. Does “narrator” stand out from the rest of the words? Absolutely. Now, does it stand out so much that the effect is jarring? Does this combination of bold and italic make this block of text easier or harder to read? From what I have learned the latter is true. Typography takes a “less is more” approach to applying emphasis. By doing both I’m making this harder to read and directing your focus too much. It might not truly register by reading one paragraph. However, a bit of focused robbed at every instance over the course of a book and I’m likely to kill your attention span before you have finished reading the Project Powerpunk demo. That’s not good at all. I bring up bold and italic because they are things that anyone who has used a word processor has seen and used. You might have fiddled with these decisions when writing essays for school and possibly made or avoided the mistakes I’ve discussed so far. They are not the be all and end all of adding emphasis to words or phrases. I just recently found out how effective small caps can be. See how “narrator” looks? It’s definitely eye catching. All capital letters run counter to how our eyes are trained to read text and will always stand out (all caps is also an effective method of emphasis). But it’s not super jarring.
See how typography goes beyond aesthetics? It looks nicer and is easier to read. I’ve attracted your attention and helped conserved it at the same time. That’s not to say that small caps is the absolute best option for everyone or everything. It might not work well for everybody. It probably won't work well if I changed the typeface or the size of the text and it probably won't work if I were working on a different project with different needs. Typography’s true message is illustrating that regardless of what I choose, my choices have weight. Much like how it is to play Project Powerpunk.
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I love fiction, which I find funny because I don't like to lie. Still, the creative process for making something that is fantastic and unreal is fun for me; it's the draw of urban myths and cryptozoology like the Candyman, Katy Perry, or Bigfoot. The things that cannot REALLY exist, no matter how much you want them to, are the best. The same goes for places like Santa's workshop in the North Pole or Sesame Street on the East Coast of America. Right now, my focus is on settings. Realms of myth and legend, castles and dragons; the idea of planets with diamond rain or plasma snow fascinates me to seemingly no end. The fictional settings that most resonate with me, however, have a root in the real; where you are 98% sure that strange oddity isn't real, all the while that 2% is still there leaving you with a lingering doubt. With Project: Powerpunk, we went to capture that excitement of "what is not, but could be." Then we were met the greatest problem of this creation model.
"Where do my ideas fit?" For example, your game master tells your group that you’re hunting a vampire in Paris, a city that is known for its landmarks, its people, its "character.” However, in an effort to put his own spin on Paris, the game master has decided to take some liberties and replace the Louvre with a "Texas Longhorn Steak Shack," the Eiffel Tower with "Mack's Truck Stop and Shrimp House,” and have all the Parisians speak with a thick American southern-twang, calling people "Ya'll" and "Hun.” Of course, this will evoke very different feelings from what you’d probably expect from the "City of Love.” Doubt will set in and the ability to connect with the setting will suffer. However, it’s not always so fun to run a local history lesson in the guise of a game either. While the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile lists every major French military victory and the general that is credited with that victory, I don’t want to play a game to learn all of their names nor do I want to play through each day of the arc’s construction. Marrying the fun part of fictional setting work with the solid foundation of a real location can yield something amazing and thus come the ideas of “interpretation” and “adaptation.” Returning to Paris, instead of bizarre setting concepts or pointless and boring information, your game master could take you down into the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier buried beneath the Arc and reveal how the Unknown Soldier is just an alias for an immortal who stalks battlefields preying on fallen soldiers. “Adapt” reality and “interpret” it within your fictional setting. Before we accepted these concepts of adaptation and interpretation, we kept finding that our setting ideas and the changes we wanted to make were pigeonholed; forced forward the way one would shove something into a tight, uncomfortable place (and I don't mean the back of a Volkswagen). Given that we were not naive folk on the rebound after a bad breakup, we were not very receptive to this process. But when we started to adapt the real world and omit certain real life changes, make unique changes of our own to make it part of OUR story and OUR world, we grew more comfortable and we were finally able to make something that is specially made by us. The setting of Project: Powerpunk is our own "scientifiction" adaptation of New York City; open to fantastic, almost magical, changes and futurist ideas. I loved the idea of New York for two reasons. First and foremost it is my home; I know NYC better than I know any other place. If we made the setting Paris or London, it would ring false and hollow. That being said, I’m not a playboy party machine so I don’t know the city as well as I want to either, but then again a lot of the allure and danger that I anticipated in going to certain clubs and hot spots have been dashed as they have since been closed down. This leads me to my second reason: the city I was prepping for is not the city I grew up into. I had family members through my childhood tell me of the dangers of this club, that alley, this drug, that party, or this neighborhood. There were tales of danger and excitement such as fleeing from a gang at one party only to end up facing other enemies at the club you hide out in or deciding to approach a new lady at a bar only to find out that she is actually looking for you to sell you out and cover her debt with someone else. There were dirty, grungy tales of a tough as nails city that shined bright for tourists and locals alike only to cast deeper shadows that would drag everyone down. I know that it is for the best that the real New York City is no longer that romanticized wild metropolis anymore but there has always been a part of me that wants to rub elbows with today's nobody band, watch them do a show in the same neighborhood bars where I once thought I would drink, and after telling the lead singer that the last song of the set was kind of trash, get his fist to my face, break a bottle over his head (preferably his bottle too, you know, add insult to injury) and use the broken glass to fight off the rest of the band as I made my getaway. Then I would ingest some poison that I shouldn't and go to a blue-collar job the next morning so I can start the cycle again from the beginning the next evening. (Some months down the line, after watching them skyrocket to fame, I could have a spiteful chuckle to myself when that crap lead singer goes to jail after his bassist dies of an overdose at the biggest nightclub in the city.) I know that realistically I am better off not having done ANY of that but a part of me laments the path not traveled. Not simply because I chose not to fall to its allure, but because that avenue was closed off and the choice was taken away for me. In Powerpunk, I have been able to put to the page the romanticized, dangerous playground of the "rubble kings," the "Gordon Gekkos," and the "Agent J’s" and that wouldn't have the same feel if I threw together a bunch of big buildings and called it "Metrotopiaville." With the basis still being New York City, that history and presence is preserved even as we added augmented reality advertisements and NYPD drones in Manhattan that are knocked from the sky by “Gargoyles,” customized drones belonging to gangs. In Queens, we have a medical research organization that has begun to release new analgesic drugs and promising medical breakthroughs in the field of “Ansenectum” (anti-aging) in the form of wrinkle removal salves and muscle rejuvenating diet programs as cyber-cowboys mount non-lethal weaponized motorcycles and patrol the borough protecting the people from law-breakers that the NYPD can’t “be bothered to” apprehend. All the while, an average blue-collar worker heads off from a mob-owned work site to a bar to down a drink before getting into an argument with the lead singer of today’s nobody band about a crappy last song only to get hit in the face then bash the lead singer over the head with a bottle and make his getaway home all to do it again tomorrow. The foundation is real but what we present is not (at least not yet.) Odysseus, Anansi, Coyote and Alan Schaefer. One of these guys are not like the others. The first three are known for their wit, tricks, greed, cunning, fame, infamy and heroism. All three are in their own way social assassins and tricksters. Alan Scaefer, a.k.a Dutch, is the human who killed a Predator in the jungle in the 80's. While it is a heroic feat, physically taking down a Monster is the standard heroic feat. Orcs, goblins, kobolds, Ogres and even eventually Dragons will fall to the blade or spells in classic fantasy rpgs. But what about a broken heart? What about being blinded by a newfound hatred of something that once profoundly shaped who you grew up to be?
There are more ways to break a person than just a fist or some blunt tools. The Joker is quoted as saying "All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day". When Wolverine killed his son by drowning him in a muddy puddle, Saber-tooth comes along clapping. He says, "All the cuts I've given you over the years--here's the deepest." While these villains are known for physical violence and mayhem, their worst moments are when they speak the truth. These were the inspirations we used in making a social combat system. Monday
First day of the week, time to get things done! Ended up playing Overwatch all day, crap. Tuesday Doing laundry, clothing, detergent foam, grayish water; Augmented Reality restaurant menus should be animated, steam coming off of hot food, utensils cutting, lifting and interacting with the food. Drinks infinitely pouring for free refills, cup already full for non free refills. Color tabs on the edge of menu, highlighted tabs for specials. Wednesday Are the rules really done, do we have enough things in place for people to do what they want? Is it still fun with all these bells and whistles? Conglomerate backed crypto-currency; offering to pay employees more in that currency than normal cash. They offer local businesses discounts and contracts to incentivize them into using their crypto-currency. Then threaten them with "action" if they refuse. Season of the scavenger If I'm not working on the game I feel like a beach. Waves of time crash into me, eroding away while I wait for a new idea to surface. It would be so much more fun if I could do this with my friends as a job; instead of having to pop in and out of creating things for the game and living a second life as a bored minimum wage worker. Government workers trying their best to keep their offices, agencies, organizations funded. The government is consolidating agencies in order to save money and cut red tape. The Agency of After-school Activities is trying to keep open all the rec centers. Their Agents have been given the okay to do anything they can to show that Recreational centers work. Bowieday Trying to write a blog post for the website, to get more views, to get more people interested in the game, to get more coke; AR baby daycare because Screw drone dog walkers! Little padded visor helmets showing different things teaching them young while they interact with not air but jungle gym surfaces. ...Nope we've built too many things in AR already, instead make it a AI teddy bear companion. Tangerine Mountain top mining, standing on top of a mountain and tearing it apart for materials. Ghost guns are guns built without serial numbers. 3D printed ghost guns might be a thing in our world. 3D printed pharmaceuticals on the black market, heart pills, asthma and other usually expensive medication. The answer to big pharma. Micro-chipping trafficked humans. Ex-vets turned vigilantes, Unionized prostitution, destabilizing the diamond industry with made to order customized artificial diamonds, Ride through the storm, see the knights fighting evil and crime. A modern day team of heroes in medieval times. Arthur and the Knights of Justice, putting evil down. Ride through the storm with the knights of the table ’round Come on, come on!! (Guitar Solo!!!~) King Arthur ride!!!!!! Monday First jumbo shrimp buffet day! I think that by this point the writing style of each developer is becoming easier to identify. While we all write under the combined alias of "Stock and Bull" as a team, each one of us speaks with a particular voice. In general when it is my turn I actually have some difficulty figuring out what to say. Do I talk about myself, do I talk about my life? Do I talk about the product, the creation process, how far along we are or how far we landed from our original ideas? I usually land on the side of caution and talk more about the company and the game then I do myself. This is for two reasons:
One: We are a team and talking about me as the individual feels selfish. Two: The talking Heads. (The band) Obviously this begs explaining. While I am writing or looking over rules or devising NPC's or whatever Jack of All Trades Cap I am wearing for the day, I tend to work in silence for a while but inevitably that drives me batty and I turn on some music. And so it was that I was listening to a playlist today as I was trying to write up what was initially a very different post about ghosts, horror and pre-marital sex...yeah...I went off on a tangent and looked at the ramblings of the mad-man that started back at me. While I may go back to that one day, this time I heard the "Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime". The part that best describes me is really "there is water at the bottom of the ocean"...nah that's bull. It's actually "same as it ever was" and that part is repeated over and over. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. That's what it feels like mostly. I will start winding this down as it is in danger of becoming more about me the person and less about me the game developer. While this seems more on the side of complaints, this is more akin to cautious ambivalence. In the past few weeks (not months and certainly not years) I have been watching with renewed vigor and cautious optimism as what once seemed like a distant dream has become an actual possibility but even now there remain many smaller tasks that require attention and detailing that still feels like there remains a gulf to be overcome before the dream becomes reality. On a more optimistic note, I can see more than just a horizon now and over that gulf seems to be within reach. Author Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Stock & Bull is a small team of six guys, who set out to make the RPG game that could finally handle their wildest dreams, and even wilder antics. When we set out to turn a bunch of made up rules hastily jotted down in a Spider-Man notebook into a full-featured, mature game that anyone can enjoy. We were a bunch of kids (plus one adult) with barely a clue on how to begin. Except, we didn’t know how deep that rabbit hole goes.
When we started down the path of turning a great idea into a great game, we were all obsessed with just getting it on paper. It didn’t need to be pretty, it didn’t need to even make much sense. Art? What art? Yes one of us knew how to draw, but that could come later. Setting? That’s easy to do! We’ve already got most of the setting down anyway. No, back then was the time for design. We wanted this game to be awesome. We needed this thing to be stacked with all the superpowers, the rules, and the systems necessary to do the stuff we couldn’t in every other game we have played so far. Numbers? Probability curves? Screw that, the dice always sort themselves out. The time soon came where we figured that’s enough. We can practically play this as is. When our regular play group got together we all ran a test run. Our friends think it’s fun. It’s time to present to the masses. That’s when it hit us. How do we do that exactly? We had a small spot of forward thinking when one of us applied for a Tax ID number about 2 years prior. Except that’s only the tip of the iceberg in establishing a legitimate business entity. How do we get this to the public? What if they steal our ideas? Do we need a lawyer? How do we make money? How do we get a business bank account? Do we pay taxes? Revenue? Profit margins? The void was exposed, the true depth of the rabbit hole laid plain for the first time. “Improvise, adapt, overcome.” Thus the writer became the salesman, the designer became the accountant, the artist became the editor, the programmer became the business manager, and the mathematician became the typographer. We’ve all each had to pick up 2-3 extra skills just to try to inch this game ever closer to completion. What else could we do? Give up? Impossible. Pay someone? With what money? We had to do 100% of the work. It was time for us kids to grow up. We’re throwing ourselves into the arena that’s known as the tabletop games industry, dominated by men many years our senior for the better part of 50 years. We had to shape ourselves into men to match. Even our aforementioned adult knew nothing of value here. Last time he ran a business was the ‘80s. The skills required then were a firm handshake and a nice smile. Not knowing how to do something, or being thrown into a task that places us well outside of our comfort zone is now commonplace. That feeling has almost become an indicator that we are on the right track with an idea. As I write this, I’m looking at a tutorial on textures in Inkscape. I have no clue how graphic design works. I’ll figure it out though, because our demo adventure book needs a front cover. Creativity is essential in any role-playing game. It opens the door to expression and imagination that shape characters, NPCs, and the very world of the game. What better way to exercise creativity than through crafting? With a craft system you can build augmentations for your character or use your character to build wonders that reflect their perception of their world.
A good craft system gives the GM and the Players a tool kit; filled with sparks for ideas and mortar for settings. You should be able to equip your unique characters with complimentary gear and fill interesting settings with important details. If you live in a police state surrounded by electric eyes the craft system needs to be able to reinforce that feeling of oppression with night vision and thermal cameras used by Brother Big, the city's Savior machine. In a city of smog, the craft system better also be able to spit out fashionable respirators, personal sonar visors and neon lights to calm those who haven't felt the touch of the sun in ages. We know craft systems can be seen as too tedious and not worth the time to make if you have a large enough equipment section. However, with our game it's not just about equipment. We believe the best craft systems help build context. Imagine your newly built character survived a gunfight against a Slavic gang during their first session by taking cover behind a brick wall. The next day you see the elderly matron of the gang you defeated, Lady Matroska, turn a similar brick wall to powder with a backhand. Now you have an idea of how frighteningly powerful she is. The thing that saved your life last night is nothing but a pebble in the road to Lady Matroska and without having to directly interact with the matron, you now know you're out of her league. In another scenario, a mercenary team outfitted with Green Industries’ bleeding-edge technology can find themselves faced with the challenge of their lives trying to break into your secret base. Your supernatural, MacGuyver-like ability to build a fortress out of mundane items like aluminum siding and duct tape can be great enough to foil such a threat. Our craft system has been designed to go past weapons and personal equipment. We have designed it to be flexible enough to allow for creativity in every respect; weapons, gadgets, armor, setting pieces, props, and even materials used for construction. This isn’t to say by any means that you will be forced to use the craft system if you want to get anything done or built, but that the option to take your game and characters to stories and worlds, past the one we have created for you, will always be there. Context built, leagues established, hero pose. What we’re creating is not a superhero game. Sure, we have superpowers, but we have dragons in there somewhere too. We could say that this is a game of superpowers, but even then that’s more of a pun than an actual description. For us, saying this is a superhero game is like saying that CSI: Miami is just as much a part of the sci-fi genre as Star Trek, since science is central to both franchises. The reason we take this stance is because much like science, “Superhero” is not a genre in and of itself.
“Superhero" does not evoke a specific emotion in the same way as “Action”, “Thriller”, or “Horror.” It is at best a sub-genre, and the best way to use superpowers are as a spice, not a full meal. Others have also taken this metaphorical approach to superpowers so we see some merit to it as more than just the pretentious ramblings of an out-of-touch and literate group of geeks just nerd-sniping each other all day with theories. Take a look at Luke Cage, one of the Netflix original series by Marvel. Luke Cage is basically a western movie with a superhero instead of your standard Eastwood gunslinger. (SPOILER WARNING) Luke is a stranger in a “lawless area”; he stands up for the masses and becomes a hero to the “townsfolk”; and in the end he cleans things up a bit and “rides off into the sunset.” This is the stance we have taken with our system. The settings and characters our players choose and create are the spices they add to the meal that is our system and the versatility is affords. It won’t matter if you play a flying, bulletproof femme fatale fighting a cult of drug-fueled corporate executives in the rough and tumble underworld of New York City or a mighty, musclebound and fleshy barbarian lord riding a giant man-eating hawk from a mystical kingdom, the rules for getting stabbed will be the same in both worlds as will the rules for attacking, defending, healing, hurting, or even just resting to recover; the system is versatile enough to handle all of these “spices.” To reiterate, “Superhero” is not a genre and this isn’t a superhero game. What we’re making is a role-playing game that explores power, because power can come in all kinds of forms: financial, political, criminal, and supernatural, just to name a few. This is a game about powers, yes, but more specifically it’s a game about a world that is conflicted by powers and how you will wield what little portion of power you have, whether it’s in your hands, your mind, shooting from your eyes, or in your bank account. |
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