Peaky 2016

Peaky is the annual freeform (larp) writing weekend held in April in Derbyshire. It is organised by Peaky Games. Games are written on Friday evening and Saturday, and then played on the Sunday. It's been going since 2001 and is my favourite gaming weekend of the year.

From what I saw, and judging from the very subjective measures of "energy in the room" and "post-game frothing,” ReGenesis looked to me as if it would be heading the pack if we had a "Best Peaky Game of 2016" award. (We don't.)

Obviously I'm biased as I was on the writing team for ReGenesis. (And two of the games I only heard about, so I could be doing them a huge disservice.)

AIs learning who they are in ReGenesis

But, for me, Peaky 2016 was also very disatisfying, and for at least two reasons.

But before I get to those, here are some thoughts on the games I played.

Trenches was written by Ben Allen, Alli Mawhinney, Ric Mawhinney, Rich Perry and is set in a trench in the grim universe of Warhammer 40K, on the eve of "the big push", a probably suicidal charge to capture an enemy stronghold. It mashes Blackadder Goes Forth with Warhammer 40K.

I played Corporal Booker, one of the unfortunate squaddies. We had a clueless commander, a scary psyker, a political officer and a whole bunch of grunts. It was dark and intense, and we filled it with gallows humour. Unsurprisingly, it didn't have a happy ending. Some died, and those who lived had an uncertain future.

Personally, I don't think it needs much more than a light edit (to make sure those unfamiliar with the background aren't left floundering). It will never appeal to everyone, but as a dark antidote to all those other cheerier freeforms, it's ideal.

Miss Maypole and the Case of the Wretched Admiral was written by Graham Arnold, Nickey Barnard, Natalie Curd, Clare Gardner, Abi Kirby, Sue Lee. Set in the same world as the 2010 Peaky game (Miss Maypole and the Christmas Pudding Affair), this game involved a 1934 Scottish country house, a dead body, mysterious rituals, a nearby Naval base and other mysteries.

I played a school physical exercise teacher who is coaching an ex-pupil to become an Olympian. I ran out of plot relevant to my character fairly quickly and gravitated to whatever interested me. I had a nice enough time though and with a bit of development it will be a fine ‘traditional’ freeform.

My biggest issue with the game came in the debrief, when the main plot that I thought was going on, the murder, turned out not to be a murder at all. (I felt not having a murder was a bit of an omission when the whole game is set up to feel like a Miss Marple murder mystery.) But it's only the first draft, and maybe they'll put a murder in. I would.

ReGenesis

So, ReGenesis. ReGenesis was written by Theo Clarke, Tony Mitton, Tym Norris, Mike Snowden, Karolina Soltys, and me.

It concerns four scientists working on developing six humanoid AIs in an isolated Finnish complex. The four scientists have slightly different agendas, while the AIs are discovering their place in the world and learning emotions and skills... What could go wrong?

A combination of me being very tired on Friday evening (by about 9pm most of my energy was spent) and organising the Sunday game timetable (plenty of that below) meant that I didn't always fully understand where we were going with the game, and drifted in and out. (The game was inspired by Ex Machina, which I've not seen, so that didn't help either.)

Hard at work writing ReGenesis

I think my input was some proofreading of the scientist characters, a few paragraphs of text about what the scientists knew about each other, and I wrote the mechanics for the AIs learning new skills.

So although ReGenesis appeared to be a resounding success, I didn't contribute as much as I would have liked.

And it certainly wasn't perfect: our biggest problem was that the poor scientists had a multi-page character booklet to absorb and didn't have anywhere near long enough to absorb it. In an ideal world they would have had a 20 minute head start on the AIs, but that's not something we were able to give them. (We hadn't recognised beforehand that it would be necessary.)

We also have a naming issue. ReGenesis is also the name of another larp. We'll change the name of ours if we ever do anything with it. (And I’ve just learned that it’s the title of a tv series. Welrd.)

The Sunday Game Timetable

My other challenge was Sunday's game timetable.

At one point, it looked as if everything was going to be just perfect for Sunday. We appeared to have games of the right size, and enough players that everything would just slot together nicely.

Oh, how I was wrong...

Peaky had 29 attendees this year. Experience has told us to keep writing groups to no more than five or six writers (in general), and with 29 that results in five groups of five, and a group of four. (We don't always stick with this, but it's a good rule of thumb.)

Assuming that all the writers are available to play (and also want to see the game they've written being run), then that means that they will typically have about nine or ten players from the other groups available to them. If they need more players, it's up to them to source them (we usually do this by having the writers play characters).

Organising the game timetable means juggling the needs of the writers (in terms of needing players for their games) and the available players. The two don't always match.

This year, my first iteration was pretty good. Everybody would be happy - there were players enough for everyone.

And then I went to share the timetable, only to learn that five players were leaving mid-afternoon, which meant that there were only 24 people for the last slot of the day. I reshuffled the timetable and re-ran the casting, and inevitably one of the games now in the last slot did not have enough players. Unfortunately, they couldn't make up numbers from their writers, and they weren't able to drop characters at that stage (about 9pm Saturday).

We ended up with a compromise. By taking 15 minutes from lunch, the previous games, and the comfort breaks between games, we created a fourth slot and only finish an hour later than normal. This wasn't ideal - the day was even more rushed than it usually is and I think all the games could have done with longer, both during them and in the breaks.

So all this took several hours to figure out on Saturday, made me grumpy, and took me away from writing and preparing ReGenesis.

What I've learned

So here’s what I’ve learned.

A more robust process. I'm going to think more about the process of organising Sunday. It will always involve judgement and seat-of-the-pants organisation, but I really suffered this year by not having all the information I needed. So I have set up an Excel file to remind me to capture everything. (And I'm doing it now while it is fresh in my mind!)

I'm not expecting this to solve all the problems, but I want to be able to identify them early so that we can discuss them in good time.

A slicker process should mean that I spend less time firefighting and more time writing.

Visual management: I sorted out the changed running times first thing Sunday morning, and wrote it all up on a flipchart and taped that to the wall. I found it very useful, so I will do that again.

Be popular or be flexible! And when I'm writing a freeform, it needs to either be popular (which means writing a compelling description that appeals to those present) or flexible (to manage variable player numbers). Or ideally, popular and flexible.

Icerigger

Icerigger by Alan Dean Foster

Nearly 40 years ago, I discovered science fiction. I discovered it through the Star Wars novelization in the summer of 1977, and I must have read it four or five times before I saw the film itself. Shortly after, I came across Alan Dean Foster's Bloodhype in the occasional school bookshop. That was my first entry into the Humanx/Commonwealth universe. Although Bloodhype isn't the easiest of reads, I was hooked.

(It was years later that I discovered that the Star Wars novelization had been ghost written by ADF.)

I guess I read Icerigger a year or so later, and I'm sure I've read it since then, but I'm sure it's been at least 25 years since I last read it. We've been clearing out junk, and I came across Icerigger and thought that before I pass it on I ought to re-read it.

Icerigger follows a half dozen humans castaway on the icy planet of Tran-ky-ky. There they encounter the primitive Tran, fight off a vast horde, encounter enormous whale slugs, build an enormous clipper-style ice ship (the Slanderscree, the icerigger of the title), and eventually make their way back to civilisation.

It's harder to read than I remember. ADF's writing style is slightly archaic, and scattered with obscure terms that I occasionally need to loo up (or more likely, just ignore). These days I wouldn't normally have the time for it - I don't like having to struggle over the writing style. The plot isn't earth-shattering, but I really like ADF's Humanx universe: aliens, mysteries, and larger-than-life characters.

The plot uses a lot of standard ADF tropes:

• Intriguing aliens, evolved for their environments (in this case the Tran, whose claws evolved into skates and have a wing membrane that allows them to skate across Tran-ky-ky's ice). If I had a criticism of the Tran (and other ADF aliens), its that they aren't very alien - but there are few SF authors that truly manage that.
• Immense, indestructable creatures (stavanzers, a sort of jet-propelled whale-slug). These are sometimes used as a weapon by our heroes as a weapon against another unstoppable foe (in this case against the Horde, in Midworld, one column of Akadi is used against another).
• A journey, peppered with encounters (a lot of ADF's novels work like this - it's perhaps most obvious in the Spellsinger series).

As far as gender equality goes, Icerigger is a product of its time. There are three named female characters in the entire book - and none of them are particularly strong or have significant presence. If Icerigger was a movie, it would fail the Bechdel test.

Science fiction often underestimates advances in computing power, but this isn't an obvious flaw with Icerigger. After the first few pages, our heroes are stranded and spend their time with the primitive Tran, so I didn't miss the lack of processing power.

My copy of Icerigger was published by New England Library (NEL) in 1976 and features a cover by Tim White. One thing I really liked about NEL's treatment of the ADF novels was their consistent presentation: they used the same font and general cover design, and most of them had Tim White covers.

I enjoyed reading Icerigger again. I was initially frustrated with the way it was written, but I soon overlooked that as I became caught up in the plot. When I first picked it up, I thought it unlikely that I would enjoy it enough to read the sequels (Mission to Moulokin and The Deluge Drivers), but I'm pretty sure I will be reading them soon.

Creating a freeform economy

A good freeform economy will create tension and conflict amongst the players. A careful balance of demand and supply should ensure that there isn’t quite enough money to go around – and that in itself can drive characters and plot through a game. However, creating a good game economy is not as simple as just adding money...

There is no need to include money in a game if nobody has anything to spend it on. Just collecting money for money’s sake isn't a particularly worthwhile goal for anyone – even in the real world people accumulate money because they want to buy things. So if your game doesn’t need money, don’t include it.

If you’re not sure whether your game needs money, here’s a few that do and don’t:

• Hollywood Lies – money is needed to pay off blackmailers, finance movies, pay for scripts, etc.
• Death on the Gambia – money is needed for airline tickets out of Gambia, pay off debts, bribe policemen, etc.
• Death in the Fast Lane – money isn't needed in Death in the Fast Lane as contracts are more important (in the game at least) than the actual exchange of money. So Death in the Fast Lane doesn’t include money. (Note Death in the Fast Lane is no longer published by Freeform Games.)

So assuming that a game has a need for money, here’s a simple way of working out how much you need.

In a spreadsheet create a table with three columns. In the first column enter the name of someone who needs money, in the second enter the details of why they want it, and in the third enter the amount they want. So it might look a bit like this.

Bob	Pay off gambling debts	£5,000
Sheila	Get a ticket out of here	£1,000
Tina	Raise money to invest in business	£3,000

(In general it’s important that the figures are in the same ballpark so that everyone can trade equally with one another. If someone is much richer than other characters, it can cause problems with the game balance.)

Then you need to create a table for the supply. This time you are including all the money that the characters are starting with – along with any other sources of income.

(Other sources of income might be, for example, prize money in a competition or buried treasure.)

Marge	£1,000
1st Prize Snail Race	£3,000
2nd Prize Snail Race	£1,000

The important issue is to ensure that the demand is slightly more than the supply. Just enough money means that the players will be negotiating and bargaining with each other to try and achieve their goals, which is what I’m looking for. A happy ending (with everyone achieving their money goals) is possible, but not guaranteed.

In general, I try to aim to have a demand that is about 20% lower than the supply – although there’s inevitably some judgement involved in that figure. Ultimately, the only way to find out if you’ve got the demand/supply ratio correct is to test the game.

Other things to watch:

• Rich characters should generally be looking to spend their money, and poor characters should generally have things (items, information or skills) that other people want.
• Don’t create a character who is so rich that they can solve all of their problems by paying for them.
• In historical games, you may need to explain some typical prices so that everyone knows what money is worth.
• Be wary of having things that are so expensive that they unbalance the game. There’s nothing wrong with having them, just be careful of the effect they can have on a game economy.

All-purpose romance rules for freeform larps

I've been thinking about freeform (larp) romance rules recently. Part of that has involved what has worked for me and what hasn't - and without going into that detail, I've written what I think are my ideal rules for romance.

I've written these as if they were part of a character envelope, although I have yet to lay it out properly (The link below goes to a somewhat utilitarian grid). The numbers would all need testing - I've assumed that this would work for a four hour game rather than a weekend game (which would have a much higher target number).

Edit: I've updated these - see here.

Romance Rules

These are the optional romance rules.

Setup

First, decide whether you want to be involved in romance, and how flexible you want to be in your romances. Get a pen/sticker from the GM desk and mark your name badge as follows:

• No heart: I'm not participating in romance.
• Black heart: I'm being romantic, but only with someone from the opposite sex.
• Pink heart: I'm being romantic, but only with someone from the same sex.
• Gold heart: I'm being romantic and I don't mind which sex you are.

(If you're not involved in romance, you need read no further.)

Second, your envelope contains a romance card that contains a number of behaviours that you would like to see in a romantic partner. Choose the six that you like the look of and delete (cross out) the rest.

The romance card also contains a number of behaviours that are unromantic - behaviours that you don't want to see in a romantic partner. Choose four of those, and delete the others.

(It's probably best if you choose these once you have read your character, so that you choose behaviours that suit how you want to play your character.)

Third, decide how easily you want your character to fall in love (your "Romance Target"). We recommend starting with a Romance Target of three, but if you want to make things easier or harder, that's great too.

That's it for setup.

During play

During play, as people play the game they will (deliberately or accidentally) behave in a way that makes your character feel more attracted to them (the romantic behaviours), or do things that put you off them (unromantic behaviours). To help you keep track we've put the tasks in as a grid so that you can check them off. (Example here.)

(We are expecting that you will only have half a dozen or so people that will be tracking. If you want to track more, you’ll need a separate sheet of paper.)

You will have a romance score for another character which is calculated by subtracting the number of unromantic behaviours from the romantic behaviours. If your romance score equals (or beats) your Romance Target, congratulations, you have just fallen in love with that person.

Falling in love

Once you have fallen in love with them. Here's what you do:

First, tell someone. That may or may not be the person that you have fallen for, but it will be more fun for everyone if you tell someone.

Second, you have a new goal.

Help the love of your life succeed: You have a new love in your life, and you want them to succeed. Depending on how hard you have fallen, this may involve putting their goals ahead of yours. (You decide - we suggest using your romance score as a guide.)

Falling in love together

If the person you have fallen for also falls for you, that's fantastic. We look forward to hearing all about it.

Unrequited love

If you've fallen in love with someone but they haven't fallen for you, well, that's just how life works sometimes. Deal with it (through roleplaying).

Falling out of love

Just because you've fallen in love, please don't stop tracking behaviours. If the love of your life behaves even more romantically, then you are even more in love with them. However, if they also start to behave unromantically, then you may fall out of love.

If that happens, roleplay it. (And again, tell someone.)

Falling in love with someone else

Keep tracking your scores. If another person ends up with a higher score than the person you’re currently in love with, then you have changed your heart. Tell people! Roleplay it!

A few useful guidelines

Respect other people's boundaries: If a player doesn't have a heart on their badge, please don't track their romantic behaviours.

Don't talk about the romance mechanics: We're prefer it if you didn't talk about the specific dos and don'ts needed to win your heart. It's fine to talk about them generally, but not to be too specific. Try to keep the conversation natural.

"What does a guy need to do you get you to fall for him?"

"A sense of humour is a good start."

Ignore all these rules if you want: If these rules aren't giving you the results you want, please feel free to go ahead and ignore them completely, particularly if it's more dramatically appropriate.

Example romantic behaviours

• Spend time with me
• Make me feel special
• Make me laugh
• Laugh at my jokes
• Stand up for me
• Smile at me
• Make me feel good
• Give me gifts
• Help me achieve a goal
• Take charge
• Be an underdog
• Fall in love with me
• Be my type
• Take care of me

Example unromantic behaviours:

• Make me cry
• Not my type
• Laugh at me
• Too clingy
• Wishy washy
• Needy
• Domineering
• A loser
• Smarmy
• Abandon me
• Played an ability on me that I object to
• Thwarted me in one of my goals

Behaviours could be tailored to the specific freeform - accompany me to the county fair, dance with me at the ball, and so on.

Dungeon World at GoPlayLeeds

On Sunday I played Dungeon World at GoPlayLeeds. This was my first experience of Dungeon World, and these are some reflections of both that session and of DW itself.

The session was hugely enjoyable, and I'm really enjoying GoPlayLeeds. The venue is nicely eccentric (BrewDog in the centre of Leeds, with lots of craft beers to try) and the staff are friendly. This was the third event, and I've yet to have a bad game there.

Guy, one of GoPlayLeeds' founders, ran The Indigo Galleon, a short scenario involving a wrecked warship, dastardly Imperials, and sinister octopus folk.

Our adventuring party consisted of myself (a salamander immolator) and two elves (a ranger and a druid).

We had a blast. I burnt lots of things, we fought monsters, rescued nefarious pirates and rescued the helpless villagers.

Getting ready to play

As for Dungeon World itself, I'd heard good things about it and when it turned up in the Bundle of Holding earlier this year I bought it (along with masses of other goodies, much of it impenetrable).

Here's what I like about Dungeon World:

Brilliantly designed character playbooks: I've seen character templates before, but for me the DW playbooks hit the spot exactly. Guy had laminated the playbooks, and it took us just a few minutes to complete them. I liked the little things that made it easy for me as a player, such as providing a list of sample names to choose from.

Proper dice: DW uses 2D6 for most rolls (damage being an exception). 2D6 are "proper" dice - the dice of Backgammon, Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Traveller and my memories of early statistics lessons. (It does use some other dice for damage, but the core mechanic is 2D6.)

Graduated success rolls: There’s complete success, complete failure, and (the most common result) a “failure with complications” result - with lots of examples of how to do that. And that's all you need - and it worked well.

Explicit game values: DW wears its heart on its sleeve, and clearly sets out the GM’s agenda. I like that. The GM’s agenda is portray a fantastic world, fill the character’s lives with adventure, and (my favourite) play to find out what happens. This agenda is followed up with a series of principles. Some of my favourite principles: draw maps, leave blanks; address the characters, not the players; never speak the name of your move; give every monster life; ask questions and use the answers.

Fronts: Fronts are themed collections of threats and dangers. They include an impending doom (or what happens if the front isn't thwarted), and neatly summarise how the screws are tightened over the course of an adventure or campaign.

I don't know if this is deliberate, but quite a bit of DW resembles good business management thinking. Having a vision and principles is straight out of the business playbook (although in my experience few businesses pay anything other than lip service to them). And the fronts and character playbooks could have come from a lean improvement project.

And in case you're wondering, I think this is a good thing. There's a lot I like about current business thinking - I just wish implementation was better.

So there's a lot I like about Dungeon World. I'm not a huge fan of fantasy roleplaying - I'd rather investigate unknown horrors, become embroiled in modern-day conspiracies or adventure in the far future. But if I were to do more fantasy roleplaying, I'd rather do it with DW than D&D. (And I should say I've not played either much.)

My character playbook

If there is one thing I had to pick fault with, it's that we as a band of adventurers weren't very cohesive - although that might have been my fault for being the only salamander in a party of elves.

That's always tricky to get right at a convention game. But having said that, I'd argue that it's the most important thing to get right. I've noticed that the best con games are where the characters have worked well together as a team, and there are things we can do to facilitate that.

I spoke to Guy afterwards about this, and he wondered if some of the lack of cohesiveness was perhaps us assembling a group at late notice (we only decided to play Dungeon World when we realised we had more players than expected on Sunday). Also he thinks he could have pushed some inter-party interaction first.

Which has made me think - why is that his job? Any of us could have decided to create a bit of backstory. Perhaps that's a player principle that needs developing.

Tombstone second time through

2016 was Once Upon A Time in Tombstone's fifth run, and the second time I had helped to run the game (my first run was it's inaugural run in 2005 - my thoughts here).

Overall the game was a huge success. We had around seventy players and six GMs, and while there were a few issues, on the whole everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. So what follows needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. I am perhaps over critical here, as the game was overall a success.

These are my reflections on running Tombstone for a second time. I don't know if documenting this will help for a future run - I hope so.

Once Upon a Time in Tombstone 2016

Getting the game ready (and managing me)

I co-wrote Once Upon a Time in Tombstone, along with Heidi Kaye, Tony Mitton, AJ Smith and Paul Snow. We started in about 2000 and finished in 2005, and all of us had peaks and troughs of writing activity. Most of my writing was done back in 2001-2003 or so - I peaked early and have troughed ever since.

As a result, I don't really know the game that well. The game has since been run three times in the US as well, and from the perspective of someone who hasn't looked at it in a decade, the Dropbox game files are a mess. Worse, a fair bit of the information is in the head of the other writers.

So to get me to fully understand the game was always a big ask - and to be fair, nobody asked me to do it. Instead, I expected to be assigned a role (the one that nobody else wanted) and I would learn that role. Which I did - I became the Big Country GM, overseeing the map, land registry and Henchmen.

My contribution during the run up to Tombstone was to proofread about twenty characters. I think I could have done a bit more (and I'm aware I'm saying this now that there's no danger of this happening...). But how to get me to do a bit more?

The short answer is I need to be managed. The best way to do that is to give me clear activities and deadlines. (That's why the proofreading worked well.) A clear plan with deadlines and deliverables, along with virtual meetings to discuss progress and issues.

I'm unlikely ever to have the time to do wholesale rewriting of a game the size of Tombstone, but I can be easily motivated to do more than I actually did.

So when I end up helping to run a game again, please manage me!

Dropbox

Most of the game files are on Dropbox, but unfortunately they're not in any sensible condition. There are files here and there from the various runs and it's very hard to find something. Even when you do find a file, it might not have been updated.

So Dropbox needs a thorough spring cleaning.

Worse, there was stuff missing, or stuff that was used in other runs but hadn't made it onto the Dropbox.

To anyone writing a game like this in the future, I recommend that if you are using Dropbox you set up a clear folder structure and put someone in charge of enforcing that structure.

Making it easier to run and organise

We still aren't very good at thinking about how things can be organised so that it's easy to both prepare the game and run the game. It's something I think about quite a lot for Freeform Games, but there is a fine balance between putting the effort up front into making it easy to run compared to the short-term pain during the game.

At FFG it's easy - if we are to be successful as a business, our games have to be easy to run, and if we do it right each game will be run hundreds of times. With Tombstone, the balance is harder - and each time the game is run the characters need a fair amount of rework to account for different player numbers and gender ratios.

Here are some examples though:

Land registry: I was in charge of managing the land registry. The process worked like this. A player approached me with an ability card (and $50) that let them register land. I checked that the land was available to register, and if it was I made a note of their name. I then dug out a slip of paper for that parcel of land and wrote their name on that. Then I gave that to them, and tore up their abilty card.

It would have been much simpler if the ability card doubled as the land registry document. I could have made a note in the master register, and then made a note on their ability card (and initialled it, if we were worried about forgeries). That would also have saved printing out, cutting up and organising all the land registry slips (but against that, some other work would have been needed in changing the system).

Abilities and envelope stuffing: I wish I had taken a photo of the stack of abilities that the game needs. It was nearly a foot high as every character had somewhere between 10-20 abilities. It took three of us about an hour to stuff them all in the envelopes, and that's even with the abilities organised by character.

I would change it so that everyone had a single side of A4 for their abilities. We could format it so that they can cut them out, or they can keep them on the single sheet (I'd leave that up to the players to decide how they want to manage their abilities). It would be a lot quicker to print and pack.

This might also result in a cull - but arguably we had too many abilities anyway.

The downside in doing this:

• The abilities aren't quite so easy to amend, if they need changing. It's much easier to make changes in a single Excel file prior to mailmerging.
• Someone needs to spend some time preparing the ability file.
• There may be some cards that we currently treat as an ability that wouldn't work in this format.

Contingencies: Tombstone has lots of contingency envelopes, but arguably too many.

I quite like good contingency envelopes, and by a 'good' contingency envelope I mean one that is surprising, or changes the direction of play. Unfortunately, quite a few contingency envelopes don't do this, and could just be dealt with simply elsewhere. For example, one character had an envelope that says "Open this if a character leaves your gang" and inside it said to shoot them. That could easily have been on their character sheet (if needed at all).

Similarly those doing prospecting had a contingency envelope that explained what to do in the event that they struck silver. That could simply have been in the rules - removing the need for preparing and packing the envelope. (Arguably making that information available in the rules, and the riches that would result, might have made prospecting more compelling for those involved.)

So I think we should review the contingency envelopes and really challenge if they are needed. If they aren't, move their contents and reduce our preparation workload.

Of those contingencies we do keep, we can probably make them simpler to prepare. My current preference is for a single sheet of A4 paper, folded in three and sealed at the edges. Works for most contingencies (it's not quite so easy for the complicated ones, with multiple envelopes.)

Hunting Treasure in the Big Country

The Big Country is what we called the area around Tombstone, Cochise County. It was full of ranches, silver mines, potential railroad routes, indian burial grounds, civil war treasure and ancient gold. Unfortunately, our records of where all this stuff was located were a bit haphazard (see my notes above on Dropbox).

Luckily AJ (who was running the ranching rules) had prepared a paper folder with most of the information in, and to start with I used that.

In between processing land requests, I worked up a master file so that we now have all of the locations of interest in one place.

I also used it to track what was happening in those sectors of the map. That idea needs a bit more work as it wasn't perfect. I think in future I would use a lever arch file with plastic wallets into which I could put a sheet of paper with the land information on it, along with any items. If I needed to GM a location, I'd take that sheet with the information from it and use it to GM the scene. Then I'd then update the location sheet by hand with whatever had gone on, and return it to the file.

And thinking about it, I'd put the land regsitry records in front of that folder, so that everything is in one place.

Council Meetings

I wasn't involved in the Town Council meetings, but over breakfast we talked about the problems of locking away a group of players from everyone else for a period of time, whether it's the Town Council, the King's Council, or going off on an adventure.

The scale of these games means that some of this is always inevitable. Players can't expect to get hold of any player at any time.

My problem with council meetings is that they are not only no fun for those outside the meeting who need to talk to someone on the council, they're often deathly boring for those attending the council as well. That's less forgiveable in my mind, and it's something I'm going to be more mindful of in the future.

For example, the town council had a few specific duties. I bet most of those could be achieved without necessarily needing formal meetings dragging everyone away from the rest of the game for an hour or more.

Bit Parts

When we originally wrote Tombstone we thought we would have some bit parts, small roles that players could take on if they fancied a break or became bored. (I first came across this idea in Arabian Nights, which takes the idea and runs with it.)

Miners with a lucky strike coming into town to celebrate, innocent poker players ripe for conning out of their wealth, people with locations of treasure maps, eager deputies for the bad guys to gun down, minor gangs for the lawmen to arrest.

That sort of thing - lots of small roles to make Tombstone feel a bit bigger than it might otherwise have been. I even wrote a few of these, although nothing came of them. However, instead of the players playing the bit parts, I think we could have had dedicated bit part players. I think Tombstone could easily have coped with two or three people doing nothing but playing bit parts for the weekend. It would have required a bit of effort - but I was willing to have sorted all that. It didn't happen because I didn't push it, which I'm slightly disappointed at myself about.

Having said that, Tombstone really didn't seem to need bit parts, but part of me would have liked to try it anyway.

(I'm told that in one of the US runs they did have one person doing nothing but playing these bit parts.)

The "Does this character look fun to play?" check that we didn't do

Unfortunately we had one character that, in hindsight, wasn't particularly well written and didn't work out for that player. When we reviewed the character in the cold light of day, it became clear that there were problems with it (it was much lighter than any of the others). It turned out that the character was written for a young player who would play with a parent, and not a "full" character as we normally would know it.

Unfortunately we didn't spot it beforehand.

What we should have done is a quality check of all the characters along the lines of "Knowing what we know about the game, does this character look fun to play?" I think because we had run the game before we were lulled into a false sense of security.

Key Lessons

So here are my key lessons from this run of Tombstone.

• Figure out how to manage me in the run up to a game. I need to be motivated.
• Put someone in charge of keeping Dropbox tidy.
• Think about how the systems you write will actually work, and look for ways to make them easier to prepare and run.
• Think about meetings and other events that draw groups of players away from everyone else. What result do you want, and are there other ways of achieving that?
• Double check that all characters are fun to play

The dilemma

The time to do this is now. We're unlikely to run Tombstone again for another decade, and we're better investing the time to do this now (while we're all fired up with enthusiasm) than just let it drop. But that said, these are fairly minor niggles - it wouldn't be the end of the world if we did nothing.

And perhaps I should be making these amendments instead of just thinking and writing about it.

So maybe that's my final key lesson. Instead of just talking and thinking about improving the game, arrange some time to make those improvements.

Thinking about Thinking Day

It's Brownies Thinking Day soon. That means for us that Megan has brought home a tube of Smarties that she earns for doing jobs. The idea is that she does a job around the house, earns a Smartie and a coin. The coins then replace the Smarties in the tube and she takes the tube back to Brownies. (So yes, it's a kind of fund-raising. I’m not sure where the money is going, but I’m sure it’s a good cause.)

It all sounds wonderfully wholesome, but we're treating it with a degree of caution. What we're not doing is saying to Megan "If you do this, then you will earn a Smartie." Instead, we're rewarding her after she has been helpful.

In Drive, Dan Pink talks about the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Or the pleasure in doing something for yourself, against doing something for a reward. In the book, Pink describes an experiment where young children (all of whom had showed an equal interest in drawing) were rewarded for drawing pictures. Some were rewarded with a certificate after they had completed the drawing, and others were promised a treat before they started. About a week later, the children who were rewarded afterwards, continued to draw as before. But the other children, those who had been promised a reward, now no longer drew. Their motivation for drawing, it seemed, had changed: if they weren't going to be rewarded for drawing, they weren't going to do it.

We've seen this with Megan.

Right now, as I type this, Megan is finishing off a drawing of a pet shop. But for a year or two, she stopped drawing completely...

A couple of years ago (and before I had read Drive), Megan made some homemade Christmas cards and sold them to us for 50p a piece. We thought this was delightful and made the right sort of noises and Megan then made us a small number of cards that we sent to friends and family.

Shortly after that I read Drive, and as I read the description of the experiment with the kids, I realised with horror that Megan had now almost completely stopped drawing. She used to love drawing, and now she didn’t do it.

We had inadvertently taught her that there was no worth in drawing if she couldn't sell her drawings afterwards.

It's taken us at least a year for Megan to re-learn the delight of drawing for it's own sake.

So we’ve been treating Thinking Day with a bit of care. It's a lovely idea, yes, but we need Megan to contribute to the running of the household (tidying up, helping with the washing up, and so on) without the expectation of a reward. And Thinking Day could undo all our good work.

The BBC's More or Less touches on this here.