Street Level

(At this point, this game is a broken rip-off, but I thought I'd get it out there. I have to playtest, but my suspicion is that I've seriously overdesigned here and that there's not much room for actually playing anything.)

Street Level

Street Level is a game about people who put on super-hero costumes and go out and try to protect their communities from various dangers. It is inspired by:

-the "street level" characters from 1970s/1980s Marvel Comics: Moon Knight, Daredevil, Punisher, Shang Chi, Iron Fist, Power Man, and Ghost Rider.

-"indie" takes on the same concept: Mike Baron's Badger, Tim Vigil's Grips, and, more recently, Millar/Romita's Kick-Ass.

-various games by Vincent Baker and Ron Edwards (especially Poison'd and Sorcerer and what people have said about Apocalypse World on sites like Story Games). Anyway, you should play/read/buy their games if you haven't already.

-that thing Tom Spurgeon says about his favorite super-hero being Wildcat because his super power is riding around on a motorcycle and beating people up.

The game is agnostic towards actual super-powers. They can exist in the game or not, but if they do you should keep the scale and scope focused on street level action.

Things characters can do:

Your character is going to be GREAT at one of these things, GOOD at two of these things, OK at four of these things, and SHIT at one of these things:

-finding shit out
-acting normal
-sneaking around
-running after shit*
-telling people what's what
-doing violence
-running away from shit*
-taking a beating
-keeping your shit together

*even though the two kinds of running are separate on the list, they get the same rating and count as one "slot" for these purposes

Gimmicks:

Every character gets to start with two Gimmicks. A Gimmick can be:

-a weapon
-a power
-a fighting style
-some kind of equipment
-some kind of personal edge
-etc.

A Gimmick has two pieces:

-a rating
-scope

All Gimmicks start at rating 1. This means when they're in play they add 1 to your die roll.

All Gimmicks start with the scope of one area of activity. This means their bonus can only be used for that area of activity.

Once you've given your character two Gimmicks, you can "bump" one of them by increasing the rating to 2 or giving it an extra area of activity to cover (i.e. increasing its scope).

You can gain another bump by adding a Drawback to the Gimmick:

-easily lost (GM can make losing this a consequence of mixed success)
-awkward (-1 to some other area of activity when it's in use)
-immobile
-large (can't be brought into buildings, etc.)

Here are some example Gimmicks:

body armor (+2 to taking a beating, Awkward: -1 to running after/away)
kung-fu (+1 to doing violence, +1 to taking a beating)
home computer with internet access (+3 to figuring shit out, Immobile)
hot rod (+ 2 to running away/after, Large)
bad-ass stare (+2 to saying what's what, Awkward: -1 to acting normal)
mutant mind blast (+1 to doing violence, +1 to saying what's what)


Obsessions:

You can choose to start with an Obsession or not. If you do, name the target of the Obsession and give it a rating of 1. Obsessions can give you a bonus dice or penalty dice if they come into play. If the GM thinks that your Obsession would help the action your character is taking, the rating of the Obsession turns into bonus dice. If he thinks it would get in the way of the action your character is taking, the Obsession rating turns into penalty dice.

"Civilians":

If your "acting normal" is Great, make up 3 regular people characters who are in your character's life in some way. If it's Good, make up 2. If it's OK, make up 1.

The Set-Up:

Players need to fill in these details:

-how does the character live day-to-day?

Actions & Consequences:

Once you've all established a baseline for how the character is going about his business, you can start into Free Play. This works just like regular role-playing.

Whenever the character is doing (or having something done to him) that falls under one of the areas of activity, he has to roll dice. Roll 4 dice is he's GREAT, 3 if GOOD, 2 if OK, and 1 if SHIT. No matter what, though, you'll only add up the 3 highest dice. In general, if you roll 10 +, you succeed easily and probably get some bonus to carry over to related activities. If you roll 6-9, you have a partial success or a success with consequences. Usually, you'll have a choice between a few different consequences. If you roll 1-5, you fail and set up yourself for worse stuff in the future.

A key concept:

-the upper hand: your character will generally start every situation with the upper hand. As long as the character has the upper hand, he can take initiative and basically take any action that makes sense. Also, on a 6-9, the player gets to make the choice of the consequence that goes along with the success. If a character loses the upper hand, actions are limited to those that are in arenas of activity below the last one that applied (see the character creation list). That means, if you just tried to tell someone what's what and lost the upper hand, you can't get out of it by acting normal (acting normal comes before telling someone what's what). Your only options would be: doing violence, running away, taking a beating, or keeping your shit together. (The exact choice of which, of course, will depend on what is actually being done.) Also, when you roll a 6-9 and you don't have the upper hand, the GM gets to choose whatever the worst option is at the moment.

You can lose the upper hand through:

-taking too many injuries
-rolling a 1-5
-if it makes sense to everyone that the character wouldn't have the upper hand

You can gain back the upper hand by rolling 10+.

Arenas of Activity:

At some point, you'll want some crime fighting to happen. If the character has a specific goal in mind, he can try to figure shit out. Otherwise, he can go "on patrol".

-figuring shit out:

10+: You get a lot of info on the target. You get a general sense of his traits. You also get a One Use Gimmick with a rating of 2 and a scope of 1 or a rating of 1 and a scope of 3. You keep the upper hand and have a lot of leeway in terms of setting up any confrontation.
6-9: You get some info on the target - choose one:
-One Use Gimmick of rating 1 and scope 1 AND Heat goes up by 2
-Heat goes up by 1
-need for caution: -1 to next roll against target
1-5: You don't find anything out that's useful PLUS something bad happens. Maybe someone found out you were looking. Heat goes up by 2 and you start against the target without the upper hand and -2 to your next roll against the target.

If your character goes on patrol, the GM rolls randomly for what he runs into. You get a -1 on your first roll in these circumstances representing a total lack of preparation.

Sometimes your character will want to try to get something done in the real world and/or pretend he really isn't the kind of person who would do something crazy like dressing up in underwear and running around beating people up.

-acting normal:

10+: You pull it off and pass yourself off as normal. You can take advantage of the services of a hospital, convince the police you're innocent (as long as you aren't caught red handed), convince the guy that you were following that you're harmless and it was just a coincidence that you're staying on the same hotel floor as he is, etc.
6-9: You pull it off, some suspicion remains - choose one:
- -1 to next roll involving these people
- heat goes up by 1
1-5: They can tell you're not normal. Services denied, cops called, impersonation of a sane person FAILED. Heat goes up by 2.

Sometimes your character will want to sneak around.

-sneaking around:

10+: You remain completely undetected. You get a +1 to your next roll if it follows from the sneaking.
6-9: Success with consequences - choose one:
-undetected but blocked - abort or roll again at -1
-some suspicions raised: -1 to next roll against target
1-5: You're busted. -1 to next roll against target, add one to Heat.

Sometimes your character will want to chase someone or something down.

-running after shit:

10+: You catch whatever you were running after.
6-9: You catch whatever you were running after, but there's a consequence - choose one:
-you take an Injury
-you cause a lot of commotion, add 2 to Heat
-you lose the guy, but have an idea where to look - +1 to a figuring shit out follow-up
1-5: You fail, plus all that running caused a commotion. Add one to Heat.

Sometimes your character will want to get his way through force of personality and/or logical argument:

-telling people what's what:

10+: The audience is convinced, cowed, crazed as appropriate. Get a One Use Gimmick of rating 2 and Scope 1 or Rating 1, Scope 3.
6-9: Success with consequences - choose one:
-you got them part of the way: abort or roll again at -1
-One Use Gimmick of rating 1, scope 1, but using it generates 2 Heat
1-5: Unconvinced, uncowed, uncrazed. -1 to next roll against target.

Sometimes you want to hurt someone. After a given exchange of violence is over, heat always goes up by 1.

-doing violence:

10+: Do 2 Injuries to the Target and a +1 to the next roll against it OR 1 Injury and a +2 to next roll.
6-9: Mixed success - choose one:
-trade up to 2 Injuries with target
-gain some advantage: no injuries but +1 to next roll
1-5: Ineffective! -1 to next roll.

Sometimes you want to run away. Use the running after shit rules, but replace "catch up" with "get away".

Sometimes you have to take a beating.

-taking a beating:

10+: No pain. +1 to next roll.
6-9: Doing ok - choose one:
-take 2 Injuries, but regain upper hand (if you don't have it)
-grit your teeth: 1 Injury, but +1 to next roll
-scarred: take a rating away from acting normal
-permanent hurt: take a rating away from running
1-5: Hurting - 2 Injuries. -1 to next roll.

Sometimes a minor world that breaks apart needs to fall together again.

-keeping your shit together:

10+: You pull it together. +2 to next roll and ignore any injury penalties.
6-9: Pulled together with consequences - choose one:
-pull it together, but still off-balance - -1 to next roll and regain upper hand if you didn't have it
-pull it together, but still off-balance, - -1 to next roll, but ignore injury penalties
-pulled together, with scars - add a new obsession
-pulled together, with scars - take a rating away from acting normal
1-5: Broken! You're incapacitated or otherwise ineffective due to mental and emotional strain. Take a rating away from acting normal and figuring shit out. Add an Obsession or increase an Obsession (up to a max of 3).

Heat:

Your Heat rating represents how much attention you've drawn to yourself from criminals and law enforcement alike. Heat affects:

-the kinds of criminals you run into on patrol
-the amount of police effort directed at you
-the ease with which you can get away with shady stuff in your community

Heat:

1-6: Bubbling under - no problems
7-12: Some concern - detective assigned to the case
13-18: Wider concern - task force assigned to the case, -1 to rolls that might be affected by heightened state of alarm (figuring shit out, sneaking around, etc.) Crooks put out a bounty.
19-24: Secret ID discovered - penalty die to all acting normally rolls. No access to home base. Bounty goes up: attracts out-of-town talent.
25+: City-wide emergency: curfew, lock down, etc. Everyone versus the hero.

Laying low:

You can try to Lay Low. Just say what you're doing instead of fighting crime. For each week you lay low:

-take one off of heat
-return a bad guy to the bad guy list
-take a -1 penalty to your next roll (for being out of practice)

Injuries:

When you delivery an Injury, it gets marked off the rating of the target. When their rating is zero, they've been defeated.

When you take an Injury:

Mark it off under the appropriate column: Fists, Sticks, Knives, Guns.

(I'll have some kind of chart here: 1st level of wounds is a -1 to roll, second level is one penalty die, and third level is 2 penalty dice. Fists and Sticks go through all three levels, but any knife/gun injury puts you at the second level of injury at least.)

[So - the injury record for your character will look like: four columns up top - Fists, Sticks, Knives, Guns. Three rows down - -1, 1 Die, 2 Dice. The number indicates the how many injuries you can take before that level is "filled" up and you move onto the next penalty level. When a column is filled up, you shift to the right and start taking injuries in that column. When you get to the end you are dying, but I don't have any particular rules for dying yet.

F S K G
-1 3 2 - -
1 Die 3 2 3 2
2 Dice 3 2 3 2

Right now the game is, somewhat purposefully, a huge death spiral. I'm working on some kind of advancement mechanic to slightly balance that.]

Healing:

Only the highest penalty in each category matters for Healing purposes.
If your character does nothing but rests, he can make a taking a beating roll to heal Fist and Stick penalties:

10+: All Fist penalties healed, Stick penalties drop to the next lowest level
6-9: Fist penalties drop to next lowest level, Stick column loses one Injury
1-5: It gets worse: nothing happens, and -1 to subsequent healing rolls

Healing from knives or guns is different: you have to either figure shit out (i.e. first aid, find a back alley doctor) or act normal (to get a regular doctor, hospital to help you) first. Then you get to make a taking a beating roll (at -1 if you're not at a legit hospital):

10+: One level of penalties is healed after a week of rest.
6-9: A week of rest gives you:
-get rid of one injury
1-5: It gets worse: nothing happens, and -2 to subsequent healing rolls

Stuff that could happen:

-investigate
-find random crimes
-beat up bad guys
-question bad guys
-spy on bad guys
-help people with problems

The Bad Guy List:

Heat 1-6:

1 - vandal (1)
2 - brawler (1)
3 - domestic disturbers (1)
4 - prostitute (1)
5 - mugger (1)
6 - car thief (1)

Heat 7-12:

1 - burglar (1, 1T)
2 - prostitute (1, 1T)
3 - mugger (1, 1T)
4 - car thief (1, 1T)
5 - drug dealer (2)
6 - bodega robber (2, 1T)

Heat 13-18:

1 - rapist (2)
2 - burglar (2, 1T)
3 - drug dealer (2, 1T)
4 - car jacker (2, 1T)
5 - pimp (2, 2T)
6 - mobster (2, 1T)

Heat 19-24:

1 - drug dealer (2, 2T)
2 - bodega robber (2, 2T)
2 - rapist (2, 1T)
3 - car jacker (2, 2T)
4 - pimp (2, 3T)
5 - heister (2, 2T)
6 - mobster (2, 2T)

Heat 25+:

1 - heister (3, 3T)
2 - arsonist (2, 1T)
3 - drug dealer (2, 3T)
4 - out-of-town talent (3, 2T)
5 - mobster (3, 1T)
6 - mobster (3, 2T)

Kingpin - mobster (3, 3T)

How the list works:

The goal is to get rid of the head mobster. You have to work your way up the ladder, though. Rules: you can only figure stuff out about bad guys in your heat level or lower OR about bad guys of the same type of one you've already dealt with (although this requires figuring stuff out, sneaking around, and/or telling them what's what). You can only roll randomly (on patrol) in the current heat level. Once a target has been chosen, the GM needs to give that Bad Guy a name and choose traits (if necessary). From then on, that Bad Guy slot is filled up and if a random roll hits it again, it bumps up to the next level.

Bad Guy Traits:

Bad Guys have a rating and one or more traits.

The rating is how many Injuries it takes to subdue them (if you choose to go the violence route) and the penalty/bonus associated with their traits.

-tough (need weapons to injure)
-speedy (-1 against running)
-determined (-1 against telling what's what, taking a beating)
-knife fighter (injure with knives, -1 to doing violence)
-well-armed (injure with guns)
-gang (-1 against doing violence, running away, +1 against sneaking, figuring shit out)
-mobbed up (draws attention of mobsters, corrupt cops - cannot be arrested, talked out of, etc. - must be killed to be permanently removed from list)
-hard to kill (takes double injuries to kill)
-out for justice (-1 against telling what's what, doing violence)
-under siege (-1 against figuring shit out, sneaking around, telling what's what, +1 against running away)

Defeating Bad Guys:

"Defeating" here might mean beating up or killing, but it might also mean scaring straight or "turning" someone (i.e., into an informant). When you defeat a bad guy you get an XP for each point of rating and each trait.

You can spend XP as follows:

-a +1 to a single roll costs 2 XP (you can spend it after the roll) (you can only get a single +1 per roll by spending XP, but this +1 stacks with +1s from other sources)
-you can add a rating point to a gimmick for 3 XP
-you can add scope to a gimmick for 3 XP
-you can buy a new gimmick for 6 XP (note: this new gimmick can start with a drawback)
-you can increase one of your areas of activity by one level for 10 XPs

Ten RPGs I'd Like to Be Playing...

I'm having lots of fun playing in some Old School D&D games and running a few sessions of Spirit of the Century (Flash Gordon-flavored), but here are a few more games I'd like to add to the rotation...

1. The Burning Wheel - One of my all-time favorites! I don't get to play it nearly enough as I'd like.

2. Sorcerer - Ditto!

3. Agon - I've wanted to play this for a while now - the competitive aspect is really appealing.

4. 3:16 - I feel guilty that I haven't played this yet.

5. Spione - Not really an RPG, but close enough for the purposes of this blog post. I haven't played this since it was actually published (and the playtest version I used has been changed significantly, I believe).

6. D&D: Carcosa - I'm not quite sure what I would do with this - probably try to run the introductory adventure in the new issue of Fight On!

7. In a Wicked Age - This looks very, very neat, and its quick start/no prep nature makes it more attractive an option than most of the other games on this list.

8. Some Jeepform stuff - This is probably the "least likely to be actually played" of all the entries on the list, but I'm really interested in giving this a try.

9. Dirty Secrets - I love, love, love crime fiction, and this game actually looks like it delivers.

10. D&D 4th Edition - I go back and forth on this: right now though it is very tempting!

The Week

I've been swamped this week...

New content in the comments:

Movie Club: Terminator 2

A discussion of the Western genre

Also, looking forward to Recess this Sunday!

Insulting Your Customers

So, I'm listening to this gaming podcast where they're interviewing a guy who puts together a magazine for people who play D&D. Now the guy is basically doing his business spiel - buy the magazine for x, y, and z reasons - so I don't want to be too harsh, but my jaw dropped when he said (something like): "People who play the game really don't have many ideas, so it's good for them to have a magazine like ours to get good ideas from."

That's actually kind of a bad thing to say from a salesmanship perspective, IMO. I mean, "Our customers are kind of dull, so they need our product" just doesn't seem all that flattering.

This is especially weird since most of people who are drawn to RPGs probably really enjoy that they can be a good outlet for the creative impulse.

Communism at the movies...

Even so, there are a few more films depicting the crimes of communism than Mr. Boaz allows. If they are less well known, that may be because they have smaller audiences, perhaps because the Cold War ended with a whimper rather than a bunker. All of this may in turn explain why there are fewer movies made about the evils of communism: the stories are very dramatic and powerful, but the collapse of communism came about in large part because the system simply broke down and the many peoples who laboured under that yoke finally threw off the yoke themselves [bold mine - JH]. Sad to say, but great stories about foreigners successfully struggling against their repressive governments are not the source of big box-office results. What kind of anticommunist movies sell over here? Rambo. Now you can probably see why there aren’t more of them being made.
--Daniel Larison commenting on this piece from David Boaz

Hmmm... For some reason, this makes me think of Ron Edwards's Spione (which I am anxiously awaiting).

Currently...

What I'm Watching: The Sopranos, of course, and Heroes, now that it's back on. Other "must watch" TV in our apartment: the Food Network programs Throwdown with Bobby Flay and Dinner: Impossible, which is probably my second favorite show right now. My favorite is Tim and Eric's Awesome Show - Great Job!. I liked Tom Goes to the Mayor, Tim and Eric's first Cartoon Network show, quite a bit, but I think the Awesome Show format - more gags, less story - suits them better. Awesome Show seems to have solved the major problem of Mr. Show: it's too short to ever feel like it's gone on too long. Oh, also: trying to keep up with as much televised motor racing as possible.

What I'm Reading: I'm almost done with The Flying Inn by G.K. Chesterton, and, I have to admit, it's been a bit of a chore. I like Chesterton's mystery stories and I love his essays, but the combination of whimsy and philosophy here is almost too much. I'm also in the middle of VernorVinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, which I really like: there are about half-a-dozen "Big Ideas" here, each of which could serve as the basis for a single sci-fi novel. The writing is a little clumsy, but I've read worse novels that have been far less inventive. I'll probably post more about it when I'm done.

What I'm Listening To: Ever since I signed up to Rhapsody 3 1/2 months ago, I've been trying to keep up with "new music". In general, though, I find keeping up with "the scene" to be pretty tiresome. There seems to be so little difference between these new indie bands and the ones that were new when I was in college, and all of them sound like The Replacements (who were derivative to begin with). So, anyway, I have been listening to lots and lots ofLoudon Wainwright III, little bits of the Mountain Goats, and various kinds of film music (Goblin and John Carpenter and the Death Proof soundtrack). I've also been trying to find morepodcasts to listen to.

What I'm Playing: NASCAR 06: Total Team Control on my X-Box. I didn't get the most recent entry in this franchise partly because I'm in the middle of a season in this one and I was a little disappointed that this one wasn't that much better than the one that came before it. Hopefully my schedule will open up a little and I'll get someRPGing in soon. I don't think a regular game is anywhere in my future, but I'd like to try to work something out.

Feast or Famine

When it comes to playing RPGs its either feast or famine for me. I hadn't managed to get a game in for most of the summer, due to stuff like moving, vacation, going to a wedding, etc., and an attempt to follow up a pretty satisfying Sorcerer & Sword game with a run of With Great Power... kept hitting scheduling snags.

But then, in the last five days, I've played four different games: Shock: Social Science Fiction, 1001 Nights, The Princes Kingdom, and the much-delayed first With Great Power... session. My eventual goal is to play, consistently, at least one game a week, but I don't see that happening quite yet.

Roached!

When I got home last night, my copy of the brand new parlor/storytelling/role-playing game The Shab-al-Hiri Roach was waiting for me.

I'm pretty excited: I've played an earlier version of the game, but on first skim-through the finished product looks really great.

Why I like the game:

1. The game works really well with folks who have never played this kind of thing before. It is a very easy game to get up and running. I would whole-heartedly recommend it to any fans of the horror genre in general and Lovecraft in particular.

2. The mix of Lovecraftian horror and academic satire is really its own thing. I mean, it kind of has a Re-animator vibe, but compared to most games of this type, it is an original work rather than an attempt to capture the feel of another piece of pop culture. (It is one of the only games I've ever played that I think could be adapted into a good movie, or, even better, a good off-Broadway musical).

3. It plays out in one sitting, like your standard board game or parlor game. This makes it the perfect game for playing on short notice.

4. It rewards players for coming up with really evil and nasty and funny ideas.

And now a geek confession: I was really, really, really psyched that I got a shout out in the acknowledgement section for my playtesting efforts. In reality, my contributions amounted nothing more than (a) playing the game a bunch of times and (b) telling the author that he shouldn't change anything. However, I think it is ridiculously cool that my name appears, at all, in such a terrific game.

(Oh, and here's a very nice post on the actual game. And here's a post about me actually playing the game).

Games, Games, Games...

As I mentioned in my post on my most recent Top Ten Film List, the amount of movie-watching I've done has declined over the past year or so. There are a couple of reasons for this, but the main one is that I've really gotten back into playing tabletop RPGs. I'd also like to blame RPGs for my lack of new posts here over the last six months or so, but, to be fair, I stopped blogging before I really started gaming on a regular basis.

However, RPGs do help to scratch both my "movie watching/reading comic books/cultural consumption-in-general" itch and my "be creative" itch, with the added benefit of being a heck of a lot more social than watching DVDs or sitting in front of a computer screen waiting for inspiration.

I had wanted to get back into RPGing for a few years now, but it wasn't until the end of last summer that I made a real push: I rounded up a few friends who hadn't really played much before and got them to give it a try, I started participating at nerdnyc.com, and I tried out playing games over internet chat. As a result, I'm currently in a Heroquest game through the Gotham Gaming Guild and a weekly Burning Wheel game. And I'm going to be playing in a Sorceror game very soon. Not only that, I've gotten the chance to play in a lot of pick-up sessions (much Trollbabe and The Shab-al-Hiri Roach and some Dogs in the Vineyardand Polaris) and playtest some in-development games. (I've even started tinkering around with my own game designs).

What's cool is that all this RPGing isn't about nostalgia: I'm not reaching for the kind of fun I had with these games when I was in high school and college. Rather, I'm able to approach the experience with a greater sense of seriousness, and (paradoxically perhaps), a greater sense of enjoyment: gaming is much more fulfilling to me now than it has ever been. And this is probably a function of my being more comfortable and contented with my life in general, and having a better sense of what I really want to get out of the way I spend my leisure time.

Gaming

I'm having a lot of fun getting back into playing tabletop RPGs. I'm also having a lot of fun reading a bunch of cool blogs about RPGs, like this one--Deep in the Game. There's lots of good theoretical stuff there for anyone interested in playing (or designing) games.

I want to respond here to Bankuei's most recent post, where he complains about RPGs that don't have any rules about how to actually play them. He talks about playing in a game that had incomplete rules and how he--at first--felt guilty for not adding in his own rules to make the game better. And then he realized:

"It's NEVER my fault if I'm following the rules..."

This really struck a chord with me.

Over the last few years, I started playing a lot of boardgames, because playing RPGs just got too frustrating. But because I am a nerd and a recovering graduate student, I wasn't content to, you know, just play boardgames, I had to keep up with all the internet chatter and boardgame design/theory stuff.

One thing I noticed almost immediately was a big philosophical split when it came to judging how well a game worked. (I'm generalizing here, but just barely).

On one side were the people who primarily played "German Games" (like Settlers of Catan). Their position was that if you play the game by the rules and the experience is generally fun-good-interesting, then the game is probably good. If fun-good-interesting stuff isn't happening, then the game is most likely bad, and you might as well just not play it.

On the other side were the people who primarily played "American Hobby Games" (like Axis & Allies, Age of Mythology, the Steve Jackson card games). Their position was that the players of a game should take it on themselves to try to turn any game into a fun-good-interesting experience, even if this meant adding tons of house rules or only playing the game in a very specific way (for example, "voluntarily" avoiding kinds of tactics that were known to break the game's victory conditions).

A lot of debates went like this:

Eurogamer: Game X is bad because the starting positions aren't balanced, the randomness destroys any sense of overall strategy, the middle part of the game drags on forever (even after you know exactly who is going to win), and the victory conditions are broken.

American Hobby Gamer: No, Game X is great. You're just playing it wrong.

EGer: But I'm playing it by the rules!

AHGer: Well, to play it right, you have to add these house rules my group came up with: we change the starting positions, substitute a deck of cards for the dice, and we don't let anyone win through points alone. Plus, we joke a lot at the table and do funny voices.

EGer: Ummm, okay. Well, wouldn't it make more sense to play one of the many games where the designer has, you know, actually solved all those problems before they published the game?

At this point the AHGer usually gets pretty defensive and starts attacking the EGer for being a game snob.

At least since Settlers of Catan, there's a tradition of strong, coherent Eurogames that are 100% playable out of the box, so Eurogamers see no need to expect anything less than a fully functional game.

American Hobby Gamers, however, grew up playing games like Axis & Allies, which almost requires house rules, so they have been conditioned not to expect anything more than a cool idea and a bunch of cool pieces. Whether or not the game works out-of-the-box isn't as important as whether or not they can cobble together something fun for their group from what's inside.

The thing is, these jury-rigged games are never as satisfying as actual, fully formed games--even if there is some sentimental attachment to their DIY-ness. Or rather, the only two reasons to choose to play a cobbled together, house rule-filled game rather than one of the many games that works really well without the players having to put in a few dozen hours of extra design work are (a) habit--this is what we've always done--and/or (b) enjoyment of the DIY process itself.

I have no real beef with folks to jury-riggers-out-of-habit, although I do think it's sort of strange that a lot of them seem to feel that this should be the normal way to approach games. That is, I think it should be normal to expect that if you're paying for a game it should work the way it is supposed to, and if it doesn't then the fault lies with the game itself (or its designer and/or publisher) and not with the players because they didn't put the time and effort into figuring out ways to fix it.

As for the DIYers, if you like Game X but want it to have Effect Y, why spend your time trying to change it when you could just make a game that aims at Effect Y? And again, I've found a lot of DIYers who feel that the DIY process is central to the gaming hobby. But it isn't, and this is, I think, a bad way to think about games. For example, we don't think this way about computer games: if I go on a computer game website and complain about a computer game being bad I might find people who disagree with me, but they are not likely to tell me that I should become a programmer and fix the things I don't like about it until it fits my preferences. They're much more likely to suggest a game that does fit what I'm looking for.

Which gets me back to Deep in the Game, which argues that, as gamers, we shouldn't settle for less than what we're looking for.