Episode 14: Craft and Combat

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 09:32:38 -0500

Craft and Combat

In working on Juggernaught, it was very tempting to take the whole project into a steampunk direction. After all, Juggernaughts are essentially big machines and normally “fantasy + machines = steampunk”. But steampunk also brings with it a lot of darkness and Victorian themes that I didn’t want to go near. I really wanted to keep the focus on the blue sky fantasy.

While game play focuses on the pilots, the heroes of the world, each of the factions has it’s own “national focus”, be it nature, pain, combat, solitude, etc… It would seem to me that there would be a faction of craftspeople – folks who think that creation and the effort that goes into it is it’s own reward.

I took a little of this from one of my first real jobs. For years during high school and college summers, I worked at a landscape nursery. I started working “on the lot” which was like working in any retail store – unloading trucks, moving inventory, etc… Eventually, I graduated up to the landscape crews. This was truly backbreaking 11-hour-a-day work. No other time in my life have I worked so hard, ate so poorly (7-11 hot dogs and slurpies), been so dirty, and slept so well. 6 days a week, I got in a truck, went to a site, and shoveled dirt, mulch, and pulverized rock, carried 80+ pound slate and wet sod, and fought with every plant from the small and thorny to the leafy trees with massive root balls. We’d spend one to four days at one site and then move on to the next in a never ending cycle of muscle soreness. It paid well, due to the 60+ hour work weeks, but it completely sucked.

Except…

Every now and then, I would drive by a house that we worked on. When I would look at the nicely laid out darkly mulched beds with perfectly spaced shrubs and the nice slate walkway cutting through a full green lawn shaded by a couple of fruit trees, I would realize that I contributed to making something much more permanent than my muscle aches. I was proud of the work I did then, and when I visit my mom these 15 years later, I can still point out some of the houses I worked on. Maybe the job didn’t suck so much after all.

Armed with this “pride of work” concept, I went looking for other examples of this type of behavior. One place I found it was in a series of TV shows about the national treasures of Japan. These “treasures” were not places or artifacts, but people who the country has designated as treasures. They were craftsmen and women who kept alive certain crafts. From the outside, they appeared to be mired in tradition, but when they were interviewed, it was clear that while they worked inside a window of allowable and unallowable, each was trying to improve on the craft and try new things. The two most memorable were the potter and the sword maker. The potter made wonderful bowls and plates in an ancient kiln on the side of a mountain. He would work his pieces to perfection, then poke them with his finger. This deformation was the intersection of craft and randomness and would make each piece unique. The sword maker would make razor sharp implements of death that were usually given as house warming gifts (to protect the new house). The sword maker said something in the interview to the effect of “My swords will be treasured items in a thousand years, long after I’m dead. If you can live like that, past your own death, you may have accomplished something in your life.”

The other example that really inspired me here was the work of Percy Cleghorn Stanley Hobart (I could not have made that name up if I tried). He was a British (of course) military engineer who was responsible for specialized armor vehicles during WWII. These were called Hobart’s Funnies as they were all so odd looking. Some worked well, some failed utterly, but all were clever and showed the will to tinker on the fly in order to try to improve a device for a specific wartime use. These were not general purpose machines, as you can see from these examples…

So, mixing my landscaping experience, Hobart’s fantastic funnies, and the ancient Japanese arts of pottery sword smithing led me to the following faction. My hope was that this faction would appeal to the more construction focused player – the computer tweaker, aspiring artist, and the motorcycle fabricator. As this genre has been the play ground of model builders for years, I felt pretty confident that there would be a few of these type of players in the audience.

A quick mention about the art here. Dan Scott totally nailed this one. He got it exactly right. I’ve long ago learned that the creativity in artists and inventors is closely connected and Dan invented images for this faction that were better than I could have imagined. In fact, I really had no good idea of what these things should look like, so I just gave Dan the outline of the faction and said “go.” He totally nailed it. You can see more of Dan’s art at www.danscottart.com

Maria Dar the God of Art and Song

“Study science, practice art.”
- Sign above the entrance of a Juggernaught studio to Maria Dar.

Forward
By Marti Hobart, The Master Machinist

Some build for defense, others for shelter, and some to extend their power reach. That is not our way. We invent because it is what we do, the ultimate defining act of us and our time in the service of Maria Dar.

The ultimate test of the machines that you are learning to build and improve upon is their performance on the battlefield against the inventions of our foes. Our foes are not creative; they are brute in force and in mind. It is our way to be more than that. Much more than that. They wield a crude thousand pound hammer while we wield a finely crafted weapon with 100 moving parts. We win.

Your instructors will teach you the correct way to respect the realities and limitations of the world around us: the mysteries of the elements, the power of fire, earth, and sky, and the fickle winds of magic that blow with their own logic. Your teachers will teach you to understand things at a causal level, things that our enemies only understand by watching effects. You must pay attention, for it is not until you understand the realities of the world around you that you will be able to create the reality of your choosing.

Your instructors will not however teach you to invent. After you fully understand the world around you, you must look towards Maria Dar and open your mind to her. Only in that mixing of your thoughts and her guidance towards the unknown will true inspiration come. In those magical moments of meditation you will see the way to improvise, improve, and invent. And if you are lucky, your invention will live on in this world long after your time has gone and act as a springboard for the next generation of builders and inventors.

It is a wonderful goal, but for you it is a long way off. First you must listen astutely to your teachers and learn the science of your future inventions. Study hard, for your goal is righteous and your path is clear.

Excerpted Forward from the Manual of Machines, 1st year.

Their Army:

Juggernaughts are kept together with the raw power of their god. In the case of the Juggernaughts of Maria Dar, this is true as well, although the power takes a more mechanical form. The giant gears that keep the joints moving are powered by Maria Dar, but they were built by members of the College Machinist. The weapons carried by Maria Dar Juggernaughts are almost never simple catapults or hammers; instead, they are made up of hundreds, or even thousands, of expertly crafted parts all working in harmony.

The strange weapons mounted on these Juggernaughts are not as consistent as the weapons on other gods Juggernaughts, but they can be extremely deadly with very powerful special effects. Even if a Maria Dar Juggernaught appears to be mounting a simple catapult, you can be sure that it is not what it seems. If it’s firing simple rocks, it will do so at a range that is beyond comprehension. More likely, it is not firing rocks at all, but some strange projectile with the ability to warp time or turn the ground to sludge.

The pride in the machines of the College Machinist is evident in their high state of repair and beauty. Traditionally, they are made mostly out of highly polished brass with brightly colored enamel pieces.

Their Tactics:

The goal of the College Machinist is to harness their gods power more effectively than would be possible without tinkering. Of course, sometimes they just get in the way. Maria Dar Juggernaughts usually have weapon-to-weapon superiority over their foes - if everything works correctly. It is the goal of the pilot to put the Juggernaught in the position to use the specialty weapons to their greatest effect and a good one does just that.

Often, these Juggernaughts take the field in matched pairs designed to work in tandem. One will often be specially created in some way to offer protection to the other as it advances upon a foe to use a deadly close combat weapon. While these combinations can be highly effective, they are also a bit fragile as if one of the Juggernaughts gets seriously damaged; the other is often a sitting duck.

Episode 13: The Appeal of Grasshoppers

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:31:16 -0400

The Appeal of Grasshopper

There are many male power fantasies. The traditional fantasy one involves waking up one day to find out you are destined for greatness, and oh by the way, you can shoot fire out of your eyes, read minds, and fly. While great, that certainly isn’t the only male power fantasy. There is a great moment in “The Legend of Ricky Bobby” where he’s on the pit crew and the boss says “Anybody want to go fast?” – that is another great power fantasy. Falling into that category is when your favorite bands lead guitar player breaks his fingers and they ask the audience if there is “anyone out there who knows our songs?”… (actually happened once to The Who, which makes it seem almost possible).

Most gamers are male, and most gaming is escapism, so why not indulge our fantasies a bit?

The faction below falls squarely into what I call “The Kung Fu fantasy archetype”. This is the fantasy that every kid who played power rangers or Superman growing up was acting out. The idea that I’m an amazingly deadly person who just chooses not to show it, but if provoked, watch out!

Kung Fu, the show, was so much fun to watch. Here was this mild mannered guy wandering around looking pathetic and weak, but boy when he needed to kick ass (always for good reason), he did. But there was also a superiority complex about the guy – he KNEW he was going to win, because he had followed a higher way. Very “light side of the force.” His calm demeanor came not from weakness, but from this knowledge.

People who like to have this particular fantasy, don’t see themselves as part of an organized group, but as one man, standing alone, against many. They also don’t see themselves in this fantasy as being “big and bulky” but instead “quick and deliberate.” Think about when you play sword fight with those toy lightsabers (c’mon, we’ve all done it). You poke, feint, jab and generally wield the thing in a way that no sword would ever be wielded in actual combat. You are essentially looking to “touch” your opponent to “win”. But someone in this fantasy head-space imagines themselves differently, fully committing to a strike because they just know that it will hit AND that the opponent won’t hit them back. Because they are just that damn good…

This faction was created to appeal to those people who would rather look inward for strength than outward.

I was never 100% happy with the imagery here, to “pagoda” for my tastes, and also too robot shaped. But others have liked it a lot, so I kept it in.

The God of Solitude

“The Voice that is always with you is the one you should be listening to.”
- Line 4 of Private Psalm 33 from The Book of Reflection

The Book of Appropriate Tempers, Chapter IV, Verse 20-31.

20, When presented with a situation that truly requires rigidity, be rigid. There is strength in an unmoving force. Just remember that those situations are extremely rare in life and often proceed death.

21, life is combat. Combat can be with forces both external and internal. As a Juggernaught pilot must effectively manage the power granted by our god to be victorious, you too must first master the internal before you can defeat the external.

22, In combat, as in life, it is flexibility of force and focus that usually allow for the success. Give ground when you must, bend with the force of your enemies, use that force against them. Understand the plan of your opponent. Share that plan with your own voice inside to find the plans’ weakness. Ensure victory.

23, I have seen trees, blocked of the sun, grow sideways and knotted in search of the sky. These trees are stronger than those who were not so challenged. I have seen enemy Juggernaughts destroyed without a single weapon fired, and I have seen great Juggernaughts pulverized by a single well placed strike from an opponent half its size.

24, Do not judge by size. Do not judge by strength. Judge by effect. Judge by usefulness. Be judged by the voice inside and use that voice to achieve success, for it is truly possible for all of us to be great.

25, Be great.

26, People often say I move slowly or that I seem not to exert myself. When truly in touch with our god, movement required is minimal. The slightest action has the potential to bring about massive change.

27, Do not be heavy handed. Heavy handed actions signal a lack of balance and a weakness of ability and spirit. Dispatch the heavy handed enemy with their own hands.

28, Do not hesitate. Hesitation is a sign of fear, and the elimination of the calm conversation with the voice. When your enemy hesitates, he has already lost. Dispatch the enemy who hesitates with crisp deliberate action.

29, Do not fear numbers. Those who fight in groups do not believe in their own abilities. When facing a group of enemies, do not fear the 5 spears pointed at you, for it is truly only one clumsy weapon. Dispatch groups slowly and patiently. Make them watch their comrades be destroyed. Eventually, their hearts will fail and they will retreat to fight poorly another day.

30, Welcome an enlightened opponent. They are strong like you. They make an excellent test of your abilities. Do not dispatch an enemy who is enlightened. Defeat them? Yes. Destroy them if need be. But do not attempt to remove their will to fight as you would your other opponents, for it is impossible. Always provide the enlightened opponent a pathway for retreat, for they are noble in cause and purpose. It is likely that someday this opponent will join your cause as even without instruction, they have taken steps towards The God of Solitude. Our god is seductive because it is already in everyone, whether or not they choose to listen at any given time.

31, Don’t be the clenched fist, be the space between.

Their Army:

The best word to describe the appearance of Juggernaughts of The God of Solitude, is “righteous.” They are made of all sorts of materials, but they utilize a lot crystal in their construction. They also carry lots of very large flowing banners and what can only be called holy symbols. They are by far the fastest of all the Juggernaughts and even the largest move with deceptive speed.

Their weaponry is on the lighter side. Most of their weapons seemed to be designed to do annoying, but not lethal, levels of damage. However, each of these weapons has the potential for one-shot kills of Juggernaughts twice their size – when used perfectly. They are always dangerous and are best kept a distance. They are masters of the “Critical Hit.”

Their Tactics:

The God of Solitude is not one that believes in the power of coordinated group fighting. Instead, each Juggernaught is usually on its own, with little or no communication with the other allied forces. That is not to say that there is no plan, simply that each Juggernaught is free to fulfill their part of the plan in whatever way seems most appropriate at the time.

While almost always outnumbered, they seem to always be in the right place at the right time. They take risks in combat that with hindsight weren’t that risky at all. They seem to know what the enemy is going to do even before the enemy has figured it out. They are the chess masters of the battlefield.

Episode 12: Games as Understanding

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:33:24 -0400

When I was at Wizards of the Coast (WoTC), I had the joy of working around folks who thought about games all day. One of those folks was Richard Garfield, creator of Magic the Gathering. There are many things that impressed me about Richard, both game design wise, where he was a top shelf designer, and in the general area of self awareness. That said, until my last few months there, I never worked on a project with him, and even in those few months, I probably never had a conversation of more than 100 words with him. No animosity or anything just that I worked up in brand doing my thing and he was in R&D working away on his thing.

So even though we worked in the same building most of what I know about Richard was stories from co-workers. One story that circulated, was that Richard was having a hard time understanding why currency values flex over time. To figure it out, he designed a simple game scenario so that he could see the basic forces at work. This story really stuck with me, because it showed how me how most things could be boiled down to game theory. I also imagined that in Richard’s game, he probably thought about rules that would be “fun” to add that couldn’t exist in the real world, but would make the game more fun.

When I was working on Juggernaught, I knew that I wanted to make sure that I didn’t design a world with such ridged rules that I couldn’t add fun (and probably illogical) rules to the game. So about half way through development of the IP, I went ahead and designed a table top miniatures game. This was both to make sure the IP as developed made sense in a game execution and to see if the game would provide any ideas for development of the IP.

It was a very interesting exercise. I’m someone who doesn’t like too much freedom in my game designs (limitations are creative lubricants to me). In this case, I had the basics of the world down, which was enough to start with, but I still had some open ended options for new rules as the IP was still flexible.

At the end of my exercise, I had learned a couple of things. The first was, that a table top game property is very different from a 1st person shooter “giant fighting robot” property – at least in the case of core player experience. Having a table top game where each player plays the role of one pilot was awfully dull to me. It can be done for sure, but the visceral feeling of damage and such just wasn’t there. The second thing I learned is that there has to be small Juggernaughts. You can see from a previous post that I made a wide range of sizes, that was a direct effect from this exercise.

In a 1-on-1 game, all pieces should be roughly at the same power level, but a game like this, one that is a massive power fantasy, needs little pieces to get destroyed. What fun it is to have a battleship if that’s the only kind of ship that exists? A first person shooter computer game needs little guys as well, so that the player can constantly be destroying things.

When I developed my board game, I quickly dropped the idea of 1 Juggernaught fighting 1 Juggernaught, it was just too dull. So made the game so that each player would field a range of Juggernaughts of various sizes. While my goal was still to have the IP’s main expression be through a single player cockpit view shooter game, it was nice to see it work well on the tabletop as well, while knowing that I was making no sacrifices to the IP to make the game work in that format.

I don’t know why I thought this was worth writing here, other than to say that IP design and game design really can’t be done on their own, you have to keep in mind the final execution of the IP from the start so that nothing looks tacked on or left out.

At the conclusion of the IP blog, I plan to publish the table top game here, it’s surprisingly fun for a game done as a research exercise. Hopefully, I can convince Jay to make it look pretty first…

Episode 11: Green Death

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 21:12:07 -0400

As I was working on the various factions, I looked around me to see what kinds of things folks followed with a religious-type zeal. I wasn’t looking for “God of the Volcano” type religious activity, but more “righteous living” type fanaticism. The faction of Grun Pec came from this type of observation.

While working on Juggernaught, I lived in Seattle. For those who don’t know, Seattle has a very granola/birekenstock/enviromentalist/vegan thing going on. As an East Coaster, I didn’t even know what a Vegan was until I got to Seattle. Now, I didn’t want to make a faction about eating the right food, but the environmental movement was something I could definitely do. Certainly Druids have appeared in all sorts of fantasy games and literature, as do those who commune with animals (ala Beast Master). Most druids in fantasy are herbal healers, and that just wouldn’t do. I needed to go with a more violent form of environmentalism.

This was a particularly fun faction to work on, because my big question was easy to answer. What’s the right way to live? In harmony with nature. With an easy answer to the big question, I got to layer on all sorts of fun earthy religious stuff, and there is just so many cool hooks in a nature that it wasn’t a nature of not finding good enough ideas, it was having too many.

Then I got to ask myself the question “If a Juggernaught is a transformed church, what would an environmentalist church look like?” I did a lot of searching on-line for church imagery that would work. There were some good ones, but these were violent environmentalists, who would be unlike to build a large traditional church. Taken to their extreme, these are people who would probably have “church services” in a sacred glade, cottonwood hollow, or deep in some ancient woods.

This led to some fun Juggeraughts like the one below…

This is what a Juggernaught would look like if the “church” was in a sacred woods. When the faithful summoned their god power, the Juggernaught would literally be formed by the earth as it transformed into a fighting machine. These are not peace-nicks, they are warriors with the full fury of the earth behind them!

Grun Pec, The Goddess of Earth

“Fight for the Earth and the Earth will fight for you.”
- Slogan of the “5th Branch” Juggernaughts

“Fight with the earth and the ancestors of old will fight with you.”
- Slogan of the “Night Crows” Juggernaughts

Jake,

Tonight little brother, on the full moon, I am to pilot one of our greatest Juggernaughts into battle. I know it will be a fierce fight, and that I may not return. I have faith in my squad of battle druids – I have never met finer. These men and women are completely devoted to Grun Pec, and they will bring me the power required to do what I must.

I take no joy in the thought of eliminating my foes, but I will do so without hesitation. My enemies have soiled this great Earth with their vile ways and their never ending hunger for war. Do they not understand that when war ruins the home of one, it will ruin the home of all? I pray for them to change, but have little hope. It is clearer every day that if we wish to preserve the natural beauty around us, it will require a great fight.

This morning I met with the glorious Sun Father. He reinforced again with me the facts of our mission. We communed together in a great grove of Willow Trees. For a moment, one that I wish to last forever, I was everything. I was the trees, I was the wind, I was the bird, and I was truly at peace. The Sun Father told me that if I serve Grun Pec with single-mindedness, I will be rewarded with more of these feelings, and that after our great victory that surely lies ahead, all the followers of Grun Pec will live in that wonderful state.

After I finish this letter, I am to meet with the Dark Moon Mother. I do not know what to expect for she is mysterious, and to be honest, she scares me a bit. I know that the Earth I love is made from the bones, meat, and efforts of the dead. I know that without the dead before us, there would be no “us” at all. There have been times when I have been at the helm of a Juggernaught that I have heard from these past voices and they have steered me in the right direction time and time again. I think of our mother and father sometimes and it comforts me to think of them as still having some part to play in the land of the living. I’m sure it comforts you as well. I know there is no reason to be scared of the dead and those who live in constant discussion with the dead. But somehow, the Dark Moon Mother makes me feel a bit like the scared child that you were years ago. I hope to someday understand her world better, it can only make me a greater pilot and perhaps there is a state equal to the feelings I had with the Sun Father than she can show me.

I have heard that you have started the training to be a pilot yourself. That makes me happier than you can imagine. I know you have the pureness of soul to be a fine pilot (but clearly not as good as me!). Listen to your trainers with your ears, but listen to the Earth with your heart, for it is truly the Earth that we come from and the Earth we shall return to. Therefore it is the Earth we must defend.

This may be the last letter you get from me little brother. But if I fall in battle tonight, it will not be the last you hear from me. That voice in your ear in the pilot house will be me.

Matthew Stormhawk
Master Pilot, Night Crows

Their Army:

An army of Grun Pec is an army of the Earth. Grun Pec’s power is shown through the tendon-like roots or flowing water that holds their Juggernaughts together. They are very organic looking and unlike other Juggernaughts, they employ a fair amount of wood in their construction (as well as stone). They use very little metal in their Juggernaughts or the weapons that the Juggernaughts carry. Many of these machines carry large crossbows that fire large tree trunks with their branches shaved off as well as large hewn-rock axes for close work.

Some followers of Grun Pec worship out doors at sacred meeting places. When these areas are brought to bear, the Juggernaught literally erupts out of the surrounding area, forming itself out of the natural elements in the surrounding area.

Their Tactics:

Grun Pec Juggernaughts react with the earth around them. Sleeping trees in the cold of winter might go into bloom as one of these mighty machines pass by. Fast moving streams will retreat to allow them to pass unhindered. While many of these effects are random byproducts of the presence of so much “Earth-God Power”, the larger Juggernaughts actually carry spell casting druids to employ the earth as a weapon.

These spell casters can turn the ground under an enemy Juggernaught to mud, slowing it’s progress and making it easier to hit, or miraculously grow a forest where there was none in an effort to put a barrier between them and an enemy. These magics are very powerful tactical weapons on the battlefield, often allowing the Grun Pec Juggernaught to isolate enemies for quick destruction or to stop the enemy from arriving at a key area on the battlefield.

The weapons of Grun Pec are brutal simplicity, but often carry all sorts of special powers as they have been carved with powerful earth runes that soak up the god-power of the Juggernaught.

Episode 10: Evil and Bwahahaha

Fri, 8 Jun 2007 16:01:57 -0400

As I mentioned in a previous entry, only a small portion of gamers like to play the bad guys in a game. Normally, this evil is of the completely random Borgish or Chaos type. Slathering evil doers doing evil things for power or randomness… These factions have very little aspirational quality and often very little human logic. I really didn’t want to go for random scary bad guys. That’s fine for a story where you need to make a clear distinction between good and evil, but in most great stories, the bad side really isn’t mindlessly evil. They are misunderstood, or off-balance because of some event in their past, but at least they are understandable.

Keeping with my big question, I had to ask what would be the right way to live an evil life? Most of my answers involved things like chaos and random violence etc… None were really satisfying to me, so I took a slightly different look at it. I looked at the definition of happiness as happiness is usually what folks look for as a reward for living in the correct way.

Some folks get happy by communing with nature, loving a special person, knowing themselves fully, being part of a greater movement, or some such similar easy to understand joy. Personally, I’ve always defined happiness as positive deviation from the norm. If I drove a Porsche every day, then getting the opportunity to drive a corvette wouldn’t be that much of a thrill. But if I drove a beater station wagon every day, then that corvette would be the greatest car experience ever!

In my life, when I’ve had the opportunity to greatly raise my standard of living, I haven’t done so for this very reason. I want to make sure that I have lots of “higher than average” experiences and that is only possible by creating a standard level of experience that is easy to exceed.

I took this idea to it’s extremes for my evil faction. A group that makes their normal days as hard as possible so that just being left along for a few minutes would be a great joy. In many ways, this faction really isn’t evil at all, they are the faction who gets the most pleasure from the smallest favor. They are the faction of joy in the mundane, but the path to that joy is dark indeed.

I named the faction after my friend Brom (his name backwards), as he does dark art all the time, but is actually a very happy person. The Interrogator General’s last name comes from where I live, Stotlzfus is a very common in the Amish/Mennonite area I live (I’m neither obviously!), and that seems to fit well thematically with a group that practices control over ones environment.

Visually, I really liked this Juggernaught. It showed that all Juggernaughts don’t need to have two legs for one thing, and it also has a real good church-to-Juggernaught transformation.

Morb X, the god of Pain and Fear

“A healthy hand does what you ask of it. It is useful, but has no feeling, no appreciation of being alive. The hand impaled by a splinter may not be useful, but after removing the sliver from the hand, it feels good and rejoices in the ability to work. That is all you need to know about the positive effects of pain.”
– Horden Zeek, The Great Interrogator

Commencement of the 103rd Class of Dark Ways
Interrogator General Stoltzfus

“As an initiate member of Morb X’s great choir of disciples, you have lived a mundane life. Your days have been a bland progression of normalcy. Your companions are not stunning beauties, your stomachs never quite full. You have led an acceptable, but meager existence to this day. Your life to this point has been a series of unexciting events in an unending loop of boredom and sleep.

“Those days are over. You know what our god requires of you and you will give it freely!

“We have a great need to power the great Juggernaughts of the Eastern Front, so your class is being activated today. You one-thousand will now don the cliché’ and the barbed helmet. You will listen to your prayer master. You will recite the words of inner hate. You will flay your own skin and those of your fellow priests. You will welcome the hooks that pierce you. You will swallow the hot coals. All the while, images of your lost wonderful life will be produced to remind you of all you have lost, amplifying the pain even more. If you are lucky, you will uncover some truly righteous pain that you long ago hid deep inside you with a desperate hope of forgetting.

“As you wail in suffering, you will dedicate that pain to our god, and our god will reward us all with his terrible power! With that power, our long dormant machines will wake and one of our great pilots will channel the overabundant energy to launch crippling attacks against our foes. As the enemies fall, their death screams will bring further power to Morb X, and even greater rewards to us.

“When the battle is over, you will return to your old life. That plain life of long ago will seem like an ambrosia. Your companions will be beautiful in your eyes. Your days will seem exciting in their lack of variance. Your will feel satiated with the meagerest of portions.

“And you will have learned the lesson of lessons. That there is no such thing as Joy, no such state as Happy, no such thing as a perfect day. There is but one thing – Deviation from the norm. When your norm is steeped in suffering and pain, even the cloudiest of days will bring you great feelings of satisfaction.

Their Army:
An army of Morb X is in a word, disturbing. The weaker willed will flee upon seeing the grotesque forms. Their weapons often have seriated blades handing from long whips or metallic round spinning wheels with uneven crooked teeth. In fact, all of their weapons seem to have barbs and hooks all over them. Often these weapons will ensnare the enemy Juggernaught at which point Morb X delivers a painful surge of power to its foe. Mostly made of painted metal, the Juggernaught will often ooze corpulent slime out of its joints as it walks.

Their Tactics:

Morb X does not enjoy a quick kill, and neither do it’s Juggernaughts. Instead, a Morb X Juggernaught will pester enemies with small annoying attacks that limit options for their enemies. These attacks include special barbed ballista bolts that wrap around the legs of enemy Juggernaughts and continue to damage the enemy over time until it gives in to the pain, or setting the enemy on fire.

In close combat, they often use weapons that stick to the enemy Juggernaught, at which point, Morb X delivers an amazing bolt of pain to everyone in the enemy Juggernaught, disabling them so they can be more easily dispatched.

Unlike other Juggernaughts, a Morb X Juggernaught often fights better as it takes damage. The pain caused to its pilot and crew can actually gather even more god power. In addition, as a Morb X Juggernaught delivers pain to its enemies, more god power can be summoned. There is nothing Morb X enjoys more than a good fight where everyone gets hurt.

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Next Up: All Gore Fires up a Juggernaught!

Episode 9: Pilots and Juggernaughts

Thu, 7 Jun 2007 14:38:56 -0400

There are three questions I ask when I start on a game; Who is the Player?, What is the player trying to accomplish?, and What does the player use to accomplish the goal? These seem pretty simple, but you’d really be surprised how many games don’t have clear answers to these questions. Not that all good games NEED clear answers to these questions, but generally, it helps. A lot.

In Juggernaught, the players take the roll of pilots (in the first person shooter console game). They are trying to bring about a nirvana state by destroying their enemy. They do this by controlling their Juggernaught. As such, I worked up some document to better describe the Juggernaughts and the roll of the pilots. The pilots are the heroes of the Juggernaught IP, so they need to be more important that their gods in some sense. This isn’t a battle of gods, it’s a battle of people using god powered machines. These two short bits come from my working style guide...

What is a Juggernaught?

A Juggernaught is a dual purpose structure. During peace time, it is actually a place of worship. These churches are hives of community activity as well as politics. Each church/Juggernaught is dedicated to one of the Machine Gods. There is always a room or cove dedicated to organized monk-type chanting/prayer. Additionally every church has a place of high honor that the leader of that church uses as his office or sanctuary. Other than that, the rest of the structures reflect the ideals of the particular Machine God. For instance, a church dedicated to The god of Solitude would have lots of smallish rooms for personal meditation where as a church dedicated to Maria Dar, The god of Invention, might have laboratories and class rooms with all sorts of equipment in them.

However, in times of war, these churches take on a much different roll in the society. To prepare for an upcoming battle, a group of senior monks go to the dedicated room for organized worship/chanting. Led by a Battle Monk, these members of the church pray to their god and the god answers by giving the building itself some of the gods own power. As the church absorbs this power, it transforms (literally in the way of “transformers”) to a Juggernaught – a massive god-powered war machine with incredible potential to deal damage.

During battle, these monks are linked to their god and to the Juggernaught itself. As there Juggernaught takes damage, their connection to their god can be badly jolted, causing them to suffer tremendous pain and even death. These monks understand that at the start of a battle, the harder they pray, the more power their Juggernaught will receive, and therefore the greater the chance that they will survive. They pray hard.

The power summoned by the monks is raw god energy. It is the job of pilot to direct this power for its greatest effect. At the start of the battle, the pilot goes into the room that is normally occupied by the leader of the church. From there the pilot acts as a conduit for the god power that is summoned by the monks. He then directs the god power in order to control the Juggernaught. He can direct power to move the Juggernaught, power up the massive weaponry, or to use any of his machines special abilities. These pilots are the heroes of the Juggernaught world.

There is often other crew on a Juggernaught as well. These crew members can take on a number of different rolls; repair crew, weapon manning, close in defense, boarding parties, etc… One of the more specialized groups that can be present on a Juggernaught as supplemental crew are the battle wizards. During peaceful days, these wizards have very little power and act as high priests, but when present on a fully powered Juggernaught, their ability to do magic is tremendously amplified. When granted god power by the pilot, these wizards have the ability to cast powerful spells on their opponents.

The Various Classes of Juggernaughts

Pilots are the heroes of the Juggernaught world. When battle calls, they are the knights in shining armor; there armor just happens to be 40+ feet tall…

Controlling a massive fighting battle-church is not easy. The god power that courses through a pilot is extreme and would easily make a person insane or even kill them if they haven’t had the proper training and experience.

In addition to the god power, a pilot must learn to control each individual Juggernaught as they each have a living memory. In essence, as they are used more and more, the Juggernaught itself will start to perform differently and take on a character of its own. Often this reputation/personality will be reflected in the Juggernaughts’ name. As a Juggernaught gets more and more experience, its personality becomes more and more pronounced. Over the years, as a Juggernaught gets more experience, it can be added on to by enlightened builders, adding new rooms and abilities. In that way, it is easy to tell the relative power and experience of a Juggernaught by it’s size.

A good pilot can use the personality of the Juggernaught to his advantage, putting his machine in a place where those preferences can be put to the best use. A common mistake for a new pilot is to suppress the Juggernaughts’ personality too much which can make the Juggernaught difficult to control. The Pilot and the Juggernaughts’ personalities essentially form a “team.”

Unlike most of the people in a Juggernaught, the pilot is not permanently attached to any particular machine. In fact, it is a pilot’s goal to gain experience and toughness so that someday they will be able to pilot the largest and most deadly Juggernaughts. But they must start small or risk insanity or death.

When a pilot starts his training, he starts it in very small machines. These machines are not even used in combat as they would be destroyed so easily by the enemy; they are simply used to figure out who has the potential to be a great Juggernaught pilot from the multitudes of those who wish to. These small machines participate in all sorts of non-lethal combat with each other as training.

If a pilot shows great promise in the training machines, they may get a chance to pilot a Skirmish Juggernaught. Less than half of those who try have the ability to effectively control even these small Juggernaughts, for even a Skirmish Juggernaught is 25 feet tall and channels a large amount of raw god-power through the pilot. In combat, these smaller machines can be effective if piloted well, and piloting the Skirmish Juggernaught in actual combat is necessary for a pilot to be allowed to move up to one of the larger “Battle” Juggernaughts – which are 40-50 feet in height.

Battle Juggernaughts make up most of the killing power of a Juggernaught army. Their weapons fire massive projectiles and those seemingly common projectiles often carry with them god powered special effects. Battle Juggernaughts range greatly in ability and dimension, but one things these machines all have in common is that they have the ability (with a good pilot) to transfer some excess god power to the smaller Skirmish Juggernaughts when needed. Battle Juggernaughts also often carry one or more wizards on board, which can greatly enhance their abilities. All of this extra power comes at a cost though. When a pilot advances to a Battle Juggernaught, he must learn how to channel god power in new ways (granting power to wizards and assisting nearby Skirmish Juggernaughts are just two of the new commands a pilot must master). In addition, these Juggernaughts channel more than twice as much god power than the Skirmish Juggernaughts, again testing the physical and mental limits of the pilot.

A truly great pilot may be asked to take the helm of an Ancient Juggernaught. These machines dwarf even the Battle Juggernaughts, and reach 70-80 feet tall. Because of the great god power required to even raise one of these machines, they are fairly rare to see on the battlefield. In addition to the extra firepower these machines bring to bear, they also represent such a large investment of god power that the loss of one of these machines on the battlefield can be devastating to its allies. Often, the god power of these machines literally spills out onto the battlefield and infects all loyal followers near by. Instead of single wizards, these machines often carry groups or covens of spell casters all working in synergy for the greatest effect. Few pilots ever get to the point where they can handle such a massive machine, and those that do are elevated to the status of war hero just for being able to control such a titanic machine.

Then there are the Legendary Juggernaughts. These are some of the oldest things known to exist and have been built upon by generations and generations of enlightened builders. When they are powered up, there is so much power in them, that they become the living embodiment of that god. It is very rare to see one of these on the battlefield. Just to transform one of these machines can take weeks. Additionally, it is rare that even a single pilot exists in any given nation who can pilot one. Like all Juggernaughts, these machines have a living memory which has a direct effect on how it performs, but in the case of the Legendary Juggernaughts, that personality is so strong that it can often overtake even a great pilot. The pilot of one of these machines is not just trying to control the god power, but also deal with the personality of the Juggernaught which may or may not want to do what the pilot wishes. It is said that the pilot in many ways becomes a god when he pilots a Legendary Juggernaught. The intensity of prayer required to keep one of these machines working is so high, that the Juggernaught can only stay powered up for a short time before the monks give out. The exertion is so great that the monks require rest for months or even years after powering up. These machines are only powered up to fight the greatest possible threats.

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Next up: Evil?

Bonus Episode 1: Logo Magic!

Tue, 5 Jun 2007 09:23:56 -0400

My good friend and fantastical graphic designer Jay Hernishin did a Juggernaught Logo! WooHoo! I imagine we’ll tweak a bit as we go, but it is amazing how a logo makes a product seem that much more real. Jay and I are hoping to do some more fun stuff here over the next few months which should cumulate in some pretty fun downloads for everyone - that is of course if our regular jobs don’t kill us first...

If you are looking for some great graphic design work, I can’t recommend Jay and his wife Susie enough. You can see some of their work here.

Episode 8: Kordak

Mon, 4 Jun 2007 10:00:58 -0400

Order Up!

When making factions for a game world, there are nearly endless places to look for inspiration. Because the driving question for each faction is “what is the right way to live”, I looked towards historical movements for some of my starting points. Clearly, if millions of actual people followed a certain doctrine of the “right way to live” then there must be something in that doctrine that connects with some fairly substantial group of people.

When going this route, you need to be a bit careful. Translating a historical movement or ideology too closely can lead to very flat and boring factions with no real sense of discovery. I also wanted to make sure that I got beyond using a recognizable historical group, like say the Vikings or the Medieval Scots, and get to what motivated those folks in regard to the “right way to live.” For instance, it wouldn’t be enough, or even perhaps appropriate, to make a faction modeled on the Vikings and give their Juggernaughts horns and Viking-ish names. Horns and names have nothing to do with the Viking way to live. Instead, I would try to take the key elements of what it means to live like the ideal Viking, then create imagery and a belief system that supports those Viking ideals. And all of that is only worth doing if I thought that the Viking ideals would strike a cord with some group of gamers.

The faction below was created in this way. It started as a look at order and teamwork. The faction was built as a mix of “the best” parts of communism and fascism.

I can almost hear the screams now… “What gamer would ever want to be these guys!” and “I thought all the factions were supposed to be good!”

Remember though, that these were just the starting points for the faction. While history has taught us that these political ideologies weren’t so effective and were often horribly oppressive, they did gain immense following amongst people who truly believed in the larger concepts. Looking at the key doctrines of both, there were a few that stuck out at me as very attractive meat for a faction and taken out of historical context, certainly not evil in any way.

1) “People would rather succeed in a group effort than in an individual effort.” This is one of the key pillars of fascism, but that doesn’t make it any less true for a lot of people. Personally, I buy this entirely. I’d much rather win a team sport where I have teammates to share the victory with than win a solo victory. Most people fit into this category.

2) “Everyone has a roll to play regardless of ability.” A key tenant of communism. The idea that if everyone does their part, the whole will succeed and all will benefit. Similar, but slightly different from the first point, this statement points to the fact that we can all be part of the winning team, we just need to find our place.

Taken together, these two comments form the core of the answer to the question “What is the right way to live my life” for the faction of Kordak the Great Planner. The first point is a truism about lots of people, hopefully making the faction more easily understandable and desirable, the second is the pathway to the group success mentioned in the first point.

The second point is a bit dangerous as it can lead to predetermination. What if my role to play is dull and unexciting? That turned out not to be a problem for me as this game is essentially about the pilots of the Juggernaughts. I never saw players taking the roll of farmers or stone masons.

In our everyday lives, people have to play their part as a student, employee, father, etc…, but in games, we get to be heroes. This is the quintessential fantasy plot line – what happens when I wake up one day to find that I am the “chosen one” ala Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, etc…? Well in that case, predetermination isn’t so bad now is it! Hell, in Harry Potter, kids don’t even get to choose their house, they are given their assignment by a freaking hat! Talk about lack of choice...

It is clear that some part of us likes the idea of being told where we belong. While that is fine, we all hope that where we belong is somewhere great. Players who decide to play this faction are living out that fantasy.

When writing about this faction, I had to stay focused on the positive. I didn’t want to get mired down in the bad parts of predestination, but in the good parts of teamwork. I wanted to stress all the good things that happen in a society with perfect order – no crime, clean streets, good public systems, etc… The world that was promised by the communal aspects of communism, but never actually happened.

For the name of the faction, I wanted to use the hard K sound, as it sounds stark and hard. This was not an original idea on my part, when George Eastman wanted to name his company, he had the thought that the hard K sound was memorable, hence the Eastman Kodak company (there was a Mr. Eastman, but no Mr. Kodak). I just added an “r.” That probably ruins the name for a lot of folks, but I got to give credit where it is due! In a similar way, I wanted to make the names of the folks in the faction kind of stark, so for the piece below I used the name of my uncle Carl, but this time with a K.

For the imagery for Kordak, I wanted their Juggernaughts to be stark and minimalist. In their final forms, they would exude a feeling that the machines were greater than the people inside them. Doorways would be 20+ feet tall, making the statement that it’s the organization that built the doorway, not the person walking through it, that matters most. The image here is too human looking for my taste (and probably too big for scale), but was a decent starting point for the plate work and I particularly liked the mace for some reason. This is not a case of the artist not giving me what I wanted, but a case of me being way too generic in what I asked for.

Kordak the Great Planner

“If you want Peace for your people, work for Justice. If you want Peace for all, work for Order.”
- Inscription on the Tomb of Fallen Heroes.

The Procurement of Order

We all have our rules. And for that, we are all thankful to The Great Planner.

Our rules bring not only the restrictions and prescribed punishments that the short sighted seem to focus on endlessly, but they bring us that most precious commodity, order. For without order, the chaos and sin that weakens the spirit and efficiency of our enemies would weaken us as well.

We followers of Kordak know that we have a place where we belong and a job to do. We all have valuable potential, and to not live up to that potential is an insult to The Great Planner. There is no room for waste, there is no room for sloth, there is no room for individual glory, for glory can only be achieved by working together towards goals unattainable by one man! We all depend on each other, for as a collective, we are stronger than we could ever be apart and that is precisely why victory is ensured.

Order is the key. The teacher who installs order and justice into the youth and the security officer who enforces that knowledge are the great role models for our way. For when they work in synergy, they create peace that is not fleeting, but a lasting peace that can survive any temporary turmoil. Even I, your Chief Justice, play just one part in ensuring that the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.

As it is the teacher and security officer who are the building blocks of our great society, it is our great Juggernaught pilots who are the heroes of the proletariat. Unlike the “Born Nobles” of other beliefs, our pilots are pulled from all corners of our great society, as chosen by Kordak during the annual delegations. These pilots represent the best insurance of the fulfillment of The Great Plan. By piloting Kordak’s mighty obsidian war machines, these heroes protect and ensure that the justice created by the teacher and officer will not wither in the face of the very real external threats that are aimed at our great society.

While pilots are the tip of our sword, they can not function alone. They move the great machines built by our forefathers, kept in repair by our stone masons and production priests, put in motion by the intonations of those of us closest to the will of Kordak. These pilots require the support of our great society to function, else they be without food, training, shelter, and all other things required for their skills to blossom. In that way, we are all connected, we are all heroes of this time and place. While the farmer toils to feed the pilot, the pilot fights to defend the controlled and peaceful life of the farmer. The gratefulness flows in both directions.

As that gratefulness flows, it feeds Kordak, and we will be rewarded for feeding Kordak the same way that we are rewarded for feeding the pilot. Order. Justice. Peace.

Know your place, for that place is sacred.
- Karl Peterschmidt, 13th Chief Justice of the Proletariat

Their Army:

The Juggernaughts of Kordak, the Great Planner are stark affairs. Made mostly of obsidian, they are extremely efficient fighting machines. Unlike the free-flowing nature of other factions, Kordak Juggernaughts tend to be organized into more permanent “battle groups”, with several smaller Juggernaughts being led by a more experienced pilot. No faction is as effective at group tactics as Kordak, truly she is a Great Planner.

Their Tactics:

Kordak armies are not the most flexible of battlefield opponents. They come to bear with a specific strategy in mind and do their best to see that strategy through to the end. On one hand, this style of fighting can be a bit limited, but woe to a general who allows the Kordak forces to maintain the momentum of their strategy, for that strategy will be executed with razor-like precision.

The biggest weakness of a Kordak army is their reliance on their leaders. Eliminating the leader Juggernaughts is usually the first step in dismantling their forces. Unfortunately, those leaders surround themselves with highly loyal pilots who protect them with every ounce of effort they have. In addition, Kordak Juggernaughts often carry specialist wizards on-board who cast powerful spells that confuse enemy Juggernaughts, often leaving them powerless at critical moments in the battle.

Next Up: The Pilots Life

Episode 7: Adamar

Thu, 31 May 2007 13:54:45 -0400

First Faction

The majority of people like to think of themselves as heroic or at least they strive to be. Being heroic is a good thing, being the bad guy… well that’s not so inspirational. Even as children playing make believe, most kids want to be the good guys. In heroic literature, the bad guy is pretty much just there so that the hero can overcome a challenge. In classic story telling, there are just two sides – protagonist and antagonists – to a story. In gaming worlds though, 2 sides isn’t very enough.

In the Indiana Jones game, who wants to play the Nazis?

Don’t get me wrong, some folks like to let out there inner evil in fantasy. As people we spend the majority of our time conforming to societal norms, and immersive gaming can give us a little time without those constraints. This “letting out of the evil” is more an exercise in “let’s see how ridiculous I can be” as opposed to representing actual goals of the player. Either way, these “evil doers” represent a small portion of the gaming community. If a gaming world has just two sides, good and bad, 90% of folks will want to play the good guys (even though the evil guys almost always look cooler.)

To adapt to this 90/10 problem, most game worlds either create just one faction and then let players layer their own desires onto the world, or they create a world of all good factions. The one faction world would be a generic fantasy world with no alternate races. The player could be a politician, wizard, fighter, thief, etc… whatever they want to associate with. Taken to it’s extreme, Chess is a game like this. Two sides to every fight, but the sides don’t have any preexisting mental states or goals.

The “all good” faction way is the middle ground, because it aims to create a lot of factions that are different, but all good. It also takes a lot more work. What these game worlds do real well is that they give players an easy to grab on to point of entry. The player simply finds the faction that fits their personal idea of “good” and jump on in. A good example here would be a world like Star Trek. In Star Trek, the humans, Vulcan, Ferengi, etc… each have their own decent aims. Weather it’s exploration, commerce, logical coolness, or in the case of the Klingons desire to test their metal with force, each of the factions have driving desires and respected activities that are not “evil.” The exception would be the Borg, who are essentially mindless evil locust. It’s fine to include the Borg in a Star Trek game though as there are 10% of folks who just want to go evil when they play games, and the Borg let’s them do that.

Because Juggernaught is a gaming world, I wanted to design my factions to appeal to specific types of game players. Gamers are a unique group, but they are not homogenous. The gaming community is made up of lots of different types of folks, so I wanted to design factions that would appeal to the larger subgroups of gamers.

The first faction here is the most straight forward. It was the first faction I made, because I made them all pretty much at the same time. I put it here first because it is the most straight forward and sets the power-level of the game. In the “Fighter, Magic User, Thief” settings of a lot of fantasy worlds, these are the fighters. This is the faction designed to appeal to folks who like straight up, bad ass, fighting. This is not Jackie Chan, more Mr. T..

For each faction, I created a lot of background material, most of it I never expected to release. I also created a single 1 page “flavor” document from the world, and a 1 page description of how the faction operates. The flavor for this faction was probably my least favorite – too blunt and “arrg”-y, but at the end of the day, I kept it what I have below because the faction IS blunt and arrg-y.

Adamar, The God of Fire and Salt

“Leave no weapon sheathed.”
- Commander Michael Gon-Gordon at the Second Battle of Jokeen Bridge

Why the Righteous Win
Battle Hymn of the 3rd Reavers “The Righteous Ones”

We train with the very best
We long to be put to the test
We hold our ground
‘til the last are down
We never need to Rest

That’s Why the Righteous Win
-Ooh Ahh!
That’s Why the Righteous Win
-Ooh Ahh!

Adamar will lead the assault
With the power of Fire and Salt
Not one step back
Through smoke or flak
His Juggernaughts never halt

That’s Why the Righteous Win
-Ooh Ahh!
That’s Why the Righteous Win
-Ooh Ahh!

Boiling with the rage
Of a wild beast in a cage
To unleash our fury
Is our sense of duty
Write our name on the honor page

That’s Why the Righteous Win
-Ooh Ahh!
That’s Why the Righteous Win
-Ooh Ahh!

Not just muscle and bone
Our minds and hearts we hone
To keep our thoughts
When all seems lost
To protect our god and home

That’s Why the Righteous Win
-Ooh Ahh!
That’s Why the Righteous Win
-Ooh Ahh!

On the battlefield we pray
Is how we’ll die some day
But to kill them first
Is our only thirst
Our god we do portray

That’s Why the Righteous Win
-Ooh Ahh!
That’s Why the Righteous Win
-Ooh Ahh!

You only know your heart
When death you must impart
In combat’s light
When all is right
Your fear it shall depart

That’s Why the Righteous Win
-Ooh Ahh!
That’s Why the Righteous Win
-Ooh Ahh!

Their Army:

An army of Adamar is a thing to behold. They carry powerful simple weapons of a greater size and strength than the other armies. Often their weapons employ fire enhancements, such as flaming hammers or magical fire throwers. In fact, the entire Juggernaught smokes and belches fire as the raw power of Adamar pulses through it’s structure. Made of heavy granite, the Juggernaughts of Adamar shake the very earth when they move. Often, an Adamar Juggernaught can continue to function, at least temporarily, after taking enough damage to fell any other god’s Juggernaught.

Their Tactics:

The God of Fire & Salt commands his faithful to take the battle directly to his opponents. Therefore, the generals of Adamar's forces have no fear in ordering their forces forward to engage enemy Juggernaughts in hand to hand combat.

As they close on an enemy position, Adamar's Juggernaughts often employ weapons of fire. These weapons may not deliver devestating damage, but they can distract or disable an opposing Juggernaught allowing the forces of Adamar to concentrate on selected targets even in the midst of a swirling melee.

Adamar's forces simply do not retreat. This awesome and unshakable commitment to win or die has carried many battles in Adamar's favor - and it has been the end of many of Adamar's greatest warriors.

Next up: The goodness of order

Episode 6: The Trailer

Mon, 7 May 2007 13:05:32 -0400

The Trailer

I’ve recently finished reading a wonderful book called Made to Stick. It takes one my all-time favorite books, The Tipping Point, and focuses on one element of it extensively. Made to Stick can be summarized as an analytical look at what makes a concept more memorable, or “sticky.”

When I started in Juggernaught, my goal was a computer game title. This meant that at some point I would be sitting across the table from folks who would know nothing of the Juggernaught world and I would have to get the idea across to them quickly and effectively. I thought about how to make my message sticky, and although I knew the presentation would likely take a fairly standard format (power point), I didn’t want to just read a bunch of slides with talking points. This was an entertainment pitch, so I really needed to grab my audience and take them from zero understanding to “I totally see how this would be fun” effectively and with maximum stickiness.

One thing I didn’t want to do was to show mock up screen shots of the game. I knew that as an outsider, I was not going to get to dictate all the elements of game play and I didn’t want to get into a micro discussions about interface features and level design. What I needed to do was get them to understand the value that I was bringing to the table (fantasy + Meks done well), and then leave them at a point where they would fill in the blanks with the kind of game they would like to make.

In the end, I thought a trailer would be the right way to open my presentation. I have no computer animation skills, and in fact, no artistic/drawing skills of any kind. But that didn’t stop me. I went ahead and did a multi-page comic strip/storyboard of my trailer. Then, because it looked like donkey droppings, I translated it into a short speech/story that I could give at the beginning of my presentations.

I did this before I went any further into the IP itself as I wanted to make sure that the IP reflected it’s most sellable aspects (the ones in the trailer). I didn’t want to make a cool trailer and then spend the rest of my presentation chipping away at the “aha moment” that I was hoping to create. Instead, I wanted the rest of the IP presentation to build on that moment.

Here is what it ended up being – remember this was meant to be said, not read, and read in a very dynamic way. Lots of hand waving and such… This was also pitched as the opening sequence/cut scene into the eventual game itself.

Inside a dark church, a robed monk blesses a kneeling archer, preparing him for the battle that clearly lies ahead. After the warrior is anointed with sacred oils, he stands up and runs down the corridor towards a small door. Along the way he passes an alcove packed with 30 chanting monks, all being led in prayer by a heavily muscled shirtless abbot pounding a book.

After the soldier moves past the chanting holy men he runs through the open door and enters a darkened narrow spiral staircase. As he climbs the staircase, the sounds of the church fade away and the sounds of battle start to be heard. The young archer continues to climb up the stairwell with heavy breaths, light spilling in occasionally from arrow slits in the wall. His breathing quickens as he reaches the top of the staircase and bursts through another doorway.

For a brief moment, the outside light is blinding, but as the soldier’s eyes adjust he looks left. There he sees an acolyte praying over a crew that is manning a large catapult. The catapult fires with a whoosh. As the rock leaves the machine, it bursts into a massive fireball and streaks across the sky leaving a trail of thick black smoke arching behind it.

The soldier turns right to take up his position next to the other archers at the edge of the wall. The sounds of battle are all around him. As he moves into position with the other archers, he looks down the outside of the wall towards the ground. Something moves.

Something big.

The Wall that he’s is standing on, is moving.

He’s not on a wall at all, he’s on a Juggernaught

At this point, I drop my defining Juggernaught image on the screen. I then go into a bit about how our hero looks ahead, sees a slightly larger enemy Juggernaught with a large hammer about to strike home and most likely destroy the Juggernaught our hero is standing on when, at the last second, a massive fireball comes in from behind our hero to knock out the enemy machine. Curious as to where the saving missile came from, our hero turns around to see an even LARGER friendly Juggernaught.

I spent a surprisingly long amount of time on this short bit. Mostly, that was because I’m not a very good writer, but also because I wanted to get across a lot of information in a story, and it wasn’t easy to pack it all in without having my points look like product placements. I wanted the listener to understand that this was a fighting church, but I didn’t want to stress “holy” or “smiting” – this is a fighting property, so even the abbot was shirtless and muscled. Before I went and revealed the Juggernaught, I wanted to ease the viewer into the magical element with the catapult. I needed the Juggernaught image to be the “wow” moment, but I also wanted to make it clear that there was more to the property that this one image. I wanted the big feeling of empowerment that ever larger machines points to. I wanted to show how human drama was possible at the scale of Juggernaughts as well.

In the presentations that I gave, this story seemed to work very well. Almost immediately, the audience could imagine how this property would translate to a computer game. It also helped me further focus on the selling points of the property. Lastly, it helped me learn how to take the Juggernaught message, one that is not obvious to folks, and slowly introduce them to the property in a dramatic way, instead of a stale “logic” way.

The rest of my presentation was very logic driven. Facts about the size of fantasy vs. Sci-fi, game play options that open up in a property like this, size of audience, competitors, etc… I tried to illustrate my main points in the presentations with further stories of dramatic moments possible in the IP, particularly when I wanted to show the difference that magic makes a game of this genre. If I had it to do over again, I would do much less logic and much more drama and story telling. Stories are just stickier!

Next Up: Fleshing out the factions

Episode 5: Why Elves Suck

Tue, 1 May 2007 14:59:11 -0400

Why Elves Suck

Now I’m ready to make some factions! Let’s see… Fantasy plus Meks… Well Fantasy worlds almost all have Elves, so let’s make some Elf Juggernaughts! Oh…I can see it now… Cool Elfy church thing. It’ll be all graceful and smooth and use cool elf weapons. In the game, they’ll probably be overpowered on a per-piece basis, but there will be less of them on the field at a time. They’ll be churches to the great Elf gods…

Or maybe that’s a bad idea.

Originally, I went down this path, even had some artists do some drawings for me of fantasy race Juggernaughts, but something in the back of my mind kept telling me that it was wrong. It just didn’t seem right to have an Elf church transforming into a fighting machine. The visuals could be cool, that wasn’t the problem. I could even create Elf gods that would be cool. The problem was that Elves don’t have big fighting churches. That’s the way the Elf brand equity works – by using Elves, I bring with them all the things that Elves are and aren’t. Making an Elf Juggernaught struck me like making a short Elf, it just sits wrong. In addition, the concept of an Elf does not spring from the world defining question about what is the right way to live your life. For the traditional fantasy Elf, the defining elements are long life, physical features, and racial issues (like hating Dwarves). In Juggernaught, I wanted the factions to spring from the world defining question, not the pre-existing concepts of fantasy races.

The world defining questions should not only define the various factions, but give the reason for why factions don’t like each other. It is the spark of both creation and conflict. At this point, I found myself at a tough crossroad. On one hand, I wanted all the great equity off Fantasy, and that meant finding a way to work Elves and Dwarves and other fantasy races into the game. On the other hand, adding those races to the game would dilute the cohesiveness of the world defining question. I think either answer could have worked here with enough clever work, but in the end, I decided that the Juggernaught world was going to live or die based on it’s world defining question, so I ditched all the non-human races.

I was more than a little worried about making this decision. I looked around at various fantasy worlds and that gave me a bit more comfort. Yes, the mainstay Tolkien world had lots of non-human races, but other great works like Game of Thrones did not. In addition, there is obviously a lot of great stories about knights and kings that have nothing at all do do with Orks (hundreds of years of history and historical fiction).

The more I looked at this base of fantasy, the more I realized that adding non-humans to a game world (one where the players are meant to take the roll of the non-humna) actually adds a layer of resistance to the players getting into character so to speak. Players are humans and have human emotions and feelings. Trying to get them to feel like an Elf is a hill to climb. By not including alternate races, I flattened that hill. They already have to climb the hill of giant fighting churches, and that is the hill I want them to climb – no need to make more of them.

There is another effect of putting in non-human races, in that some folks are big fans of a particular race, they are fans of how that race has been portrayed in the past. My Elves would have to be pretty different to fit into the world of Juggernaught. Games Workshop did a good job with this when they did Eldar Titans, but those were sci-fi elves, so it was a shorter jump to make as sci-fi implies machinery.

In the end, the reason I felt that I had to get rid of the races was that it would make the humans of the Juggernaught world too one dimensional. Humans have all sorts of beliefs as to the “right way to live”, so diluting them down to just one would make them very unappealing to most players (who also happen to be humans). By making all the races human, I was free to represent lots of the human answers to the right way to live, and do so in a way that was very accessible to the audience of players.

Finally, having chosen to leave the Elves, Dwarves, Orks, and other non-human races at home, I was ready to make factions. I did this through a simple 3 step program…

1) Answer the world defining question (in a new way each time)
2) Take the answer and extrapolate thematically appropriate visuals and game play effects (often with the help of an artist)
3) Check final product against list of known gamer profiles to ensure that the factions wasn’t just different, but appealing to the types of people who play games (No factions who think the right way to live is to be a hermit!)

After a faction made the cut, I would then go back and layer in details to flesh them out. In the end, I developed 7 factions, which is probably one more than I needed.

At the same time that I developed the factions, I also put more work into the inner workings of the Juggernaughts themselves and the general world functionalities; How does a pilot get trained in a Juggernaught? Who builds Juggernaughts? Are the pilots also priests or are they warriors exclusively? Etc... I stayed away from creating a map as I wanted to leave things open at this point. I also think that maps add little value and can harm faction interactions by locking factions farther away from the action than they need be. I knew eventually I would need a map, but no reason to rush things. I didn’t worry too much about creating a time line either, although I did a bit of work on the major events in the Juggernaught past.

My plan was to use this information as a short style guide for pitching the world to people. I figured that the world and it’s factions would substantially change if a publisher picked up the game, but I wanted to show some depth of thought to the world development. I think it’s just as important, if not more so, to explain how you got a point as it is to show the final destination. There was a lot of though into Juggernaught and by showing the thought, I hoped to counter a lot of the early and obvious questions like “Where are the Elves?”

Next: The Trailer

Episode 4: What is it All About

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:13:40 -0400

What is it all about?

This previous work brought me to the point where I had enough info that I could populate the world with a map, factions, types of juggernaughts and all sorts of other types of “meat for the bones.” I took a few small steps in this direction by giving a few artists “give me an Elf Juggernaught” type of art descriptions. Something just didn’t seem right about the way I was doing things though, as if the “bones” I was adding the “meat” to didn’t make for a very solid skeleton. I had a concept of Fantasy meets Meks and I knew how the Meks work, why couldn’t I just overlay the Mek part onto Fantasy and be done with it?

Had I been working on this project before meeting Ryan Dancey, I would have done just that, and probably ended up with a property full of reasonably cool details, but one that was a setting, not a story. But in these, my “post-meeting-Ryan-Dancey” days, I know that the foundation of a gaming property is much more than just figuring out what the Elves look like and how the Dwarves get along with the Goblins.

A focused gaming world is much more like a story than a setting. Settings, the places and times in which stories happen, are the backgrounds in which a story takes place. Stories have a greater, easy to connect to, question at their heart. Terry Gilliam’s Brazil had an interesting setting – what does a world without transistors look like (wow did I just oversimplify that …) – but the story is really about loyalty to the system vs. loyalty to people. The question of loyalty sparked the world into something more than just “no transistors”. It pushed the setting into one of a strong and oppressive system – one that made the question more interesting. All the relevant characters in Brazil are defined by their answer, or lack of answer, to the loyalty to system vs. loyalty to people quandary.

In building a gaming world, one with factions as almost all gaming worlds have (for good reason), each faction essentially takes on the roll of a single actor in a greater story. And just like in Brazil, the factions need to all be answering essentially the same question. The various answers to the question give each faction it’s grounding in the story. Not every gaming world has done this, but the best ones do.

A great example of this type of faction building is in the Legend of the Five Rings property. It is a fantasy feudal Japanese property full of samurai and shugenja (spell casters) which are broken into a several factions. The plotting Scorpion Clan with their spies and underhanded methods, the stout Crab clan with their stubborn defense of the wall that separates the civilized world from the Shadowlands (bad place), the Crane Clan with their focus on the arts, etc… To a casual observer, it appears that each of these factions is a “cool idea” with some game mechanics attached. But (barely) beneath the surface is a question that ties them all together. What is Honor? To the Scorpion, the honorable man does the jobs others aren’t willing to do to protect the empire. To the Crab, the honorable thing to do is to protect the empire at all costs, bathing be damned. To the Crane clan, seeking perfection in all things is where Honor is to be found.

So before I went forward with filling in details, I had to decide what the Juggernaught world was all about. I knew that each faction would have a god, so I went looking for a religious question. Why do gods fight? What would make them disagree? The answer to whatever question I chose couldn’t be a simple yes or no, or I’d only have two factions. Most religions have some sort of concept of afterlife, and it is certainly a question with many possible answers; 40 Virgins, reincarnation, a big party in a warrior hall, one-ness with all things, etc…

I liked the idea of fighting over the afterlife - it gave me lots of hooks at tied nicely in with the god powered aspect of a juggernaught. Essentially, these gods are feuding and whichever god “wins” turns the afterlife, or this life?..., into it’s desired state. I had no intention of ever stating this fact as simply as what I just did. I didn’t want a game with a religious focus. The last thing I wanted was an epic fantasy world with Jesus figures walking around talking about the glorious afterlife… But how could I avoid that if the entire setting is based around gods fighting for control of the afterlife?

The question had to be brought down to a human level. What would the followers of these gods disagree about on a daily basis? They would disagree about the right way to live in THIS life. “What is the right way to live your life?” became the operational question. The gods desire for afterlife control is really just a spark for conflict. The story driving force is the different ways that the gods want their followers to live. I had to allow for the characters to have normal disagreements, not just thoughtless “my god hates you, so we will try to kill each other now.” Alliances needed to be possible. I even wanted it to be reasonable to have followers of the same god fight each other. I later defined the gods power as granted to the follower who calls on it by structure, but without limitations on it’s use. In this way, the fight was taken from “god vs. god” to “follower vs. follower.”

Once I got down to the “what is the right way to live,” factions became pretty easy to work on. Each faction had to answer a few key questions differently, but logically, and the rest sort of filled itself out. Later, I’m going to go through all the factions as they ended up and why I made the decisions I did regarding each. It is worth noting that there are very definable types of gamers, so I needed to represent those key types of gamers with factions. Luckily, those types of gamers already disagree about the “best” way to do things, so I just needed to put meat on these now-much-sturdier bones.

Interestingly, you could apply this “What is the right way to live your life?” question to modern people and come up with some pretty good answers.
- To pursue money
- To pursue fame
- To protect the weak
- To become the strong
- To protect the earth
- To win
- To find mental clarity
- To find maximum physical pleasure
- To learn
- To create

You can see how these types of answers could lead to some pretty fun factions.

Next: Why Elves Suck

Episode 3: Franz, Gods, and Men Without Penises

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:03:43 -0400

So I’ve got my idea generator and my idea rejector built. Time to start writing stuff right? Well…sort of. At this point, I had to come to terms with a sad truth about me. I can’t DO anything.

One of the many great lessons I took from working with Bob Watts was that when you start a small biz (which I extrapolated to this project), you need to be able to DO something. It’s not enough to manage and coordinate, you’ve got to get your hands dirty. In a start-up company, this could be something like learning how to use Photoshop, make web pages, or write game text. At this point in my career, I had tons of game design experience, and a lot of experience analyzing properties and trying to figure out why they did or didn’t work. I had done a lot of research as to what makes a compelling story. But I had zero experience actually doing the writing, and I certainly didn’t have any experience making the visuals that would be critical to the property.

I felt like with time, I could hone my writing skills to be at a B level (hopefully), and lord knows that there is a lot of less-than-B level writing in this industry that goes over OK if the world concept is cool enough. There is also some fantastic writing, but I wasn’t going to fool myself into thinking I could reach the higher end level. I decided that I would do the writing for the pitch and structure documents, fully understanding and welcoming the day when someone better would take it from good enough to great. All I needed to do was get across the highlighted cool features – no long form story writing, just out-of-context short blurbs and fairly dry world documents.

I KNEW I would never have the visual skills required. I was going to have to work with some artists, and this meant money out of my pocket. That didn’t bother me at all, and I was pretty excited about seeing my idea made more real with visuals. Because of my past experiences working with artists closely – particularly Brom and Keith Parkinson – I had a pretty good idea of how things were going to work. Unfortunately, I had also become a bit of an art snob. I had some pretty good thoughts in my head about how I wanted things to look, but I had learned from previous jobs that often the artists have better ideas. So many people look at artists as “wrists to guide” not folks who can really add to a product. I was fairly confident that if I gave the right artists some freedom in interpreting my descriptions I was likely to get something that was far better than what was in my visually impaired imagination.

I went through my list of favorite artists, then found the ones who I could afford and were available. I wrote up a brief world document to get them started. My pitch was basically “read this over and if there is something in your head that speaks to you, draw it.” I was prepared to get back of bunch of weird, most likely unusable art as my descriptions were so loose. My hope was that the first batch would be a lot of “I like part A from this piece and part B from this piece” and then I’d do another round to tighten things up.

While the artists were working, I reviewed my books on writing and started banging away on some various documents about how things worked in the world

3 or so weeks later, the first piece came back, and it was (literally) world changing for me. I’d never done concepting with artists, just commissions for finished work. Simply put, Franz Vohwikle rocked my world with his submission. Not only did it absolutely kick visual ass, but it was FAR better than what was in my head and had more thought behind it than I was expecting to receive. It is the piece on the front page of this blog, and was his take on a Dwarf Juggernaught. He explained how the Dwarf race used certain materials in their creations (stone), how they used the hex shape predominantly (totally appropriate/cool), and pointed out features on the drawing that had to do with boarding defense parties, etc…

Again, my “blink” was “winner.” I could have looked at the piece for problems and ways that I could change the piece to make it fit the writing I had done over the last 3 weeks. Instead, I decided to make this piece the center of the property. It communicated everything the world was in a single powerful image that not only answered questions (what is this property about), but invited speculation (how does that thing work? What do the others look like?). I wasn’t going to change a thing. This piece was destined to be the center of any pitches I would do in the future, and if I had my way, a color version would be on the box.

I looked back at my 3 weeks of writing and deleted all of it from my computer.

I sent the Franz image to all the other artists working and said “here’s some reference for you, now give me a different fantasy race.”

Part of the reason for me publishing this blog at all was that I felt like Franz deserved to have this image put out there in context. He is brilliant and if anyone out there is working on a property, or just needs great art, give him a call.

The Big Question

This piece raised a bunch of questions, the most important of which was “how does this thing work?” It’s a fantasy world, so I didn’t need a math proof here, just an explanation. Magic was the obvious answer, but that felt weak to me. In my mind, magic makes things like fireballs and lighting bolts, it doesn’t animate massive machines except perhaps at the very climax of a story. Well, what did the idea rejector have to say about it?

If Magic powered these machines, it mean that the person piloting them would most logically have to be a “magic user.”

Wizards, while very powerful and key players in fantasy stories are rarely the heroes. Harry Potter being the obvious counter example, but even Harry deals with every day problems and is far from all powerful. In epic fantasy, the hero is usually a warrior or an “everyman”, someone empowering and easier to relate to than an uberpowerful spell slinger. Wizards in epic fantasy are often the bad guy and rarely are the driving force or “main character.” Gandalf and Frodo. The hero often usually uses a magic widget or two, and it would make sense if the pilot/hero used a Juggernaught in a similar way. I saw no problem having Juggernaughts as the magic widget, albeit a big one, that the hero uses to defeat the enemy, but the pilot couldn’t be a classic “magic user.” That didn’t fit. The idea rejector had spoken.

So “magic” was out. I certainly couldn’t use science either. Steampunk was an option, but the idea rejector threw that out quickly. No part of “Fantasy meets Meks” says “steampunk.” I looked to the Franz piece for inspiration. Clearly, this thing is not powered by any logical tech. It’s made out of normal building materials that have power holding them together, making them move. What does this thing do when it’s not turned “on”? I can’t imagine that it just sits in a field belching fire. There had to be a transformation from “off” to “on.” Could it have a function as a building when not fighting? What buildings hold special powers?

Churches.

Churches talk to gods.

Gods have power, but don’t have to grant that power to classic wizards.

Bingo. Juggernaughts are giant God-powered fighting churches! I ran with this concept for a week to see if it would pan out. The idea rejector never reared its ugly head. I knew that a small group of people would have a problem with the idea of fighting churches due to the word “churches” – but those would not be consumers. They would be the people in a company who feel it’s their job to kill ideas because of some imagined backlash. A good friend of mine calls these people “Men Without Penises” (MWPs). Essentially, they are so overly PC, that they convince themselves that a project is “offensive to someone.” These folks are idea killers par excellance, as you can’t prove or disprove their opinion.

If there were MWPs in the meeting on Star Wars, the movie wouldn’t have been made as all that “force” talk sounded a bit to much like an alternative faith. And lord knows there wouldn’t’ be a single chain mail bikini, comic book heroin with curves, villain that wasn’t a caucasian, or Dark Elf in existence. I should mention that MWPs aren’t limited to Men, I’ve met more than my fair share of female MWPs. I use the phrase as a catch-all phrase for people who are so worried about being insulting to anyone, that they get in the way of products being something to someone.

This is FANTASY. No consumer will think that they are having their Christian (or whatever) faith insulted by an epic fantasy world with God-Powered fighting churches. Fantasy characters call on their gods all the time, The only difference is that in this world, the god answers by taking their church – their most obvious presence in the world – and making it a Juggernaught! If it was just the word “church” that offended the MWPs, I could easily change it to a less modern, but still appropriate word like “temple.” However, when the time came, I did leave the word church in my presentations. It helped me spot the WMPs in the room…

Bonus Game! Which one of these two comics features a MWP?... it’s tricky...

or...

Next up: What’s it All About?

Episode 2: From Gut to Reason

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:20:38 -0400

There is an excellent book called “Blink” by Malcom McDowell – his follow on to the also awesome “The Tipping Point.” In a nutshell, Blink argues that when you are an expert in a field, your first impression is better than your reasoned thought. Secondarily we’ve been trained to ignore our first immediate thought and often use our reasoned thoughts as a path specifically to counter our trained intuition.

I’ve certainly seen this in meeting after meeting, particularly when I worked at larger companies. An initial idea comes out early in a meeting, and the panel of bright experts all immediately “gets it.” But the panel is not happy with their early impressions, and feels like it is their god granted responsibility to test out the idea and look for flaws. Look long enough, and the flaws come out, however minor, and the idea gets squashed. In most companies, all it takes is one person to find a reason to shoot something down, and down it goes. At Wizards of the Coast, we named this phenomenon “The Skaff Effect” after a coworker who was particularly good at shooting things down (we actually had two meanings for the term Skaff Effect, only one of which I think he knew).

Skaff was/is brilliant – freakin’ genius IMO, and he thought it was his job to try to poke holes in things before the company spent large amounts of money on a bad idea. Seems logical right? He expected everyone around him to challenge him right back. He never realized that generally folks thought so highly of him that they weren’t about to disagree strongly in a meeting. It didn’t help matters that Skaff was pretty forceful in his idea presentation. In his defense, he was more than willing to change his mind if given good reason, it’s just that few people tried.

But here’s the rub, all ideas have flaws. This might seem illogical because some ideas and products have been so successful, but trust me, pre-launch, the AUTOMOBILE could have been shut down by Skaff in a WotC meeting. After all, it was loud, smelled bad, could break easily, could only travel on a road, wasn’t as fast as a horse at full gallop, couldn’t turn as well as a horse, and was 10 times as expensive as a horse!

Ideas should be rated as a comparison of their good point to their bad points. Play up the good ones in development and increase that ratio. Entertainment ideas particularly can’t be everything to all people. Who likes every kind of movie? Where was the love story in Saving Private Ryan? Where was the chase scene in Sleepless in Seattle?

How did all of this effect Juggernaught? Well, my gut quickly saw that the nugget (Fantasy + Meks) was great. If I went looking for reasons not to do it though, I would have found them. Instead, I decided to go the other way and try to figure out why I liked it so much. The logic being if I could really nail down what made the idea great, I could focus development in a way to maximize the good, thereby minimizing whatever downsides there were in comparison.

I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out why I liked the nugget. Obviously, I liked the fact that I hadn’t seen it done well before. I liked the fact that there is a genre of “Giant Fighting Machine” games, and while this product fit into that category, the category wasn’t very crowded, like say the WWII shooter category. Mostly though, I liked the fact that it was a tested Sci-Fi genre was being deployed into traditional Fantasy - which is 4+ times as popular. So often Fantasy gives it’s themes to Sci-Fi, it was cool to see it work the other way.

But what specifically did I like about Meks and what specifically did I like about Fantasy?

I worked on a list of defining features of both. I then took the list and made a set of requirements for the property in order to retain the value that my gut saw so quickly. That list looked something like what is below (except it was 15+ pages).

Meks
- Allow for a feeling of player empowerment. These things are big ass kicking machines that make the driver feel powerful.
o Effect: Players needed to be pilots
- Scale. Meks get cooler as they get bigger.
o Effect: Even the smallest Mek had to be large, and the world needed to stretch far enough that massive Meks were possible
- Fantastic. Not “Fantasy” but not logical either.
o I needed to find a unprovable, but reasonable way for these things to work
- Built. Most Mek games allow for customization
o Needed a wide variety of Meks, and allow players to have an effect in construction.

Fantasy
- Factions. Most Fantasy has alternate races (LoTR-like) or at least factionalized humans (Game of Thrones). These factions drive the world creation
o Needed natural factions
- Magic. Either natural or god-based.
o Big differentiator and needed to make it an integral part of the property
- Way more popular that Sci-Fi
o Look for the most popular Fantasy worlds for tone. This led me to “Blue Sky” fantasy (more on that later).
- Heroic. Most computer games are heroic, but fantasy as a genre is built around heroes almost exclusively.
o Allow the player to be the hero, not just be part of the experience/member of a squad.

After distilling what I liked about the nugget and figuring out how it would effect the world, I looked back on my desired outcome – a computer game. For years, I’ve used the Mech Warrior titles as an example of taking a brands value and translating it to a different platform well. The original Battle Tech titles were mostly literal translations of the board game. Mech Warrior took the real values of a mech game, particularly empowerment, and put it front and center in a way a top down board game never could. In my mind, Juggernaught should be a 1st person Mech Warrior type fighting game.

It also helped that the Mech Warrior development team was close, so I figured when I was ready, I could get a meeting with them…

Nothing on my list wouldn’t work as a Mech Warrior style game-play product (whew). Additionally, there was nothing on my list that required “new tech.” No part of this product would require revolutionary game play, This made me happy, as revolutionary products are way harder to pitch and harder to communicate to potential consumers.

Having reached this point, I had essentially created two tools. One tool was an idea generator. Looking at what I wanted to emphasize it was fairly easy to come up with creative ideas to go from nugget to property. More importantly though, I created an idea ejector. I knew I wanted a hyper-focused property. I did not want to add ideas and details because they were “cool,” I wanted to add ideas and details because they reinforced the key values of the nugget. This might seem obvious, but I’m telling you, having ideas is easy, throwing them away is hard. Too many properties allow a “10% off” idea to enter early in development. That 10% off idea then gets used as the basis for further 10% off ideas, until the final property sprawls everywhere and instead of being something to someone, it’s everything to no one.

The really ugly and painful development experience is that some ideas that seem to fit early, after being fully developed, no longer fit. Cutting those ideas loose is probably the hardest thing to do, and I was hoping my idea ejector tool would help minimize this experience.

Next Up: Franz, Gods, and Men Without Penises

Episode 1: Starting With This...

Mon, 9 Apr 2007 11:12:01 -0400

This is the story of the creation of an Intellectual Property called Juggernaught from a blank sheet of paper to completion. Who is this for? Me mostly, I did a fair amount work that I wanted to get out there in some form. I also used some artists along the way who deserve to have their work in the public. If I do my job well here, there should be a lot of value in reading this site for anyone who wants an inside peek at how properties are developed either for curiosity or for sharpening skills.

I should say that Juggernaught is not “my D&D campaign world” and I am not a hobbyist. Working is this field is my job and has been for 14 years. This is part of what I do for a living (not this site, but the hobby game field).

In my entries, I will try to make it clear what questions I asked, and why I answered them the way I did. There is a lot of logic to a good property that is often hidden in a direct way from the end consumer. While not directly discussed, this hidden logic ads greatly to the consumers enjoyment and I thought it would be interesting to bring these questions up front. When I’m done, hopefully it will be clear that a good IP is not just “something cool someone thought of”, but something designed to be purposefully cool to a particular group. There are rarely any “happy accidents” in good IP design.

So, follow along and over the next few months, and enjoy the unfolding world of Juggernaught!