Last time, we discussed multi-card moves here on Storium Basics. This time, I'd like to spend a bit of time on their opposite: cardless moves.
While most moves in Storium games will probably involve cards, cardless moves are an option in Storium. Narrators will vary on how much they like them. For my part, I'm totally fine with them as they add some great color to scenes, but I do want to caution that you not allow them to overwhelm scenes. They're great for adding detail but can also sap a scene of momentum if they are overused.
When writing a cardless move, think similarly to how you write a move for a Neutral card like a Subplot - but unlike neutral cards, cardless moves don't push the scene closer to completion. Remember, a challenge's remaining card slots are, in a way, the measure of how much "story" is left in the challenge, and how close it is to a conclusion. When you play cardless, you aren't changing that at all. You also aren't in any way tipping the challenge's balance - cardless moves obviously don't count as Strong or Weak, or even Neutral. In other words, the story of the challenge does not move forward in a significant fashion, and the actions of your character do not have a particularly noteworthy impact on the challenge.
When you write a cardless move it should be more about showing what your character is doing in the current status of the scene than anything else. Your move doesn't significantly impact the scene and doesn't move the situation forward in any notable way…but it still needs to relate to what's going on. You're not playing on a challenge, but…still think about the move in relation to a challenge and/or the scene all the same. It should never drift totally away from what the scene is focused on.
I'm fond of using cardless moves to show my character's reactions to big moments - to help make other players awesome by making clear that what they've done got a reaction out of my character. That's one good way of using these.
They can also be used to just develop a point a little more, without actually pushing it forward. Maybe your last move was about conversing with a character, trying to convince him of something, and while other stuff is going on in the scene, you'd like to take a moment to show that the conversation is still going on and develop the character's motivations a bit more, without actually having the challenge's situation change yet. That can be a good use of a cardless move.
The trick is to use them, but not abuse them. It's easy to fall into a trap of overusing these move types when a challenge is active. They're good for reactions, and good for further development...but don't react to everything, and don't develop everything. When challenges are active, keep the focus on playing on the challenges. Moves with cards, for most games, should clearly outnumber cardless moves while challenges are active...otherwise, games really risk losing momentum. Use them with restraint, and they'll work best.
That does bring up an important side note, though: There are times when a narrator will set up or continue a scene without challenges, specifically to give you the opportunity to roleplay with cardless moves. Obviously at that point, cardless moves are what the game's all about! Just remember to play according to the story, and even if there aren't challenges present, don't allow your character to overwhelm the rest of the game.
For more information on cardless moves and cardless moments, see these articles:
lunes, 24 de febrero de 2020
domingo, 23 de febrero de 2020
For Four Years In A Row...
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| Noelene du Toit (Educator-in-Charge of Northcliff High School's Esports Club) awarding learners awards for excellence in esports. |
Of course, the results of schools may fluctuate from year-to-year as learners come and go, but if the administration of the club is sound, the club should hold its own.
Thus the achievement of Northcliff High School is quite remarkable.
Mind Sports South Africa's (MSSA) Online School Championships is the first championship of the year, and represents the ability of the schools to gear up for thhe gruelling competitive year ahead. The points earned by the various schools in this first official championships, sets the ttone for the rest of the year as schools fight for the honour of being named, and known as, the best esports school of the year.
The remarkable achievement of Northcliff dominating MSSA's Online School Championships for four years in a row is previously unheard of. The result is testament to the hard work, dedication, and excellence of those few, but happy few, educators who put the best interests of their learners first.
The top ten schools for the past four years:
Also read:
Results of MSSA's 10th Annual Online Championships for High Schools
- Ensuring gender equity in esports.
- MSSA celebrates its women who have earned Protea Colours.
- Why schools and universities should invest in esports.
- Entry fees for Provincial and National Championships
- How school clubs affiliate for the 2020 season.
- 2020 Calendar of Events
- The various events held by Mind Sports South Africa.
- Why schools and universities should invest in esports
- New National Team Selection Criteria
- Selecting the national Protea teams for Mind Sports South Africa.
- The road to Eilat
- MSSA to nominate candidates for IESF's International Referee Workshop.
sábado, 22 de febrero de 2020
God I Love Subquark Games!
Whats going on everyone!?
Today for the #2019gameaday challenge I grabbed one of my favorite GOTG games, Mint Tin Pirates from one of my all time favorite game publishers, Subquark Games!
Of course my lovely wife won the game but that doesn't make this game any less enjoyable.
I can honestly say that I have grown to expect to have their line of games with me wherever I go. By far my favorite games for travel and nearly a must!
As always, thank you for reading and don't forget to stop and smell the meeples! :)
-Tim
jueves, 20 de febrero de 2020
A New Day, A New Year.
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| There is nothing as exciting, and rewarding, as heading off to represent your country in international competition. |
Mind Sports South Africa (MSSA) wishes all its member clubs, Registered Players, and members of the media a Joyful and Prosperous New Year.
The year is full of optimism and opportunity.
MSSA is, of course, committed to carry on delivering LAN and online championships from grass-root level to the highest of standards.
International Esports Federation (IESF) has already declared the City of Eilat, Israel, to be the host of IESF's 12th World Championships. MSSA has already committed to send a full team to the event.
FMJD, the international body for draughts, has also released its calendar of international events.
Thus, a year of hard work presents itself to MSSA's Board of volunteers in order to make dreams and aspirations actual.
However, all athletes should note that the only way into the National Protea Team is through participation in MSSA events as a member of an affiliated club.
For more information please contact mindsportscorrespondence@gmail.com
Also read:
Esports titles selected for all MSSA's Premier Provincial and National Championships
- Esports titles selected for all MSSA's School Championships.
- Esports titles selected for all MSSA's Student championships.
- 2020 Calendar of Events
- The various events held by Mind Sports South Africa.
- Why schools and universities should invest in esports.
- New National Team Selection Criteria
- Selecting the national Protea teams for Mind Sports South Africa.
- MSSA's umpiring course - 25 January 2020.
- The road to Eilat
Hiring: 3D Artist
Title: 3D artist
Focus: Environment design
Type: Full-time, permanent
Last day to apply: 17th of June 2018
Frictional games are filled with terror, intrigue, mystery, and emotion. We want our environments to reflect that, from the shape of the landscape to the smallest rock, while subtly guiding players and helping to enhance the gameplay.
This is where you come in.
We are now looking for an experienced 3D artist, who will focus on environment design for our upcoming games. This means working closely with our gameplay programmers / designers, and using modelling, texturing, and design skills to create memorable, interesting, and functional environments for our players to experience.
What will you work on?
We are quite a small team, but we consider it our strength. As an environment artist you will get to work on everything from props to high-level design. This means your contribution will greatly influence how the final game looks, plays, and evokes emotions.
Here are some of the things you will be working on:
- Collaborating with designers to create level layouts, combining both gameplay and an artistic perspective.
- Taking levels from whitebox to a polished product.
- Creating basic models that make up the levels, such as walls and floors.
- Modelling props of various complexity, both with and without the help of concept art, and often having to take gameplay concerns into account.
- Constructing particle systems, both by drawing textures and using parameters in our editor.
- Combining various techniques to create special effects, such as flowing water or fire.
For some examples of our environments, please check the video above!
What are we looking for?
The person we're looking for is creative, driven and self-sufficient. We have recently set up a central hub in Malmö, Sweden, and hope you can move over to our seaside city sometime in the future.
You have to be a European resident to apply.
Here are some essential skills we require:
- Good understanding of composition and player guidance.
- Ability to challenge yourself, make bold creative decisions, and try non-conventional things.
- A critical approach to your work, with the ability to take a step back and reflect.
- A strive for structure, efficiency, and clarity.
- Strong self-drive and ability to organise your own work.
- Interest in and ability to do research for interesting prop and environment solutions.
- Love for working on a variety of tasks.
- Fluency in English.
- Excellent skills in 3D software. Modo preferred.
- Familiarity with Zbrush/Mudbox/similar.
- Excellent skills in Substance.
- Excellent skills in Photoshop or similar software.
- Familiarity with issue-tracking software.
- Experience in classic/non-PBR workflow.
- Basic rigging and animation skills.
- Love for horror, sci-fi, and narrative games.
- A major role in completing at least one game.
- Great free-drawing skills.
- Experience in level design.
- Strong game design skills.
- Experience kitbashing/working with modular sets.
What do we offer?
We make games, because that's what we love. But we know there are other things we love, like playing games, taking part in sports, or spending time with our families. We believe a healthy balance between work and life reflects positively on your work, which is why we don't encourage crunch.
We also offer:
- Flexible working hours.
- Opportunities to influence your workflow.
- Variety in your work tasks, and ability to influence your workload.
- Participation in our internal game Show & Tell sessions, so you'll have input into all aspects of the game.
- Social security and holidays that are up to the Swedish standards.
- An inclusive and respectful work environment.
- An office in central Malmö you can use as much as you please.
- Fun workmates, game and movie nights, and other outings!
Apply? Apply!
If all of the above piqued your interest, we would love to hear from you! Send us your application 17th of June the latest - but the sooner, the better! Please attach your:
- Cover Letter
- Why should we hire YOU?
- CV
- Portfolio
- Link or PDF
- Preliminary work test
- See the test below
- Examples of works that have inspired you or blown you away
- PDF, screenshots preferred.
Please note that we require all the attachments to consider you.
Send your application to apply@frictionalgames.com!
Preliminary work test
After 3 years of failed experiments, Professor Kim finally managed to reverse gravity. However, the professor died just as he succeeded, and the whole thing ran amok.
The player enters the research facility where the experiments took place. As they go through the level, they gradually learn about what the professor was trying to achieve. At the end they're met with a revelation, and see the disturbing results of the experiment. As they reach the end, the level must loop in a way where the player finds themselves near the entrance, where they first started.
We are looking for a simple design, done as a rough 3D sketch/white box. You are free to write notes and do paint-overs on top of the 3D.
This test is a first step in the evaluation process, showing us your basic skills, so we are not looking for you to spend a lot of time on it. Imagine this as a quick proof of concept you would present before doing a pitch or a design.
We will evaluate your artist vision, creativity as well as level design skills.
Put everything as a collection of images into one folder on Dropbox, Drive or similar, and send the link to us.
Privacy Policy
By sending us your application, you give us permission to store your personal information and attachments.
We store all applications in a secure system. The applications are stored for two years, after which they are deleted. If you want your your information removed earlier, please contact us through our Contact form. Read more in our Privacy Policy.
Feeling Guilty About Gaming Deaths!!!?
I was wondering if anyone else out there couldn't help feeling a bit guilty about the fate of certain characters in this game....
If you don't know, in Mass Effect 2, depending on how you play the game and how much time you pump into the game characters will either live or die in the final chapter of the story and all at a pretty rapid succession!
For me, I felt bad when Mordin died, and again, of all things, when Garrus died, I even had a twinge of guilt at seeing Jack's mangled face.... am I disclosing here how little I put into the game, here...?
I think to be honest only Grunt, the black guy, Miranda and the DLC girl survived for me... this was surprising as I thought if you did the side quests for each character they basically would survive... this was not the case, I used Garrus all the time in pretty much every quest.... but still... he didn't make it.... any I felt a little guilty for it......
As for Grunt, I had no sympathy towards him, I had read a few minor spoiler hints and I was under the impression that you had to choose one character to kill off, to send on a suicide mission..... I had Grunt in mind for this because I figured he was the least human and most animal like..... and yet, Grunt survived!
I went down to CeX and saw Mass Effect 3 for £2, so have just bought it, I understand that characters that lived can get carried over, but those who died, they are gone forever.
There is something refreshing about this. In most games death is something that can be corrected with loading up an old save, or using a phoenix down or whatever.... but here, death is death and we have to live with the consequences of our failings to protect the characters in our team. That's something I really like because its true to life, and whilst we play games as a form of escape, I like games to have some moral teaching in them, or something to help make me a better person. Being reminded of my mortality and the mortality of my friends, and the permanence of death... they are all good things from a Catholic world view.
Remember Mordin, thou art bits, and unto bits thou hast returned.
Remember Fr Higgins you are dust and unto dust you shall return.
miércoles, 19 de febrero de 2020
Helping Kriel Company
Since I've been following what has been going on in CID, and given that I own both Khador and Legion, and love both Man-o-War and Blighted Ogrun, I did a lot of dojo over the last few months while I was out of actually playing the game.
Now that I'm coming back to play Warmachine again and I've settled back on Trolls, there have been a few things I've noticed as a problem before I took my hiatus as well as the things that have changed for themes and list building in the newer themes that PP has designed. Mostly this is to go over the few problems Trolls face in our themes, most of which is in Kriel Comapny.
Saving Horthol
One thing that other themes have been getting that Trolls lack is that generally their Dragoons count towards the free points. Laddermore adds to the free points counter for Storm Division, Man-o-War Dragoons add to the counter for Man-o-War, etc. One thing that would be a huge quality of life improvement for Troll lists in both Band of Heroes and Storm of the North would be to change it so that rather than just Trollblood Units counted towards free points it could be "Trollblood Units and Dragoons" or just change it to call out the specific unit types to allow Horthol to count towards the points.
This would really be a quality of life improvement for list building and it would get Horthol back onto the table without severely hamstringing what can be taken in addition to the beasts for these unit heavy armies.
Fixing Kriel Company
Trolls have some very strong themes, but Kriel Company is by far our least represented theme force, and for good reasons: it is extremely restrictive. The inability to take any of our beasts without a ranged attack, and thus no access to Rage outside of a Mountain King really changes what kinds of things our lists can play into. This is a very frustrating turn of events since all of our heavies are effectively designed around having access to the Rage animus. We pay a premium for access to ranged heavies because we can turn them into respectable melee threats. The theme has little to no armor cracking unless you go down the Gargantuan route.
What is upsetting is that other factions "Ranged Only Themes" aren't similarly restricted: Sons of the Tempest and Winds of Death can still take their Centurions and Gladiators. Trolls are pigeon holed in that our other themes effectively remove almost all of our ranged options especially ones with "legacy models" that formed the core of a lot of combined arms lists in MK2 and put them all into a single theme (SotN gives us two ranged units and one Battle Engine to make a combined arms list).
It's also not as if our shooting options are inherently good or oppressive. Most if not all of them are fairly average at best, with short ranges across the board. They require specific caster support to be really effective – that's why our "ranged casters" are extremely powerful and synergistic and would be utterly broken if put into another faction (imagine either Grim or Gunny in Cygnar or Legion).
The 'official solution' for getting armor cracking in Kriel Company is to say that we should just take a Mountain King if we want Rage, but then we start working against what the theme wants to get benefits. Once you take the Mountain King you can't afford to take any other heavies without cutting into theme benefits elsewhere and the list suffers for it.
I believe there is a more elegant fix to Kriel Company's problems rather than just allowing Maulers to be taken or by giving something like the Blitzer Rage as a special animus in theme. After all, putting Maulers into KC would make yet another theme where we take "Mauler + Other Heavy" and call it a day before moving on to taking the non-beast options that count towards the free points.
One theory is to make all Warbeasts, Battle Engines, and Units count towards the free points, but up the requirement for a "free" item to 30 points instead of 20. This means KC will still max out at 3 free items, but taking a larger battlegroup or a Gargantuan isn't a huge loss. I think this is warranted given that the theme doesn't have access to any of the really strong melee unit options that are available in Trolls.
It also gives us another theme that would allow more variety if we wanted more than just "Beast Points + 15" worth of Warbeasts without hamstringing the theme. It's not as if Trolls have the fury management to make a seriously effective battlegroup based gunline like Legion or Skorne could, but even if we did we could just build that in Power of Dhunia and have access to Rage via a Mauler right now.
If you wanted to play beasts and have them be powerful in melee you're still playing a "Gargantuan list" where the SR packet still favors multiple heavies vs. gargantuan/colossals. You're still not taking lots of ranged units with our melee beatstick casters that don't support them because they're just not particularly effective without the support from our ranged focused casters.
Overall, I don't think this change breaks the game, or even makes Trolls particularly oppressive. It would just help get our ranged units and maybe even a War Wagon back onto the table vs. having us be a overly melee focused faction.
Please PP, help make those units see the table!
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