Doing That Slouch And Jive, The Artist Must Survive, We've Got All We Need We Cried, And We Don't Look Back

--"Polaroids (cover)", Mary Lou Lord

The first game I can remember inventing was a wrestling board game I made for me and my brother Francis. We were both heavily into the 80s WWF frenzy back then so it was a natural leap to want to capture the action at home. I don't know--I guess I've always been into games from a young age, but that time when I was seven or eight was the first time I actually wanted to create a game. It was simple. We each made up our own stable of wrestlers, came up with their gimmicks, and appropriated two special moves into their repertoire. I remember my big dog was named Polar Bear and his special moves were the Avalanche (body splash) and Bear Hug. Francis' best guy was named Lights' Out. It was basically a dice rolling game wrapped around the theme of wrestling. Looking back, I can see how crude that first attempt at creativity was--cutout ring glued to cardboard, markers stolen from a board game we never played anymore, mismatched dice. The thing was my brother and I loved that game. We played it so much it would spill over into real fights over who was cheating who, who the belts really belonged to (oh yeah, we made up belts for our wrestlers), and whether or not certain wrestlers had earned title shots. As far as first efforts go, that one was pretty solid as I took it with me to a few camping trips when I was Boy Scouts too.

My next two games were invented on the heels of one another. Subsequently, I'm not sure which one came first.

One was the Nature game, which my cousins still talk about, and involved randomly choosing an animal from dozens (duck, lion, elephant, monkey, shark, &c...). Then you would roll the dice to change the environment (one or two meant land, three or four meant water, five or six meant air). If your animal could move in that environment then you got to move or attack your opponent. First person to attack their opponent three times was the winner. Yes, it was another simple game that depended almost entirely on luck (let me tell you picking the duck was the luckiest move in the game because that sucker could fly, swim, and waddle, meaning he always moved on every turn). Yet we played that for months and probably added four zoos' worth of animals to the deck.

The other game was a BMX racing game that I made up the rules for in an afternoon. You basically had a set number spaces of moves you could go on each turn, but the jumps were controlled by you rolling a dice to see how many spaces you jumped. Jump too little and you lost your turn. Jump too much and you lost your turn. Yes, folks, my first games were really about knowing how to roll the dice. However, I did draw some fairly intricate tracks for this game, which took me about an hour to design and get down on paper each.

I guess that reflected my thinking at the time. I figured if it was a board game then it had to involve dice somehow. I was locked into the mentality that players were at the whim of some small cube because that's what I thought of when I thought of games. From Risk to Monopoly to Trivial Pursuit--everything revolved around dice. I only utilized my creativity in regards to outlining the rules and designing the boards. It was only later that I tried to come up with something more strategic when designing rules for my games.

My next major game didn't come until college and the days I was watching Ranma 1/2. I'd been playing a lot of Magic:The Gathering and Big Two so I'd been working on some ideas regarding how cards made for more tactical and strategic games. No longer dependent on dice to provide the randomization, I started thinking about how to create something playable involving cards. When I came across a blatant Chutes and Ladders rip-off themed to Ranma I got my first idea for a card game. It was like poker, but with hands dependent on your opponent's hand. To utilize the example of Poker, it'd be like holding a straight that became a straight flush if your opponent played a pair, or became a pair if your opponent played a flush. I think the ingenious idea of that game I can still salvage because it's a neat mechanic whereby you can't just memorize a hierarchy of hands. The value of every round fluctuated with that particular deal. It was very replayable, and the theme fit perfectly (i.e. Ranma was worth 15 vs. almost everybody, but he was worth 0 if played against Akane because Ranma would never hurt Akane, but Akane would hurt Ranma; Ryoga was worth 12 in human form, but worth 0 if the opponent had the bucket of water because, let's face it, little black piglets can't hurt anyone--but, if he was in little black piglet form, then the opponent couldn't use Akane because Akane could never hurt her itty-bitty pet P-chan; &c...). This game also has the distinction of being the only game I've ever invented that I've ever played with either Jina or Breanne.

Over the next few years I had dozens of ideas for new games. Most of them were alright, but most of them never actually got produced even in a mock-up form. The themes of these games ran the gamut from witches to werewolves, from samurai to purely abstract games. I couldn't stop working on ideas in my head. I still can't. To this day I always have an idea or two rolling around that I'm one step from putting onto paper. Indeed, I have an idea in my head for a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl decided entirely be a regular deck of playing cards that I think would make a fantastic game.


from a real sheet for production for my card game 12 Clans

I used to think the underlying reason I had for trying to invent games was because it was another outlet for my imagination. There are few things that I enjoy more than creating a system of rules and tweaking them until they make sense. It's the mathematician in me. Very few people know this, but I actually have more aptitude for math than for English; I actually scored considerably higher on the SATS in the former in comparison to the latter. That's why I always thought it was a way to utilize my fascination for numbers and the way they work with my talent for creating stories. That's all theme is for a game; it's merely placing setting and characters to breathe life to what would otherwise be a lifeless flowchart of numbers and calculations. To me designing games was like trying to come up with that perfect blend of art and logic.

Now I've realized it fills another need for me. It's an avenue of socialization as well. If I look back on all my games, they've always been a blend of the exhilaration of coming up with a good design with the satisfaction of having people enjoy them. Even when they don't work, I always take a little comfort in the fact that friends and family were willing to give them a shot. And when they do work, like that wrestling game, like that Ranma game, I don't think I've had a better time just sitting around a table than when playing those games. There's something nice about being responsible for keeping an evening going, knowing that something I made up has provided the perfect excuse to while away the hours with people I feel close to.

That's my real goal, to find that game that everyone can enjoy and that I can just bring out and put smiles on their faces. Sometimes it's hard to find an activity that people from all walks of life can enjoy. I think games, if done right and with that intention in mind, may be the only things that can really draw a group of disparate people together.

That's what I aspire to, to create something that gets people to get along--even if only for an evening.

That'd be something worth playing.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers