Every Wednesday, I have an essay on any topic that catches my fancy!
For me, game design was pretty much like writing: most of us do it but few call attention to it. I remember playing my first few games of
Monopoly and my brother made a house rule that all money lost (whether from Income Tax or some card) would be placed in the Free Parking slot--to make that particular area more interesting. It's a small deviation from the rules yet for me, this is already game design. The moment you start tinkering with rules and making changes to the game, you're a game designer.
As much fun as board games were at the time--or those that I was familiar with--my first love came in the form of video games. I owned a Famicom (the Japanese equivalent of the NES) and I remember spending many fond hours playing with it. For me, the Famicom was an interesting device because you could play various games with it, as opposed to something like the Game and Watch, or even the arcade machines. However, the problem with video games is that you can't easily tinker with the rules. One needs to be a programmer in order to modify the game and for a brief period of time, I wanted to learn programming so that I would design the next big video game. I bought books on computer coding and I was even thought BASIC--but no game arose from it.
Nonetheless, at school, I still created games, usually on graph paper and involved mazes and high adventure. I was a fan of
Street Fighter II at the time and I even made an ad-hoc game where each character had a different move that dealt a different amount of damage. The only ones who played with was my seatmate but creating those games felt wonderful for a ten-year old. I even remember spending one summer creating my own board game using stickers from
Battle of the Planets. It was ridiculously simple and involved rolling dice and the like. My conceit was that the stickers on the board concealed an event underneath it (unfortunately, I wasn't yet antiquated with the use of cards in board games) so that one didn't necessarily know what one got into when you landed there.
In terms of game design, there are two games that really interests me. The first are tabletop RPGs like
Dungeons & Dragons. The thing with such games is that the Game Master usually has their own set of house rules. In D&D, this is more pronounced, especially with seemingly mundane things like the ultimate critical hit (a special effect that happens when you roll a 20) or critical fumbles (when you roll a 1). The problem however with such RPGs is that game design is usually in the hands of the GM alone and leaves the players out. Sure, the players might have suggestions but the GM is not obligated to take into account their suggestion. But I've experienced collaborations on determining the setting, what the flavor will be and sometimes even rules mechanics of the world. It's a very different experience from what I was familiar with compared to video games where pretty much what you see is what you get. (Of course I might add that many PC games these days have changed--there are all sorts of mods and skins and maps and hacks that enable one to change the game or tell an entirely different story.)
The other game that encourages game design I think are card games. What I had in mind was
Magic: The Gathering but it's not limited to just that. I mean the regular deck of cards is proof of game design: who came up with ideas for Blackjack and the variants of Poker? Even the Philippines has its own "card game" with
Tong Eights (too complicated to describe here). Whoever proposed Strip Poker or losers guzzling down a mug of beer whenever one lost is a game designer--it's modifying the rules of the game! But going back to
Magic: The Gathering, aside from coming up with variants on the game (especially with tournaments like Sealed Deck or Booster Drafts), I do think that every veteran player has at one point in time or another imagined designing a card for the game. It didn't have to be a revolutionary idea or a spanking new ability, it could be something as lowly as a 2/2 creature for one mana. It's just that some people actually went on and published their designs for the game, others merely spoofed it (as can be seen in some websites, blogs, and gaming magazines), while there's a segment that's probably frustrated game designers and simply decide to move on and remain as players.
I don't profess to be a professional game designer in the sense that I've published or sold any game design. But that doesn't mean the game designer in me has died. In D&D for example, I'm always imagining what would be a cool ability, a nifty feat, a unique monster, or an uncommon spell. In board games, there's always the house rule that'll add spice to the game. And perhaps the best thing about all of this is unlike a few decades ago, people now have a venue for their game design ideas. I mean part of
Magic: The Gathering's success was dependent on the Internet (especially with all that errata) but one of the first spoof Magic cards came from Photoshopped images of existing cards and posting them on the web.
This is easily an indispensable tome for anyone who has a mania for faeries. Aside from the short stories in this anthology, the comprehensive introduction of Terri Windling on the fey and the illustrations by Charles Vess is worth the price of admission alone. Moreover, the last few pages also has a Further Reading section on the topic of faeries. The typography of the book is appropriate to the faery theme and makes the text quite readable. In other words, it's really a pretty book. But The Faery Reel isn't just about exterior beauty and I'd still buy the book if only for the story selections and the poetry. There's actually a lot of stories I liked in this anthology and choosing a select few to talk about is quite difficult: "Catnyp" by Delia Sherman manages to reconcile something as anachronistic as libraries and faeries. "Tengu Mountain" by Gregory Frost is this adventurous Japanese tale that ends perfectly. "The Night Market" by Holly Black is partially this guilty pleasure because it uses Philippine myth yet successfully makes it a horrifying story in a way I didn't expect. "Never Never" by Bruce Glassco is a new take on a very familiar icon while Jeffrey Ford's "The Annals of Eelin-Ok" is probably one of my top ten Jeffrey Ford stories. It's only now, grabbing the book after reading it one month ago, that I realized that I really love this particular anthology as flipping through the contents, I'm thinking hey, I recall and love that story and those weren't even my favorite ones. The only thing that doesn't appeal to me is the poetry--not because the poetry is bad but because I'm just the type that doesn't really appreciate the medium. But despite that, this is nonetheless easily one of the anthologies I'll cherish. Get it, grab a copy, and it should belong in everyone's book shelf! At the very least it's a great resource on the fey.
