Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I can explain what went through my head on my morning jog. One of Robin’s theses in HHP is that in most narrative media, it’s rare for the protagonist to enjoy a string of unmitigated successes. The key to effective narrative is modulating the pass/fail (or hope/fear) cycle. The book offers some pretty compelling evidence for this, and for the sake of this post, I’m going to accept it.1

So in Fiasco, after the Tilt, you know whether or not success or failure is good for your character in the long run. The game encourages you to push for your character to have the same fortune throughout.2 In the Vegas game at GenCon, for example, I had two black dice at the Tilt, so the “best” thing for my character was to keep losing.3

What I ended up doing in our LA 1936 game, however, was pulling a reverse. My burlesque dancer, Holly, had been dominant in her early scenes, especially against other player characters, like when she faced down Will’s nightclub owner. The game told me that I needed to play for white dice. But Will, sitting to my left, also needed them, and by the time it got to my third scene, there was only one left. Will had just done a great, possibly redemptive scene with his character, and I wanted him to win. So I decided to take a dive, and played my next scene to fail, leaving the white dice for him to take.4 I ended up with a fantastic bit of drama involving the revelation of my impossible love for Ryan’s corrupt liquor licensing commissioner, resulting in what Robin would call a dramatic down arrow. And it worked. I felt great about it, and the rest of the people around the table clearly responded to it.

What this game and Robin’s book made me realize is that I love pulling these sorts of reversals5, both because they make the character deeper and more complex and because they make the story more interesting. So thank you, Robin, for seeding these ideas in my head, and thank you, Jason, for making me wrestle with them.

1 The book had such an effect on me that after I finished reading it, I started doing beat analysis on the in-flight movie on the plane I was on at the time.6

2 Excepting that the consequences of your first two scenes don’t play into this, but I’m going to ignore that for now.

3 And boy did I.

4 Which didn't work, because Ryan took it, but I had to try.

5 What I realized this morning is that I’ve done exactly the same thing before, like in the game of Shooting the Moon at Dreamation in 2008, where made my scumbag business unit manager turn a volte face in the final scene to make his wife’s decision to leave him that much more poignant.

6 Which in this case was Shrek 4.

After lunch, I had two sessions with two of Esther’s co-authors. The first was “Trust, Authenticity, and Forgiveness” with Diana Larsen. Diana focused on trust as the key differentiator between teams and workgroups, on why trust was essential for high-performing teams, and on what we can do to build (and rebuild) trust in the workplace.4 The second was “Agile Managers: The Essence of Leadership” with Johanna Rothman.5 Johanna asked the question, what do Agile managers do, given that most managers’ traditional functions should be subsumed by Agile teams. In it’s simplest form, the answer is “act strategically, rather than tactically.” Managers should set strategy by managing the project portfolio, remove organizational obstacles, foster trusting relationship, lead hiring decisions, and build the capacity of the organization.

That both of these two sessions talked about trust as an essential component of Agile teams, and that both presented the same four-step framework6 for offering feedback surprised me, though it shouldn’t have. When we talk about valuing people over processes, we’re inherently acknowledging the need for trust. People build software, and we need to treat them like people, not processes.

1 Open Jams are self-organizing events that occur semi-spontaneously during the conference. They had four spaces set aside for these, and they were organized using a whiteboard and Post-Its, plus a wiki and Twitter.

2 This is the structure Esther and Diana Larsen present in Agile Retrospectives, which we’ve been using for several iterations now and which has given us great results.

3 As well as a few of what might be called “opportunities for learning.”

4 Her working definition of trust came from Roy Lewicki: “An individual’s belief in and willingness to act on the basis of the words, actions, and decisions of another.”

5 Who wrote Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management with Esther.

6 Create an opening – describe the behavior – state the impact – make a request. I’ve seen this somewhere before, but I don’t remember where.

After breakfast, my first session was Janet Gregory’s “The Dance of the Agile Tester: An Iteration-Length Performance.” I have Janet’s book, Agile Testing,3 but I haven’t been able to do more than skim it, so I was curious to get an overview of testing in an Agile context. The session didn’t disappoint, despite be interrupted by a fire alarm. Among my key takeaways:

• Continuous Integration means that a stable, up-to-date build can be pulled for testing at any time.
• It is useful to differentiate types of tests along two axes: tests that support the team vs. those that critique the product, and tests that are business facing vs. those that are technology facing.4
• In Agile, a requirement is a story + an example + a conversation.
• Don’t leave iteration planning without your acceptance tests defined, at least at a high level. Acceptance tests are about intent, so it is vital to develop a shared understanding of the problem.
• Automating tests is what makes time for exploratory testing.

A focus on testing and integration carried over into my afternoon session, “Continuous Delivery” by Jez Humble and Martin Fowler. This presentation was all about “taking code that works when you hit F5 and making sure it works for the customer.” Their contention is that cycle time5 is probably the most valuable measure of whether you’re doing Agile well. One cause of long cycle times is that the “last mile” of delivering something that works in a production environment is painful. We’ve gotten good at setting up continuous integration systems that verify our code works in a development environment, but that doesn’t always tell us if it will work for our customers. There are usually two forces at play here: poor collaboration between development and operations, which is often caused by organizational structure, and lots of manual work to deploy to a production environment, caused by a lack of knowledge and tools. While Jez talked a little about the former near the end of the presentation, most of the session focused on the latter.

So what is the ideal that we’re trying to reach?

• Getting software production-ready is not a phase; it happens continuously.
• Deployments are reliable and easy to roll back in a rare case something goes wrong.
• Everyone can self-service; there’s no additional overhead when someone needs a build.
• Releases happen according to the needs of the business, not the needs of development.

How do we get there? We need fast, automated feedback on production readiness every time there is a change to code, to infrastructure, or to configuration. When we have small deltas, finding and fixing problems is easier. Getting this feedback requires that we have excellent automated testing at all levels, that we have comprehensive configuration management, and that we have true continuous integration. Martin proposed an intriguing criterion for when your tests are good enough: You should have confidence that if someone had access to your source code and made a change, if all your tests ran green it would okay to ship.6

They talked a bit about specific techniques for building, testing, and deployment, but for me the most interesting other topic they covered was continuous integration. Specifically, Martin wanted to make clear what felt continuous integration really is. For him, it means:

• Every build is repeatable
• Build means test too
• A commit is not considered successful until the mainline goes green
• Everyone commits to the mainline every day
• Feature branches are incompatible with continuous integration.7

All in all, it was great day of sessions. I stayed at the architecture/design level of technical topics, which is about where I wanted to be. I was sorry I missed Matt Smith’s session on improv, but I got a lot value of what I attended. And to think I’ve got three and a half more days to go.

1 I feel this reflects poorly on my character.

2 They had yogurt too, but enough about breakfast.

3 Co-authored with Lisa Crispin, whom I noticed appeared at one point.

4 This is Brian Marick’s 4 Quadrants of Testing

5 Measured in Concept-to-Cash terms: From the point at which you have an idea of something you could sell, how long does it take for you to have delivered it and gotten paid?

6 Because this is what development does, after all.

7 Particularly if you have more than one branch at a time.

As planned, I met up with Will Hindmarch, Ryan Macklin, and Wil Wheaton last night to game. Wil had asked to play A Penny For My Thoughts, but Will and I had another plan. As were sitting down, I asked, “What would you think about trying Fiasco instead?” The look on Wil’s face led to my immediate followup, “Right, we’re playing Fiasco.” Apparently he’d been wanting to play it for a while.1

We picked out Chris Bennett’s Los Angeles 1936 playset, which had finished second in the voting to Vegas on Thursday. We immediately got the right vibe, setting up a corrupt liquor licensing commissioner (Ryan), his good girl secretary (Wil) who was stuck in a frozen marriage to a nightclub owner (Will), and the burlesque dancer the club was named after (me). What was amazing to me was how understated the whole thing was. In contrast to the gonzo of the Vegas game, we played this one relatively straight. Yes, things still went horribly awry, but in a human frailty sort of way. We also managed to tell a great film noir story without telling a hard-boiled detective story.2

The only downside of the game was that it went much longer than we’d planned on, so I had to bail on my dinner plans with my friends Jeff and Mari at St. Elmo’s.3 Fortunately they had a good time together, helped by a shared love of martinis, and we met up afterward to hang out, eventually joining the our usual crowd and migrating from bar to bar as they closed. I was loathe to go to bed, knowing it was my last night at GenCon, but when 6 AM finally rolled around I said my final goodnights and turned in.

I somehow made it to convention hall before noon today4 and made my last few passes by booths. We had a great signing event for The Bones, which made me realize just how many cool people were involved with that book and how happy I am to have been a part of it. Then it was off to the airport and on to the next stop on my whirlwind tour. The trip to Orlando was relatively uneventful, though I did manage to read a good chunk of Robin Laws’ Hamlet’s Hit Points on the plane.5

So goodbye, GenCon, for another year. You’re always too short, always too far away, always too big to throw my arms around. There were old friends I missed, new friends I met, and people who get to spend too little time with. We should do this again sometime.

1 Yes, it’s a little strange to push someone else’s game instead of my own, but I’ve played Penny with Wil before. Plus, Fiasco is awesome.

2 Though Wil and I did get to help out Ryan, who was struggling a little bit in a solo scene we’d set him up in, by playing two guys who came in through the door with guns.

3 Was a double wound, as I didn’t get to have dinner with them and I missed out on good Midwestern beef.

4 For the first time this year.

5 Considering it contains a beat breakdown of Casablanca, my favorite movie ever, I’m predisposed to like it.



Once again I availed myself of the opportunity to sleep in and stay well-rested. This time, instead of grabbing lunch before heading to the convention hall, I went straight there and ended up, as I usually do, at the IPR booth. For the third year in a row, lunch serendipity occurred. This is a phenomenon where you run into someone with whom you have not been able to spend much time with, who then happens to mention in your brief conversation that he or she hasn’t eaten lunch yet. You say that you haven’t either, and spontaneously you decide to get food together, thus allowing you to spend more time with each other.2 Last year, this happening to me with Mike Mearls; the year before it was with Judd Karlman. This year, I was fortunate enough run into a hungry Daniel Solis at the right time. Dan actually seized the initiative; it turned out he really wanted to talk to me, and he ended up buying me lunch in return for advice on game design.

That Daniel Solis wanted my perspective on game design was a little boggling to me at first, but it started to make sense as we talked. We’d each published our first game in the last year, both of them significantly outside the mainstream design ethos of the RPG hobby, and we have similar concerns about the explication of rules and procedures in book form. We ended up having a great discussion about Daniel’s game in development, Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, and I think both of us learned a lot from it. There was lots of scribbling on napkins, long pauses to think punctuated by excited verbal exchanges, and generally a sense that the things he was worried about were issues of presentation rather than design. It was cool to discover that I did have something to say, and I’m glad I was able to give Dan something that will (hopefully) help Do be a better book.

That was pretty much the highlight of the day, though the day isn’t over yet. Tonight is the meeting of the Wil(l)s. Apparently Wil Wheaton told Will Hindmarch that he wanted to play A Penny For My Thoughts with him. Will Hindmarch then asked me if I could bring my materials and join in.3 Ryan Macklin then caught wind of this and demanded the fourth spot. So now I’m grabbing my stuff and heading out to meet up with the three of them to play my game. Seems like a good way to start my last night at GenCon.

1 I usually stay until Monday and meet up with my parents, who drive over from Iowa, but because I’ve got the Agile 2010 Conference starting Monday morning, I have to leave early.

2 These moments, by the way, are one of the biggest reasons I love GenCon.

3 He caught me just as I was packing on Tuesday night, so I was able to grab my demo kit before I left home.



Two very cool things happened today. First, A Penny For My Thoughts won the Indie RPG Award for Most Innovative Game. I figured that I had a chance, but I was floored (and humbled) that I actually won. As I said in my brief acceptance remarks, apparently to win an award for innovative game design, all you have to do is steal from games no one else has stolen from yet. I want to thank the designers of all of games that inspired the game, particularly Meg Baker for 1001 Nights, James Wallis for The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Fred Hicks for Don't Rest Your Head, and Jared Sorensen for Lacuna Part I: The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City. Thanks again to Fred Hicks and to Jeremy Tidwell for making the game look awesome, and thank you to Ryan Macklin, my editor and developer, for making sure that the game actually made it into the book.1

And on the subject of thanks, the second very cool thing happened at the ENnie Awards. While accepting the Gold ENnie for Best Podcast, Ed Healy from the Atomic Array thanked Chris Perrin for doing the very first podcast he listened to, and "Paul Tevis, for helping me get through my first tour in Iraq." If my podcasting never had any impact other than that, it was a success. Congratulations on a well deserved win, Ed, and thank you.

Now, off to find more troublemakers and decrease the likelihood of seeing morning tomorrow.

1 And congratulations to my fellow Indie RPG Award winners: Danielle, Ken, John, Jason, and Steve. You rule, and I'm honored to be included in your ranks.

Whereupon I stepped outside and nearly melted. Ah, Midwestern heat and humidity, how I do not miss you in California. My roommate Will, in whose name the room was booked, wasn't going to arrive for another hour or two, so I promptly set up camp in the lobby of the Embassy Suites to watch for people I knew.1 I waited for approximately thirty seconds, which is one of the reasons I love GenCon.

The rest of evening involved people, food, and drinks, which are possibly my favorite things the world, so I was content. I was happy to see BoardGameGeek win the Diana Jones Award, and I continue to look forward to that party every year. And I even followed my own advice and went to bed earlier than I could have, so that I could meet Daniel for a run on Thursday morning. I promptly mis-programmed my alarm, but awoke just in time to throw on some clothes and meet folks for a very pleasant (if humid) run.2

I felt good but extremely droopy after breakfast, so, not having any commitments Thursday morning, I decided to go back to bed. This turned out to be a wise decision, and despite not getting to the convention center until well after noon, I do not regret it all. That I ran into people I knew at lunch certainly helped. I spent the rest of the afternoon following my Thursday tradition at GenCon: walking the entire dealer's hall. I try to skim the floor on the first day, just to give myself a sense of what's where and what I was interested in coming back to learn more about. Just before the hall closed at 6 PM, I finished, taking my tired feet back to my hotel room for some rest.

Now to find some people for dinner and see what trouble we can get into.

1 Technically I'd already met Daniel Solis at the door on the way in, but that doesn't count for these purposes.

2 I was reminded how nice it is to run on the flat, given that our neighborhood is not at all.

It’s not that I don’t like to travel. I love to travel. I love to meet people, to eat local foods, to try to puzzle out the local culture and badly mangle the language. I love to visit places I haven’t been before, soaking in the sense of place about a destination, experiencing the folding together of topography and architecture that descriptions never quite convey. Whenever I travel for work, I try to extend my trips for a few days, taking the opportunity to see and do things I can’t normally at home.

When I’m not at home much, there is no sense of normal, and those breaks in routine become chaos to manage instead of enjoy. This is the lesson I forget every time I’m at home for a while. When I spend three weekends in a row in the house, I forget how exhausting having three weekends away is. And so I plot my own demise.

I found steps towards a solution. I’ve cut back on my project load, focusing more on day-to-day maintenance, reducing the need for weekends to keep myself, the house, and my relationships in good working order. I try to focus on using weekends for things that I can’t do during the week, and I’ve discovered there are lot more things that I can do on weekdays than I used to think.

So I’m trying to strike a balance. I love the trips I take and the things they let me do. I just don’t want to define myself by what I do when I’m not at home.1

1 That I wrote this on an airplane is not lost on me.

He drove carefully, the wind whipping his shaggy blonde hair, the wrap-around sunglasses shielding his eyes, a grim smile crossing his face, a .38 Police Special on the passenger seat beside him, the corpse stuffed in the trunk.

Or another:

They sat, he with his dour expression, the one reserved for funerals and government officials, she with her smile, the one that never left her face, both of them taking their places at the heavy wooden table, the mounds of paperwork all around them.

The course instructor likes these types of sentences because they start with something simple, something the audience can easily grasp. Then they start adding details, piling on descriptions and modifiers, building something more complex, something that if you tried to build with bound modifiers would collapse under its own weight before you ever found the verb.2

So of course, having been exposed to this idea, I'm now seeing analogues of cumulative syntax everywhere. That first example shows how you can start a story in one place and end in quite a different one, one that is still obviously connected to the beginning but whose conclusion, or even subject, you could not have predicted from its opening. I'm noticing that some of my favorite bloggers/essayists3 use this style, and it's something I want to do more of in my own writing. The second example shows how you can layer on detail without much forward motion, detail that forces the reader to keep going back to re-evaluate and re-envision the simple idea they started with. When I first encountered these sort of sentences in the course, I found them hard to follow. Once I got used to them, however, I found them much richer and nuanced than their non-cumulative counterparts. I keep seeing a parallel here with the Dresden Files RPG, in the way the commentary on the main text forces you to continually stop and re-evaluate it. It was confusing at first, but ultimately provided me with a more satisfying experience.

Like I said, when I find a new idea, I see it everywhere.

1 I've to listened and enjoyed several of their audio courses, including their excellent pair on the history of Western music and the history of opera.

2 And yes, I'm having fun using cumulative syntax in this post.

3 Notably Rands and Susan Schorn.



August, however, is full of travel for me. On Wednesday, I fly to Indianapolis for GenCon. I have to leave GenCon a little early3 to fly to Orlando for the Agile 2010 conference. And today I bought plane tickets from Orlando to Switzerland, to spend a week and half in our office in Lausanne followed by five days of vacation with Gwen. I get back on August 31. My normal routine is non-existent this month.

All of which means I have a much better chance of getting some writing done.

That may seem counter-intuitive, but I think it will actually work. I’m going to be away from home for twenty-eight days straight. The normal forces that work on me at home will be completely gone. That means that I, rather than the pattern of commitments I’ve built up, will be in complete control of my schedule. If I say I writing is at the top of my to-do list, it will be.

So, for the rest of August, I will spend at least thirty minutes a day writing for this blog, and I will post something everyday. When I return home, the habit of daily writing should be strong enough to carry over into my day-to-day. Or at least that’s the plan. So if you see me in any of those places in the next few weeks, ask me how it’s going. Hopefully, you’ll already know.

1 With the notable exception of spending three hours a day watching the Tour de France.

2Especially when you include three hours a day of watching the Tour de France.

3 Sunday afternoon, rather than my usual Monday afternoon schedule.