Thursday, December 30, 2010

Comments and Reviews - Geasa on Voice of the Revolution

Check it out! Not that it's got a review but we got lots of mention and love from Voice of the Revolution.

Remember, we've still got that contest going. If you want to review Geasa, and I want honest reviews I don't want people blowing smoke up my ass, and post it to either IPR or Drivethrurpg you can get a free copy of the book.

Only the first five reviews count towards this, and you have to tell me about it by emailing it to me or putting it in the comments.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Geasa The First Week - What I've learned

It's been a little over a week that Geasa has been on the market.

The sales have been surprising for me. Mainly because when we put out Mile High Dragon to say that it was met with very little fanfare, or anything remotely considered to be a single ticker tape made me uncertain as to what might happen.

Well, Geasa was a very pleasant surprise. For the first week, the sales at Drivethru have been pretty good. We've got 18 total sold of the full book and 23 total downloaded (from review copies, that means 5 people who are on the drivethru review list have it. We'll see where it goes from there).

What's doubly surprising is the amount of people who downloaded the free version of the game. The free version has gotten 337 total downloads. These are numbers that I certainly couldn't have dreamed to match with any product ever. That's a lot, and if I can convert even a 1% of these people, that's 3 sales I wouldn't have gotten without a free product. Hell, maybe someone will take the rules and make their own game with it. I'm already trying to think of how to do that with a game called Teenage Wasteland. I'll jot some ideas down, but that game is going to have to wait until I'm done with CyberGen 3.0.

This also tells me that .pdfs are doing fine and dandy thank you very much. I barely cracked the top 10 of the "sales of the month" category before I dropped quickly out of those rankings to be replaced by others. However, when that happens with only 16 sales, you know that there is a lot of people buying electronic formats to the games.

Also, it blows my mind that people would put any type of DRM on their electronic documents. Quick, I want people to be able to access the game as quickly as possible, let's put something that will slow them from enjoying the product. BRILLIANT IDEA!

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Geasa - The Free One

Part of Geasa is that the rules are under BY-SA license. Which means that I created a document that was a pared down version of the main book to be used as a reference.

I had some advice from someone who has been spending a lot of time with free RPGs and they feel that it could be better. I agree, anything can always be better and since this is the free document I'd like people's advice on how to make the free version better?

Submitted examples from people playing the game for each section?
More detail on how to do things?
Cut out any extraneous text and just go to the heart of things?

Post here to tell me how I can make the free product better.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Geasa is now available!

It's up on Drivethrurpg! You can find the link here.

Once it's up on IPR we'll let you know. There you'll be able to pre-order the book!

EDIT: Just to let you know, for one dollar more than the book is going to cost when it's here you can get the book and the pdf on preorder! Check it out at IPR!

This does mean that the contest is on! ^_^

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Geasa FAQ

I got asked if there was a FAQ for Geasa. There isn't one, but I figure that I might as well have a place where people can go and ask questions. So, here is the post where I say, "Ask any question about Geasa that you want."
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Monday, December 13, 2010

Going Home - A Power Fantasy Playtest

For some reason I can't seem to get the Game Chef site to recognize that I am a person, and not a spam bot, which means that I'm going to post here saying that a group of us ended up playing Going Home, A Power Fantasy by Mikael Andersson.

Now, this was the first time the game had been played. Which is always nice because you know that you're gonna run into speed bumps, but that the person who designed the game is more than willing to sit down and try to tackle them.

First of all, I will say that I love this game. I love the fact that all you start out with is a name and the question, what did you just abandon. I think it's prefect and I loved how it just set you up for a lot of uncertainty.

I was playing a character who had just abandoned their phone. Amber was playing a character who had just abandoned an office job. Angela was playing someone who had just abandoned a suitcase and Mikael had abandoned ... I can't for the life of me remember but even just with that you can see the narrative possibilities that can show up.

I liked the fact that each player had different narrative roles that they got to play. The Enemy, the World and Karma (the Camera wasn't used since we were playing with only 4 players). The Enemy was straightforward, where you go to play the reactions of what was currently The Enemy of the scene. The World had the narrative responsibility to provide a detailed world in which the Enemy and the Traveler (the player in question) work in. Karma was a little more difficult, but basically it was what was supposed to keep you to your previous actions and also be the voice on your shoulder.

We managed to get once around, each player got to pick a question on the map, and the questions were great. My question was so integral to what happened that I almost screamed out the answer when I was done my moment, but it wasn't so much the same for the other players. We ended up talking about it, and I think the conclusion that we came to was that the other players needed to remember that the game is a Power Fantasy, which means that there needs to be far more Power and Fantasy in the moments that are provided. For instance, if someone searches a glove compartment, they will find something like a gun which will cause havoc (that's what happened to Mikael).

Power = weapon
Fantasy = Finding it easily

I want to play it again. I'd like to get further along the map and answer more than a single question.

Geasa - It's done and a contest

Radio silence is finally over. That means Geasa is done. The PDF should be going up on IPR, with preorders for the book, and the PDF will also be going up on Drivethru a little while afterwards.

I'm really happy with the book. Then again, it's my book. I should be really happy with it.

However, I want to know what you think about it. That means I'm going to hold a contest. To the first five people who review it when it goes up on either IPR or Drivethru will get a free copy of the book. There can be a dedication, or whatever (if people like that kind of thing) in it and stuff but you'll get the first five copies of the game.

How do you do this? We'll you'll have to buy the pdf from either one of those sites, look at it, play it a bit, and then write a review. Once that's done you should post a link to the review here on the blog. Your comment here should include a link to the review, and a way to get a hold of you so I can get a shipping address so I can send the book to you. Only the first five reviews combined between the two sites will be considered for this.

Are you excited? I'm excited.

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