tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80684139112396065792024-03-05T06:39:27.384-05:00Gamish Designer - Adventures in Game DesignI do games things. This is where I talk about game stuff. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.comBlogger346125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-58372691172409845282017-08-26T17:00:00.000-04:002017-08-26T17:00:15.076-04:00Conventioning - Gen Con 2017
GenCon!
Okay, so Gen Con happened this past week and everyone is running their recaps so I figured I should too! Because a lot of stuff happened, and this one felt like a weird Gen Con. Not a bad weird, more of kind of a strange weird. The lead up felt like it just kind of came up as a surprise, and the whole way there it didn't seem like it was actually happening.
Then we arrived, and it did.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-58550382030936903622017-07-25T13:39:00.002-04:002017-07-25T13:39:50.492-04:00Character Generation Library - Unhallowed Metropolis
I got this game ages ago, and I haven't actually managed to play it yet. It's not so surprising because I don't frequently get a chance to play much lately, and the game itself is one that requires a pretty good understanding of how the parts work in order to really get it but that's fine because the setting is what makes this game amazing.
Instead of it being some kind of history game, it's a Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-47925372327633015082017-07-06T16:23:00.001-04:002017-07-06T16:23:16.059-04:00Character Generation Library - Classic Battletech
Going through my drive library right now, because it's easier than grabbing a book at the moment. I have "Classic Battletech" which I remember as Battletech 3rd edition.
I grew up loving battletech. We used to play it at Bryan's house with coins for minis until the wee hours in the morning. It's where I loved to play with infantry and artillery even though the game is about giant stomping Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-88910378738714070812017-06-30T17:12:00.003-04:002017-06-30T17:12:56.943-04:00Character Generation Library - 13th Age - Massium Cardinal
Time to get back to this. The list of games I have is growing and not making time for these is slowing me down.
When in doubt, alphabetical is the way to go. That means 13th Age, which I have only heard of rather than actually played. Mainly because it felt too close to D&D for my tastes, but if you're going to make games you need to grab things that people find interesting because there's Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-71764851230196605702017-03-16T17:58:00.003-04:002017-03-16T17:58:59.656-04:00Conventioning - Breakout 2017
Breakout happened! There was a long list of guests and a lot of amazing games and tonnes of fun were had. That's thanks to the tireless efforts of all the volunteers from the GMs who volunteer to run events to the staff that work relentlessly to make sure everything is run as smoothly as possible. It's a great convention, and everyone I know had a great time.
That said! What did you do JonathanAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-62613836975470573692017-03-13T12:19:00.001-04:002017-03-13T12:19:05.260-04:00Conventioning! Play & Pub Toronto
Recently Dancing Giant Games hosted a Play & Pub convention in Toronto this past weekend. I had a great time for a few reasons.
The first was the it got Curt Cover from Smirk and Dagger up to check out the prototypes as well as try out a few things that were coming down the pipeline for S&D as well.
I'm not going to talk about every game, because we played a lot in a wide Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-69437945296232076932017-02-02T17:08:00.000-05:002017-02-02T17:10:35.570-05:00Character Generation Library - CyberGeneration
Welp, about time I check this one off the list.
For those of you who don't know, there was a period of time where I had the line license for CyberGeneration. It really was the first RPG I ever got into. This was the game that got me into roleplaying, this was the game that after no one had touched it for years made me want to start making product for it. This was the game that I kind of burned Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-5989443834549354972017-01-15T20:21:00.001-05:002017-01-15T20:58:43.619-05:00Actual Play Report - Dragon Age
I had a good time today. I ended up running a Dragon Age game for my son's 20th birthday with two of his friends. Daegan has a pretty good knowledge of DA, his friend Basil had played DA:O and DA:I a while ago so he was rusty and Saiden has no knowledge what so ever.
Because it's Dragon Age, I got to have fun putting it somewhere. I decided that I had put it 30 years after the Inquisition in Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-58851631017290001482017-01-07T13:07:00.002-05:002017-01-07T13:08:30.578-05:00Character Generation Library - Dragon Age
My son is having his 20th birthday, and usually I say that I'm going to run a game for him for his birthday. Well, his friends are notoriously difficult to schedule, so I'm going to run a game for just him this year and after much deliberation it's going to be Dragon Age.
I'm looking forward to it, because I bought the Dragon Age book because I'm a huge fan of the series (number 2 for life) andAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-785899578451005862017-01-02T15:00:00.000-05:002017-01-07T13:08:47.091-05:00Character Generation Library - World Wide Wrestling
Ended up looking at the bottom of my list and saw my folder for all my *World games (yes I know it's pbta but I like my wildcard characters okay) and decided I'd do one of them. That means World Wide Wrestling because very much yes. I'm a huge wrestling fan, not necessarily the biggest wrestling fan in the world but still, it's so much fun.
Anyway, I used to play in this facebook wrestling gameAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-44962974132885394022016-12-21T12:00:00.000-05:002016-12-21T12:00:04.102-05:00Character Generation Library - Kobolds Ate My Baby ... in Colour!
I remember buying this thing when it was held together with a piece of construction paper and a staple. Yipping like a kobold was such a big part of my game playing when I was younger it may be why I have kobolds (though not these kobolds(tm)) in Critical!: Go Westerly. Because I think they can be kind of intrinsically funny even if we went in the complete opposite direction of KAMB.
If you've Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-64267189600388726172016-12-20T15:34:00.001-05:002016-12-20T15:34:56.200-05:00Character Generation Library - Marvel Heroic Roleplaying
So this is me trying to do my first Character for the Character Generation Project. If you don't know what it is, you can look at this page for all the details of what's involved.
With that in mind let's start with Marvel: Super Heroic Roleplaying. I want to start here because I love this game, but also because a lot of people were like "Uuuhh, there isn't a character creation system here"Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-7344436291150429702016-08-29T16:37:00.001-04:002016-08-29T16:37:58.129-04:00Fan Expo 2016 Schedule
It's that time of the year again. I'd like to thank Justin Mohareb for inviting me again to Fan Expo this year. My schedule is basically going to be panels and board games and ... maybe an RPG if I'm feeling up to it.
General Schedule is as follows though note I'm going to probably moderate more than I talk when it comes to panels and I'm not going to have a fixed OMG doing this game here Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-6619360863231535472016-08-11T17:31:00.000-04:002016-08-14T15:12:43.374-04:00Gen Con 2016 - J'ACCUSE!
Gen Con has come and gone again, and it was a great event. If you look into what I've written in the past (there isn't a lot and it's stretched out over time so you could do your research) and you'll see that I have not always thought so. The fact that it gets better and better every year is a testament to the hard work and dedication of a large number of people who work within Gen Con.That saidAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-33161110763166203062016-02-17T07:37:00.000-05:002016-02-17T07:37:33.868-05:00Veronica Monsterhearts - Hardboiled Inequality
I've been working on Veronica Monsterhearts for over a year and I haven't had a lot of opportunities to play it. I've had one or two play tests myself, and then Cheyenne ran at Gen Con last year so it's been a lot of theoretical kind of stuff rather than hard physical testing.
That said, something came up with Cheyenne's play test that I feel I really should talk about. An important part of Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-23759330479406467172015-10-21T10:03:00.002-04:002015-10-21T10:03:21.405-04:00Idea Corner - buildyourown World game
In one of those Hey what about this" ideas you get when you're working on something else. The kind of idea you might want to chat about but don't actually have the time to put any effort towards. This is one of those ideas.
It's kind of like a Tabula Rasa World game. You come in, and there's some kind of way to determine what you're going to play. Something to setup the genre, your expectationsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-67029462272302202972015-10-19T14:50:00.002-04:002015-10-19T14:50:25.520-04:00Veronica Monsterhearts - Back to Work On It
Now that there has been some distance between me and this game, I think I'm going to take a break from Rent's Due and work a little bit more on Veronica Monsterhearts.
What I'm aiming for in v0.3
1. Better wording. I'm going to be looking at all the text and not just the moves and all that.
2. Better move decisions. I do want to look at the moves again, because one of the things that came up Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-90071575162641097022015-10-17T11:56:00.000-04:002015-10-17T11:56:51.481-04:00Chill Talk - Tokens
I know that this isn't going to be scheduled, it's going to be a "when I get around to writing them" but I do still want to talk about why I think Chill is a great horror game, and a great game to run period. There's something that a couple of people I've seen online pooh-pooh, and that is the use of Chill Tokens. The few whining conversations were all about the meta game, like this was some Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-38849573699474645722015-08-25T15:11:00.000-04:002015-08-25T15:11:49.669-04:00Fan Expo 2015 - Panel Schedule
Wow, so Fan Expo this year is all full of panels which I really appreciate. I like con games, but sometimes in Toronto it feels like it's the same people playing the games at Fan Expo. I'll still be around, but not officially running any games. I will have games there though, in case anyone wants to see what's new and what's coming down the pipe.
Panel: Humour in Swords & Sorcery
Time: Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-87905040403073069332015-08-09T10:15:00.003-04:002015-10-19T15:04:30.705-04:00Chill Talk - Weapons
This may seem to be a weird place to start, considering I'm a person who hates weapon lists because I find them immensely boring like only a block of stats can be. However, this is a great place to start with a discussion about why but trust me this is one of the things I love the most about this game.
If you've read the book, you may have gone over to look for a list of weapons to see Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-88355231327797024012015-08-05T13:02:00.000-04:002015-10-19T15:04:49.148-04:00Gen Con 2015 - Convention Games in Review
Gen Con this year was kind of amazing. I say that as someone who spends most of his time running between a booth and events and not someone who attends the convention. What I'm going to talk about are the two games of Chill that I ran this year.
Both games were Cold Dark Earth, which was a module that Matt created and was hoping to have on the website soon. I'm not going to spoil it too much, Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-21946110590680185412015-05-07T17:17:00.002-04:002015-05-07T17:17:58.560-04:00Third Life Thoughts - Fate of Skills
So Cam Banks was having a conversation on twitter about Fate and it hit a lot of points that I've been thinking about in regards to Fate, and in particular the Skills of Fate.
I personally think that Fate is a great game, I just also think that the definitions of the skills is probably the worst thing about it. Attack, Defend, Overcome an obstacle, Create an advantage seem perfectly fine but Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-85369256677765260382015-05-07T15:11:00.004-04:002015-05-07T15:12:29.158-04:00Hitting the corners - Making your best pitch
Ha! Sportsball references! ^_^
Anyway, I was at the local monthly board game designer meetup and we got to talking and one of the things we talked about was how to pitch your game. I'm not going to go into all the details of the pitch but one of the things that struck me was that someone said that he felt like a pitch is misrepresenting your game.
I disagree. I think a bad bitch misrepresents Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-67222965424060162842015-04-22T11:00:00.000-04:002015-04-22T11:00:05.210-04:00GREAT GAME EXCHANGE - Feedback for Headspace
I talk a fair bit about THE GREAT GAME EXCHANGE because I think it's awesome, and I've gotten some great feedback on my projects and hopefully given out some feedback that people can use. Recently I was asked to read over Headspace which is a great cyberpunk RPG that uses the Apocalypse World engine. It's great, you should check it out because the quick start guide is available at the Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068413911239606579.post-42553401665659273212014-08-26T12:51:00.000-04:002014-08-26T12:51:00.631-04:00Veronica Monsterhearts - Playtesting Notes
Well, got some Veronica Monsterhearts playtesting done. Little playtesting done, but the character creation stuff gave me some thoughts.
1. Need to make everything immediate to the players. You just don't make it up and go, you have to make the city and I have to come up with that. Everything that's coming up is heavily influenced by 5 Fires, but I really don't want to just cut and paste that. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00271253447979460916noreply@blogger.com3