Conventioning - 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. So let me give you a recap of what happened while I was there.

Booth Setup

We get there, and finally get the booth setup. It's always a great time, and the people who are doing all the hard work had done most of the annoying work first (the setup of all the flooring and the carpets on it) and then we got to work on setting up the booth.

The biggest issue came up when the big smirky ball in the sky wasn't inflating because the battery powered inflater we had ... died. Well the battery did. Thankfully the staff at the convention center is amazing and they found a way to pump it up for us and then floated it up right before the carpets went down.

IGDN Social

After that came the IGDN social. Now, at this point I have driven about 9-10 hours myself, and got about 3 hours of sleep in the afternoon before that so I'm a little ... exhausted. Now Exhausted Jonathan mixed with coffee and one drink turns into manic Jonathan pretty quickly so I was a little loud, and a little overly energetic.

That said! It was a great time. A bunch of Canadians took over the table by the door, and we indoctrinated a few of our American friends. They did accept the maple candy of citizenship so it was all okay. Particularly fun to hang out with Rob, Rachelle, Kate, and Anna who I have met peripherally a few times but was able to actually have conversations with.

If you've never been and are an indie designer, I highly recommend it. Loughmillers is a nice space (if small) and there are a lot of the smaller designers that you can hang out and talk with. The key is to get there early and grab a table because space is at a bit of a premium.

They announced the results of the Indie Ground Breaker awards, of which I probably should have kept track of but didn't because see manic Jonathan. I won one of the prizes and got a physical copy of Chariot which is great since I have the PDF. It's like I did the reverse bricks and mortar!

Stuff that happened

GenCon is always a bit of a blur. I got to spend most of it with my booth family, hanging out at the Smirk and Dagger booth. That said, I ran two RPGs.

We Used To Be Friends - Thursday

Ended up with a game of We Used To Be Friends, and it was a 4 hour slot because I find that the city creation and character creation takes a while because people get invested in it. It was nice to have a group of people who were invested in it but blazed through it. Fourty Five minutes and we were ready to go with our town with four clubs. It was a fun time where I got to play this game with Matt and his daughter Teagan. Matt was playing the Libertine and Teagan was playing a super Harriot the Spy like Plotter.

The Episode Mystery was based around why this equipment for this new nightclub got trashed. Which was a perfect episode mystery. For a while it looked like one of the character Duncan might have done it, but it turns out it was the family's security head honcho. It was heavily implied that Duncan's mom was getting kind of handsy with Security Dude at a party.

Shining Moments: 
-Omarr (Hard Boiled) coming out to Duncan (Socialite) and Opening Up, asking them out basically. Rolling a 6 and then the moment happens when that's when everything gets quiet and everyone hears so he basically came out to everyone and their parents.

When asked what Duncan was going to do the response was, "Pause ... and then just walk away without saying anything."

Then the Delinquent "started a fight" with Omarr to try to help them hide their embarrassment.

-Just outside Duncan went outside and had a moment with Matt's Libertine (whose character name I forget) and ended up also rolling a 6 which ended up being this moment where the Libertine thought he was having a moment but Duncan though he was hitting on him too.

"Is that what I am to all of you?" Duncan screamed.

Critical Go Westerly! - Faux Dungeon - Friday

This game was fun! I had a couple of people who had never really played RPGs before, and a bunch of people who I knew (Kate has owned this game for like 5 years and has yet to play it) as well as Michelle and her son Will. I had a table of 7 people but Critical is kind of the game where if you have more people it doesn't bog down too much.

We had everyone but Daphadiana and Tara, but that makes for a good group, and while there was a couple of times someone said something wincy (and I had to keep reminding someone that Angelique is a woman) it was fun. Laughter was had by much people!

Shining Moments:

-Urist has had enough of being trapped inside the demon's ball of invulnerability and wants out. The player goes, "Wait, there's like real stone beneath me. I want to find it, I want to find the real floor."

To which I replied, "So you're saying you want to disbelieve the dungeon?"

"Yes."

"Just checking."

-There was a RDI moment that made me smile.

"The wench over here --"

"HEY! I have a name. It's Mary."

I laughed because I think Mary would have approved of it had she been there.

-The players have messed with the mechanism and find themselves teleported to the actual realm of Ailee the Necromancer, and they see the house.

Barnabus, "Oh! I read about this in Magician's home weekly. It's 4 years out of date but it was very impressive architecture. I mean, there seems to be less bodies laying about the place but I guess that's to be expected."

Conventioning - 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 Jonathan?

That's a good question self.

Saturday was mostly about panels.

First Panel was on GM Troubleshooting, with Matt McFarland, Robin Laws, Anna Kreidar, and myself. I was there as a last minute replacement of the missing Emily Care Boss (who was ill) and Guest Boss (who was tending to the ill) and it went really well. It was thankfully not a lot of the standard "I hate my group and how do I make them change" but a lot of great questions in regards to preparation, and how do you feel you should structure things.

Second Panel I was just moderating but it was the State of the Industry Panel so that means it had Eric Lang, Michelle Lyons-McFarland, Robin Laws, and Jonathan Gilmour. It was a pretty good panel, with a lot of questions and only a few limited "I have a statement to show off how smart I am, but I'm going to pretend it's a question" moment. The biggest difficulty I had was that there were lots of board game questions and fewer and fewer RPG questions, so to throw things to our RPG guests I had to kind of find the RPG nugget in them and then pass them along to the RPG part of the panel. I think it was a great time, and lots of people seemed to enjoy the information and had a good time which was great.

That night I got to run a game of We Used To Be Friends with Megan, Duan, Bill and Amanda who were amazing. They were experienced players, and had been through a bunch of games together including The Watch by Anna Kreider and Andrew Medeiros which I have heard nothing but amazing things about, so that's great.

We had a Delinquent (Amanda's Zia), The Hard Boiled (Duan's Casey), The Libertine (Bill's Nadeem), The Socialite (Megan's Kobi), and my Ingenue (Sparrow). I wanted to play the Ingenue because I was interested to see how it would play and what it needs, I tend to usually play the Tech Geek because I have all the love for Mac.

Anyway, the episode mystery is that someone, my Rival Erika, got fired from her job for stealing tips and her little brother swore that she didn't do it and went to Zia for help. Zia talked to the kid for information, and Amanda rolled Gumshoe and asked "Why should I care about this" which is because someone that Zia had listed as an enemy was the person who was the first suspect and this would be a great way to bring her down. So she called Casey to help her figure this out.

Casey was at home with Sparrow because he had been kind of somewhat under "house arrest" since he ended up blowing the whistle on his cousin. Zia and Nadeem ended up showing up and Nadeem got their attention by throwing rock at the window, even though they didn't need that. Sparrow ran interference (because everyone loves him, how could you not believe him) and Zia asked for Casey's help which he was happy to give because it would give him something to get out of the house.

Nadeem got sent out to get Erika out of her house and over so that Casey, and Sparrow, could talk to her and see what's going on. They got some more clues and were going to meet up with Zia at the underground mining tunnel club that we had built when we built our town.

Kobi didn't really seem to have a spot, so Megan did the one thing that I really hoped would happen and started working on her personal mystery. Megan picked a scene where Kobi had just come home and her parents were arguing about telling her something, so she hid and tried to Gumshoe it. I think we messed up because she should have still received a clue, but she did hear something about a facility and her cliffhanger was her dad walking over to her and asking, almost shouting, "How long have you been there?"

Because there was a cliffhanger we moved on to the party where Nadeem was already there trying to flirt with the suspect. It was great because he failed to flirt and managed to get a clue anyway because the Libertine is meant to try and fail and be okay with it. But what was awesome was that the suspect (whose name escapes me) was totally aware of what Nadeem was doing and set a trap for him later and told him to meet her by the lake.

Casey and Sparrow show up, and Zia who likes to mess with Sparrow's mind drops down from the balcony above right in front terrifying Sparrow. Amanda went to the move "Sometimes I'm up all night thinking about myself" where if she does something dangerous to turn someone on. She made the 10, which means that Sparrow changed his relationship with her (it would be more than that but that's what it said at the time) and so I decided "Okay, it's Rival. You've got to stop doing that to me." And that became a thing where clearly the Delinquent had a thing for riling up the Ingenue.

This is getting long, so to quickly start summing things up. Nadeem ended up getting attacked by some guy who turned out to be the manager at the restaurant in the Casino where Erika and the suspect worked. Then he got arrested for trespassing and spent some time in a chair next to a cop while hitting on everyone.

Kobi watched it happen, and got away but fought with her friend (the suspect) about it, and then went home to do some sleuthing on her parents. She ended up finding the name of the institute they were talking about.

Casey solved the case, with help from Sparrow and Zia, and made Erika's little brother's day. Turns out that the manager was the suspects cousin. The suspect was the one stealing the tips, and the cousin didn't want to get her in trouble so he framed Erika for it.

With Sparrow, I decided to use my Rival move with Zia. Ended up getting a 10+ which means I get a bonus, so I chose take +1 forward if you challenge them. Since Zia seemed to be intent on turning that into a game of I can make you feel things I used the Ingenue's turn someone on move, which is when you act innocent or naive. Rolled a 10+.

Zia's reaction was, "I've been waiting for this for a while. My place, or yours."
Sparrow demured and said, "My mother wouldn't approve."
Zia replies, "Hot. Your place then."

And scene.

It was a great game and it showed me a few things.

A. The "What should you care" question is so good early on because it provides that kind of impetus for a lot of things. It's not as useful later on, but that's why you get to ask other questions.
B. I think I made is explicit in the text that you have to deal with a cliffhanger before a character can appear in another scene, but I think I have to go back for it.
C. I ended up going over the few casefiles that had a "turn someone on move" and made them a bit more uniform and a lot more interesting. I had originally just replaced the "give them a string" with "change your relationship"
D. The question for the mystery was so good. When we were wondering how to make clues fit, going back to the question made it way easier to figure out.
E. The personal mysteries are perfect if your character really isn't doing much with the episode. If we were able to play with it longer you can kind of have two or three stories going on at the same time and it doesn't feel like it's dragging things apart. In fact, when we started to come up with ways to get Kobi into the episode, it felt more forced than letting her explore that mystery on her own.

Sunday I ran Critical!: Go Westerly - The Importance of being Gwendolyn

I had a bunch of players who were nice, and I had Michelle playing in the game which was awesome because she was supposed to play in this game when I first wrote it. I'm glad she got to play it because it's my version of Tom Stoppard's Travesties, where you have a game that's about a situation that is also about the Importance of being Ernest.

There were quite a few laughs and while I made the mistake of booking two hours (I had a thought to run Faux Dungeon, but switched my mind in regards to the game forgot to do so and so only had 2 hours of game) rather than 3 or 4. That said, it was super amusing and a good time!

I managed to playtest a bunch of stuff, as well as get a few board game moments in. It was a very good time, and something I recommend for everyone. Seriously, if you're looking to get someone into trying out games, or trying out conventions I can't recommend Breakout enough.

Gen Con 2014 - The Good, The Bad, and The Other

Everyone is already done with their Gen Con write-ups so I figured it would be time to get around writing mine. It was a great convention on the whole personally, professionally it was just kind of okay but I didn't really push for any kind of interaction in that way so that's way more on me than it was on the convention.

Anyway, onto the events that I ran!

1. Critical!: Go Westerly: Growling Door Gates

We had a great little time here running this scenario. The idea is that they're trapped inside a White Griffon Tavern that has been sucked into a different dimension, a demonic dimension. They end up finding out that it's a demon reform school and have to stop the graduation ceremony before it rips into the fabric of reality.

The Good:

It was a funny game. There was a bit where one of the players is like "I'm going to steal gold from another player" and I usually let that go the first few times around. If they keep it up I tend to give them something else to worry about, and if they can still find a way to get a gold steal in then it just makes it actually funny.

They got stuck on the language that the demon gave them. The demon, Gog, kept telling the players that Gog was a bad demon. It was a great moment because I didn't elaborate and they had to spend time figuring out if Gog meant evil or just bad at being a demon.

The Bad:

Again, it devolved a little bit into the "I'm going to steal from you, no I'm going to steal from you" which is fine because it was contained and we moved on.

The Other:

I had the same father daughter team who has played one game of Critical at least once every year. It's always great to see them, and they always bring something fun to the table. This time the daughter ran head long into a large battle with demons and was the first person to ever actually get knocked out in a con game of Critical ever.

But it was a glorious way to get it.

2. Dime Stories: Varmit

Well, I had written about 7k words for this encounter for Joe and then when I tried to access it my phone, which was supposed to have unlimited data, had no data and I couldn't get to it. Thankfully I had an understanding of the highlights of the module and so I just kind of ran with it. I'm sure I ran it wrong but as long as we keep the story moving and kind of get it right then all for it.

The story is about a small town named Varmit and the module is supposed to give you a couple of options. I ran with the corrupt mine foreman, with the local law enforcement having an issue with an escaped convict brother out in the wilderness.

Another moment of awesomeness was that I got to play a game with Matt and Michelle for the first time in quite a few years. There were always attempts but this is the first one we managed to have happen in a while. You can read what Matt thought about the game on his blog.

The Good: 

The story flowed well. The players were good, for the most part, at keeping the story going and understanding that RPGs kind of need the players to bite on some hooks. They did, and the ending really wasn't the easy one which is good because they could have forced the issue. Hell, one player did try to backstab them all and got away with no one the wiser.

The Bad: 

Look, if you're upset because the game is getting off topic there are ways to do it that are both friendly and polite. We all understand being in a game where it goes kind of sideways for a bit. We just had a player who was leaving the game because of time and so we had that "after player leaves conversation" and one guy really soured the mood for everyone at the table.

Seriously, you can be like "Hey folks. I get the conversation is good, but could we get back to playing the game?" That works just fine.

The Other: 

You reckon'?

The problem with any type of western is that you'll end up trying to do "that" accent. I tried hard not to go too deep into it, mainly because I'm a french canadian with a raspy Gencon voice even by this stage of the game, but also because it's really easy to turn it into a "making fun of" voice which I don't want to do.

The aforementioned guy who soured the mood once said the words "you reckon'" at least five to six times in a single sentence.

3. Daedalus - Icarus Falls - When the Wax Melts

There isn't going to be a section here because the game didn't go off.

However, I was the only person sitting at an empty table in a room full of people with full tables. As far as a feeling goes, that sucks a hell of a lot.

I had people show up like 35-45 minutes after the game started but at that point I was dealing with the whole impostor syndrome that shows its ugly head at times like that.

4. Daedalus - Icarus Falls - Tribute

I told myself that this game, I was going to run it no matter how many people showed up, or how late they showed up. I ended up with one person and you know what? Ended up being a damned good time.

Basically we worked out that he had been working for Crime Boss Zidane, and his contact was a young Zenedine. A bunch of children had been taken by a local gang called the Bangers. They had cobbled together enough tech to give them a kind of cybernetics. It was all exoskeletal, because cyberwear isn't a thing in Daedalus and I had a single Ninja Tech who was busy trying to figure out what was going on.

The Good:

Man, the Alarm thing worked wonderfully. I threw it up in a situation with a lot of tension, and it just raked it up a little bit more.

The Bad:

One player made it hard to really see how anything would go in a group.

The Other:

Hilariously, he only failed a single roll. Everything else was either 7+ on the rolls let alone the bonuses.

Anyway, it gets me excited for that project when it comes down the pipe. I still have to go over the document, because I know for a fact that I'm probably missing a section on the revolutionary groups but that said it's looking like a fun game.

Fan Expo 2014 - Panels and Game a Go Go

Gen Con is behind us, and Fax Expo is in front of us. If you're going to be in the downtown Toronto area next weekend you'll be able to hang out and talk about things because there are plenty of panels here.

Friday
11:00 am - Room 709 - Finding Your RPG Style Panel
12:00 pm - Room 709 - Kicking Off your Campaign Panel
03:00 pm - Room 703 - Publishing your RPG

07:00 pm - Room 709 - Geasa: An Evening of Curses

Saturday
11:00 am - Room 709 - Finding Your RPG Style Workshop
12:00 pm - Room 709 - Kicking Off your Campaign Workshop
12:45 pm - Room 705 - In the Game of Boards you roll or you lose

02:00 pm - Room 709 - Gaming by Storm (1 hour blocks, I'm running 2 games of Critical! and 2 games of Marvel)

Sunday
11:00 am - Room 703 - Pathos and Probability Curves: Writing Adventures
04:45 pm - Room 705 - State of the Industry

01:00 pm - Room 709 - Critical!: Go Westerly: Growling Door Gates

GenCon 2013 - The Review

Gen Con seems to have happened so long ago. Mainly because I rushed right into another convention in Fan Expo right away, but that doesn't take away the fact that Gen Con happened, and it was kind of cool.

I ended up only running three games, because Gen Con magically reduced the amount of players hours needed to get a badge and it's amazing to me. Mainly because most other places *cough*Origins*cough* seem to be trying to desperately squeeze everything they can out of everyone that they're starting to try to use GMs to fill their other volunteer voids, a practice I think is uncool at best and kind of desperately pathetic at worst, that it's just one more way that Gen Con is turning into a con I'm really starting to enjoy. This is good because for a long while Gen Con was the thing you had to do, the convention I said you had to put up with because everyone else went.

Now I tell you, go. Go have a good time. Gen Con is where you want to do that.

So, what did I do? My first game of Critical!: Go Westerly didn't end up running because most of the people were still in their True Dungeon slot. When it comes down to the economics of games, a slot that costs you over forty dollars versus a slot that costs you four usually ends up with the forty dollar slot winning. And I was left without any players.

That's fine, I ended up hanging out with Akira from Windmill Games and we played Sentinels of the Multiverse. Fun times! We did one, which went well, and then we did a second one which ended up being the wrong kind of combination and it ended up taking forever. So much so that we decided we have figured out how to win, and it was just a grind so we quit. It was fun, I'm not sure I would get it with the separation of time and space I have now, but I do recommend it to people who like a big co-operative superhero card game. You should check it out.

The second game I ran, was the Critical!: Go Westerly game of The Importance of Being Gwendolyn, which I do mean to actually publish at some point in time. Get it out there for people to see, I mean people are downloading You All Meet in a Tavern still which says something, right?

The game went well, we had our Pirate Captain, named Captain, who was busy looking for her lost Pirate Ship in the landlocked parts of Westerly, because it was smaller than the Ocean and you should always look in the smaller places first. We had Grokk our might Orcish Hero who was very much a Hero in his own mind, and eventually a small part of Tam as well. We had our Charismatic Mystic who managed to talk her way through the whole scenario and the wizard who couldn't remember where he was half the time.

They managed to diffuse many situations with Grokk coming out looking like a hero. When the wizard managed to destroy some buildings with a missed fireball, Grokk was there to tell them that Grokk Hero and Bandits Defeated!

The people rejoiced.

When they infiltrated Country Gwendolyn's estate, they had to fight for their lives as the guards recognized Algernon as a hated member of the other Gwendolyn clan. Grokk managed to get out of trouble there too because he was a Hero. It was a great moment with Grokk standing there with his hands above his head and the guards agreed he was a Hero and moved around him.

It was a game that reminds me what I like about Critical a lot. It can be funny, but the funny stuff is usually in the doing and not in the quippy lines that people say. Quips and jokes happen, but it's the actions that add to the humour the most so the game doesn't get bogged down and derailed in the quest for the better joke.

The second game that managed to be successful was the game of Geasa that ran. I ended up with a bunch of Canadians, which is a strange thing that happens to me at Gen Con. I tend to get a lot of people who could be local to me, or damned close enough to have it not matter play in my games. This was one of those times, they played Geasa and they decided that they were going to play it as Kindergardeners. Normally this can be a problem because watching people play kids who don't spend a lot of time around kids is painful, but we had 3 teachers and a teacher's assistant at the table and it went beautifully.

When I play Geasa, I tend to play it dark and I tend to play it aggressively. This group managed to play the game and have all the problems be giant and enormous ... if you were 5. We had the class bully whose mother was the teacher and always blamed the other kids for her behaviour. We had the new kid, the kid who loved dinosaurs and the kid who wished she was Alice from Alice in Wonderland. We had a Fae that was all about napping, Mr. Jinglehat that wanted all the teeth, Ennui which wanted to do something, and the fourth Fae didn't figure much into the game but it went beautifully.

The child who wanted to be Alice had Ennui push her to sneak outside ahead of time. She ended up getting lost in the half block of woods behind the school and stuck her head in a rabbit hole and was covered in frozen mud. There was a creepy moment where Mr. Jinglehat wanted to bully to get the teeth from a dead squirrel, but that was a dark as the game got. The new kid made friends with the dinosaur kid and as they tried to escape to go to the museum, the Nap Matt got the new kid to take a nap under some nice coats and the dinosaur kid ended up heading out on his own. The teacher, who couldn't keep tabs on the kids because of the Fae, ended up sending her daughter out to find the Alice kid but she ended up getting lost too.

It was sweet, and tragic, and wonderful and a way I hadn't seen Geasa get played at all before.

You know, I was kind of feeling a little out of it because everyone was running things at GoD, but I don't think I would have gotten the groups that I did get had I gone and run things through GoD at Gen Con. Origins, I'm still going to do that because I think it's a great idea and something I think I can have fun with. That said, I think I'm going to keep on doing events at Gen Con on my own.

Next year, the plan is to run larger Geasa events, because that way I can have multiple groups going because once a group gets it, they don't need me to tell them what to do. That way I can have lots of these stories to tell because I think they're awesome.

Call to Adventure - Critical!: Go Westerly Adventures

Okay, I've been neglecting putting out some stuff for Critical!: Go Westerly because part of me is always looking to do something new, and the other part of me is working on writing books for the stuff.

That said, I'm looking for 3 adventures that are going to be going out in the next year or so but I need other people to write them for me. This is a paying gig (it's 30$ per adventure), and if you want an idea on how the format is being done you can check out You All Meet in a Tavern for the format. They really should be no more than 10-12 "Chapters" long which puts them between 4 - 6k in their word count.

If you'd like to pitch, I'm looking for a twitter length pitch for your adventure and a little paragraph as to why your idea is funny.

EDIT: Where to send them?

Send all submissions to jonathan at firestorm-ink dot com.

EDIT the Second: Where are the rules?

You don't have the game? Well, it's 5$ for the pdf version which comes with the world setting, or if you just want to check out the rules then they are under CC and available for free here.

People say even more nice things - Critical!: Review part 2

Brian Fitzpatrick (Fitz) over at Game Knight Reviews ended up getting a copy of Critical!: Go Westerly.  Apparently there's enough cool stuff that he feels the need to split the review in two, the first one deals with the world of Westerly.  This is a link to the second one, where he talks about the rules of the game.

Right now, you can check out Fitz' thoughts on Westerly here.

Let him know what you think there, or leave a comment here.  Feedback is appreciated!

People Say Nice Things - GameKnight Reviews Critical!: Go Westerly part 1

Brian Fitzpatrick (Fitz) over at Game Knight Reviews ended up getting a copy of Critical!: Go Westerly.  Apparently there's enough cool stuff that he feels the need to split the review in two, the first one deals with the world of Westerly.  The second one, that's coming later this week, deals with the rules of Critical! itself.

Right now, you can check out Fitz' thoughts on Westerly here.

Let him know what you think there, or leave a comment here.  Feedback is appreciated!

Let's talk about - Making Pregens for you Convention Game

This is something that's kind have been buzzing around my head since Origins.  It was a whole bunch of things, but basically it led to this kind of thought.

How do you split your genders when it comes to making pregens for your con game/adventure module?

If you'll notice, when we did Critical!: Go Westerly, which is available for the low price of five bucks, Geoff made sure that there were 4 women and 4 men.  Ultimate we ended with 5 women and 4 men, because of a quick of licensing that didn't pan out we had already created one character and included her anyway because her origin story is pretty funny, which ... kind is an anomaly when it comes to pre-generated characters.  I just went through some of the "free" stuff that was nominated for an Ennie and saw that when they had a chance to do a 50/50 split the adventure modules ... didn't do it at all.  There was usually just one woman character and the rest were all dudes.

This leads me back to Origins where there was a game that Geoff was running.  He was running the introduction campaign with a table of 8, which is the maximum that the game will go.  That means that there were 4 characters that were men and 4 characters that were women.  One of the players noticed this, and the first thing out of this mouth was, "Why are there so many women characters?"

Geoff replied, "Well, half of the population is made up of women.  So, half of the population of the characters are women too.  It only makes sense."

To which the player scoffed, "Not in gaming it isn't."

Which is of course, patently bullshit.  You didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to notice that there were a wide variety of people, all of whom where there for gaming in some form or another.

We talked about it later at Big Bar on 2 with Amanda Valentine, who played in the intro game the day before this all happened, and she commented that she had instinctively picked up one of the female characters, and then a second one and stood there contemplating her options before she realized that there were two other characters she could pick from.  I believe, and she can correct me if I'm wrong here, she said that "One is usually all I get, two female characters is usually decadent."

Having two options is considered to be decadent.  Think about that statement for a moment, and then realize the fundamental absurdity of it.  I know if I have a stack of pregens put in front of me, I'm probably going to have more than two choices.

I leave this to you know, fellow game designer people.  If you're going to make a set of pregens for a game, a sourcebook, a campaign, or whatever.  Let's at least try to start making sure that we provide some equality here.  It's not that hard really, just make your characters and then sit back and look at them and count how many of each gender you have.  If it's not a 50/50 split then you should probably fix that.

Just saying.

Critical!: Go Westerly - You All Meet in a Tavern

Hey Folks,

We've published our first Adventure for Critical!: Go Westerly.  It's called You All Meet in a Tavern and it's a lot of fun.  I know, I've run it several times.

The description of the adventure is as follows:

Embrace the Standard Fantasy Trope!  As a fledgling adventurer you have decided that the best way to get into the business is by attending the monthly Adventurer-Nite at the local White Griffon Tavern.  You meet your fellow companions, you get Your First Quest™ and are about ready to go when events happen that change the course of history.  Or at least it's something more interesting than whatever Your First Quest™ was going to be.

It can be had at Drive Thru RPG and eventually up at IPR, I still haven't totally figured out how to get things set up there properly.

Critical!: Go Westerly - Soft Proofs

I've just got the soft proofs from the printers.

I'm excited, excited, excited.

There's a random T there, which people are going to have to tell me if they're in the PDFs. I can check myself but I'm lazy.

Book printing soon!

Critical!: Creative Commons

Hey Folks,

For all those looking for the Creative Commons version of Critical! it's up on Drivethru RPG. The link is here.

I didn't really learn my lesson from Rob over at the free rpg blog. It's a cut and paste job from the rules, hopefully though they will still make sense.

Check it out, tell your friends, let the world know!

Other People Say Things - Critical Review

Ed Grabianowski over at Robot Viking, who is an officer and a gentleman, did a review of Critical!: Go Westerly. I love his summation of the game:

It’s a framework for you to play a comedy RPG within. At that, it succeeds admirably (totally rolled over their Success Number). The rules are light enough that they’ll never get in the way of a good time, and there’s plenty of open space in the design for you to hang your own silly concepts and ludicrous ideas.

I'm happy because that was a big part of what we thought would make the game funny. I'm glad that it was easy to highlight.

To read the rest of the review check it out at Robot Viking.

Critical!: Go Westerly - Up on Drivethrurpg

Hey Folks!

We've got Critical!: Go Westerly up on Drivethrurpg.

It's only five bucks, so check it out.

We'll be putting out the CC version at a later date but it won't have any of the cool illustrations, nor the very helpful GM section.

Critical!: Go Westerly - Critical! A Go Go - Update the Fourth!

I know we had a big splash when we posted the cover art, done by our wonderful artist Avery Liell-Kok. However, we've had this contribution level at the bottom where you can get a ring from the Queen Samantha's Collection.

Well, I've got a picture of the ring to show you.

It is a 10k Gold Ring with 4 Diamonds and 3 Emeralds in a very tasteful arrangement. It was once a ring worn by the Eternal Empress of the East, but the Queen accidentally put it in her pocket while making a rare state visit.

What do you get with this Perk?

* Well, the ring.
* A letter of Authenticity from The Curator of the Queen Samantha's Collection
* An Adventure called "You All Meet in a Tavern" by Geoff Bottone
* The Two Maps (One Human and one Dwarven)
* The GSSC Alumni Shirt
* A Printed Copy of the Game
* The PDF

I think that's rather awesome, don't you?

Critical!: Go Westerly - Critical! A Go Go - Update the Fourth!

Hey Folks,

We've got the final cover art, without the text, for you to take a gander at.

I love it. This book is going to be so much fun.

Remember that you can contribute to the campaign at our Indie Go Go page. Contributors get cool things like maps, alumni t-shirts, their own character in the back of the book. There's even a diamond ring available, a real one which we'll probably be posting later today.

EDIT: The image doesn't show up well on this thing, so I'm going to just give you the link to the cover art.

Critical!: Go Westerly - Critical! A Go Go - Blog Update the Third

There is something awesome happening. We've got the logo for the GSSC alumni shirts ready thanks to Joe from Monkeyden Productions and the blog Underwear on the Outside. Joe is a great friend and he's been very supportive of the whole project from the get go, and he really was psyched to come up with the crest.

So here it is, in all it's glory.

I can't wait to get these on some shirts. Right now there are three people who are getting Almunist shirts. If you hurry you can join the ranks of the GSSC alumni over at the Indie Go Go page.

Critical!: Go Westerly - Critical! A Go Go - Update the Second

Hey Folks!

I hear some people might be a little hesitant to get in on the Indie Go Go page for Critical!: Go Westerly without seeing anything. Well, I'm here to give you an 8 page sample with one of my favourite sections available for anyone to just pick up and check out.

You can grab the sample here.

Once you've checked it out, if you are intrigued you can go to the Indie Go Go Page and get in on this campaign!

What a Year Makes - Geasa

Well, we've got 1 year of Geasa as a PDF at least under our belts. So I figured I would check out what that meant for us as a whole, I mean I'm just an itty bitty publisher and if you can get about 200-300 sales of your book out that's pretty damned good.

So, what are the numbers like? Remember, we do have two types of things to look at. The numbers for the purchase product and the numbers for the free product.

Geasa - FI10001

December 2010 - 30
January 2011 - 10
February - 7
March - 4
April - 0
May - 1
June - 1
July - 1
August - 2
September - 0
October - 2
November (unfinished)

Clearly I did this in November before it finished. Drivethru RPG is down so I can't get this data

Total: 58

Not a bad number. Now that we have the physical books out, I'd be interested in seeing what we get, but 58 copies of a game is fairly respectable. Especially when it's in PDF Format.


Geasa: Just the Rules - FI20001

December 2010 - 380
January 2011 - 106
February - 21
March - 16
April - 11
May - 13
June - 19
July - 8
August - 10
September - 6
October - 12
November (unfinished) - 1

Total: 602

Looking at these numbers


Geasa in book form - FI30001
IPR info is still a little on the sketchy side as they redo the website. However, when I go check to see the main page for Geasa I find that there are only 9 copies available. That means that there were 21 copies sold as well as the four preorder copies that I sent.

Sold to Retailers by me - 5
Sold to Individuals - 21
Preorders - 4
Sold to Individuals by me - 4

This puts the grand total of physical copies sold at 34, which is pretty cool when I think about the genesis of this game which was me being unhappy and writing down the rules on a streetcar ride on my way to work.

Ultimate totals?
Copies of the Game purchased = 92
Copies of the Game downloaded = 602

That works for me, and it makes me excited for what's going to happen when we get Critical!: Go Westerly out. You can help with that by going to our Indie Go Go Page and supporting the project. You can get cool things if you just sign up!

Critical!: Go Westerly - Critical! A Go Go - Update!

A friend of mine asked about the The Adventurer level, and he said something that made me realize wasn’t totally clear. Originally, it was supposed to be that you got listed as an Adventurer in the book, but that’s not nearly awesome enough. For those who have the Adventurer level, you will get listed as an adventurer in the book. You won’t have any stats, but you’ll get about 150 words describing your Adventurer and your most notable exploits. No plain lists for us!

So to recap what do you get as an Adventurer?
The Adventurer: $70
One Copy of the PDF
One Signed and Numbered copy of the Book
One Gwendolyn School of Swordplay and Cookery Alumni shirt
Two Prints of the Map of Westerly, one is the Human version, and the other is the Dwarven version. (The Kobolds like the Dwarven version of the map.)
You will be listed in the book as a Adventurer, the kind people should look up to with 150 words in the book about your Adventurer!

What kind of adventurer will you be?

As always you can find the Indie Go Go page here.