[Need a Catchy Contest Name] - Webcomics!

I was recently at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) and I got to thinking. There was that whole kerfuffle in the community about licensed products and their viability and blah, blah, blah. Lot of people complaining about games and kind of missing the point.

Make games that you want to make, and play games that you want to play. By all means experiment and try new things, because doing nothing but the same thing rots your brain, but play what you like.

With that in mind, I had an idea. Why don't we see if we can do that. Pick a webcomic that you enjoy and try to turn it into a game. Find what makes the comic work and then try to turn that into a game. Any game fits. A card game, a board game, an RPG. Let your imagination fly.

Despite the utter failure success of the last contest, I think doing another one quickly is good. Keeps the creative juices flowing.

GIANT WARNING RIGHT HERE!
Just because you're doing stuff with a web-comic, doesn't mean that you have their permission. That means you can't use any of that artist's art, unless you have permission and at that point in time you'd probably just go ask if you can product the RPG/Card Game/Board Game for them anyway.

You don't have to go that far, but you can if you want. They key thing is to replicate the feel of the comic.


How do I enter?

1. Well, post here expressing your interest and what webcomic you're using as your inspiration.
2. When your game is done, post it in the completion thread over at the "What's been done" post with a link to the game.
a. If it's an RPG, a link to the PDF is fine.
b. If it's a card game, a link to the rules and a PDF of the cars works.
c. Board game see above, though if you have specialty pieces you're gonna wanna tell us how to make them.

Deadline
Well, this last contest went until September, how about we call this one for January 31st, 2012. That means you've got four months to get your stuff together and see what you can come up with.

Judging Criteria
Me and a panel of me will be the judges on this one. Not because I think I'm overly qualified for this, but because I think it'd be kind of cool to judge this. We're going to do it, a la dancing with the stars kind of judging. I'm going to give each game a rating, based off of the criteria below, and then we'll use that as the base point value. Then we'll have a vote off to determine the winner.

The Criteria are:
1. Completeness: Can we play the game, or does it feel like it needs a lot more work.
2. Fun: Is the game fun to play? Does it do the things that make you want to play it again, or continue the campaign.
3. Mayhem: How much mayhem is there? Blood all over the ice, or does it feel like too goons tweeted to stage a fight?
4. Look: How good does the game look? Is it pretty, is it awesome looking? Does it inspire the crowd to riot when their team wins?

Each is based out of 10 and that will provide the base score.

I'll make one too, it just can't enter the contest. There may be something cool at the end, I don't know. I may not have the power of an OGB behind me, but maybe a gift card for IPR, or Drivethru of undetermined value would be up for grabs.

That's right, I'm not cool enough to get people on my own. I'm going to have to bribe them with piddly sums of non transferable cash.

[Need a Catchy Contest Name] - Post your Final Product Here

For all of you not paying attention, we've got a contest that's going on where you have to Blood-bowlify a winter sport. The original thread is here if you missed it. Well, with a month and a bit left to go I thought I'd post the link that allows you to put forward you finished product.

24 Hour RPG Contest - THA WINNA IS ...

You can read it here, or read it over at the Free RPG Blog but we do have a winner for the 24 Hour Movie Mash up RPG competition. Without any real peep of complaint the winner is Droog Family Song Book.

My big question though, is what came in second for a lot of the judges. That's where the conversation really starts, and where it gets interesting which is why I want to bring it up.

The Silver Winner for me was All the King's Men. You can read my review of it here. What is yours and why?

[Need Catchy Contest Name] - Brrr! It's Cold Sports!

There seems to be a large amount of contests that are going about the place. You've got Game Chef which should be starting up in a couple of months. You've got the Ronnies, which I still think is one of the most masturbatory titles in all of game publishing, which happen ... well whenever it seems. The key thing is that they get the creativity flowing and some really cool things happen from them. Heck, someone hijacked my almost empty lets tell a story thread to tell me that Fall of Granada was going to be turned into a real live book.

All this is cool.

However, what I see that is lacking is a sense of diversity. They all try to kind of do the same thing, here are some keywords and some stuff and here's your time frame and then we'll see what comes up. This is good, again there are plenty of cool games that come out of this. What I'm going to do is start my own contest, in honor of The New Toy selling The Licensed NHL Hockey Guys from Kaskey Kids. Let's see if someone can come up with a game, and I'm not going to limit it to RPGs, but a game that can take a sport and turn it into an RPG, Boardgame or Card game? That's right, I'm going that route. AMAZING.

Now, for the limitations. Because limits are what make things challenging.

1. It has to be a winter sport. By that I mean something that would get played at the Winter Olympics. Here is a handy, dandy list:

1. Alpine skiing
2. Biathlon
3. Bobsleigh
4. Cross-country skiing
5. Curling
6. Figure skating
7. Freestyle skiing
8. Ice hockey
9. Luge
10. Nordic combined
11. Short track speed skating
12. Skeleton
13. Ski jumping
14. Snowboarding
15. Speed skating

2. Mutant League XX - This is also inspired because I got the urge to do a version of Blood Bowl. That means there has to be some sort of mayhem attached to the game. Now I know someone is going to make a, "well I just have to do hockey normally then, don't I?" joke. That's fine, you can make the joke but I think it could do with some over the top violence there.

How do I enter?

1. Well, post here expressing your interest.
2. When your game is done, post it in the completion thread over at the "What's been done" post with a link to the game.
a. If it's an RPG, a link to the PDF is fine.
b. If it's a card game, a link to the rules and a PDF of the cars works.
c. Board game see above, though if you have specialty pieces you're gonna wanna tell us how to make them.

Deadline
I think this should give people plenty of time to think about it. Let's say September 31st because that's con season plus 1 month. I'm flexible on this, if you think it should be shorter, that's fine. If you want to submit early, that's fine.

Judging Criteria
Me and a panel of me will be the judges on this one. Not because I think I'm overly qualified for this, but because I think it'd be kind of cool to judge this. We're going to do it, a la dancing with the stars kind of judging. I'm going to give each game a rating, based off of the criteria below, and then we'll use that as the base point value. Then we'll have a vote off to determine the winner.

The Criteria are:
1. Completeness: Can we play the game, or does it feel like it needs a lot more work.
2. Fun: Is the game fun to play? Does it do the things that make you want to play it again, or continue the campaign.
3. Mayhem: How much mayhem is there? Blood all over the ice, or does it feel like too goons tweeted to stage a fight?
4. Look: How good does the game look? Is it pretty, is it awesome looking? Does it inspire the crowd to riot when their team wins?

Each is based out of 10 and that will provide the base score.

I'll make one too, it just can't enter the contest. There may be something cool at the end, I don't know. I may not have the power of an OGB behind me, but maybe a gift card for IPR, or Drivethru of undetermined value would be up for grabs.

That's right, I'm not cool enough to get people on my own. I'm going to have to bribe them with piddly sums of non transferable cash.

Movie Mashup 2011 - Djinnbusters

Since I'm involved in a contest that doesn't end until June 1st, 2011, I figured that I would do what I did with Game Chef and do reviews for people who have put forth entries into the 1km1kt.net Movie Mashup 24 hour RPG competition. I put my game up already, but since I'm not really going to review my own stuff, I'd rather get feedback from other people, I turn my attention to those the other contestants.

I'm doing this because I know that feedback is important, and that it is rather notoriously hard to get. I offer free copies of a book to people who will do a review of the PDF and I still haven't gotten any reviews that fit the contest (though Ed at Robot Viking did one, which is always appreciated).

Anyway, I'll be doing this review using most of the criteria put out by the contest. Copying from the 1km1kt.net thread here are the criteria for judgement.

Poor you! Our panel of monkeys will be judging you on:
Must include an NPC called Keeton
Proximity: How close to the two films is it?
Complete: Is it complete? Could you run it?
Attractive: Is it attractive to look at?
Professional: How much effort went into layout and style?
Extras: Did they include actual cover, index, character sheet or any other cool things you get in a proper RPG?

Don't worry too much about the Keeton part. That's a running joke on the site.

Next on the docket - Djinnbusters by Jens Thuresson (aka Groffa)

Djinnbusters is a game that takes Disney's Aladdin and Ghostbusters and combines them to have the players be ghost hunters in an Aladdin like setting. Now I will admit that I was both interested and cringing slightly when I heard this mash up. I was excited because I wanted to see the outcome and cringing because I still hadn't recovered fully from the Game Chef Fist Full of Native Use series from November. However, I think it does a pretty good job says me without really any background other than Arabian Nights (and by that I mean the book, honestly.)

Proximity: The game is a pretty good mash-up. You've got the setting from one, and a rather iconic object from the film in the lamp, and puts the Ghostbusters spin on it. I know this might sound like I'm going against what I said, with the previous review of A Fistfull of Dollars and Dark City, but there it didn't really give me the same kind of grit that I expected. Here we've got two comedies and a game that is actually pretty serious. You get jobs from Iago, which I will never hear any GM do without hearing Gilbert Godfrey's voice in my head, where you then go to try and find ways to weaken the ghosts that you encounter. It's got the magic carpet, with a personality, which I think is really important to me because the carpet was perhaps the best character in Aladdin.

Complete: It's a great little game. It uses the Good at / Bad at / Impossible at kind of mechanic and a very simple die roll. This is good because what really makes the game shine is the example where you're busy trying to figure out what makes the ghosts weak. I would totally make the players actually do what they thought they had to do in order to defeat the ghost. Sing songs, warm up those pipes folks. If it's dance, you'd better get ready to get up. If you had to throw things, you might want to start balling something up to throw. I might draw the line at like feeding it grapes, but just barely.

Attractive/Professional: It's nothing particularly special to look at. The art is all hand drawn and rather cute actually. It doesn't really convey the kind of seriousness the game has. I mean, as serious as any game that will get the players dancing to try to defeat ghosts can get. It would have been nice to get a couple more images in there that might have helped, but that's a small quibble.

It's a very functional document and does what it should do. That's really all you can ask from a book done in 24 hours. I blame Dr. Lang and his "how to layout a free rpg" guide.

Extras: It's got the character sheet, and a title page and a GM section which is always appreciated. It even has the "Don't enter here" page to help make sure the players really want to know how the thing works. I say that because the players knowing how the ghosts mostly work doesn't really impede the process.

Would I play it? Hell yeah. I would run it just to have my players dancing about. I think this one is my current favourite (sorry Alone in the Woods) so far but there's been a burst of new ones and we'll see how it goes.

Some Thoughts on my 24 Hour RPG

I finished my 24 Hour RPG because I really wanted to get that off the ground for a couple of reasons. It was a break from writing CyberGen 3.0 and Critical!: Go Westerly. It was a chance to get the creative juices flowing again in a different direction, which always makes them come back better when working on projects.

It was also a quick mental challenge that, while draining, is something I think served me a little better than the Game Chef competition did. It gave me a much tighter deadline. I ended up writing 10k words for Game Chef and in retrospect that's far too much. I wanted to be more concise.

I also ended up showing that I can use Geasa and modify it to fit something different. I hope by showing that I can do it, other people can do it too. If I get it polished enough what I might do is put it up on Drivethru as a free download because I think it's a good way to get people to understand that the system is there to be used.

Anyway, if you want to check out the game you can download it here.

You know you've got a bad rule when ...

Starting off this thread, just to see if anyone is interested in playing with me.

"You know you've got a bad rule when ..."

it requires multiple books to explain.

Keep it going in the comments!

Voting for the ENnies

Hey there folks.

A friend of mine has something up for an ENnie again, she's particularly awesome. So go vote for it! Even if you haven't checked it out, I have an it's awesome and we all know whatever I say goes, right? Right?

It's called the Rose-Bride's Plight and it's up for Best Adventure.

The URL for voting is here. Go vote for other stuff too, but make sure you give that nod to the Rose-Bride's Plight! Hurry up, voting closes August 1st!