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.

I gots Interviewed! - RPGamer.com

One of the fun things that happened was an interview with Scott Wachter at Fan Expo 2011. We talk about the pun that is my company name, CyberGeneration, Geasa and Critical!: Go Westerly and some future projects!

You can listen to it here!

Free RPG Day - Ode to Free RPGs and not just whatever was put out ...

Today was free RPG day and while I appreciate the sentiment I think that there's a lot of people who need to understand that it can be free RPG day every single day and not just when people feel that it's an opportunity to provide a marketing push for RPGs as a whole, though really only the ones that can afford to print a whole pile of free material in the hopes that you will pick up their books.

Where to begin? I guess the first thing is to try to see if you have a bias against free RPGs. I know I developed one over the years. I know when I was a teenager and this new-fangled internet thing was still new I used to look everywhere for free RPGs. I was but a youth and had no cash and this looked like it could be used to provide hours of entertainment.

Then I got a job and started being able to buy stuff and soon fell into the siren song of paid for RPGs. Clearly they have to be better than the free alternatives right?

That is not the case at all. In fact, I think there are some brilliant ideas coming out of Free RPGs that people really need to see.

How do I start?
Well there are a couple of good resources to go for Free RPGs. The first is Dr. Rob Lang's Free RPG Blog where he goes over and reviews a wide variety of Free RPGs.

There is also the Free RPG community over at 1km1kt.net where a lot of free games are hosted. There's also a forum where there is chatter by a pile of monkeys about games in general.

There is also an wiki that has a list of all the free games called the Year of Living Free by Sanglorian. Definitly worth a check out.

There are too many of them! I am paralized by choice!

Allow me to make some recommendations.

1. Lady Blackbird

A wonderful setting with quick game play, Lady Blackbird is one of the most popular free rpgs. It's also been hacked a lot, so if you know how to play this one you'll have an idea on how you can play the million or so renditions of others.

2. Metropole Luxury Coffin

A Cyberpunk Future where fashion is king, your face time is your currency and you all dream of finding a way to raise your status enough so that you can leave the Metropole Luxury Coffin Motel. It's a great game, with a great dynamic between the players and the world. It very much deserved to win the Cyberpunk Revival Project contest.

3. Action City

This is a great game if you want to play that Action Movie(tm) kind of game. Seriously, at the end of every major scene there needs to be an explosion of some kind, and it's hard wired in the rules. How do you go wrong with that!?

4. The Droog Family Songbook

What if you mashed up the Sound of Music with A Clockwork Orange? You would get the most amazing bit of music mixed with ultra violence. Protect your favourite things against the invading Nazi hoards in 1995 by relying on fate, or acts of ultra violence.

5. Geasa

Yes this is my own game, and the link is to the free version. If you want a co-operative and competitive storytelling experience then you want to play Geasa. The Free version contains all the rules, not just the ones that might give you a feeling for how the game plays, but all the rules are there. You can even modify them and print your own game since it's under a Creative Commons BY-SA license.

It's free! Check it out.

There you go. Five games to get you started. Anyone else want to suggest their favourite Free RPG?

Twitterverse - Let's LOLsob at this.

There were a series of tweets that I came about 1/4 of the way into that turned into something that was full of head-desking fun-ness. I'm copying the tweets over so you can see the timeline. This would be ridiculous if it wasn't SO FREAKING TRUE!

GeekyLyndsay
@dazedsaveends gaming cannot be apolitical if you consider that the personal is political and you are donning the mantle of another person

GeekyLyndsay
@dazedsaveends feminism: it's at your d&d table

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay Yep, that's pretty much it exactly.

GeekyLyndsay
Chompy and I are on the way to dnd! Oh also my husband.

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay Have fun, Lyndsay and Chompy!

GeekyLyndsay
@dazedsaveends the husband got us into a big combat, we may all die

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay YAY party wipe in big combat! That'll teach you to let your husband do anything in the game.

GeekyLyndsay
@dazedsaveends I know right

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay this is why you have to think carefully before allowing men at the gaming table, they're very disruptive to the game

GeekyLyndsay
@dazedsaveends they make bad decisions based on emotion, rather than logic. Tsk

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay Exactly! Plus they are distracting at the game table and try to ply their masculine wiles against other gamers.

GeekyLyndsay
@dazedsaveends they're only at the table because they want attention, they aren't serious about the hobby like us women.

firestormink
@GeekyLyndsay @dazedsaveends Hey, I'm not like that! I mean, I'm just one of the gals, right?

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay Yeah, really. And they're all "so and so's husband" or "so and so's boyfriend" -- WORST when they're the DM's boyfriend!

GeekyLyndsay
@firestormink @dazedsaveends you're a special credit to your gender but you will never truly be one of us. Keep trying though.

dazedsaveends
#dnd tip: Ladies, having a hard time getting your boy to play a girly game like D&D? Get him a manly @dragonchow dice bag - boys like gifts

dazedsaveends
Women, check out http://bit.ly/fR1LGl - a great "gateway" gift for your non-gaming boyfriend! Boys are attracted by bright colors & letters.

GeekyLyndsay
@dazedsaveends and then they play a crappy fighter because it's easy and they don't have to care about it. men bring down the game.

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay I'm not saying all boys are bad gamers; I knew a few who could keep up with the women, but it just isn't natural for them.

firestormink
@GeekyLyndsay @dazedsaveends I usually get asked to play Healers. When I ask why I get told it's because my gender is nurturing and stuff.

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay Oh dear, is your tag-along husband playing a fighter? I give the boys a simple class like that so they don't get confused.

dazedsaveends
@firestormink @GeekyLyndsay Someone has to play the Healer, & you can use your fatherly instincts. Just don't bring your kid to the table!

GeekyLyndsay
@dazedsaveends and I mean, if men want to get into a hobby like this don't get all insulted by my sexual comments and advances

GeekyLyndsay
@dazedsaveends it's a compliment. Men need to get used to it, it's part of the hobby.

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay Yeah, it's not fair for the women to have to change the way we play just because some boys want to join in too.

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay There's a certain culture to gaming, and it's decidedly feminine. Boys are welcome as long as they don't upset things.

GeekyLyndsay
@firestormink @dazedsaveends look play a healer but don't get all fatherly on my tough fighter. She's not emotional like that.

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay One boy I played with got upset at all the chainmail codpiece jokes, but it's just gaming culture. We like guys! They're hot!!

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay Mmm, chainmail codpieces. That reminds me, know any artwork of sexy but still powerful male characters? So hard to find :(

firestormink
@GeekyLyndsay @dazedsaveends Totally. What's wrong with those dicks? I can take a joke. What me show off my approval of your actions!

dazedsaveends
There's nothing misandrist about liking chainmail codpieces. Male bodies are meant to be sexy! We can't help what we like, we're women.

dazedsaveends
I only like the tastefully done chainmail codpiece artwork, of course, not huge bulges. more than a handful/mouthful is a waste!!

GeekyLyndsay
@dazedsaveends I know, I love seeing sexy make characters but they cover up so much. Don't be a prude!

dazedsaveends
@firestormink @GeekyLyndsay I'm glad we have boys like you into gaming who can take a joke! also I bet you have a pretty penis.

dazedsaveends
There's nothing wrong with sexy chainmail codpieces. sure they're not realistic, but this is FANTASY gaming, right?

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay I'm going to write a book mocking all the sexist women gamers who ostricize boys. It'll be called "The Quintessential Boytoy."

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay My clever plan to mock misandric women will be to repeat sexist stereotypes about boy gamers & characters. WHAT A RIOT

GeekyLyndsay
@firestormink dick pics or get out, I know @dazedsaveends will back me on this LOL!!

dazedsaveends
@therobotviking It started when @GeekyLyndsay insisted on bringing her husband along to gaming. boys just usually don't fit in at RPG tables

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay @firestormink Let's think about this productively... how can we get more boys into gaming? without changing gaming of course.

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay The hard part of course is that gaming just doesn't appeal to boys. we can try anyway--maybe give them chocolate on crithits?

GeekyLyndsay
@dazedsaveends men change the dynamic of the table and don't get my sense of humor. It's just not how I game. This can't be my fault at all.

dazedsaveends
#dnd tip: Try to think about how to make your campaign appeal to boys too, not just women gamers. Maybe add more horses?

dazedsaveends
I guess when it comes down to it, gaming just doesn't offer anything for boys, being so women-centric. So why bother trying?

firestormink
@dazedsaveends @GeekyLyndsay Maybe we could, I don't know, maybe let me have a say in what's going on? Maybe offer an opinion? Ideas?

dazedsaveends
#dnd tip: Don't make all your male NPCs into shallow caricatures defined primarily by gender; they can be as interesting as the women NPCs!

dazedsaveends
@firestormink ... haha that's cute, but @GeekyLyndsay and I are trying to work this out. Don't you have to make me a sandwich or something?

dazedsaveends
Maybe we need more examples of strong male characters in chainmail codpieces. With long, broad swords. Mmmm. That'll get boys into gaming.

dazedsaveends
#dnd tip: Throw in roleplaying opportunities for male players, who usually aren't into the tactical combat as much as women gamers are.

firestormink
@dazedsaveends @GeekyLyndsay OT can I copy this down and post it on that blog thing I does?

dazedsaveends
@firestormink How cute, you have a little blog? Is it about boys in gaming?

dazedsaveends
@GeekyLyndsay I usually don't allow more than one boy at the table, because whenever you have two, they start catfighting for attention.

dazedsaveends
I do like that they hired @mikemearls to write his "Confessions of a Boy Gamer" column so that Dragon magazine isn't just a big beaver-fest.

firestormink
@dazedsaveends @GeekyLyndsay I do have a blog. I write about games and designing and writing. I talk about men and games all the time!

dazedsaveends
@firestormink It's such a good thing you're doing by being a boy gamer. Haha I keep getting you confused with the other boy gamer who blogs!

dazedsaveends
@firestormink I bet you get hit on all the time by the women you play with, haha

Just a quick tip ...

Dear people who made this ad on Drivethru RPG:

You might want to consider all the non male GMs that are work hard to give their players a great and fun experience in their gaming lives. They work just as hard, frequently having to deal with a lot more crap that male GMs don't have to put up with. They too deserve an ad that doesn't exclude them.

Really, it's not that hard to do either.

Here are some example copies:

No GM, No Dice ... Bribe them with something Nice
No GM, No Dice ... Give gifts to keep rolling.
Think of your GM ... Think of your Character ... Get your GM a gift that keeps your character breathing.

Now, are they all good copy? Not really. But when your ad excludes half of the population you can clearly make the argument that it's bad copy too.

Dreamation 2011 - Critical! and Geasa

There's a convention that I like to go to, and it's Dreamation. I find a pile of wonderful people there who I love talking to as well as get to play with a pile of games. Some of them are even my own.

There were two games that we ran. The first one was Geasa, and I ran a lot of it since it's the new game that we're pushing, and the second one was Critical!: Go Westerly! We got a couple of interesting insights playing these games.

Geasa

I only had one game of Geasa go off, there were four scheduled.

Lesson One:
Try to produce more hype for the game. I was hoping to get at least two of them off because I want people to play the game. They need to play it, or at least hear about it to want to play it. Must bust out the marketing chops, which we all know that most writers suck at this part of the biz.

The game went off fairly well. We did a lot of exploring in France just before the revolution. This was funny to me because this was the second time that someone decided to do that and one time was in Hamilton so there is no way that they were able to collaborate on this. I should probably find a way to write up a setting book for this time period because apparently it's pretty popular. I think I'll blame Montseigneur 1499 for this.

Lesson Two:
Make sure that you schedule a break. Geasa is a pretty demanding game and the fact that people just kept going means that it broke down pretty quickly near the end. I think if I give people that 15 minute break between every two times the game goes around the table then it will refresh the mind and give people the chance to do what they need to do. Must remind myself about that for the next time I run the game.

I also need to sit down and give people a slightly better overview of what they can and can't do. They can tell what their characters are doing, they can define anything for an NPP but they can't tell things about the other players. That's stepping on toes and should probably be reigned in better. Anyway, I think it went well and hope people enjoyed the game.

Critical!:* Go Westerly

Wow. This game went off so much better than I thought it would. Not that I thought it would be bad, but I didn't think it would be this much fun. The players really did have a good time with the characters and it was silly, but at no point in time did it because goofy, and that's my biggest worry. I don't want this game to be thought of as some sort of equivalent of Munchkin: The RPG or something like that. It needs to be able to stand on it's own funny.

Here were some lines during the game carefully written down by Geoff Bottone, who is one half of the creative team on this. They are listed by character, not by player.

Mary the Wench

As a duly-authorized employee of the tavern, offering to sell the tavern's provisions to the hungry Kobolds for gold. Thereby ending the battle with the kobolds with her unusually high common sense. Also, frequently using her common sense to help others.

Urist Axebeard, Tall Dwarf

When confronted with flying fairies: I can't reach them with my axe? Can I throw it at them? I really don't like fairies.

Urist: Wait, there's a plaque on this wall. And it says, "Perend Adventure Tours Dungeon Complex, Room A5? That...doesn't make any sense."

Urist: What's my name? You don't really care, do you? You'll just call me, "dwarf," anyway, so whatever name you give me is fine.
Mabel: Oh, excellent! You shall be known as El Tallface!

Barnabas Ramsey, Wizard

Discovering, through discourse with a kobold that he had captured, that the kobold was both a) very intelligent and b) a licensed therapist. Then the two of them proceeded to have a very nice conversation as they headed to the kobold lair (pronounced "lay-er" by the kobolds), where they found the others mired in traps and negotiations.

Taking out the entire group of anarcho-punk fairies by shouting, "this is ridiculous! We live in a feudal society! You can't tell me that you've just come up with this extremely advanced, modern, political system on your own in what is, essentially a vacuum! I don't believe it! I just don't believe in these fairies!"

This lead to the fairies keeling over and dying, because someone didn't believe in them. Everyone else was very careful not to clap.

This entire exchange with Aelae the Necromancer. It's paraphrased. The actual exchange was even more awesome.

Barnabas: You may be evil, but you don't have to be a jerk!
Aelae: Sure I do, it's in the contract.
Barnabas: You have a contract to be evil?
Aelae: Yes! I graduated from the Wizardry with a major in Necromancy and a contract that says that I get to be a jerk whenever I want!
Barnabas: Really? You're a graduate of the Wizardry? Me too. But I was valedictorian!
Aelae: So was I.
Barnabas: Oh.
Aelae: Incidentally, if you're a graduate of the Wizardry, what are you doing slumming it in this dungeon with these idiots? Shouldn't you be teaching classes?
Barnabas: I don't...have...a graduate degree...Um...Can you write me a letter of recommendation, maybe?

Barnabas: "I know, I'll summon a fire elemental. That should solve the problem. This is a dungeon, nothing in here should catch on fire."
Mary: "What about the wooden kiosks outside?"
Barnabas: "Fire elementals don't buy things."

Daffodianna, the Very Nice Bard

Played by, possibly, the nicest person at the table. She was quiet and sweet, and played songs that gave everyone bonuses virtually all the time. She also conjured an impressive goblin-repelling force bubble out of song. And, was responsible for this little exchange.

Player: Okay, now that combat's over, I'm trying to do (something not combat-related, I forget what it was). Do I still get the Bard's song bonus?
Daffodianna: No. I don't play music when combat's over. There's no point. It's just not exciting.

Angelique Doto, Quillsman

Bartender: Okay, you're standing at the end of the stairs. The basement floor has collapsed out from beneath you and you see the remains of the basement, about twenty feet down, in another cavern.
Angelique: I jump down! Hoorah!

Things like the following happened all the time, but this was by far the coolest example of Angelique. Who had no weapons or armor of any kind.

The players fight two skeletons. Urist kills one. Angelique says.

Angelique: I do a leaping dive roll, grab the skull of the skeleton that Urist just killed, and throw it really hard at the other skeleton. Success!
Bartender: Okay, you hit the skull with the skull in the back of the...skull...The other skeleton crumbles. It looked awesome, by the way.

Marten Iij, Priest of the Thief

Marten: "I'm not going hunting for kobolds. All we're going to do is run into traps."

Marten (upon seeing a woman trapped in a heavily trapped room with whirling death blades and the like): Ma'am, is it all right if I try to steal from you? (He knew that if he was robbing her, his chance to succeed would be higher).

Stelph the Elf

Stelph's constant running patter about how he was better than everyone else (in both incarnations) was just hilarious. And then there was this:

Bartender: The undead are pouring through this tunnel, which looks like it's been hastily dug. Roots from trees on the surface protrude through the ceiling in a lot of places.
Stelph: I use my nature-based magic to convince the trees to attack the tunnel, because I am a Defender of the Forest. I fail. Oh, nature, why have you foresaken me.

And this:

Bartender: The elf introduces herself to you as Tulip. She flicks her blue hair absentmindedly, stares at the floor, and says, "heeey." (this was me, channeling Ke$ha, though Stelph doesn't have a beard).
Stelph: Heeey. I'm two hundred.
Bartender: "I'm 198."
Stelph: Oh. Really? Well, huh.

What I got to do!

I got to play with Brennan and Amber with a couple of Brennan's games. I got to play Three Black Crows, Three Dead Men and Sparks from the Fire both games that Brennan did for various contests. They were both an amazing good time. Amber and I both agreed that had we not been so exhausted we probably would have had even more fun, which is amazing when you consider the fact that we had a great time. It seriously was one of the big highlights and I recommend that you pick up Three Crows and check out the rest of the games from Galileo Games. Seriously good times there.

Also, Brennan has a bag of awesome. It's making me want to scour through ebay to find something similar. It was just too amazing.

All in all it was a great con. I can't do anything but recommend any of the dexposure cons if you can make it. Not only are they a great and good time, you'll get to see and play a bunch of games with some amazingly awesome people.

I was just disappointed that my games conflicted with my chance of being a Cosmic Roadie!

TL;DR version of a response to Steven Long's IPR post

I was going to write a long post about Steven Long's post over at IPR. It was going to be filled with quote things and stuff like that, but in the end I think I could boil it down to the tl;dr version.

Who cares? Makes games you want to play and have fun with it. Now I go write my own IP and pine for a Veronica Mars RPG.

Look at that. 120 characters.

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!

Something Cool - Handcrafted Dice

Someone just posted this over at the Self-Promotion page at the free rpg forums and I thought I'd share.

It's someone who does specialty dice. Holy crap they look cool.

Check them out. They even have an "open source" how to guide on how to do things yourself.

http://dicecreator.wordpress.com/

CyberGeneration - Sponsors?

Someone over at the Firestorm Ink forums, a barren wasteland where very few people gather to talk about CyberGen and hopefully other stuff when I get that released, there was a discussion about maybe setting things up so that there is a Sponsor program. This Sponsor program would be something like Kickstarter, though I don't think that there would be a time limit other than when we get the book out, where you pre-order + extra and you get some cool stuff.

There are a couple of questions that come with this. What would you think would be a viable price point to get things. We're looking at making the book at the $20.00 point. What would be things people would be interested in seeing?

- Name in book as a Sponsor
- Special Cover
- Alt Cover Art
- Signed Copies (some people put stock in that)
- Personalized Copies
- Cool junk from my house prizes?

Suggestions? Ideas? Help me out here folks.

I don't want your crap, even if it's for a good cause

If you haven't heard there is a bundle that you can pick up over at RPG Now that is 25$ and gives you over 700$ worth of games. I recommend it, mainly because you can download what you want and say to hell with the rest of the products that you don't want. This is good because there are some pretty sweet stuff to be found in this bundle.

However, I do want to highlight a couple of things I think are wrong with this. Not from One Book Shelf (The people who own RPG Now) because the money is going straight to help support a cause that has completely fallen off the radar. I think they're awesome. Not from the people who put in inexpensive products, because they're complete things that are inexpensive because they're small.

No, I want to talk about people who think that including a Quick Start version of their game and a preview edition of their book in this bundle. I know they may have just taken the top X games and put them in this bundle, but I'll say right now that if I had something like that in there I would upgrade it to the full version pretty freakin' quick.

As @wapcaplets replied when I first commented on it, "It's like tipping with Canadian Tire Money."

eBooks and the like

I don't know if you know Adam Jury but I would recommend that you check him out either on his blog or on twitter. I mention him because he's talking a lot about ebooks. Not PDFs, but ebooks. The things that can be read in electronic readers.

Now, I don't doubt that it's totally possible that they will set it up so that .pdfs can be read in e-readers, but there's also this possibility that it won't. Technology is a fickle entity and sometimes it goes in directions that you don't expect it to because of the technology that's already there.

With that in mind, I'm going to start trying to convert all the books that I am going to be printing into .epub format. I'll have to do the research to figure out how much to charge for these formats, but I figure that making a book easier to be purchased can't be a bad thing.

I'm going to start testing it out with Mile High Dragon, but Geasa will be the first released book that's in .epub format as well.

See Adam, all your tweeting has gotten to someone.

Signal Boost - RPGirl zine - Looking for Submission

Hey there anyone who reads this thing.

RPGirl Zine is lookin for women to submit articles for the next 'zine.

Details can be found here.

Dreamation 2010 - The Review

I got back from Dreamation and I have to say that I love all the double exposure cons. I do. They're were I got to meet a lot of people that I love and play a lot of new and exciting stuff.

Let me give you the highlights of what we ended up doing and then we'll talk more about the Con.

1. Playtest Geasa a couple of times.

There was one official slot of playtesting, which went really well. I think it's one of those games which is turning out to be a lot like Suitors. It didn't take a lot of tweaking to get the type of game that I wanted. Suitors went through three incarnations before it pretty much stayed as is. Geasa is looking like it's going to be just the first incarnation is going to do it. I might make one change, which is to give people stats of 4, 3, 3 and 2 rather than 4, 3, 2 and 2 but that hasn't seemed to be a problem.

The big problem is the amount of selection anxiety people seem to have. Because the game is showing that it really needs at least one person to take the lead, and make a strong decision. Otherwise people end up wondering what the hell they should be doing. Personally, I think with good examples in the book and more experience running the game at cons this can be mitigated. It seems to be a game that once one pass has happened people get it, and then they can get into it. The trick is going to get them going into it.

Our first game ended up being in the SF genre. This is interesting as the first one ended up with a Janitor who used to be a Nuclear Engineer but couldn't find a job doing that on the station. We had a Bartender who was looking for her long lost son. A ship Psychologist who was afraid of space and a Captain who wanted to get off the station while making life as miserable for the rest of the crew. It was pretty sweet.

The second one was a modern day setting, with a Priest, a Fisherman, an Assassin and a Town Drunk. It was a challenge to see the game try to deal with these disparate characters, and some of the Fae that were created were weird, but the game didn't suffer at all from it.


2. CyberGen LARP

We had about 30 people show up again for the CyberGeneration LARP. It was another bundle of chaos mixed up with some interesting stuff. We've finally got some sort of "plot" going, as in that one group has managed to get involved with the Eden Cabal. There was a suggestion that two things happen. The first is that there starts to be a little bit of plot. Nothing huge and railroading, but more let's have the rest of the world interact with the players because otherwise they end up all over the place and we spend our time running after them.

The second thing is that I'm going to be dumping most of the responsibility of running NAGA with the judges they have and focusing on the LARPs. The only time I had a slot go off was when I was unable to physically do it (like 1 hour after running a 5 hour LARP). This means that there will be two slots to come and play CyberGeneration during the day. Good time there.


3. Playing games with other people

So I got to check out a couple of games, which I don't normally get to do. One of them was The Fisherman's Wife by Julia Bond Ellingboe. I had a great time playing that game and enjoyed it's many austere qualities and the drama that exists between the two characters being tempted and either succumbing or rising to the occasion.

I got to see Brennan's How We Came To Live Here. I didn't get a chance to play, but I'm going to remedy that for Anime North. It looks really interesting, incredibly interesting actually. I want to go through the book and see what others think of it too.

I also got to play in a Zombie LARP. Not just any LARP. An Apocalyptic Zombie LARP. Which translates into me talking in a Southern accent for a while, bashing Zombies with a boffer wrench and make bad TV references all night. Seriously, amazing time. If you're in the area I recommend that you check out Dystopia Rising. Go play in their LARP or show up at DEX and play there.

All in all there were many good times to be had.

A question about the future - Faery Curses

I've been thinking about stuff and how to publish things in this new age where the old models for everything are slowly dying around us. How I might want to do things differently.

There is a new method of doing things, which is through the ransom model which has worked well for Arc Dream publishing. There is the Creative Commons License, which I think is gaining more and more steam and rightfully so. There is even the old stick my head in the sand method and hope I luck out. However, with our latest experiment not working out the way we thought it would the last idea seems to be the worst of that lot.

Now, I do have Feary Curses (it has a new name, but I'm sticking with the working title because that's how I've talked about it here, but for the record I seem to be going with Geasa) and I was thinking what would happen if we just released the text as Creative Commons by-nc-nd license.

My question, to the three people who read this blog and anyone else who might stumble upon this. What should I do? Should I use the by-nc-nd license, or should I make it a less restrictive CC license. Should I give the older method a good ol' college try again. Do I take a page from Arc Dream and try the Ransom method.

Thoughts?

Upper deck ... Hey Hey Hey! Goodbye!

That's the old chant in many a hockey arena when a team is about to get elimintated from the playoffs.

Why reference it? Apparently Upper Deck, those who used to purvey lots of hockey cards as well as games such as Yu-gi-oh and Vs, has apparently been packaging up cards outside of the license with Yu-gi-oh and were selling them out the back door.

Konami sued them good, as you would if you owned the Yu-gi-oh franchise, and Upper Deck tried to counter sue and all that.

Apparently all the judgements are in and the judge has ruled in favour of Konami in every single instance.

Quoting the report from the New York Post we see that a bunch of execs,

Instead, five Upper Deck execs involved in the alleged fakes -- including Chief Executive Richard McWilliams -- have resisted being deposed, citing their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

Upper deck was trying their best to say that they had an approval clause in their letter of intent to Konami, but the Judge, Judge Valerie Baker Fairbank has ruled the following:

For the reasons asserted in Plaintiffs’ Motion papers, the “Approval” clause is not
ambiguous, and applies to advertising, promotional materials, and promotional activity. Exhibit C to the LOI provides illustrative examples, and though not an exhaustive list, reveals that a reasonable interpretation of the ʺApprovalʺ clause of the LOI would not include reproduction of unauthentic YGO.


They've got a lot of the court documents and other information here. This one is hilarious because it's got Konami's facts and UD trying their best to object to them.

Seriously? I think this is hilarious. UD used to be considered one of the big players in the game industry. They had the rights to Yu-Gi-Oh, which is really a license to print money, and had the only super heroes game that had the rights to both DC and Marvel in their VS game. Only to lose pretty much everything including MLB's licensing.

There have been a lot of grumbling that UD has always had a string of unethical business practices such as reprinting lots of wanted cards for individual executives who were able to use them for personal gain.

[H/T to Duk at Big League Stew]