"Free RPG Day" - Every year, the games really aren't free

Now this seems to be a thing because there is "Free Comic Book Day" and now the past couple of years have had "Free RPG Day."  While this is a great idea, I would perhaps like to draw your attention to some games that are actually Free.

1. Eclipse Phase

What is this Jonathan?  But this is a game with high production values!  Clearly it can't be free.  Well, the whole game is licensed under a BY-NC-SA (the text, which is the important part).  That means that if you want, you can download the game on their resources page in epub and other formats.  Download the game, try it, if you like it don't be a douche bag and buy their very reasonably priced PDF for 15$.

2. Leviathans

While the minis aren't free, the game is licensed also under a BY-NC-SA license, though I think it's a lot less than what's licensed under Eclipse phase.  That being said, there's a lot of free perusing under there that's worth your time.

3. 44: A Game of Automatic Fear

This is now available in print, but you can still pick up the free copy of the game on 1KM1KT.  Matt Snyder's game about alien take over is pretty damned fun, and I can say that because I played it too.  It's a blast to run and you'll constantly have your characters running away from whatever has come to take them over.

4. FATE

The FATE system is under OGL, which means that you can find a lot of resources on how to use it for free. That's right, there many online SRDs and other such things to get you going on playing just straight FATE if you haven't heard of it (which mean you have been living under a rock as of late).  There are also a bunch of great games you can pick up that use FATE like Bulldogs!, or the Dresden Files, or the Kerberos Club.

5. Critical!: Go Westerly

This is your own game, you might say.  I would say in reply yes it is.  It also has a Creative Commons version which is free.  Play it, try the game out, see what you think and then if you like it spend the 5 bucks on the full version of the game.  It's a lot of fun, and Free for Free RPG Day.

As always a lot of these free games have a pay version of the game.  Unlike a lot of the games you'll find on Free RPG Day they are fully playable in an of themselves.  There isn't a "quick start" game where you get some of the rules, but if you want the whole thing you're gonna have to pay.  There are no teasers, or trailers.  You can read these rules and go ahead and play the game.

That being said, if you like the game support the designers that made playing that game possible.  That way, you can make sure that you end up getting more games from those same designers which means that you'll have more things that you can play.  It's pretty simple, actually when you think about it.

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!

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.

Signal Boost!: Curse the Darkness - Playtest Stuff!

Okay, I don't know if you've been following Matthew MacFarland's Curse the Darkness? It looks like a lot of fun, and it touches on post-apoc stuff which is very firmly in the category of games I enjoy playing.

What I'm doing is letting everyone know that he's got a playtest booklet out that you can download from his website. It looks great and I'll let people know what it's like after I've read it more and played it.

Shout Outs - The Awesome Dice Blog

Hey Folks,

I got an email from Brian Wood over at The Awesome Dice asking to give him a shout out, so I checked out the blog and the website. They're a Dice Retailer with their own dice and gaming related blog.

I recommend you do it too. The dice seem reasonably priced, though I haven't checked with shipping, and it's nicely organized. I ended up going from link to link in the recommended section, which is a nice thing when it works well.

As for the blog he seems to be on a big Cthulu kick, which is fun. They also have their own WordPress Diceroller, which I might pick up when I finally get the firestorm ink website up and running better.

Thanks for the heads up Brian!

[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.

Free RPG adendum - Because It really needs to be here

Hey folks, one more quick free game for you to enjoy on this Free RPG weekend.

6. Three Black Crows, Three Dead Men

Brennan wrote a lovely little macabre game where you play three crows talking about the three corpses that are hanging in the gallows. You will use various pieces of the corpses to describe who they were as you play three crows with varying personalities. It takes about 30 minutes to play and is a riot the whole time.

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?

Critical!: Go Westerly - Why you should check it out

This is the part that I'm not good at, trying to hype up games that we're making that are awesome. I'll play the hell out of it, I'll run it again and again and again for people at a Convention, but I'm just not that good at talking about it in a public forum. The curse of the writer I guess.

This changes. Geasa got a lot of good reviews from Critics, but that's all well and good. I want Critical! to do really well, really really well. In order to do that, I've got to convince you, the reader, that you want to buy this game. I'm going to try to explain why you'd want to do that kind of thing.

TL;DR or more commonly known as the elevator pitch

Critical!: Go Westerly is a fun, humorous fantasy romp that doesn't rely on being self-referential for it's humour. It also has a mechanic that helps create a desire for more gold as well as critical situations where the players will find out that something good has happened, and so has something very, very bad.

The Longer Version
The Mechanic
The Critical! System is a Creative Commons licensed game. It isn't a BY-ND-NC license that's basically "you can share this with people" but it's a living breathing BY-SA license. That means you can take the Critical! system, modify it as you see fit and publish your own game. Everything that Firestorm Ink comes up with that's our own original material we want to share with people, because the more you share with people the more they tend to share back with you.

Beyond the fact that it's a open game, the Critical! system works like any normal system, where you want to beat a target number, but it plays on the age old question that all TN games tend to gloss over. What happens when you meet your target number? In Critical! you get one really good thing, and one really bad thing. That is unless you can bribe your bartender to let you have two really good things, but that price depends always on the mood of your Bartender, and how often you've asked for their favour before.

The World
I'm biased, but I think the world itself is pretty damned funny. It's so funny, that I'm also making it a CC license. It's going to be a BY-NC-SA. We want you to tell us all the stories you have when playing in Westerly. Character blurbs, short stories, poems, plays, actual play events, novels. You name it, we want it. If we like it enough, hell there's a good chance we'd publish it. We want to really push the world and let people explore and put out on the net what they'd like.

Back to what makes the world funny, it's a fantasy world that doesn't rely on being goofy or self-referential in order to be funny. Things happen that are rather serious: border wars, blood feuds, separation movements, mysterious dukes rules from behind a curtain, pirates. However, what makes it different is that each element has a certain twist that makes it funny. The border war is between who doesn't have to control a patch of land. The blood feuds are over a school, and who was named Gwendolyn first. Things like that which give the world it's humourous edge. What also helps is that everyone in the world takes everything very seriously, for the most part humour depends on characters being able to keep the wall up and accept things that we might find ridiculous or outlandish.

I think these two things really drive Critical!: Go Westerly and are two big reasons why you should check it out if you see it being played at a Con, or if it's on the shelf at your FLGS (eventually!).

Review - @dragonchow dice bags are awesome

Adam Jury was nice enough to introduce me to Lyndsay over at Dragonchow dice bags. I had a good time talking with someone who was cool, fun, interesting over twitter. Since she did the dice bag thing I decided that I would get a couple of his/hers dice bags (yes, I will occasionally be that geeky) for Amber and I.

I recommend that if you are in the market for a dice bag that you get one.

First of all, she's incredibly easy to talk to when it comes to getting what you want. If you have a particular fabric in mind and an idea of what you want, she's right there with you helping with what might be a good idea or a bad idea. Super communication, which makes any online purchase a breeze.

I will admit, when I first saw it I was like, "It's only this big?" because I'm used to dice bags needing to be enormous to hold any amount of dice. Then I put all my dice in there and went, "Oh, I've still got lots of room!" The flat bottom design means that you get a lot of space in a compact package. I love it!

The whole experience with the bags has been nothing but positive. It was so great that if you know if you have someone who wants a dice bag, send them to see Dragon Chow. If you want to get more information here are the places you can go.

Twitter - @dragonchow
URL - dragonchow.com

Also, I'll see if I can get Amber to model hers.^_^

You can see the his/hers bit. We both picked a colour and then just switched which one was on the inside and which one was on the outside.

Charity Package - Over 1k Already!

Hey Folks,

Just giving a heads up here that Geasa is part of a charity package for a single mom that just got diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa. Her friend Elizabeth, from Two Scooter's Press, asked to put together a charity package and Geasa is a part of that. For 10$ you get 6 awesome games and an additional role for Apocalypse World.

* Mars Colony, by Tim Koppang
* Polaris, by Ben Lehman
* Remember Tomorrow, by Gregor Hutton
* Murderland, by Elizabeth Shoemaker
* Perfect, Unrevised by Joe McDaldno— along with all the reference sheets
* Geasa, by Jonathan Lavalee
* And a special, bundle-only Apocalypse World character class: THE HOARDER, by D. Vincent Baker

You can check out the full story here and buy it there, or you can just access the bundle through the button below.

As of right now there have already been 100 people who purchased the bundle. This is for a limited time too, so I'd go check it out.

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!

Geasa - The Free One

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

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

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

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

Geasa is now available!

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

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

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

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

Geasa - It's done and a contest

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

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

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

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

Are you excited? I'm excited.

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/

Geasa - Da Layout

After many, many, many, many, many false starts Geasa is finally in the layout stage.

What does that mean?

It means I've got a cover to show you.

There have been some updates, like putting my name on the front cover and the URL of the website on the back, but ultimately this is what it's going to look like. I'm pretty stoked.

EDIT: Note, I've updated it so that it has all the stuff that people commented on that I agree with.

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."

In which I get interviewed - Dreamation 2010

Hey folks,

There's an interview with the folks from Bacon Ice Cream productions over on Youtube.

Check it out