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.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
Blog Game - Let's Play Story Time
Okay folks. I'm gonna try this every so often, just to see if people are interested in playing some blog games.
This week we're going to do story time. I'll start with one sentence, after that let's get the next line in the comments and we'll go from there.
Opening Line:
This was the last time that Ella would ever let Jacob play a mean practical joke ever again.
This week we're going to do story time. I'll start with one sentence, after that let's get the next line in the comments and we'll go from there.
Opening Line:
This was the last time that Ella would ever let Jacob play a mean practical joke ever again.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Geasa - What I've learned
I've picked up a little bit more knowledge in how Geasa works. Not enough to do something about it, that also requires some more energy, but it's still something that's worked itself out.
I think the ideal amount of people to play Geasa with is 4. I've noticed that most, or all of the games where I feel that the plot kept moving towards a central point. When you add more people it's still possible to do it, but you're probably adding on another hour or two to the game. If you're playing with 6 you should probably understand that you might need an extra session or two to complete your story. There's just so much that's going on that even if you want to get it towards any type of conclusion you're looking at probably 8 to 10 hours.
That leads me to the second point, which was kindly driven home by the people I played with at Dreamation. This game requires breaks. Frequent breaks. Being on all the time is kind of intense. Even in the most intense RPG there are moments when you don't need to give your full attention. Geasa doesn't allow that. I suggest that every two rounds you take a break, otherwise you'll start to run down quick. That's just a guideline. You might find that your group varies with their needs for breaks depending on the action and what's happening, but breaks are important.
I think the ideal amount of people to play Geasa with is 4. I've noticed that most, or all of the games where I feel that the plot kept moving towards a central point. When you add more people it's still possible to do it, but you're probably adding on another hour or two to the game. If you're playing with 6 you should probably understand that you might need an extra session or two to complete your story. There's just so much that's going on that even if you want to get it towards any type of conclusion you're looking at probably 8 to 10 hours.
That leads me to the second point, which was kindly driven home by the people I played with at Dreamation. This game requires breaks. Frequent breaks. Being on all the time is kind of intense. Even in the most intense RPG there are moments when you don't need to give your full attention. Geasa doesn't allow that. I suggest that every two rounds you take a break, otherwise you'll start to run down quick. That's just a guideline. You might find that your group varies with their needs for breaks depending on the action and what's happening, but breaks are important.
Monday, March 21, 2011
The Difference Between Criticism and Little Stars
I put out Geasa, and most of the people I know have really enjoyed it. That's not to say that my Aunt really likes my games, but that I really like my games and people that are strangers come up to me and say that they like it and people I know who won't bullshit me also say that they like it. I appreciate that kind of feedback.
That said, I show up on Drivethru RPG and I see that my "star rating" is 2 out of 5. In reality, I couldn't actually give a shit though my swearing my make people think that this isn't true. I'm mad, but not at the rating. I'm mad because it's the absolutely most useless thing I have ever seen in my life. It doesn't help anyone at all because it's just a freakin' arbitrary number. There's nothing critical about that at all, there's no way that anyone can make an informed opinion using that scale. There's no way that I can improve anything because there's no critical feedback what so ever.
I guess I'm just frustrated because I haven't heard anything back at all. There are 572 people who have picked up either the full version and/or the free version. Surely with all the people with lots of opinions everywhere someone has something to say about it at some point.
Until someone does, I ignore you. You pathetic number rating. You are no help at all.
That said, I show up on Drivethru RPG and I see that my "star rating" is 2 out of 5. In reality, I couldn't actually give a shit though my swearing my make people think that this isn't true. I'm mad, but not at the rating. I'm mad because it's the absolutely most useless thing I have ever seen in my life. It doesn't help anyone at all because it's just a freakin' arbitrary number. There's nothing critical about that at all, there's no way that anyone can make an informed opinion using that scale. There's no way that I can improve anything because there's no critical feedback what so ever.
I guess I'm just frustrated because I haven't heard anything back at all. There are 572 people who have picked up either the full version and/or the free version. Surely with all the people with lots of opinions everywhere someone has something to say about it at some point.
Until someone does, I ignore you. You pathetic number rating. You are no help at all.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Review - Kingdom of Nothing
I told you that I was gonna start just picking at random! Take that internet community!
At Dreamation I ended up picking up Kingdom of Nothing by Jeff Himmelman. Jeff does the writing as well as the illustrations for the book. It's the first book that Brennan over at Galileo Games published and it's the first one he didn't write. I've been meaning to pick it up ever since he started talking about it because I like pretty much everything Brennan has put out and it's in essence a horror game. These two things make it a quick sell for me.
However, when I picked it up I will admit that I had a reservation. You see, there's a comic artist in Toronto who decided that he was going to do a comic about the homeless people he saw around him in Toronto. If you've been downtown, there are a fair number of homeless people and they all have their own stories and are their own people and what the artist does is play on them and completely dehumanize them. The comic became about him rather than about the people he was supposedly writing about.
When I opened up the book, I was worried because even the best intentions can become problematic.
Thankfully, I wasn't disappointed.
Kingdom of Nothing is a game where you play people who find themselves as one of the Lost. Something large and traumatic happened to you and you find that people no longer pay attention to you. Even if you shake regular folk, you'll find that they forget you pretty quickly and you go back to being stuck in the Kingdom of Nothing. The goal of the game, is to get past the bad stuff that stands in your way and come out the other side.
The book itself is gorgeous, and the illustrations are breathtaking. Everything just seems to fit right. The hopefulness mixed with despair. The fact that you're dealing with your community of Lost and what goes on there is captured wonderfully in the illustrations.
Now, what makes this game great is the mechanic. I'm usually one for the story and screw the mechanic, but sometimes there comes something that is so perfect for how the game works that you can't really divorce the game from the mechanic. Don't Rest Your Head is like that, but Kingdom of Nothing has just completely blown DRYH out of the water for immersive mechanic. From the part in character creation where the book encourages the GM to be ruthless when it comes to taking away things that the characters might have had, to the idea that you use spare change as the way to see if you succeed sends chills down my spine as someone who creates games. I love the idea that the only way to get ahead is to be risky, or desperate. I just love the mechanic so much that I read it again, and I never do that unless I absolutely have to.
The other part of Character Creation that I really love is the fact that everyone writes up your secrets and it's up to the GM to try to weave them together. Usually it's not that hard, because you have to leave the trauma up there as something you forget. It's rife for props to come into play, if you like to make props, or other elements. I might even consider trying to use music if I could find a way to do it right.
The setting also makes you more aware of what's going on around you, or at least it did for me. When I was driving my autoshare car around doing errands I ended up looking at buildings that might be Lost places and what I might be able to do with them. How I could run a game and use a map of Toronto and mark these places down and how they might impact people.
If I do have a complaint about the game, it would be the couple of editing mistakes that appear here or there. There are a couple things that are duplicated in a bunch of lists. Also, there's a moment where it says that a dime is worth three successes and later on it says that it's worth only one. I'm going to stick with the dime as three because it fits with the theme and the progression.
For fifteen bucks I would highly recommend this game to anyone. If you're making a big purchase at IPR or if you see it at a con, it is totally worth the pick up cost.
TL;DR Version
Setting is chilling and appropriate. Book is beautiful to look at. Mechanic is perhaps the best woven in I've seen, even better than Don't Rest Your Head. At 15$ you should buy it now.
At Dreamation I ended up picking up Kingdom of Nothing by Jeff Himmelman. Jeff does the writing as well as the illustrations for the book. It's the first book that Brennan over at Galileo Games published and it's the first one he didn't write. I've been meaning to pick it up ever since he started talking about it because I like pretty much everything Brennan has put out and it's in essence a horror game. These two things make it a quick sell for me.
However, when I picked it up I will admit that I had a reservation. You see, there's a comic artist in Toronto who decided that he was going to do a comic about the homeless people he saw around him in Toronto. If you've been downtown, there are a fair number of homeless people and they all have their own stories and are their own people and what the artist does is play on them and completely dehumanize them. The comic became about him rather than about the people he was supposedly writing about.
When I opened up the book, I was worried because even the best intentions can become problematic.
Thankfully, I wasn't disappointed.
Kingdom of Nothing is a game where you play people who find themselves as one of the Lost. Something large and traumatic happened to you and you find that people no longer pay attention to you. Even if you shake regular folk, you'll find that they forget you pretty quickly and you go back to being stuck in the Kingdom of Nothing. The goal of the game, is to get past the bad stuff that stands in your way and come out the other side.
The book itself is gorgeous, and the illustrations are breathtaking. Everything just seems to fit right. The hopefulness mixed with despair. The fact that you're dealing with your community of Lost and what goes on there is captured wonderfully in the illustrations.
Now, what makes this game great is the mechanic. I'm usually one for the story and screw the mechanic, but sometimes there comes something that is so perfect for how the game works that you can't really divorce the game from the mechanic. Don't Rest Your Head is like that, but Kingdom of Nothing has just completely blown DRYH out of the water for immersive mechanic. From the part in character creation where the book encourages the GM to be ruthless when it comes to taking away things that the characters might have had, to the idea that you use spare change as the way to see if you succeed sends chills down my spine as someone who creates games. I love the idea that the only way to get ahead is to be risky, or desperate. I just love the mechanic so much that I read it again, and I never do that unless I absolutely have to.
The other part of Character Creation that I really love is the fact that everyone writes up your secrets and it's up to the GM to try to weave them together. Usually it's not that hard, because you have to leave the trauma up there as something you forget. It's rife for props to come into play, if you like to make props, or other elements. I might even consider trying to use music if I could find a way to do it right.
The setting also makes you more aware of what's going on around you, or at least it did for me. When I was driving my autoshare car around doing errands I ended up looking at buildings that might be Lost places and what I might be able to do with them. How I could run a game and use a map of Toronto and mark these places down and how they might impact people.
If I do have a complaint about the game, it would be the couple of editing mistakes that appear here or there. There are a couple things that are duplicated in a bunch of lists. Also, there's a moment where it says that a dime is worth three successes and later on it says that it's worth only one. I'm going to stick with the dime as three because it fits with the theme and the progression.
For fifteen bucks I would highly recommend this game to anyone. If you're making a big purchase at IPR or if you see it at a con, it is totally worth the pick up cost.
TL;DR Version
Setting is chilling and appropriate. Book is beautiful to look at. Mechanic is perhaps the best woven in I've seen, even better than Don't Rest Your Head. At 15$ you should buy it now.
Movie Mashup 2011 - Spade vs. Indy
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.
Don't worry too much about the Keeton part. That's a running joke on the site.
Today's game is Spade vs Indy by Tamás Kisbali aka Evil Scientist
Spade vs. Indy tells your right away what kind of game this is, and what movies were used to mash things up. This one uses the Maltese Falcon and the Indiana Jones movies to create a wonderfully film noir, pulp adventure experience. This one just kind of popped up for me, I hadn't been to 1km1kt.net in a while, so I didn't have the same sense of anticipation when I read the game but it's still a pretty damned good idea.
Proximity
Yes. This is what I see as a mashup. It's not one, or the other, but it takes elements from both movies and turns it into an original game. It's pulpy, and campy, and full of the potential for backstabbing, doomed romance, and mustached twirling villains. You always feel like you're in both movies, without feeling too much like you're in one or the other. Perfect.
Complete
100% complete. It would have been nicer to have a few more examples, just to make sure that some of the rules are clear. The game uses a card system to determine everything from stats to success. Not only do you have a set of cards for character creation and tricks, but you'll need a second one to be the random challenge difficulty.
Where the game shines in a place where it might fail is the role of the secondary characters. There are two main characters, your spade and your indy but if you've got more than three players then normally what you're left with is a bunch of unhappy players. However, here the associates get the fun job of trying to screw up the two 'main' characters to get what their characters want. It's a really elegant way to solve the problem of not being in the spotlight since it's not "your story."
Attractive and Professional
The few graphic elements in the pdf are nicely placed and are perfect for the setting. Same thing with the header fonts. The separate colours really make them pop well.
The standard body font is serviceable, unless we're dealing with quotes. That's when I want to take what's been done with the book and throw it out. Seriously jarring to have to deal with one of the quote marks on the bottom and the other on the top. It's the only thing I would change in the whole document, but it's a big one especially in the opening story text section where you're going to either capture your audience or lose them.
Extras
It's got the character sheet at the bottom, with a little nifty crest watermarked in it. The slots are big enough to place the cards in, but in reality I'd rather just write the number and suit down rather than have to worry about fixing the cards to the paper somehow.
Also, a little personal quip of mine. I'm kind of sad that it's got a No Derivative Clause in the Creative Commons License. I think this is a wonderful mechanic, to the point where I start to wonder how I can hack it. Just a personal qualm, nothing actually bad about the game itself.
Would I play it?
Hell yes. It's in the current, games I think that should win this contest.
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.
Today's game is Spade vs Indy by Tamás Kisbali aka Evil Scientist
Spade vs. Indy tells your right away what kind of game this is, and what movies were used to mash things up. This one uses the Maltese Falcon and the Indiana Jones movies to create a wonderfully film noir, pulp adventure experience. This one just kind of popped up for me, I hadn't been to 1km1kt.net in a while, so I didn't have the same sense of anticipation when I read the game but it's still a pretty damned good idea.
Proximity
Yes. This is what I see as a mashup. It's not one, or the other, but it takes elements from both movies and turns it into an original game. It's pulpy, and campy, and full of the potential for backstabbing, doomed romance, and mustached twirling villains. You always feel like you're in both movies, without feeling too much like you're in one or the other. Perfect.
Complete
100% complete. It would have been nicer to have a few more examples, just to make sure that some of the rules are clear. The game uses a card system to determine everything from stats to success. Not only do you have a set of cards for character creation and tricks, but you'll need a second one to be the random challenge difficulty.
Where the game shines in a place where it might fail is the role of the secondary characters. There are two main characters, your spade and your indy but if you've got more than three players then normally what you're left with is a bunch of unhappy players. However, here the associates get the fun job of trying to screw up the two 'main' characters to get what their characters want. It's a really elegant way to solve the problem of not being in the spotlight since it's not "your story."
Attractive and Professional
The few graphic elements in the pdf are nicely placed and are perfect for the setting. Same thing with the header fonts. The separate colours really make them pop well.
The standard body font is serviceable, unless we're dealing with quotes. That's when I want to take what's been done with the book and throw it out. Seriously jarring to have to deal with one of the quote marks on the bottom and the other on the top. It's the only thing I would change in the whole document, but it's a big one especially in the opening story text section where you're going to either capture your audience or lose them.
Extras
It's got the character sheet at the bottom, with a little nifty crest watermarked in it. The slots are big enough to place the cards in, but in reality I'd rather just write the number and suit down rather than have to worry about fixing the cards to the paper somehow.
Also, a little personal quip of mine. I'm kind of sad that it's got a No Derivative Clause in the Creative Commons License. I think this is a wonderful mechanic, to the point where I start to wonder how I can hack it. Just a personal qualm, nothing actually bad about the game itself.
Would I play it?
Hell yes. It's in the current, games I think that should win this contest.
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