As If I Need Another Mission Statement

From the Indianapolis Monthly

It’s 9 a.m. Friday. The city has awoken around the Convention Center halls, now flooded with light that drenches the sun-shy gamers, seated in circles at tables or on the ground. Many of them were in these very spots when the sun last set and have moved little since. An RPG can go for days, weeks, even years, theoretically. Characters take hours to build and months to develop and hone their skills by accruing experience points, “learning” spells and building prowess with certain weapons. The “action” transpires at a clip just a hair faster than real time. Minimal duration for a typical gaming session is three to four hours. Otherwise, you couldn’t get anything accomplished. That’s why there is no such thing as a casual gamer. It just takes too much time for anyone who’s not completely obsessed.

I’d love to see a news article on (the roleplaying at) DexCon or Dreamation and see how they compare.

General Update

Played another game of Mechaton, three players this time. It was awesome. I still have pics to post, sometime, of my game the other day. I rebuilt some of my Mechs today to be even more awesome. Once I have the actual setup rules, it will be even more awesome than that. I can’t wait.

Played the first solid now-we’re-actually-playing session of Burning Wheel. It’s hard to remember that we have more than four hours to play, so I don’t need to push straight towards the awesome every second. Damn Con games are ruining me. I also need to internalize some of those rules - looking crap up takes time.

I really, really hope I’ll have my books in hand for Gen Con. I will be one sad puppy if that doesn’t happen.

Ideas for indie game events at Pandemonium are bubbing in my head. Post-Gen Con, some of them will hopefully be coming to fruition.

Ken Hite gave Timestream an unanticipated nod in his latest Out Of The Box. I yet again squee with fanboyish glee.

Haha, I’m having some blockage in regards to my latest game idea. Serves me right! I need to give the ol’ noggin a rest, but its so hard. So hard.

Oh yah - I also wrote a game about Owlbears.

Mercenary

Lots of shtuff in the blog-o-sphere is making my brain swirl today. We got Phil Reed on “Forge Games” Are Not “Indie Games”, the announcement that IPR got the Ogres Choice Award for Most Influential Company and this RPGnet thread titled The Forge Manifesto?.

I self-identify as an independent RPG publisher. I’m pretty secure in that self-identification, so lets leave that aside for now.

Am I an indie publisher? Am I a Forge publisher? Where do I lie on the “fringe <–> mainstream” continuum?

More and more, I’m looking at these questions less and less as identity concerns, and more and more as marketing concerns.

In a marketing sense, Indie Games are a brand. Whether this is a good or a bad thing, eh. Personally, I think that the self-publishing community is healthy and prolific and self-supporting while being mutually supportive, and thats awesome. Are there people that buy Indie Games like theres people that buy d20 Games? Yes. Definitely.

Do I want to market to those people? Thats the question that I’m trying to answer with each of my products. Being an active member of the Forge and Story-Games and an infrequent poster to RPGnet, and my games being carried on IPR and Key20 positions me in a certain way in the community. Honestly, if I wanted to deny the Indie label and try to refocus my outlets to other market segments - that would be a lot of work. Would it get me more sales? I don’t know.

And let’s not forget the fact that IPR as a whole probably grosses more than many “second-tier,” if not first-tier, large-press RPG publishers. Let’s not forget the fact that a number of individual independent publishers probably move more books in a year that these publishers, and that they make money on every sale. So it’s not like the Indie label is a bad one to have, in terms of moving product.

But it’s a little sad, that in the end, it all comes down to the green.

“O” Is For “Overkill”

So, someone got really excited about Mechaton. And went and got new dice for it. And went to the lego store. And is playing with his friends tomorrow.

With the aid of my meager lego collection and a “lego grab bag,” I present to you: The Frogz.

So I’m not gonna win any design awards (yet….). But I decided, hey, if I’m gonna go big, I should go all the way, right?

This fellow is pretty basic. I could see him as a all-around workhorse - 1 range weapon, 1 yellow die for the spotlight on his off-hand, 1 green die for his huge feet, and maybe an armor die or a hand-to-hand weapon.

This dude’s pretty sweet. He was originally artillery but..uh…you’ll see. So he definitly has a mad ranged weapon, with that four-barreled monstrosity, and either an artillery peice or a one-use rocket on his shoulder. Again, the scope could be worth a yellow die. His shield, though? Two armor die, please. That shield is da shit.

Ah, the scout. One of these guys led me to sweet victory against Vincent and Brennan over the weekend. This particular model has two yellow dice for all those antennae and signal pickups, one blue die, and one green die - look at the freakin rockets on the back! He ALSO has a green d8, because he has no weapons. Sweet!

Holy crap. Will you look at that. This guy is so huge, you can’t not love him. Notice the little support mechanism he has for his GIANT SWORD of an arm. So, hand-to-hand weapon, and I’m thinking 3 blue dice! Not only for his cool little shield, but also cuz no-one wants to get close to him because of his GIANT SWORD. I might also give him jumpjets or something to give him a green die instead of one of the blues.

This is my favorite. He’s, uh, heavy artillery. He launches little explosive frog heads off of those rail arms, and they will eff you up. I’m thinking either one weapon (artillery) and three armor, or two weapons - artillery and range, so he can shoot frog heads right into your face.

Battle report to come tomorrow, barring unforseen circumstances.