Another Adventure Begins

I began playtesting my new game, Annalise, last week.

From my current intro:

The games is about creating Vampire stories from the perspective, not of the Vampire, but of his victims, servants, enemies, and others affected by his appetites. This is creating the story of Dracula by playing Van Helsing, Mina Harker and Renfield; it is the story of Lost Boys by playing the younger brother, the two vampire hunters and the grandfather.

We did character discovery and the first scene of the first phase of play, and it was solid. I mean, I took a ton of notes, and I have an idea of stuff to start carving away now, and we obviously have just barely began to engage with the economy and reward cycles, but my group seemed pleased with the core stuff and we’re looking forwards to continuing it (or at least I am).

Anyway, I’m polishing up my notes and procedural rules text into a more human-readable document. The stuff for the first phase of play is all done (with copious examples!), and the second “half” of the game is mostly elaborations and modifications of the mechanics for the first part, so it shouldn’t take so long to finish up.

The point being, by next weekend I should have a fairly usable playtest draft. So, if anyone’s interested in checking it out, lemme know!

Oh, and here’s a first draft of the “first half” character sheet. It’s looking like you’ll need a different sheet for the second half, and this one is actually already out of sync with my latest rules revision, but whatever. I’m digging how it looks so far.

Annalise Character Sheet

I’m excited.

Gen Con 07 In Pictures

A few, crappy pictures, cuz I was down to my celly. But, here’s what I have!

A small horse, seen wandering about the streets of Indianapolis. You can’t really see in the picture, but he’s wearing sneakers and a leather hat. This was the cap of a long evening of running around and being a superspy; Kevin and myself collapsed into hysterical laughter shortly thereafter.

Greg Stoltze in his incredibly uncomfortable Reign clapboards. He looks miserable because I insisted I get a picture, just as he thought he would never have to put the thing on again. I’m a bastard like that. However, he shouldn’t be too sad - Reign did very well at the IPR booth (second highest seller behind Spirit of the Century), and there was a lot of positive buzz around the booth. Meeting Greg was cool, in any case, as I’m a big Meatbot Massacre fanboi.

James Brown, the hardest working man in game design. Aka blankshield. He was a primary booth sponser, so he got to harangue us before and after each day of sales. Also, his Blood and Bronze WITHOUT PEER sets were totally boss - it’s hard to beat hand-hammered brass bowls, yo.

Jon Walton doing the “lets break down the booth” dance. On his left are Tim Koppang, Lenny Balsera’s back, and Eric Boyd. Justin Bow’s back is to his right. Jon did the opposite of me during Gen Con, in that he spent all his time at Games On Demand and didn’t do the dealers hall like at all. We compared notes, and decided that we both need to mix it up a bit for next year.

Justin Bow, of Green Fairy Games. We met at DexCon, and it was cool that he made it out to the Forge booth as well. Fae Noir is a more “traditional” game, but it demonstrated that there’s totally a market for indie non-hippy wierdness, and we had some good conversations. Let us not enforce false divisions!

OMFG MASTER CHIEF!!! I wish I had gotten a better pic. Halo rules, and this promotional costume was totally sweet. Not enough for me to buy Halo Clix, but whatever…the fact that the Spartan suit exists makes me happy.

Ron Edwards has his own haranguing to do. Hanging out with Ron is fun! I love face-to-face communication.

Ron Edwards, Brennan Taylor (of IPR and Gallileo Games) flashing the secret code sign, and James Brown. The other primary booth sponsors were Ben Lehman and…someone else? I don’t remember. Anyway, this was the triumvirate of power. Notice Brennan’s stylish Project Donut stickers.

Unfortunately, this is the only “booth in action” shot I got, and it sucks. From left to right we have Brennan’s back, Steve Segedy, someone wearing a theRPGsite T-shirt (which rules that he was hanging out in the Forge booth, by the by), a friendly customer, Greg Porter (of BTRC fame), and Seth Ben-Ezra demoing Dirty Secrets for Ben Lehman and someone else. Wooo!

A Storm Trooper. ’nuff said.

The awesome old factory thats behind the convention hall. Next year I want to devote some time to strolling around Indy and taking some pics of the neat old cool buildings.

Tim Koppang (TCK Roleplaying) in all of his well-groomed self. Tim is a fun guy, and I met his wife, who was also really cool. It was kind of hilarious when she walked up to him in the middle of a demo, said “you forgot something” and put his wedding ring on his hand, without either of them missing a beat. I kind of hoped that was the whole marriage ceremony, but no, he had just forgot to put it on that morning. Anyway, hilarious!

A crappy shot of some cool resin Tomes of Evil, with full-on unlatching and paper-containing powers. I liked these a lot, though I have no need  for them. Artifacts are neat!

And that’s all I got. Next year, there will be more. But, anyway, yay pictures!

Gen Con AughtSeven

I had a really good time at Gen Con. I’m also doing a lot of thinking as a result of it, which is always good.

I promised some pictures - unfortunately, I lost my stone-age digicam half-way through the con (which is good, cuz I need an excuse to get a new one, but is bad, cuz I had some great pics on there), and my cell phone pix aren’t apparentely ready to come through the intertubes yet. So, there will be some pictures, but not quite yet.

I started doing this by day, but my brain is mush and it all runs together anyway. So, in very rough chronological order, bullet points

• I broke my (two-convention) streak, and didn’t meet anyone in the airport that I knew. Lame!
• We need better logistics at the booth - not to blame anyone, cuz we’re all volunteers, but we did a lot of waiting when we could have been doing a lot of setting up. That said, the load in went smoothly, ’specially cuz Bill and myself had Origins to train us on the equipment.
• The Diana Jones Awards, while fun with the free drinks and the….attentive…wait staff, was a little underwhelming. Maybe cuz I didn’t care about any of the three things up for it, maybe cuz there was little AC and little loudspeakering, maybe cuz I was exhausted, but I really wanted to have more fun there. Oh well, maybe next year?
• Seeing people is fantastic! You are all my friends that live in different places that I only see a couple days a year, but its totally worth it.
• I particularly enjoyed spending time with people that I kinda knew, and developing those relationships more. Kevin, Jason, Steve, Eric, Brennan, Bill, Krista, Paul, Danielle, Clint, Matt, Justin, Gregor, Julia, Ron, and I’m sure there’s some I’m forgetting - thank you for spending time, meals and games with me. This isn’t to say I didn’t really enjoy gaming, chilling with, meeting or bullshitting with the rest of you people, I just don’t remember your names at the moment!
• The dealers hall was much more manageable, probably a combination of me having experienced it before and it actually being a little less crowded this year. The Forge booth had plenty of space, and even with the increased electronic games presence, there was still a lot of unused space - like, the Segway challenge was in the dealers hall. Wierd!
• Free loaves of bread from the mall food court. A Dro sandwich ensued.
• Going to a sleazy underground bar with Kevin in pursuit of his spy game goal, and watching him win 100,000 in two hands of blackjack. I felt like a superspy, and I wasn’t even the one kidnapped. Unfortunately, we never did find the final clue, and Kevin failed to save the world.
• Going way off the beaten path with Kevin and Jason and Eric to relax and eat and have a great chat. Indianapolis has some hella cool buildings, and the extra 15 minutes of walking were totally worth it to get out of the con zone.
• Hatching secret plans & ideas for a booth next year.
• The booth was rocking, but exhausting. I was doing double-duty as IPR rep and Forge booth participant, and even though they were in the same physical location, I really couldn’t muster the energy to do well by the booth. I didn’t end up running a single demo of carry (though others did, thanks Ron!). I did run Primitive (which got recorded by Canon Puncture) and a couple of InSpectres demos, all of which were fun. I like running demos for other peoples games way better than my own, I’ve come to realize.
• Morning conversations with Krista, Brennan and Bill as we all got around and on the way to the dealers hall. These always put me in a good mood, and we had some really interesting talks in that hour or so every morning, not to mention some hilarious moments (f’rex, “Dude, I’ll punch you right in the sleep-hole”).
• Getting lost EVERY NIGHT getting back to my hotel. I’m glad I had a map. My brain is not built for directions.
• My hotel was neat! There was a train in it, and ghost people! I wanted to play Drifter’s Escape sitting between the train cars!
• Playtested Darkpages twice. The first was an incredible lineup of players (I ran it for Jared and Jason, the authors; Thor, the editor; Dave Turner and Mike Mearls, who have been following the games development for awhile, as I understand it), and was an incredibly productive playtest, I thought. I can’t wait for the game to take a final shape. The second was much more abbreviated (with Kevin and Alexander), but demonstrated that the previous playtest had pointed the game in a good direction.
• Played Roanoke. It was fun, but our story gamer brain damage got in the way. Kevin was hard on himself about not running it well; I think we had some expectation/execution dissonance in play that contributed, and I kinda went off in a weird direction with my character. Nevertheless, it was a good time for me, and I would play a game with those guys (Kevin, Clint, Jason, Eric, Matt Snyder) in a heartbeat.
• Playtested Acts of Evil, kind of. Well, we did, but we didn’t get through too much of the game. But what we did get through….this game is awesome, in the most literal sense. No less than three times I sat back at the table, staring into space and going “Holy crap, Paul. That is BRILLIANT and disturbing.” - about game mechanics. Oh yes. Oh yes.
• I am so incredibly glad that I stayed until Monday. Sunday evening dinner and gaming after the pressure of the BIG SHOW is off was really great, and I don’t want to ever miss it again if I don’t absolutely have too.
• Ron and Jason and Julia and myself had an interesting conversation about our games. A subject for another time, but…there’s something interesting happening in game design, and while I’m not sure that it’s a big ol’ deal, there are some fascinating implications to some of these games that are happening right now.
• I saw a lot of great costumes, and it’s really sad that I lost my camera for that reason alone.

So, in short, good times. Very good times.

Tomorrow: The World!

Gen Con tomorrow.

Excellent.

I’ve been promising others (and myself) to take plenty of pictures, and I’ll try to take some daily notes.

I plan to have a fucking excellent time. Anything that gets in my way will be crushed.

That is all. See ya in a week.

Some Thoughts on Contenders

I played Contenders last Wednesday at SGBoston. It’s a game about boxing drama, though it’s really a game that uses competition as the focus for asking what drives people to get what they want. I played with traveling rock star Malcolm Craig, who facilitated the game and SGBoston stalwart Eric. I had a surprisingly good time! We made a really compelling story about three boxers in 1930s Colorado, each trying to scratch a living out of the hard times and take care of the people that they loved. I’m planning to pick up a copy at Gen Con. It very much hilighted a couple of game design things that I’ve been thinking about a lot, such as….

Good Rules Take You Somewhere New

Why do we have rules for RPGs? Because they take you somewhere you wouldn’t have gone on your own. My boxer was a kid, 19, just out of school, who wanted to box and the marry his sweetheart. He was a good, honest kid in a bad town. On my own, his story would have been one of struggle against his internal demons, with a lot of interaction with his sweetheart (when should they get married? what if she’s pregnant and he doesn’t want a kid yet? what if he doesn’t have enough money to support them both?), the boxing hilighting that conflict.

I got knocked out in the first round of my first fight, and that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the game. Due to a combination of poor card draws and personal decisions about what kinds of scenes I wanted for myself, I ended up with my Pain stat skyrocketing. I never had enough money to do anything, and I ended up being beat up by pretty much everyone (other boxers, the Mob, the other gangsters, etc). By the end of the game, I tried to use my measly earnings to get my sweetheart a ring….but her father didn’t even allow me to see her, because I was such a loser. I ended the game jumping on a train and becoming a tramp.

Wow! Totally not what I had had in mind for the character when I made him, but it was a really compelling, tragic story arc that grew directly and concretely out of my engagement with the game system and my poor, poor luck drawing cards. I’ve played games where failing almost every roll (or draw, in this case) was extremely frustrating; in this game, the system is such that you always have a slim chance to overcome your past failures, and it was enough to give me hope for the next time around!

So I really admire it as a piece of tight, streamlined game design, much more than I had expected to, to be honest.

GM is a concept, not a person

I also dug the way that GM duties are apportioned out in Contenders. Basically, you choose and frame your own scenes, and you can choose to assign other players to NPC roles in your scenes if you want. But you can also narrate your own scenes entirely, draw some cards, then narrate the end. Which sounds kind of lame….but the other part is, you HAVE to interact with each other in actual boxing scenes, because someone else needs to play the other boxer, even if it’s not another players character. Also, the Brawl scenes are specifically for fighting another boxer outside the ring, so it’s another avenue. Finally, the system acts as a kind of general, overarching adversity, as your own stats determine your opposition to non-boxing conflicts. I never had the sense that we were playing seperate games in parallel (which I get with GMless games sometimes), even before we started involving each others characters in our scenes.

Anyway, I’m working on a GMless game right now, and I’m glad that I played Contenders so’s I can steal from it.

So…

I liked Contenders a lot, and I’m excited to get it and hopefully play it some more.

Ties

I just got really excited about my tie-breaking mechanic for a new game.

“Once the active player and the scene guide both have dice, they roll them and order them sequentially. Look at the highest single result for each person; if the active player is higher, then he “wins” the first volley, and he describes how his trait and actions get him closer to his goal. If the scene guide is higher, than the active player loses the first volley, and the scene guide describes what this means in the fiction. If they are a tie, both dice are returned to their owners and you look at the next highest pair. If all pairs are ties, then the contest is interrupted by something that means it will have to continue on later. This something can be declared by anyone at the table, and that person automatically claims the conflict (as it has become a discrete repeatable action).”

That’s right; ties mean that the conflict gets broken off before it’s resolved, and turns into a resource that someone can bring back at any time in order to influence a different conflict. That’s hella cool, no?