Static

…page, that is. Up above you can see I added a seperate page to index the RPG Design Handbook stuff.

Oh, and I need to do another print run of carry. Many thanks to everyone who’s picked up the game. I hope y’all get to play it. I’m going to be doing a typo correction re-edit, and I’m adding one rule (it’ll be posted everywhere once I have the wording correct in the text). Feel free to point out typos and other weirdnesses with the text in the comments, if you have a mind to.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Dreamation On The (Mental) Horizon

And here’s what I’m planning to run at Dreamation 2007:

Thursday

Event Title: A Night Of Enticing Stories

System: 1001 Nights

Blurb: 1001 Nights is the game of storytelling, courtly intrigue and self-preservation in the palace of the Sultan. “You play members of the Sultan’s Court, whiling away the sultry nights by telling pointed stories to advance your own ambitions. Navigate the social maze and you could win your heart’s desire; offend the wrong person and you suffer the Sultan’s wrath.” This rotating-GM style game gives everyone the opportunity to tell tall tales and enjoy the parables of others.

Maximum number of players: 6

Please choose an attitude rating for this game: Fun

Please choose an age rating for this game: Suitable for All Ages

Friday
Event Title: The Burdens Of War
System: carry. a game about war.

Blurb: carry. a game about war. is a short-form game that follows the story of a squad of U.S. Marines in the Vietnam war. The players take on the roles of soldiers from this squad, and create the weights and issues that they bring with them into the war. As the unit falls apart under both external attack and internal strife, how will you shape the legacy and memories that you will leave behind? This is not a convention scenario; this game is played in its entirety in one 4-hour session.

Maximum number of players: 6

Please choose an attitude rating for this game: Serious

Please choose an age rating for this game: Suitable for All Ages

Saturday

Event Title: The Burdens Of War

System: carry. a game about war.

Blurb: carry. a game about war. is a short-form game that follows the story of a squad of U.S. Marines in the Vietnam war. The players take on the roles of soldiers from this squad, and create the weights and issues that they bring with them into the war. As the unit falls apart under both external attack and internal strife, how will you shape the legacy and memories that you will leave behind? This is not a convention scenario; this game is played in its entirety in one 4-hour session.

Maximum number of players: 6

Please choose an attitude rating for this game: Serious

Please choose an age rating for this game: Suitable for All Ages

Event Title: The Guardians of Time

System: Timestream

Blurb: It’s a big responsibility, the preservation of history. And those tasked with it have started to slip. Strange events and changes are started to erupt in every era, and now you’ve been tapped as a replacement. Unfortunately, you have your own goals and interests - which may or may not match up with your new duties. Will you and your compatriots be able to stand up to the test of time itself? Or will you let your personal interests get between you? As Time Travelers, Temporal Manipulators and Thralls, the fate of the timestream itself is in your hands.

Maximum number of players: 6

Please choose an attitude rating for this game: Fun

Please choose an age rating for this game: Suitable for All Ages

Keepin’ my Sunday open, baby. I’m looking forward to this one.

The Voice

The second EVAR Voice Of The Revolution podcast contains a review of carry. a game about war. Brennan played in a playtest of it at last years Dreamation; Paul Tevis hasn’t played it yet but wants too; and they both have very thoughtful (and complimentary) things to say about the game. Check it out, yo.

I would love to hear them talk about it after they both get to  play a full game.

Awww, Thanks Guys

The Sons of Kryos have some very nice things to say about carry, which Judd played at DexCon and Jeff played at JiffyCon, in their latest podcast. They go a bit into detail about their thoughts on the game and liken it to Spirit of the Century (!), and it was really nice for me to hear some analysis about the game from others.

And you should be listening to the podcast anyway, so….where, I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.

Audio Demo: Carry

Jeff and Judd (of the Sons of Kryos, natch) recorded a demo of carry with me at Gen Con. Here’s the mp3 file. Check it out.

Thanks guys!

Invert, Not Revert

So I had an awesome revelation while writing up my carry demo materials. So, how stakes resolution works in the game is that all of the player involved set their stakes if they win the conflict. If the players have a conflict with each other, it’s easy, they either win their stakes or the other guy wins his stakes. The GM can throw extra counterstakes into this, if he wants. Now, if the conflict is against the GM, he sets counterstakes for if the players lose. The GM never sets positive stakes for NPCs, just negative stakes for PCs.

Now, the easy and logical thing to do is just reverse the positive stakes, right? So the player goes “If I win, I diffuse the bomb and we make it to the checkpoint.” Reversing this would be the GM saying “If you lose, the bomb goes off and you don’t make it to the checkpoint.”

Blah. How lame is that?

Now, whats awesome is when you invert the stakes. “If you lose, you diffuse the bomb, so everything thinks that you guys are home free - until you get captured by the VC patrol thats been trailing you.”

See? You don’t want to negate the positive stakes, you want to take the potential success and turn it into a failure/further complication. This is awesome, because it makes it really easy to bring in stakes about intention and about setting and situation authority. You can turn conflicts into conflict not just about fictional events, but about whether the establishment of the fictional event is a positive or negative thing for the characters. It also aids in the progressive movement of those fictional events.

So there’s one thing about how I play that isn’t explicated in the text.

Gen Con 06

I was going to try to write stuff during the con and then post it sequentially…that didn’t really work out. But here is what I did get down on paper, as it were.

8/9/06

11.01 AM

I am sitting in the Baltimore Airport, waiting for my plane to Indianapolis to board. I am surrounded by gamers. The three guys behind me are hoping that they can get into the exhibitor hall to look around tonite; I can see one fellow leafing through a players handbook; a teenager is hauling a backpack and a Games Workshop emblazoned army case. There are more subtle tells as well - the guy to my right is reading an R. A. Salvatore novel. Two other guys with beards are totally engrossed in PSP and Gameboy Advance play, respectively. Laptops abound, even for an airport. We also have a number of wrestling and ultimate fighting shirts - I’m willing to bet good money that they are among us.

The guys behind me say that someone should stand up in the front of the plane and get a show of hands for who’s going to Gen Con. That would be pretty funny.

Me? I slept like crap, but the burrito and airport coffee is giving me hope for the rest of the day. I bought a new book (The Dante Club) to read on the plane, but I have no idea if that’s going to happen.

A guy wearing a shirt with the Nintendo controller buttons across the chest just sat down. Rocking.

It’s simultaneously frightening and awesome that I am so obviously among my own, and that we’re all going to the same place for the same reason.

Say what you will about subculture mentality, but it’s awful comforting to feel like you’re part of something, y’know? I’m quietly reveling in that comfort, as it’s helping me not be so damn nervous about the days to come.

Schedule for the rest of the day: get into Indy, get to the hotel somehow (shuttle? I cross my fingers), try to hook up with Brennan, head over to the dealers hall to set up Forge-y things, and then at 6 we have our demo madness at the Embassy spearheaded by Clinton.

Boarding begins in 10 minutes. Until next time.

8/13/06

3.56 pm

Well, I meant to actually do a log over the course of the Con. But it just didn’t happen.

Every day I woke up, got breakfast, went over to the dealers hall at about 9 or 9.30, and then was solid busy all day until I went to bed (between 1.45 and 3.30 am). I just had no time - well, that’s a lie. I had no time that I decided I would rather type up stuff than play, talk about or recover from games.

So I’m in the middle of my layover on my way to Albuquerque (I’m taking a week of vacation there. Whoo-hoo!). There is no possible way to construct any kind of narrative about the last four days, so I’m just going to set down isolated chunks as they occur to me. And I’m definitely not going to be touching on even a sizable portion of the awesome that was my first Gen Con.

So, in no particular order: Gen Con 06!

Kevin Allen JUNIOR. That guys an award-winning game designer.

There is going to be awesomeness at next years DexCon. I’m very excited about the next 10 months. Y’all just wait….

The Yu-Gi-Oh Master. This guy had a throne, and he took on all comers all day long. They would play on a pedestal behind a pane of glass, and it was awesome. Apparently he gets custom cards from the company, and so all of the challengers are forced to enter their names into the annals of the defeated.

I realized on Saturday that I hadn’t seen anything on one side of the convention hall yet. There’s so much stuff there that you need to schedule time to actually go and look, and you have to keep track of all the places that you haven’t been yet, because it’s going to take multiple trips.

Thor stepping on Sen(k)owski’s head to make him let go of the totem.

Oh man! I was so going to get Thor or Dro or Tony and go to the Asmodee Editions booth and take on the dude who was running Jungle Speed demos. That would have been awesome.

Meeting cool people. Oh man. I feel awesome because I met so many great people at the booth, and I feel lame that there’s literally too many people to spend quality time with all of them. There were some people at the Forge booth that I literally didn’t talk to, not because I didn’t want too, but because I was too freaking busy. That is lame, and will be rectified next year. To anyone who thought I was being a dick - many apologies. It wasn’t you, it was me!

People who come into the booth want to know about our games. Once you realize this, selling becomes fun. I had an awesome time just talking about games to people - pitching them, yes, and trying to get them to buy it, yes, but these are AWESOME games that I like, and I love talking about how cool they are!

Buying jewel-y dice for Meg for Thousand and One Nights. Oh yah. I love that game.

Bad stakes-setting gets people arguing about stakes. Good stakes-setting gets people reaching for the dice. You’ll be seeing more about this later.

Oh! My buy list. With commentary:

- 500-count 5-color poker chip set, with two decks of cards and 5 dice in an aluminum, locking case: 25 freaking bucks, man. Now I have no excuse not to play Mortal Coil and Mountain Witch.

- Speaking of which. Mountain Witch! And Kwaidon, the japanese ghost story companion to it. I ended up playing in a really fun game of MW over two night at the Embassy Suites (run by Tim, which was neat), and it totally sold me on the game. I’m really looking forward to absorbing Kwaidon and getting a rocking game of TMW together.

- Thousand and One Nights. I couldn’t buy Mortal Coil again because I already own it, so this one takes my “favorite game of the con” spot. I just love the game. And now I own it. Reading the text makes me smile.

- Mechaton! I have my own Mechs (more pics to come), but now I have the rules as well. Victory.

- Primitive. Kevin Allen Jr’s awesome DIY game of cavemen. The really cool thing about it is that you can’t talk in-character, cuz the characters are pre-verbal. So over the course of play, you create your own language of grunts and gestures, and thats powerful. Though, we played this at Embassy as well (me, Jason Morningstar, Danielle Czege, Kevin….Gregor? I know there was at least one more person, but my brain is dumb), and we ended up turning on each other with clubs in the first ten minutes. After my character was beaten down for disrespecting the totem, Kevin just said: ‘And that’s how Primitive never goes.’ We rock. And the book is freakin’ hand stitched. That’s awesome.

- Push, the progressive roleplaying journal that Jon Walton edited. I just read it on my first leg, and it’s very, very interesting. I need to digest it before I say more than that, but the format is awesome, and it has some neat, neat stuff in there. I will be talking more about this one in the days to come as well.

- Agon, John Harper’s game of heroic greek combat. I know it’s fighty and greek and has cool tactile mechanics, and it looks like a lot of fun, and I want to play it. And the book is gorgeous.

- Best Friends. Gregor Hutton’s Ronnie’s entry, it’s basically Mean Girls the RPG. Character creation is so streamlined and elegant and powerful that it blows me away. I’m stealing it for something. And I think it would be a blast for one-shots.

- Don’t Rest Your Head. Fred’s game was on the rack, and I was all “who am I kidding, I want this game” One of my players will be really into it, and I’m sure I’ll be able to get some play in. I’m excited.

And that’s it! I actually wanted to pick up Faery’s Tale (not at the Forge booth, and I forget the publisher, but it looks mad neat) as well, but I was just crunched for time this morning. Maybe later.

My demo for carry is blistering. I had so much fun running it, and it sold games, and that was good. And Jeff and Judd recorded a demo that they’re going to put on Sons of Kryos! And that is so awesome. I’ll def have a link when that goes up. Oh, speaking of, they did interviews with the different strata of Forge boothers - I was in the “newbie” interview, which was all the designers who were there for the first time. You’ll hear it when they get it up, but the interview was awesome!

I also interviewed with Mike Sugarbaker of the Ogre Cave podcast, and that was really fun. I was knee-deep in a gin-and-tonic at the time, so I hope I don’t sound like an idiot on it, but it was cool meeting him and talking shop about the future of the indie community.

Also met Paul Tevis, and yelled at him for calling me Thomas. Anyway, he’s a cool guy, and I’m sure he’ll have awesome Gen Con material for his podcast as well.

Podcasting is capital-I Important for our community. I just want to make sure you all understand this.

I was unable to attend any seminars, which was kind of lame, but there was after-hours design talk in various ways, and I honestly was just having a blast running demos and selling games at the booth. So no harm, no foul.

Honestly? I don’t think there was any higher proportion of fat, unpleasant, smelly or otherwise undesirable people at Gen Con than at any other public social event I’ve been too. I mean, there’s the costumes, but that’s different. I was pleasantly surprised, is all I’m saying. Of course, I was primarily in the dealers room, so maybe other parts had other stuff, but yeh. I was happy.

None of you can stand to the Mouth Of Ronom!

I’m officially Jungle Speed-ed out for a little while. I’m going to need the break for a little while for the spark to come back. But I put in a lot of Jungle Speed hours in. A lot.

Grey Ranks. That’s Jason Morningstar’s new game that he’s working on, and it is going to be capital-A Awesome, once it works. I played in a playtest session, and the diamond is there, shining in the rough. I really look forward to its development. Not to be pretentious, but I really think that games like carry and Grey Ranks are pioneering a specific way to approach very powerful and painful real-world history in a way that both respects it and allows you to address it, and is an enjoyable experience. I really hope that there will be more of these kinds of games happening, because it’s important for the maturation of our hobby to have that. We need to become adults.

Anyway. I was planning to take a “design break” after Gen Con, but I have so many fucking ideas spinning in my head just from osmosis and from talking to people and from this bet with Kevin (Dex Con, man. it’s gonna be awesome!), that I don’t know if I’ll be able to. We will see.

Whoo. Anyway, if anyone has any questions about Gen Con, ask them! Maybe you’ll be there next year, or I mentioned something interesting, or you have a question that you think I can answer - but this post doesn’t just need to be me spewing my excitement. Or if you want to mention something cool that I forgot, fellow attendees, that would be cool too. Dialogue = awesome.

More Love

Paul Tevis of the Have Games Will Travel podcast had some nice things to say about both Timestream and carry in his Gen Con Survival Guide episode, and put them both on his “games I want to know more about” list, with some great company: Deaths Door, Mechaton (I will destroy you all!) and Kwaidan. Though on the podcast he said that I was Thomas Robertson, which was funny for two reasons. First, I am not Thomas Robertson. Second, I recently met the fellow in question IRL. So, funny.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to meeting Paul if at all possible. Along with the rest of you lugs.

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.

The Book As Artifact

Here’s a honest question: are there any large-press games that are being produced with an eye towards how the book itself, as an artifact, informs play?

This is one of those things that really excites me about the creator-owned design and production process. We can make books that, by their physical makeup, interface with the imagined content that playing that game generates. One thing I’m really hankering to check out at Gen Con is Keith Senkowski’s Untitled. I’m also very curious to flip through Shock:. The cover is gorgeous and evocative, and I can’t imagine that the content is any less.

I know that Ron has posted about how he put Sorcerer together the way he did because he wanted picking it up and flipping through it to be a different experience, from the get-go, than picking up a standard-size game book. I think InSpectres has a good physical presence at the table, personally. Small and unobtrusive and glanceable.

Carry is laid out in a manner inspired by military field manuals (credit where credit is due - I may not have gone through with it were it not for Keith’s prodding). It’s pretty stark and serious and no-nonsense. I think it works. I’m very curious to see reactions from people who pick it up sight unseen.

This is one element of a larger concern that is becoming stronger within me. Production is an element of design. As I start to conceptualize new projects, I’ve been thinking about how the final product will look, and work, as a part of how the game itself will play. At this point, I can’t even imagine saying “Well, maybe it’ll be 5.5×8.5, unless I get a high enough page count, in which case I’ll go for full-size, maybe with a hardcover.”

Where am I on the spectrum with this? And what kinds of other concerns that relate physical book design to the gameplay experience should I be incorporating?