Moments In Annalise

Here’s the (filled-out) play aid that I threw together for the JiffyCon Boston playtest of Annalise. Click for full size.

Whenever you get into a moment in the game, the group generates an array of possible achievements and consequences that could come out of the moment. If you read down the paper, you can kinda see the flow of the game based on which achievements and consequences were on hand for the various moments. Which is hella cool!

I plan to revise it into something a little easier to parse at the table (probably with little circles or boxes for assigning dice, with the chart at the bottom that tells you which number means which either relegated to a different play aid kinda thing, or integrated into the sheet in a less obtrusive manner).

Anyway, something I’ve been meaning to post for awhile. In general life news, we’re at the end of the season at the shop I work at, so we’re in the big final build crunch. Lot’s of overtime in the next two weeks, but no free time a’tall. I am waiting on the proofs for the next printing of carry, though, so that is probably the next thing I’ll be posting about.

Also, news soon about my booth at Gen Con!

Commercial Gaming!

I dunno if Dev shared this with anyone else, but I think it’s hilarious.

(via Dev)

JiffyCon Boston 08

Wow, what a great time!

This my first time co-sponsoring an event (along with Dev) and it went pretty darn smoothly. We had a good attendance of 30+, including peeps from far-flung NYC and New Jersey (thanks for making the trip, yo!) as well as locals and many representative from Western Mass. We even had more people than games in our morning slot, and Dev got to run a playtest of his game The Dance and the Dawn. So it was, like, Boston designer playtest day, between that, my Annalise, and Jonathon’s Geiger Counter.

I facilitated a very solid playtest game of Annalise in the morning, and played Misspent Youth (again, a playtest) in the afternoon. I think Rob got some good feedback out of that game, so that’s a nice feeling.

And I saw friends and had a good solid chunk of social time! Shreyas and Elizabeth were wonderful houseguests, and it’s always exciting to see the friends I’ve made since getting into this fragment of the hobby. Thanks everyone for coming!

And, without further ado, the pictures:

Jonathon and Shreyas have introspective moments while playing Annalise. Prominently displayed is our third sponsor and official morning fuel of JiffyCon, Dunkin’ Donuts. In the background are Melissa, Kat and someone I can’t make out playing the Dance and the Dawn.

Adam Flynn winds up for another knockout punch while running Spirit of the Century! for a full and (from what I was overhearing at the time) enthusiastic table.

There were some kind folks present who have been filming a documentary on Pandemonium, the game store that graciously provided our venue for JiffyCon. They came by and filmed a couple games and did a couple of interviews, and were generally cool people. Yay, JiffyCon on film! I’ll be sure to put a link when the thing is available.

Two friendly fellows whose names I, unfortunately, don’t remember (sorry guys! though, they were playing characters by the names of Sam and Cornelius, respectively) flank Eppy as he poses for me. Ah, always posing for me, thats my Epidiah. We were playing Misspent Youth, by the way.

My Misspent Youth character sheet and notes.

Emily Care Boss playing Shooting the Moon with John and Deanne Adams. John is aghast at the dastardly deeds of Emily’s shootin’ fingers.

Shreyas runs a playtest of Mist Robed Gate for a packed and super-boisterous table. There were tears AND Kung Fu. Most excellent.

So, again, thanks everyone for coming! It was a blast!

My Dreamation Tribe

Yay Dreamation!

Due to a personal scheduling kinda thingy, I was only able to go to Dreamation for a little while this time around. Thursday through Saturday morning, to be exact. So I went into it aiming for it to be primarily a social event for me, as well as to conduct some biz for upcoming excitingness.

In this, I felt successful.

Games, quickly:

I ran a pickup of InSpectres for Rob Donaghue, Remi Truer (sp?), Alexander Newman and last-minute-joiner Emily Care Boss.  It was, as always, wacky and fun. Rob and Remi had never played before! Upon learning this, I made it my mission to make a mission happen, and as far as I could tell it went well. We set the franchise in Indianapolis, and their first mission was a strange possessing spirit that was linked to Gen Con attendees. Nerdy injokes ensued.

I played in a playtest of Serial, Kat & Michael Millers police procedural/serial killer investigation game. I had played an earlier version of the rules at Origins, and I enjoyed it much more this time around. It’s really tightened up a lot, and has a lot of potential as a party-style game for people not familiar with roleplaying, I think.

I played a game of In A Wicked Age with Dave Younce, Alexander Newman and Kevin Allen Jr. We had war giraffes. I really liked my Reaver King character. Wicked Age is a little stabby for the kind of play I’m into right now, but I totally had fun playing.

Non-Game Stuff:

I hung out with my tribe. It was really fantastic. I made some new just-met-you-and-I-think-you’re-cool friends (hi Eric and Star and Chad and I’m sure I’m forgetting someone cuz I suck!). I did a whole lot of conversing and drinking and just having a good time. I <3 all of you!

That said, it really sucks that I saw many of friends for a few minutes at most (sorry Dave C and Adam and Joshua and Jeff and Judd and everyone else!), and didn’t get to share meals with more than a few people. I didn’t even see many people that it turns out were there, so that sucks too.

I wish I could just do this every weekend. Seriously. That would rule.

See y’all next time!

Exciting Things

First: I played a 1001 Nights/Warhammer 40K mashup last nite. There’s a thread about it here at Story Games. It was an abnormal amount of fun. I think it was cuz we were using miniatures. Miniatures rule. I also got really excited about how Warp works. Anyhow, I look forwards to playing it more!

Second: In an hour or so I’m leaving for Dreamation. Unlike years past, I’m only there for a couple days, and I didn’t schedule anything. I’m looking forwards to treating it like a vacation, hanging out, playing informal games and seeing friends old and new. Yay Dreamation!

Third: Annalise is going well! I’m happy with the new new rules. The only problem is I’m having some language problems. I played with Shreyas over the weekend (oh, yeh, it’s actually really good as a two-player game, by the way. Super-exciting!) and was all “so, this thing I call a conflict, that’s not what it is, right?” and he’s all “yeh, that’s not at all what this is at all”. The best we could come up with is calling it an Event, because at least it’s not wrong, but I’m still trying to come up with something thats right to call it. Maybe this weekend will be helpful in that regard.

Anyhow, I need to clean up the text and rewrite some examples, but I think it’s almost in shape for sending off to people who aren’t me! I have some people specific I wanna send it to, but I’ll also be doing a public call (? ugh, such a gross word) for readers/playtesters in the near future. Stay tuned.

JiffyCon was Fun!

Yay!

There were some serious driving adventures, what with getting stupid lost trying to get to Stow to pick up Dave Younce (who is cool and I hope to see more of in the future) on the way out, and getting pulled over (but only given a warning!) on the way back. If you haven’t yet, you should check out the pictures put up by Bret and Shreyas. Here’s what my morning Annalise game looked like (sans players):

The game went very well, I thought. We managed to get through the whole thing in the 4.5 hours or so of the morning session, with three players. This is a fairly accelerated pace, as the game is designed to go for maybe 3 or 4 sessions with 4 players, but I think we made it work just fine.

Our story was a small one. We played three high schoolers in a small town in middle America, two girls who were friends and thought that they were better than everyone else for different reasons, and a geeky guy who felt like he had to to handle everything important by himself. He has a crush on one of the girls. They all end up going into the big city to see a KMFDM show, with some stoner goth friends. At the show, they see their Con Law teacher, all gothed-up, who doesn’t seem too happy to see them. Over the course of the show, a Mysterious Stranger appears, and it becomes apparent that a segment of the crowd is very, very enthusiastic. Blood begins to pool on the floor. The Mysterious Stranger is very interested in the girl that the guy has a crush on.

The show ends, and the kids are kept from leaving by a number of tattooed strangers who seem to be taking orders from the Mysterious Stranger. The other girl is taken to an abandoned office by a “bouncer”, and the guy and girl (who has started to reciprocate the crush) are stopped by their teacher, who had tried to warn them, and now says that he’ll get the other girl if they think they can make it out on their own. The Mysterious Stranger stops them as they try to leave, the guy (who reveals that he hears voices in his head) ends up taking him out by stabbing him in the neck with the inverted crucifix worn by one of the tattooed guys. They run for it.

The teacher takes out the “bouncer” and frees the other girl, and tells her to run for it when he gives the word. He gives it, and she starts across the club, and sees her goth friends tied up in chairs and bleeding out of open wounds, with a bunch of creepy tattooed people dancing and, uh, partaking. She reveals that she doesn’t think that anyone is actually good enough to be her friend, and she escapes before anyone can stop her.

The next day, their Con Law class goes as normal, except that they get one significant eyebrow from the teacher. The guy and girl have an awkward “hey-you-like-me-huh” conversation, and kind of end up asking each other out.

I still have some work to do on the game, specifically with messing with the main conflict mechanic so that it makes sense to people other than me, but I’m amazed with how solid it is. We had a really fun game, and many thanks to Kat and Melissa for playing with me!

In the afternoon, I played Jeff Lower’s Giants with Jeff and Shreyas. Here’s the map from our game. It’s really cool. I played a fire demon giant and Shreyas played a giant Wolf lord, and we stopped the Eternal Winter from coming by laying waste to a human city with an insane king. The game is fun, and I want to play a long-term game of it, maybe after the holidays. I mean this as a total compliment, though it may sound bad: The game is like being a Giant. Simple, direct, big (in scope and character), and without a lot of extraneous material. And making the map is super-fun.

Dinner was big and fun, and I got to catch up with people and just spend quality time.

After dinner was also big and fun. I ended up splitting off from the Baker’s and going over to Julia’s with Dev, Dave Younce and Eppie, and later Other Nathan showed up. We hung out and petted Julia’s beautiful cats and played Murder Ballad Blackjack. It’s like Baron Munchhausen for folk song nerds. I liked it!

And then homewards, with misadventures.

I feel…not recharged, per se, but more just reassured that the people I know from this community rock, and that I can depend on them to have a good time sharing a hobby I love without needed to engage with all the shit on the internet that I hate. And that’s a good feeling.

Can’t wait ’til the next one.

Update & Some Music

I’m heading out to JiffyCon on Saturday, which I’m mega-excited about.

I’m running a weekly Aberrant game for some friends, which is going well and is scratching all my long-term-established-setting-high-character-immersion itches.

I was playing in a weekly GURPS game with rotating “campaigns”, but I’m sitting the next cycle out. I need time to work on Annalise. It’s, as my buddy who’s playing in both of these games with me and who playtested Darkpages and Annalise with me aptly said, “A different kind of fun”.

Speaking of, I’ll be running it at JiffyCon, and shortly therafter have it available for interested readers, I expect. This is the first game I’m writing while listening to an extensive soundtrack (or any soundtrack at all, really), which has been a very rewarding ritual. So far tonite:

• Depeche Mode
• Goldfrappe
• Rammstein
• Oingo Boingo
• Lords of Acid
• Healer
• Evanescence
• The New Pornographers
• Rilo Kiley
• The Cure
• Sisters of Mercy
• Bauhaus

Though, the single theme song for the game is definitely Bat for Lashes’s ‘Sarah’.

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.