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For no particular reason, I decided to see if I could (via harsh editing and severe formatting) squish the Frogger rpg I wrote down to two pages.
Downside: I lose all the great illustrative quotes that kept me chuckling while I wrote the original rules.
Upside: everything is much more concise -- I wish I'd done this during the 24-hour time frame, then let it expand back to normal dimensions and more explaining -- it would have been better.
The challenge- Design a character sheet. NOT A GAME. Just a character sheet. You have 2 weeks to do this. Everyone may submit a design, but they may only submit 1.At the end of the two week entrance period the sheets will be randomly distributed to the designers (you will not get your own). Using only the character sheet as a guide, the designers will have an additional 2 weeks to design a game that uses that character sheet.
I'm friggin' sorry as hell I missed this. I love.. LOVE a good character sheet. :)
When shall we wrap up the Shadow Shard TF #4? Saturday or Sunday evening?
Chime in below, and ring the bell quickly.
Based on this: [Bacchanal] GenCon demos and more, I ordered this: Bacchanal, a roleplaying game for adults, by Paul Czege.
I am very much looking forward to playing it at some point.
I have no idea with whom.
Dogs in the Vineyard Flash Animation -- if at work, have headphones.
Hero's Banner -- link for me to remember to go get the dang thing -- and Agon.
So here's what happened.
Over on Story-Games, someone posted this:
You played it till your thumbs blistered, now write it up RPG style!It occurs to me that many people today who browse the 1KM1KT website have only played computer games and have no (or very little) experience with tabletop games.
This 24 Hour RPG contest is about introducing our computer gaming audience to the world of tabletop gaming!
Adapt a computer game into a tabletop RPG in 24 Hours! Any computer game will do: Doom3, PacMan, Zaxxon or World of Warcraft (for the uninspired).
The goal is to breech the gap between hardcore computer gamers and the awesomeness that is tabletop role-playing. Read that: "Try and make your content accessible to new gamers."
The submissions will be judged by the folks here at 1km1kt.net and the winner will have their game heralded in our newsletter, bumped to the front page, and will receive a fabulous 1KM1KT fun pack! The fun pack consists of an official 1KM1KT T-shirt and T-shirt packing material! (T-shirt packaging material may present a choking hazard)
The Rules:
1) Games must be based on PC or console style video games.
2) Games must be completed within a continuous 24 hour period.
And I thought:
Huh.
And I didn't really think anything of it.
And then I thought:
Maybe X-Com.
And I did, in fact, actually work out about five post-it notes worth of thinking on the X-com idea. Meanwhile, on the original thread, people were talking about some whacked out stuff like Katamari Damacy and stuff like that. One guy took 90 seconds to write up Pong, using two quarters, and I'm sorta looking at the X-com thing and knowing I could never give it the tactical grit that I love in that game, not in a 24 hour span, not really.
And I told Kate about the whole thing, and Kate was like:
Man, you should totally do like... Frogger! Or... ooh! Pitfall. I used to LOOOOVE Pitfall!
And I was like... yeah, heh. Funny. X-com x-com x-com... I even started up my old saved game of X-Com from last year and played a few nights away. Good game.
And then someone in the Story-games thread posted a link to Lifemeter, which is like a site where people draw art based on old console games... and there was This One.
And I thought... damn... office guy... why an office frog?
And then I went and looked at the old art for the side of the Frogger stand-up console. You'll see what I mean.
And this goddamn game got stuck in my head.
This is the nightmare of modern office life: work that crushes the spirit, office cubicles as cells, and managers as wardens. The office is a dehumanizing environment for the employees - the kind of thing that makes you a cog in the machine - a number. Nothing.Faced with that, driven to a breaking point, human beings generally do one of two things: create their own petty fiefdoms and delusions of importance... or Get Out.
Frogger is about Getting Out. You remember the artwork on the side of the old Frogger arcade console? (Here's a hint: look at the picture on the front cover of this game.) A frog, rushing somewhere, vest and tie awry, briefcase in hand. It's easy to think that he's imitating the White Rabbit, muttering "I'm late, I'm late...", except that you know from the game itself that he's trying to get Home. He's an office worker, trying to get away, get across all these obstacles, and get to the thing he wants - the thing he needs.
Something happened to our worker bee that made him want to get away from the buzz; something hit that cog and made it slip off.
I grabbed the idea of that little game... and Office Space.
...Clockwatchers.
...Falling Down.
...Lost in Translation.
...Harold and Kumar go to White Castle...
And then...
...Shawn of the Dead
...Grosse Pointe Blank
...Road to Perdition.
This is what I ended up with.
Vyew.com - Free Web-Based Collaboration - Vyew.com - looks like a cool way to run games online. Link is up so that I'll remember to check it out when I get to a machine where I have stinkin' admin priviledges (stupid corporate security :P).
Played the first 'real' session of the Galactic playtest on Saturday. Here's what happened.
Forgive, please, the extra-super details on who rolled exactly what dice in each conflict -- this is a playtest, and the game's author has asked for lots of detail on how the conflicts balance out. Aside from that, the start of the stories are pretty cool.
Afraid: a new game from Vincent Baker, using the Dogs mechanics, for playing horror. Link is to the playtest docs, which in turn sort of require understanding/owning DitV to get what's going on, but the final game will be it's own thing.
Also, Vincent's just finished up Mechaton, which is a good game for doing battles with mecha built from legos. My only problem with this is that I don't have legos, but I do have a lot of old battletech minis. Darn.
go-play.org: A whole web page for a simple sticker. :)
Apparently, the Go. Play. meme took off like gangbusters a GenCon, which is just kinda cool. :)
Okay, so on Thursday night last week I hooked up with some folks in NYC to play Paranoia -- the new version, done by very respectable Mongoose Publishing.
Had. A. Friggin'. Blast.
There were seven players with a very mixed gaming background and levels of familiarity with one another. Let's sum up the players and their characters:
So the basic premise of the scenario:
We were a group of fledgling troubleshooters who were being dispatched by a "blue"-security Major to take care of a rogue cleaning bot who was spraying grafitti on the walls of Alpha Complex Three. At the same time, the Major was supposed to dispatch a seasoned, veteran, bad-ass group to Gamma Sector 14 to handle a mission with 0% survivability estimates.
In short, they got our mission, and we got theirs. Bastards.
I'm honestly not sure how horrifyingly tough the opposition was -- we'd already killed the Hygiene Officer once before we got to the mission (technically, he did himself by activating the self-cleaning mode), been covered in Commie Propaganda stickers during a power outage, and I'd shot three fingers off my own hand, trying to get into the power suit (yeah, on a d20, I missed my 'tech' roll by 16 -- YOU figure out how bad my skill rating had to be in that stuff). The leader was carrying undiluted cleaning solvent that, undiluted, would eat through human flesh and GLOWED IN THE DARK... the comm officer had a box of unlabeled grenades of dubious usefulness, I was hauling around an EMP cannon on a really LONG extension cord, and I think the Loyalty Officer had what amounted to an "Ancient Tech" bowling ball -- my guy was terrified of the mighty Black Orb.
It was a wonder we weren't all dead before the tram doors opened. As it was, I think we made it about fifty meters down the first hallway of a three-level complex we were supposed to check out, before the comm officer freaked, grabbed what turned out to be a boomerang-grenade, and ganked the lot of us.
Oh yeah, and there were aliens infesting the place. They burrowed into your chest and took you over... and they looked like mop heads.
Except we were SUPPOSED to be hunting a rogue cleaning bot... so clearly we never saw these other things. All Hail the Computer.
Everyone: "All hail the Computer."
Sue: "... the Computer."
Right. So we wake up back in the debriefing room and we individually (mostly) meet with the Computer in the Debriefing Pod... which is basically a little room with glass walls so everyone else can see what the debriefee is doing and at whom they're gesturing. Fun.
So the Computer finishes up, tells that last batch of us that so and so are traitors, and the debriefing room turns into a bloodbath of Tarantino-esque proportions (not helped by the fact that I got the Hygiene and Happiness officers confused and tried to shoot Kate's character in the back of head instead of Timothy's... luckily, I didn't kill her, and I critted the follow-up Bootlicking roll. :)
In short, it was a total ball.
Interesting Bits:
Perversity Points -- these things are basically (as I understand it) traded in 1:1 to give you a bonus on your rolls, OR to give penalties to someone ELSE's roll. Now, the examples that Matt-the-GM gave as to how these things could penalize someone else's roll all generally involved your character interfering "ICly" with the other activity in some way -- and in the setting of Paranoia, that totally makes sense.
Except people didn't use them that way. Even before we started play and were just discussing the points, the examples we were coming up with were much more 'meta-authorial' in nature, like "I'll spend five perversity points against your action -- the floor is really slippery here."
The best example of this in the game session itself was just before the boomerang-grenade was used. I'd dragged this sick infra-red worker back to the group, and while I was hanging onto his ankle (while wearing the power armor suit), (1) he went into convulsions as a mop-critter started to claw out of his chest and (2) Francine jet-packed my guy into the ceiling.
Now, Timothy, being the good gamist advantage-angler, wanted me (or, more accurately, the power armor) to keep hanging onto the guys ankle as my brains were being smooshed into the ceiling, so that the guy was dangling helplessly and harmlessly from the ceiling while everyone else shot the mop-critter. The GM finally opted to allow that level of authorial input/control with the expenditure of something like 20 perversity points (which is a ton -- we each started with 25, and most of us were running low by then), and then allowing the group as a whole to chip in to make the total.
It was really, REALLY interesting to see that happen in the group, because (1) the players involved got what they wanted out of the result, but (2) what they wanted were actually different things. For example: Timothy contributed points to get the tactical advantage, while I chipped in solely to have input on the narrative and the storyline (no tactical advantage to me -- my guy had just died and my clone wouldn't even get there before the grenade wiped us out :), and so forth...
Anyway, that... that was really interesting.
Everyone had a ball -- emails circulated in the days to follow about how much fun the game had been, with a special note from the first-time-player, thanking everyone for 'letting the noob come along' and recounting how she'd broke down in giggles a few days after the game, remembering Colin screaming "lick my balls!" at the sluggish infra-red janitorial staff.
Good times. :)
After having just finished two Greg Rucka books, this is very interesting to me: The National Security Decision Making Game.
The NSDM Game recreates real-world international crises of the present or immediate future. Ideas for scenarios are taken from current headlines and developing trends. Players take the parts of national leaders, dignitaries, ambassadors, military leaders, and political groups and are given the opportunity to try and solve all the world's problems.At the opening of the game Controllers will select a scenario appropriate for the number of players present. Players are assigned places within a Country or Organization cell, typically representing major world powers like the US, Russia, China, Japan, Great Britain, France, Germany, Iran, Israel, etc. and organizations like the international media, the UN, NATO, and the EU. Available player cells change with each game, and not all countries are represented in each scenario. In some games countries will be played by Controllers.
Each player is assigned a role and a set of motivations and goals. The object of the game is to play your role well and to accomplish your assigned goals. In some cases players have conflicting goals, just like in real life. As a player you spend time negotiating with allies and enemies, making deals to gain you or your country more power, more weapons, more food, or a national chain of convienience stores. Some players will have roles which require them to set a national budget for the country they represent, in order to fund actions of the military, state, intelligence, research, and business players. Other players, both within and outside of your cell, may be working with you or against you in order to further their own goals. Your opportunities are limited only by your imagination and ambition.
Strikes me as something between a LARP, Diplomacy, and that Scavenger Hunt we did in NYC a few months back. Cool. (Also: read the quotes page.)
There was actually a fair amount of game-type things going on this weekend. I will write a bit more about each individual element later (when I have my notes), but in the meantime here's a quick summary posted mostly just to push the gaming calendar down the page a bit. (But isn't it kinda neat that it's there?)
Thursday: Played Paranoia for the first time evah, with a whole group of people I'd never really RP'd with before. Had. A. Friggin'. Blast. So funny. Very low-stress easy-learn rules and tons of Pure Funny pouring around. More later.
Saturday: During the Beach-House-Party the geeks from NYC commandeered the dining room table to play some Jungle Speed (first time for everyone but Keeley). While this is a great, fun game, it's damned hard to play when you've had a corona or six two, so we switched to Pit, which was different fun, but still fun.
Monday: Played Cataan. My province was generally peaceful and agrarian, exploring for the sake of exploring and trading only insofar as was necessary to enable the simple lives to which my people had become accustomed. In short, we were simplistic but happy bumpkins who would no doubt have ended a 'Protectorate' of whoever actually *won*. I need to play this game more; it's fun. Initial outlay for the basic game, plus the expansions, is a little prohibitive though. Ahh well.
... and that's it. I'll have more to say, later, about Paranoia, Jungle Speed, and Pit.
I posted something on the Alliance boards about finding a time to finish this up. To quote:
Got most of the way through the Fourth Shard TF last night, with Malcalypse, Psi-Clone, Amorpha, Puck Bunny, Sword, Hang Time, Noelle, and a very helpful tanker named Monstress. In the wee hours, as we were considering the next time to meet, to finish up, the following suggestions were raised:*This coming Tuesday, the 8th, around 8pm Eastern. In which case we'd probably be missing Monstress.
*This weekend, in which case, Hang Time and Noelle are unavailable.
*Next weekend, when we may lose Puck and Sword
Any other possibilites or thoughts?
I like this discussion: The Secret Language of Cars -- iconography for gamers.
Green means go.Triangle in square means play.
GO PLAY.
From Storygames for Everybody:
Candamir is one of the spin-off games from Settlers of Catan. In it, you have a character (playing piece-style). You adventure. You get and spend Xp. You fulfill quests, buy potions, fight bad guys.It's not exactly a roleplaying-based game, by any stretch. But still.
I can't help but think that having a game but much like this that starts simple and slowly stages up towards roleplaying couldn't help but be awesome.
Sounds cool... sort like Talisman or Hero Quest (the old board game.
What? Shadow Shard Task Force 4
Where? Shadow Shaaaard
When? This weekend, prolly eveninks
Why? We wants it, precious
How? cf. Hook, crook.
Who's in(terested)?
(Note: War Bones is unavailable -- we'll need a tank.)
Some folks in Toronto are using Donjon to run some Space Opera, and recording the results on RandomWIki.
The game setup:
- Rocketships have to look like ROCKETSHIPS, with sleek shapes, fins, sparklers sticking out their butts, etc.
- Rayguns need to look like RAYGUNS
- Flash Gordon-esque, but updates ala transhumanist stuff (Iain Banks) are also possible
- Set in Solar System, with the caveat that every planet/moon in the solar system is not only inhabitable in some way, but also inhabited
- Lots of planet hopping
- First person who brings up a law of physics to say something can't happen gets kicked out
That last rule makes me happy.