Home

Voice of the Revolution Episode 36

  • Nov. 13th, 2009 at 11:35 AM
Me
October 2009 -- Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies Review and Kevin Allen Jr. Interview
Runtime: 38:35 / File size: 26.5M

Find out more about these fine games and others at Indie Press Revolution. To comment on this podcast, visit The Voice of the Revolution forum or send us an email.
Direct download: revolution36.mp3

[How We Came to Live Here] Another Story

  • Nov. 4th, 2009 at 10:38 AM
Me

Each chapter in How We Came to Live Here has an accompanying piece of fiction. This art by Kurt Komoda I posted a few weeks back goes with one of these. Here's the story:

http://www.galileogames.com/audio/Marrying_Outside.mp3
[audio and narration by Russell Collins]

At that moment, a woman emerged from the scrub.
At that moment, a woman emerged from the scrub.

Aspects and Backgrounds in Chronica Feudalis

  • Oct. 26th, 2009 at 11:50 AM
Me
Rob Donoghue brought up the idea of "things I want to see more of" vs. "things my character is good at" in this post. Both Josh Roby and Daniel Solis elaborated a bit.

I think this is a really interesting idea. One of my groups is starting a game of Chronica Feudalis soon and we were doing character creation. One part of character creation in Chronica involves assigning Aspects and Backgrounds to the character. Aspects and Backgrounds directly address this dichotomy of "things I want to see more of" vs. "things my character is good at" in a way that I don't think I've seen before.

In Chronica, you get three Aspects. These describe your character, and like good aspects in FATE, they can have both positive and negative results for the character. One of my players has the Aspect "Sole Heir to the Throne." She gets to call on this to help her when she wants to assert any authority or privilege that goes along with being the sole heir, but I also get to play with it when someone wants to call that into question or challenge her authority. By choosing this Aspect, my player is creating a flag for the character, stating that "Sole Heir to the Throne" is something she's interested seeing come up often in play and being important to the plot of the game.

So far, so good. You see this in a lot of games that have free-form traits or aspects, right? Here's where Chronica does something interesting. You can also assign a Background to your character. Again, this is a free-form trait that you decide describes your character, isome fact about the character that is true within the game world. The interesting thing here is that a Background is then some trait your character possesses that is not incorporated as a plot point or used against your character in any way. You can put in unremarkable talents that just aren't important to the plot, such as "Reads Latin" for our same character above. But you can also put in something fairly remarkable, thereby marking it off-limits as a disadvantage for your character. Our sole heir to the throne also has a background of "Woman Warrior," pretty unusual and potentially problematic for 8th century England. By marking this as a Background instead of an Aspect, it is now a trait that is unusual, sure, but not one that will cause problems for the character.

Chronica uses Aspects for "things I want to see more of" and Backgrounds for "things my character is good at."

IPR and My Game Design

  • Oct. 19th, 2009 at 3:24 PM
Me
As most everyone reading this will know, I run Indie Press Revolution, the online indie game store. I started it way, way back in 2005 as a way to promote my own games and the games of other folks in my situation, the independent publisher. It turns out this was a great idea, and IPR ended up being extremely successful. So successful, in fact, that it sucked up absolutely all of my time and slowed my game production down to a crawl.

I had the first edition of Mortal Coil done in early 2006 and I launched it through IPR. After that, I didn't release a single product until I published Mortal Coil Revised earlier this year. This is almost completely due to the fact that I was working on IPR for that entire time.

Well, there is now some good news. I'm putting the finishing touches on How We Came to Live Here, a new game about mythic heroes in a stone age society. I'm also starting on a revised version of Bulldogs!, my ass-kicking sci fi game, updated for the FATE system. I have about half a dozen other smaller projects in the works as well, little supplements for the other games or new stand-alone projects that will run a few pages.

Where did this burst of creativity come from, you ask? IPR is finally at a place where I can employ staff to do a lot of the work I was doing all these years. I'm no longer doing all of the accounting, all of the marketing, all of the convention planning, and all of the day-to-day tasks required to keep a company like IPR humming along. This is a massive relief to me, and I am super happy to be getting back into more game design, which is what I wanted to be doing in the first place.

It's a strange thing to have something succeed beyond your expectations. I'm glad it's now succeeded to the point where I can step back a bit.

[How We Came to Live Here] The Wolf Woman

  • Oct. 9th, 2009 at 2:23 PM
Me
A while back I posted some concept sketches for artwork in How We Came to Live Here. This piece is by Kurt Komoda and is the final version from those sketches.

View the Full Piece )
Me

It’s been a long time coming, but How We Came to Live Here is finally nearing completion. This is all part of my plan to step up Galileo Games’ production schedule. I released Mortal Coil Revised earlier this year, and I’m very pleased that I will have managed to get a second game out in the same calendar year.

In anticipation of the release, I’ll be posting some cool How We Came to Live Here related materials, including some of the final art for the game along with a special surprise. I anticipate everything being ready to go to print in the next couple of weeks, and as soon as files are sent off to the printer I’ll be setting up a preorder on IPR. The printed book should be available by November.

For those of you not familiar with the game, How We Came to Live Here is a Native American fantasy inspired by the myths and archaeology of the American Southwest. Players take the role of heroes who must try to achieve their own ambitions as well as protect their villages from the many threats that loom outside. This is complicated by the temptation to sin against the traditions of their People. Two of the players take the role of the Inside and the Outside. Their duty is to create conflict and hardship for the hero players, either through family ties and rivalries on the part of the Inside player, or through monsters or natural forces on the part of the Outside player.

Keep watching this spot for new stuff as the time approaches!

Spirit of the Century Delivers. Again.

  • Sep. 10th, 2009 at 10:33 AM
Me
This shouldn't be news to anyone reading this journal, but Spirit of the Century is a very good game. I ran it for our Wednesday group at Dark Tower Games. We had four or five players depending on the session, and ran a three-session story arc. Since we can only get in about 2-3 hours of play each time thanks to work schedules and store closing time, a typical one-day game takes us at least two sessions, sometimes three.

I took a premise from an old online game I played (for one or two e-mail exchanges). This sets the game a bit farther back, in the late 19th century. The player characters are all part of Dr. Fu Manchu's organization cast as the heroes rather than villains, resisting Western encroachment into Asia. We had Karamaneh, an infiltrator/spy; Zatoichi the blind swordsman; Huo Yuanjia, a martial artist; Tremal-Naik, a mighty hunter; and Sandokan, a swashbuckling pirate. Sandokan was only present for one session, the middle one, but the rest were there from beginning to end.

The thing I love about Spirit of the Century is that things are always awesome. Several of the guys were new to Spirit, but everyone caught on how to use the system pretty quickly. One initial conflict ended with two characters getting captured, and the players were initially dismayed but then realized how much fun that can be. They immediately started making declarations about the poorly constructed stockade they were in, with it's inattentive guard.[1]

This was where I introduced the main antagonist, a stern and humorless British officer named Colonel Smith. I succeeded pretty well in making the players seriously loathe this guy, but also understand that he was a pretty dangerous opponent. They managed to take actions throughout the adventure that interfered with or wrecked the Colonel's plans without ever actually directly confronting him in a conflict that favored the Colonel's skills. I was pretty impressed with how they managed to do that, and they were all using the system very well to make that happen. Survival turned out to be a very useful skill for Tremal-Naik's player. He established that a key British camp lay on a dry riverbed, and found where they had dammed the river upstream. The final scene was, of course, the player character's pulling down the dam and flooding the British camp. Survival used to find and tame a wild elephant was essential to the scheme, and he also managed to use Survival to escape a better-constructed jail by identifying the wood used to build it, and knowing that the wood was preyed upon by a particular beetle making it weak and easy to break.

If there was any weak point, I think it was with the aspects. I had everyone fill in aspects at the beginning of play, but many were a bit convoluted and hard to tag. After playing a lot of Spirit, I think I have a better feel for what makes a good or bad aspect, and can give some advice, but it can be tough to help five people craft ten good aspects each all at once.

All in all, I still find Spirit to be one of my current go-to games. It delivers every time, and any time I want a high-action pulp adventure, whatever the setting, Spirit is my first choice.

1. If you are unfamiliar with Spirit of the Century, you can make a skill roll to declare a fact about some part of the scene. If you succeed, the fact is now true, and you can call on that fact (called an aspect) to add to a later roll, in this case, for escape.

The Voice of the Revolution #34

  • Aug. 31st, 2009 at 1:35 PM
Me
The Voice of the Revolution #34: August 2009, Ganakagok Review and Emily Care Boss Interview August 2009 -- Ganakagok Review and Emily Care Boss Interview Runtime: 32:18 / File size: 29.6M

Find out more about these fine games and others at Indie Press Revolution. To comment on this podcast, visit The Voice of the Revolution forum or send us an email.
Direct download: revolution34.mp3

The ENnie Voting Is Open!

  • Jul. 24th, 2009 at 9:55 AM
Me
The Ennie Awards polls are open! Here's where you go to vote:

http://www.ennie-awards.com/voting/ballot.asp

The Voice of the Revolution is up for a best podcast award, so Paul, Ryan, and I would appreciate your support and vote!

A ton of other games and books that are carried by IPR or produced by friends of mine are also up for vote. If you're looking to support the indie game community in general, check out the picks over at the Summer Revolution: http://www.summer-revolution.com/

I will be voting today, and I plan on posting my choices later.

Also, there's this:

Mortal Coil Revised: A Clarification

  • Jul. 17th, 2009 at 11:32 AM
Me
At DexCon last week, I had two people approach me on two separate occasions and ask me the same question about Mortal Coil Revised.

"I heard that magic no longer has a price in Mortal Coil Revised. Is that true?"

Both people were, rightfully, dismayed that this might be the case. The answer is, no, it is not true. The way magic works in Revised is unchanged. Price, as these two players mentioned, is one of their favorite parts of the system, and it is mine, too.

Since two different gamers asked me this same question on two different occasions, I was concerned. It seemed that a rumor about this change was starting to circulate, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. A short bit of investigation led me to the source of the rumor: a blog post by Rob Donoghue about the Revised edition. A careful read of this blog will show that Rob is not saying that magic has no price in Revised. He is, in fact, talking about a different rule, the threshold of credibility rule. A quick skim of the post, however, is leading people to draw an incorrect conclusion, and rereading the post I could see how a reader might interpret the post as saying that magic no longer has a price.

I hope this post helps clear the air on the issue!

The Voice of the Revolution #32

  • Jul. 3rd, 2009 at 2:44 PM
Me
June 2009 -- The Shadow of Yesterday Review and Wolfgang Baur Interview Runtime: 36:45 / File size: 33.6M

Find out more about these fine games and others at Indie Press Revolution. To comment on this podcast, visit The Voice of the Revolution forum or send us an email.

Voice of the Revolution Episode 31

  • Jun. 1st, 2009 at 1:43 PM
Me
May 2009 -- 3:16 review and John Harper interview
Runtime: 32:59 / File size: 30.2M

Find out more about these fine games and others at Indie Press Revolution. To comment on this podcast, visit The Voice of the Revolution forum or send us an email.

Mortal Coil Revised Information

  • May. 27th, 2009 at 6:59 AM
Me
For owners of first edition Mortal Coil who don't want to buy a whole new book, you can now get all the additional information in Revised from the Galileo Games web site:

http://www.galileogames.com/mortal-coil/

The file is in the Download section. This contains all the changes. I didn't include sections that exist in first edition that were rewritten for clarity in the Revised edition, only the new info. Where there is a conflict in the rules, use the information in the supplement.

Writing Folktales

  • May. 5th, 2009 at 2:48 PM
Me
As I mentioned on this blog earlier, I'm writing a series of folktales for How We Came to Live Here. The first one was a real breeze, it just jumped out of my forehead fully-formed, and this made me think the rest would be easy too. Instead, I've been wrestling with the damn things for six months now. I was making zero progress until I noticed a difference between my first story and the subsequent stories I was writing.

In the first story, none of the characters had a name. The main character is just "a man." As soon as I stopped trying to give the characters names, the stories suddenly became much easier to write and I've already knocked out two and got a good start on the third.

I just find it interesting that this little detail was the difference between me being able to write these easily and having a massive writing block.

The Voice of the Revolution Episode 29

  • Apr. 6th, 2009 at 10:09 AM
Me
The latest Voice of the Revolution is live!

Runtime: 30:28 / File size: 27.9M

Find out more about these fine games and others at Indie Press Revolution. To comment on this podcast, visit The Voice of the Revolution forum or send us an email.

Another Bit of Art

  • Mar. 31st, 2009 at 3:37 PM
Me
Kurt Komoda has provided me several more sketches for How We Came to Live Here. I'm sharing my favorite!

Art below the cut... )

Give a Break to New Guys

  • Mar. 26th, 2009 at 3:20 PM
Me
This post is a response to a now weeks-old post on Story Games. I am slow to blog, obviously.

The post in question was very critical of a newish game on IPR: Summerland. Summerland is a freshman effort from a new game designer, Greg Saunders. It's a cool game with a very interesting theme. Post-apocalyptic, but in this case the apocalypse is the natural world overgrowing cities and human works, and transforming most humans into an animal-like feral state. Players take the role of survivors, but a particular kind of survivor. Only some people are able to travel into this wildness and not be overcome and transform. These select individuals serve an invaluable purpose, traveling between the remaining communities and delivering trade supplies and messages.

Overall, a cool concept. I personally think it is well-executed and the system is worth looking at. Obviously, I thought it was good enough to be included in IPR's lineup, and I still think so.

All that said, sure, the game is far from perfect. As I mentioned, this is Greg's first game. Like a lot of first-time game designers, Greg had feedback from his peers, but did most of the work himself. I'd personally quibble with his body text font choice, it's a bit hard to read. Greg probably laid out the book himself and has no formal training in layout design.

He also has no formal training in game design. Pretty much no one in the tabletop game industry has formal game design training because there really isn't any to be had. We are all self-taught. That means that any game designer's first effort is going to be far from perfect. It may even have some serious flaws. I know I've been accused of picking people's pockets by selling an unfinished game, and that was my third published game. I learn more each time, and I think I've got some good game design chops now. Mortal Coil Revised is far superior to Mortal Coil, and How We Came to Live Here is my best design yet. The more I practice, the better I get, just like any endeavor.

What I'm calling for in this post is a certain understanding of this process. As a consumer, you don't want to buy a flawed or inferior product, and you are justified in being angry when you do. Just keep in mind that if you buying the first game from a new designer, you are not likely getting a fully polished, slick and professional work. You are getting a game designer's first effort. It could be brilliant, but the designer will always be improving. Pay attention when you make a purchase to the designer's previous record, and give the designer a bit of a break on the first game (or couple of games) out of the gate.

Advertisement

Latest Month

November 2009
S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Syndicate

RSS Atom
Powered by LiveJournal.com
Designed by [info]chasethestars